الفهرس 
prefaceOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The plight of Russian Jews began long before they even thought of immigrating to America.
As early as the eighteenth-century, they had suffered from persecution at the hands of Russian
authorities. Nevertheless, following the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881, the
persecution of Jews in Russia reached an unprecedented degree. State-sanctioned pogroms
against them spread throughout the empire, which led to a massive wave of Jewish immigration
from Eastern Europe that lasted from 1881 until 1924. Most immigrants landed in America
which attracted them with its democratic principles. However, contrary to their expectations,
most Russian Jews resided on the Lower East Side of New York, America’s largest Jewish
ghetto, under inhumane conditions; thus, they came to see integration into mainstream society
as their gateway to social and economic prosperity. Yet, notwithstanding their arduous attempts
to Americanize themselves, they were viewed as outsiders to America’s national society and
culture. In addition, the pogroms they had been subjected to in Russia had left an indelible
mark on their group consciousness, maiming their psyches and destabilizing their identities.
They consequently felt dislocated and uprooted, unable to belong to their original or adopted
homelands. Abraham Cahan was one of the leading Jewish voices who managed to capture the
identity crisis suffered by most Russian Jews in America between 1881 and 1924. This study
traces the elements of fluidity and cultural vacuity that characterized the identities of Russian
Jews in America during those years by examining a selection of works by Cahan.