A Jew's Head

Brooklyn NY: S. Davidman. Very Good. 1942. First Edition. Stapled wraps. [moderate external soiling, single-staple binding solid, internally clean]. ("Subway Library," No. 1) Series A small pocket-size publication, No. 1 in the "Subway Library" series, published by the author (who later went by the name Solomon Davidman). Noted as "translated from Yiddish," it's a short tale (the booklet is only 40 pages, including the covers) about a Jewish merchant, Mr. Julius Jackson (nee Judah Jacobs), a Ukranian immigrant living in Queens but with a successful shop on 42nd Street in Manhattan (apparently a jewelry business, although it's never stated explicitly). One day while commuting to work on the subway, a headline in a Yiddish-language newspaper in the hands of another commuter -- "A Jew's Head" -- catches his eye, and troubles him. On his lunch break he wanders down to the Lower East Side, site of his first business in America (as a watchmaker), finds a copy of the newspaper, and reads the story (which is presented as a story-within-the-story), a horrific account of a Nazi massacre of Jews in a Ukranian village. It shocks him deeply and brings on a kind of guilt-ridden lament for the dwindling importance of the Yiddish language within the Jewish culture (he regrets, for example, that he never taught his children to read the language, and is upset that his wife has moved his collection of Yiddish books to their cellar), and for the broader danger to Jewish culture itself represented by the Nazis. In the end, he is re-invigorated by his Jewish heritage and faith, and in response throws himself wholeheartedly into the war effort: "Everything for the winning of the war! Everything to destroy Fascism! Everything in defense of the Jewish people!" Davidman (1900-1975) continued to issue "Subway Library" titles at least until 1949; a search of OCLC turns up a total of seven titles in English and a few in Yiddish, all very scarce as far as library holdings are concerned (sometimes just single copies, and never more than half a dozen or so). The very last publication credited to him in OCLC was published in 1975 (the year of his death), in Yiddish, with the translated title "A Song to Yiddish." (The address given for Davidman is in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, at that time populated mostly by first- and second-generation Jewish-Americans (and following the war, Holocaust survivors). The building at that address was built in 1928 and still stands today.) ***This book is among the nearly 150 items offered in ReadInk's new Catalog Number 4, "Booking Passage: Books on the Immigrant Experience." You can access this catalog and its contents in any one of three ways: (1) email us to request a PDF to be emailed to you; (2) view or download the catalog from the link on our website's main page; (3) browse the books individually (including a few that didn't make the cut for the catalog) on our website under these two subject headings: "Immigration: Fiction" and "Immigration: Non-Fiction." .