46 pages • 1 hour read
Anzia YezierskaBread Givers
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1925A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book 1, Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 1: “Hester Street”
Book 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Hester Street”
Content Warning: This source material contains themes of patriarchal control and misogynistic treatment of women. This source material also contains derogatory language towards people with disabilities and mental illnesses.
Sara Smolinsky is a ten-year-old Polish Jewish girl who lives in an apartment with her family on Hester Street in New York City. Sara’s older sisters, Bessie, Mashah, and Fania, arrive home, unable to find work. Despite their economic situation, Mashah spends her extra money on new hats and clothes, which infuriates Sara’s mother, Shenah.
Sara’s father, Reb Smolinsky, tells his wife and their daughters that women can only get into heaven if they serve men. At dinner, Shenah complains to Reb Smolinsky about their lack of rent money. She blames their poverty on him because he does not work and studies the Torah all day. Shenah convinces him to move his books out of one of the rooms so that they can rent the room. The next day, Shenah and Sara hear Reb Smolinsky reciting the Torah. Suddenly, the landlady rushes in and demands rent. She interrupts Reb Smolinsky’s prayers, and he tells her that they do not have the rent. The landlady angrily hits the Torah, and it falls on the ground. Reb Smolinsky slaps the landlady, and she brings back policemen, who arrest Reb Smolinsky.
Later, Sara buys herring to peddle in the street. Sara sells enough fish that she makes a small profit, which she proudly gives to Shenah.
Book 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “The Speaking Mouth of the Block”
Reb Smolinsky wins his trial against the landlady because the lawyer proves that the landlady threw the Torah down and stepped on it. The Smolinskys rent out one of their rooms, and Sara sees a change in Shenah’s mood. Shenah starts to tell her daughters about her life in Poland. Shenah says a matchmaker brought Reb Smolinsky to meet her father, and he impressed them with his knowledge of the Torah. When her father died, they inherited his business. However, Reb Smolinsky lost the business, and they traveled to America to survive.
Book 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “The Burden Bearer”
Fania catches the attention of a young man named Morris Lipkin, who writes her love poems. One night, Bessie asks Sara to help her get into Mashah’s new dress because Berel Bernstein is coming to visit her. When Berel arrives, he tells Reb Smolinsky that he wants to marry Bessie. Reb Smolinsky does not want Bessie to marry yet because she makes so much money for the family. Reb Smolinsky says that if Berel wants to marry Bessie, he must pay him the money that the family would lose without her. Berel tells Reb Smolinsky that he should be grateful that Bessie’s work has allowed him to live in laziness for years rather than working like everyone else.
The next night, Berel tells Bessie that he will marry her without her father’s approval, but Bessie worries about what will happen to her family. Berel gets angry and refuses to marry her. A few weeks later, Berel gets engaged to another woman. Sara sees Bessie crying, so she goes to the celebration of Berel’s engagement and curses Berel for breaking Bessie’s heart.
Book 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “The ‘Empty-Head’”
Mashah falls in love with a pianist named Jacob Novak. Reb Smolinsky does not like that Jacob plays piano on the Sabbath. On the day of Jacob’s biggest concert, Mashah tells her family that Jacob’s father, who owns a department store, is coming to visit. When Mr. Novak arrives, Sara sees that their poverty makes him uncomfortable. After the visit, Jacob leaves with his father and does not return.
After a week, Mashah tells Sara to write a letter to Jacob, telling him that he will never hear from her again. Sara delivers the letter, and Jacob tells Sara that he will not let his father keep him away from Mashah. Jacob visits Mashah and begs her to forgive him. When Reb Smolinsky sees Jacob, he kicks him out because he does not want a man who breaks the Sabbath to see his daughter. He tells Mashah that if she ever sees Jacob again, he will disown her. Even though Mashah loves Jacob, she obeys her father, and Jacob never comes back. Sara begins to hate the sound of her father preaching from the Torah while the rest of them work. She resolves that she will not end up like her sisters and will choose her own husband who will let her make her own decisions.
Book 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “Morris Lipkin Writes Poetry”
Reb Smolinsky gets angry because he reads one of Morris Lipkin’s love letters to Fania. Reb Smolinsky decides that he will go to the matchmaker and pick out husbands for his daughters. A few days later, Morris visits Fania. Reb Smolinsky comes home, but before Morris can speak, Reb Smolinsky pushes another man into the room. Reb Smolinsky introduces the man as Moe Mirsky and ignores Morris. Sara is ashamed of her father’s rudeness.
After Moe leaves, Reb Smolinsky brags about how Moe is a diamond dealer. Reb Smolinsky tells Fania that if she continues to see Morris, he will kick her out of the house. Later, Moe visits Mashah and buys her diamonds. Not long after, Moe takes the diamonds back to sell for bigger diamonds, and he repeats this every few days. Before long, Moe and Mashah are engaged, even though Mashah does not love Moe.
The next day, Reb Smolinsky introduces Fania to Abe Schumukler, a cloth salesman visiting from Los Angeles. Two weeks later, Abe and Fania are engaged. The night before the wedding, Fania tells Bessie and Sara that she will always love Morris, but she feels that marrying Abe is her only way to get away from Reb Smolinsky.
A month after Fania and Mashah marry, Mashah comes to visit. Reb Smolinsky asks her for money, but Mashah tells him that Moe lied: He isn’t a wealthy diamond store owner but instead simply worked at a diamond store. He lost his job at the diamond store because he kept letting Mashah wear the diamonds he could not sell. Reb Smolinsky yells at her for being too stupid to see that Moe was lying to her, but Mashah tells him it is his fault because he promised her that Moe was a diamond dealer.
Six months later, Fania writes to tell them that Abe is a gambler and that she wants to come home. Reb Smolinsky writes that if she leaves her husband, he will disown her. He also tells her it is her fault for not realizing Abe was dishonest. Sara gets mad at Reb Smolinsky for blaming his daughters for his mistakes. That night, Sara finds Morris’ love letters to Fania under the mattress. The love letters are so vivid that Sara develops a crush on Morris. She musters the courage to tell him that she loves him, but he laughs at her. Sara feels humiliated by the interaction and tears up his love letters.
Book 1, Chapters 1-5 Analysis
This section characterizes Sara as a hard-working and devoted daughter. Sara describes how peddlers fill the street, desperate to sell their wares so they can pay rent and feed themselves. Despite the peddlers’ desperation, their dedication to survival inspires Sara. Even as a child, Sara understands the pride that comes from contributing to the family. For example, when the policemen arrest Reb Smolinsky for hitting the landlady, Sara sells herring on the street. She presents her earnings to her grateful mother as if they are a prize, demonstrating her desire to contribute to her family by working. Sara’s work and sacrifice differentiates her from her father, whose refusal to work stands in stark contrast to his daughters’ and wife’s industriousness.
The tension between Sara’s sisters’ choices in suitors and the matches Reb Smolinsky makes for them introduces the theme of Traditional Values Versus Modern Aspirations. Although Bessie, Fania, and Mashah all work hard for their father, Reb Smolinsky finds fault with every one of their suitors. Reb Smolinsky’s inflated ego after winning the trial against his landlady leads him to think that the Jewish community on Hester Street expects his daughters to marry influential and upstanding Jewish citizens. He decides to arrange his daughters’ marriages in the traditional role of a matchmaker, rather than letting his daughters choose their husbands. Reb Smolinsky’s decision illustrates his refusal to let go of Jewish tradition and his fear that the Americanization of his daughters threatens his own cultural identity. His daughters comply with his decision in part because they respect him and put trust in their culture’s traditional values. Marriage also lets Fania and Mashah escape the oppression of their family home. Fania reveals that she gives in to Reb Smolinsky’s wishes because she feels desperate to get away from him and his constant dehumanization. However, Fania and Mashah ultimately trade in living with their verbally abusive father for living with equally oppressive husbands. Although Reb Smolinsky boasts about the quality of the men he finds for Fania and Mashah, he later blames his daughters when the men’s faults are revealed. His inability to take responsibility for his poor matchmaking decisions is due to his unwillingness to admit that his daughters have better judgment than him. Reb Smolinsky’s pride and strict adherence to Jewish tradition trap Fania and Mashah in loveless marriages that they cannot escape from without losing their family and cultural identity.
Reb Smolinsky’s misogynistic behavior introduces the theme of The Threat of Patriarchal Control. Although Sara cannot fight against her father at first, Reb Smolinsky makes it clear throughout his daughters’ lives that he believes that he is inherently smarter, holier, and more important than them because he is a man, and they are women. Reb Smolinsky’s constant misogyny weighs on his wife and daughters; however, they have difficulty fighting against it because he often hides his sexism within his religion. Reb Smolinsky uses Judaism to justify his laziness and his treatment of the women in his family. Therefore, when Shenah and her daughters contradict Reb Smolinsky, they feel like they are fighting against God. Sara realizes that Reb Smolinsky uses traditional stories from the Torah and his holy books to control the women in his family. Reb Smolinsky knows that his stories comfort Shenah and her daughters because they remind them of their cultural identity and the life that they left behind in Poland. Reb Smolinsky’s strategy of framing his misogynistic beliefs as cultural and religious truths demonstrates the insidious nature of patriarchal control, foreshadowing how Sara will struggle to overcome her father’s misogynistic views even after she leaves his home. As Sara watches Fania and Mashah marry men that they do not love, she resolves to choose her own husband and not give into Reb Smolinsky’s pressure when she gets older. Since Sara is the youngest and does not remember life in Poland, it is the easiest for her to shape her worldview towards modern aspirations, rather than traditional ones. However, even as Sara forms her own, modern goals, Reb Smolinsky and his patriarchal pressures will continue to shape her life going forward.
