When Mirah was brought to America as child with her father (the novel was published in 1876, so I am assuming Mirah was in America sometime between the 1860s and 1876), she did not have a Jewish community that welcomed her and that she could engage in her beliefs with. Mirah says to Mrs. Meyrick, “he [her father] did not follow our religion at New York, and I think he wanted to me not to know much about it” (Eliot 178). Moreover, she says, “… when I was quite small I slipped out and tried to find a synagogue, but I lost myself a long while till a pedlar questioned me and took me home” (Eliot 178). Eventually, Mirah does meet a fellow Jew in America: the landlady, and it is through this connection that Mirah came “… to know a little of our religion, and the history of our people, …” (Eliot 178-9). According to Hasia Diner, author of “The Encounter Between Jews and America in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” “the 1870s coincided with the beginnings of the mass migration, primarily although not exclusively from shifting regions within eastern Europe, and from this date, the state of affairs began to change” (4). Before the 1870s, the number of Jews in the American population are said to have “… lived with a degree of anonymity…” (Diner 4). Diner mentions that the Jews who immigrated to the United States from 1870 until the 1920s experienced history differently than their earlier fellow Jews (6). Apparently but not surprisingly, between 1877 and 1924, many institutions in the United States had quotas against Jews or simply excluded them (Diner 5). Furthermore, Diner claims that it was not until the 1850s that Jews in America used distinctive Jewish signs and that before this time synagogues were neutral buildings (Diner 7). The 1870s, according to Diner, saw “… a quickening of Jewish defense politics and a willingness to challenge the American status quo” (7). Unfortunately, this willingness to challenge the American status quo did not occur for everyone, and the status-quo included internalized stereotypes that police officers held and that targeted Jews. According to Mia Brett, writer of “‘Ten Thousand Bigamists in New York’: The Criminalization of Jewish Immigrants Using White Slavery Panics,” there may have been reason for Mirah’s father dropping the Jewish religion and culture in America from society in addition to his possible personal reasons. Mirah’s father wanted to be accepted by others. The trip to America was to start over. He tells Mirah that her mother and brothe are dead , and that is the reason he gives for their not going back (Eliot 176). This is indicative of his attitude towards what was left behind: they were dead to him. Mirah even mentions that her father would ridicule their own people in an attempt to make others laugh (Eliot 180). Brett mentions, that “white slavery prosecutions of Jewish immigrants allowed the courts and the press to use concern over crime and young women to mask bigotry and anti-immigrant sentiment.” It was not until the late-nineteenth and almost early twentieth-century, according to Diner, that Jews “… began to insist to the overwhelmingly Christian majority that it did not have the right to claim America as a Christian nation” (8). Hence, Mirah’s father, coming to a place in which Christianity was dominant and Jews were certainly other, would have been awfully alone. Assimilation would have been a source of validation at the expense of one’s heritage. To him, it seems the price was worth it, but to Mirah, the betrayal to her people was a heavy burden. Although Mirah’s time in America did not last long, by the time she left at thirteen, she says, “… I seemed to myself quite old…” (Eliot 179). This experience certainly does play a signifant impact on her character and her mirroring Daniel. On the voyage back, she hears her father say, “There’s no race like them [Jews] for cunning in the men and beauty in the women. I wonder what market he means that daughter for” (Eliot 179). According to the Brett writing, women were trafficked in America. Apparently and again not surprisingly, “according to Turner, there was a ‘third great flush of immigration consisting of Austrian, Russian, and Hungarian Jews’ coming to New York around 1885, which included a large number of criminals. Turner claimed these criminals realized after immigrating that ‘the sale of women’ would be an extremely profitable business because there were many police who were bought by Tammany Hall who also controlled politicians.’” Furthermore, Brett claims that Turner (an anti-Semitic police commissioner) in “Daughters of the Poor” claims that Jewess daughters were "'sacrificed’" by being forced to work so that the boys could go to school and that Jewish women were vulnerable to becoming prostitutes. Finally, Brett claims that Turner pointed out that Jewish women are easy to be forced into prostitution via seduction by men who promised to marry them. The underlying notion is that Jewish women were a threat to the morality of chaste women and not there was some stuructural issue. The Jewish women were racialized as perpetuators of unchaste prostitution while Christian girls were victimized. I cannot say that this is exactly what Mirah’s father was intending, but there was certainly some underlying expression demonizing Jewish women in what he said on the voyage back, and Brett's peice may suggest a possible interpretation. Nonetheless, what is clear is that Mirah’s father perpetuated stereotypes regarding Jews in a degrading manner rather than respecting them. This was clearly extremely hurtful to Mirah, especially in her formative years, who identified as a Jewess. To close this out, the idea of mirroring and interpretation of that mirror can be considered a theme in Daniel Deronda. Mirah’s story of her childhood experience in America is similar to what Daniel experiences in adulthood in finding his Truth regarding his family and religion.
I am not using an image. I am still confused with the whole copyright thing, and I would rather play it safe. I do apologize.
Works Cited
Brett, Mia. “‘Ten Thousand Bigamists in New York’: The Criminalization of Jewish Immigrants Using White Slavery Panics.” The Gotham Center for New York History. Oct. 2020, https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/ten-thousand-bigamists-in-new-york.
Diner, Hasia. “The Encounter between Jews and America in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, vol. 11, no. 1, 2012, pp. 3–25., www.jstor.org/stable/23249056. Accessed 29 Apr. 2021.
Eliot, George. Daniel Deronda. Oxford UP. 2014.