Values and status are linked together in every society. Status is given to the persons who embody the values of that social construct. The values of the Old Country, Russia, were those of spiritual and religious piousness and learning. Therefore those who studied religion, like Reb Smolinsky, were among those who held the highest status. However, in America, these values were not the same. Immigrants soon learned of the capitalist nature of a materialistically driven land where whoever had the most wealth held the most status. The question arises, what happens when people in a society with one set of values enter a society with different values? To assimilate successfully, the immigrant's values must undergo a change. In her novel Bread Givers, Anzia Yezierska tells the tale of an immigrant family who has difficulty coping with such a clash of values. Reb Smolinsky in particular is a character that craves his status so much so that he changes his values in America and adopts something he doesn't understand, thus ruining his family.

Jews in Russia lived differently than they did as immigrants in America. In Russia they lived in sht

But Father said, he got plenty of money himself. He wanted to buy himself honor in the family. He wanted only learning in a son-in-law. Not only could he give his daughter a big dowry, but he could promise his son-in-law twelve years' free board and he wouldn't have to do anything but sit in the synagogue and learn (Yezierska 31).

(Yezierska 166). It was this knowledge that gave Reb Smolinsky the high status he needed in order to marry Shenah and live a life of comfort. But then hard times fell upon the family and they were forced to immigrate to America. Mother says, "When everything was gone from us, then our only hope was to come to America, were Father thought things cost nothing at all" (Yezierska 34). However, Father soon learns that he was horrible mistaken. The Smolinsky family realizes that the land of freedom and opportunity comes with a price, and they are no longer living lavishly. Yezierska scholar Gay Wilentz claims:

her Father and leave him, she is able to succeed in America and eventually rescues the man who forces her into this success. Thus, though Reb Smolinsky's clashing values negatively affected him, and he fails to achieve on his own his acclimation of status, his ideals consequently help his daughter to achieve that which he was unable to. The novel ends with Sara Smolinsky, who has succeeded in balancing her value for knowledge with the need to acquire wealth in America, as a settled individual and she picks up her Father, now defeated, and helps him continue on his way.

So, what is Yezierska portraying by a happy ending where the Reb is at peace? Is she saying that it is possible for one who is stubborn in values that are unaccepted and foreign to a society to succeed in that society? Certainly not. At the end of the novel, Reb Smolinsky finds himself defeated, married to a woman who will not support nor care for him, lonely, and worthless. Only after such a dishonorable ending does Sara take pity on her Father and show him the sensitivity that he failed to show her. Reb Smolinsky is comfortable at the end of his life, but it is only because he chooses to be humble and recon ciliate with his daughter whom he once disowned from his family. Because Father can finally find a compromise within his values so that he can accept a daughter who disrespected his orders, he is ultimately rewarded the harmony between his value of study and his value of status. Reb is allowed to study freely with Sara and Hugo and, because Hugo is a principal of a school, and Sara is a schoolteacher, he is guaranteed financial status as well.

When the Landlady approaches the Smolinsky apartment for her rent, Father claims that he cannot pay because his daughters are out of work. The Landlady screams, "Hear him only! The dirty do-nothing! Go to work yourself! Stop singing prayers. Then you'll have money for rent!" (Yezierska 18). Clearly the Landlady does not value Torah study enough to merit Father not working. Father slaps the landlady in the face, "till the blood rushed from her nose" (Yezierska 22). "A Jewish patriarch bloodies a daughter of the faith who is, like his own daughters, merely trying to eke out a living" (Ferraro 555) Father does not see the intentions of the landlady as the same of his own - to build themselves up- and instead is blinded by his own stubbornness and desire for wealth.

"Sara moves forward because she has uncovered the limits of social arrangements in which she is currently embedded and, subsequently scouting around, ahs identified alternative forms of mobility from which emanate promises for addressing these new concerns." (Ferraro 560) She has pursued her own dreams and becomes a schoolteacher, yet she does this the American way. "Sara Smolinsky in this novel, took America at its word and tried to live by its ideals" (Kessler-Harris xix). Sara acknowledges that in order to succeed in America, she must have money to live by, but she will not sacrifice her own values and her desire to

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Approximate Word count = 2976
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page double spaced)