Pinchus

Pinchus, the father of Mary Antin and the son of Joseph, is the patriarchal figure whose emigration from the Pale of Settlement to America sets the entire memoir in motion. A promising yeshibah bahur in his youth, he is transformed by the New World into a citizen who, though he fails to secure material prosperity, dedicates himself to the intellectual freedom of his children, making him the embodiment of the book's central theme of Americanization through the next generation. His story is one of a man who, bound by the traditions and poverty of the Old World, finds in America not a fortune but a cause: the education and advancement of his offspring, through whom he lives out his own unfulfilled dreams of liberal learning.

Identity and Background

Pinchus was the grandson of Israel Kimanyer of sainted memory, a lineage that marked him from birth as the pious scion of a godly race. His father, Joseph, was an indifferent workman, scholar, and hasid, distinguished only by his grumbling and a pessimism that saw the sable lining of every silver cloud. In contrast, Pinchus distinguished himself for scholarship from the first. Five years old when he entered heder, at eleven he was already a yeshibah bahur, a student in the seminary. The rebbe never had occasion to use the birch on him; on the contrary, he held him up as an example to the dull or lazy pupils, praised him in the village, and carried his fame to Polotzk. His grandmother, Rachel Leah, had carried him to heder on her back in the bitter winter because he had no shoes, she herself walking almost barefoot in the cruel snow, a sacrifice that underscored the family's devotion to his education. In Polotzk, he continued to distinguish himself, and people began to prophesy that he would live to be famous, regarding the promising grandson of Israel Kimanyer with double respect.

The Old World Marriage and Family

Pinchus's marriage to Hannah Hayye was a sacrament, a union celebrated with the merriment of fiddlers and the dancing of the most pious men in Polotzk, their earlocks dangling and the tails of their long coats flying in a pious ecstasy. The sixteen-year-old bride, suffocated beneath her heavy veil, blushed unseen at the numerous healths drunk to her future sons and daughters. This marriage was part of the great career of parenthood, for in the Pale, to rear a family of children was to serve God, and woman's only work was motherhood. The family tradition held that Mary was the quicker, the brighter of the two daughters, and that hers could be no common lot, while Frieda was relied upon for help. This distinction was sealed when Mary failed as a milliner's apprentice while Frieda made excellent progress at the dressmaker's, and it was understood, even before they reached Boston, that Frieda would go to work and Mary to school. Pinchus, however, had sent his children hand in hand to school before he had ever thought of America, and his best hopes were to see all his children at school with equal advantages at home.

Emigration and the Vision of America

Pinchus was carried away by the westward movement, glad of his own deliverance but sore at heart for the family he left behind. He traveled with borrowed money to a German port, whence he was forwarded to Boston at the expense of an emigrant aid society. His departure was unlike his previous journeys, as the family had no reliable source of income, no settled home, and no immediate prospects. In a letter written just before boarding the ship, he wrote with the confidence of a well-equipped soldier going into battle, though he simply noted that the emigration committee was taking good care of everybody, the weather was fine, and the ship comfortable. Mary, reading the letter with her mother in a darkened room, felt an elation, a hint of triumph, such as had never been in her father's letters before, and it was this letter that made "America" the centre of all her dreams. When the steamer ticket arrived, the news spread all over Polotzk that Hannah Hayye had received a ticket for America, and a steady stream of friends, foes, relatives, and neighbors poured into their street, making her the heroine of Polotzk.

Citizenship and the Quest for Intellectual Freedom

Almost his first act on landing on American soil, three years before he led his children to school, was his application for naturalization. He took the remaining steps with eager promptness and became a citizen of the United States at the earliest moment allowed by the law. The boasted freedom of the New World meant to him far more than the right to reside, travel, and work wherever he pleased; it meant the freedom to speak his thoughts, to throw off the shackles of superstition, and to test his own fate, unhindered by political or religious tyranny. He was only thirty-two when he landed, and most of his life he had been held in leading-strings, hungry for his untasted manhood. Three years passed in sordid struggle and disappointment, as he was not prepared to make a living even in America. He had been endowed at birth with a poor constitution, a nervous, restless temperament, and an abundance of hindering prejudices, and his body had been starved in boyhood that his mind might be stuffed with useless learning. He never learned to write English correctly, and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day, but he lost nothing of what was to be learned through reading, attendance at public meetings, and exercising the rights of citizenship.

The Father's Legacy and the Children's Advancement

Unable to prosecute his own education, Pinchus sought to realize his compensation of intellectual freedom by sending his children to school, to learn all those things that he knew by fame to be desirable. He knew no surer way to their advancement and happiness, and he would walk by proxy in the Elysian Fields of liberal learning. On the first day of school, he conducted his children himself, taking long strides in his eagerness, the rest of them running and hopping to keep up. At the teacher's desk, he gave them over in her charge with some broken word of his hopes that his swelling heart could no longer contain. His atheistic doctrines, which Mary glibly repeated in the schoolyard, were part of his effort to purge his house of superstition, a process that also affected his wife, who eventually kept the same day of rest as her Gentile neighbors but still joined the ancient service on the Day of Atonement. When Frieda had an offer of marriage, Pinchus, though still in the woods financially and would sorely miss her wages, would not stand in the way of what he considered her welfare, letting her escape from the workshop while the roses were still in her cheeks. His children's triumphs, such as Mary's graduation day when he sat on the platform as a guest of honor, were his own, and his legacy was fulfilled in their success, as Mary went on to Barnard College and learned to think in English without an accent.