by Dr. Philip Ernest Schoenberg

Abe Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky, Bud Schulberg's What Make Sammy Run?, and Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz deal with the immigrant experience. All deal with Jews who go into the business world. The first two deal with the American experience while the last one deals with the Canadian experience. The first one deals with adjustments of an immigrant while the last two deal with the adjustment of their children. Finally, they reflect different experiences in time. Abe Cahan's novel takes place at the turn of the century, Bud Schulberg's novel takes place between World War I and World War II, and Mordecai Richler's novel takes place during World War II and the Korean Conflict.

David Levinsky is a man who becomes a successful businessman. But he questions whether or not he has lost his soul in the process. He has no family and he has forsaken religious rituals but not religious values. He should be more religious but he can't. Sammy Glick has no soul, Jewish or otherwise. He has no values other than achieving material success that others can envy. He is ruthlessly relentless in using people and in getting ahead. He gets his come upance when he marries a movie mogul's daughter. He can't divorce his unfaithful wife without going down the tubes. "Duddy", or "Dudele", Yiddish diminutives for David, Kravitz is a man who acquires a Jewish soul and Jewish values. He is a more positive and likable person at the end of the novel than he was at the beginning, something that can not be said for the other novels.

The Canadian background in The Apprenticeship of David Kravitz is fundamental to understanding the novel. The cities of Montreal-- where Duddy grows up and works -- and Toronto-- where he occasionally visits for business reasons; the Laurentian mountains, the Canadian equivalent of the Catskills, where Duddy goes to work in and gets his big chance to buy the land that may secure his future -- play major roles. Canadian place names, personages, and symbols are constantly mentioned.

Then, there is the marvelous description of Fletcher's Field High School, in Montreal, as a place where the immigrants have hopes of upward mobility through their children. We see how the school works, how the principal and the teachers operate, and how the students struggle. Occasionally, we learn how it feels like to be an adolescent. We get glimpses of various educational and behavioral philosophies. The successful children move out of the neighborhood and go elsewhere so that this public high school is slowly losing its Jewish character.

Duddy Levinsky is more fleshed out in the novel than the movie version. The movie skipped over some of the positive things that he did such as helping his brother out of a mess that involves an abortion so that he continue on to medical school. The negative qualities of other people are skipped over in the movie. For example, Zede (Yiddish for Grandfather) Simcha Kravitz is shown to be a man who lacks inflexibility and understanding when he deals with his own children. He is not the man of values that the moral universe can go by as the movie at the end indicates.

Duddy as a high school adolescent was not a prize student. He was a notorious rake that had been expelled from a yeshiva. He was the school troublemaker. He could be very cruel at times and played many cruel pranks on the faculty, students, and the general community. However, as one of his classmates said, "We all did it at various times." Duddy did not study too hard. He got the Canadian equivalent of a general high school diploma because he had failed two subjects. What Duddy must be given credit for is rising above his environment -- an environment that screams that money is everything to measure success by.

His grandfather, father, and uncle all say this to him. At the same time, the importance of family is emphasized although the dynamic relationships between relations is strained at times.

His grandfather, Simcha Kravitz was a shoe maker who immigrated from Lodz, Poland to Montreal. Evidently, he was a success as a businessman because he lent money out and was able to bring his shrewish wife and two children from the old country. The people of the community respected him but did not love him. He has a vegetable garden and keeps on telling Duddy that the only security is the land. When he has falling out with Benjamin because his son's marriage is going downhill, he won't make any moves to ameliorate the situation, not even when his son is dying. He says his son can always come see him.

Simcha Kravitz has two children Benjamin and Max Kravitz. "Uncle Benjamin" is the favored one because he has the "smarts". Benjamin is successful academically and financially. He graduated from McGill University and starts his own business. He has a textile factory among other enterprises. However, his life goes down hill emotionally because his wife is unfaithful. He won't divorce her. He becomes a heavy drinker without impairing his business abilities to make money. Benjamin gives his brother Max enough money to start a taxi business. He says he won't hire him for his own business because he has to make a profit.

Max is what we would call in classical yeshiva culture, an am ha-aretz an uncultured boor. Max barely makes enough money and pimps on the side. He occasionally gets a "freeby", which his son David does not approve of. Although his wife died early and Max leads a rough life, he can crack the whip over both his children without laying a hand on them.

Nevertheless, he has a determination to get ahead and appreciates the value of getting an education that both his children, Leonard and David, share in different ways. Although Max Kravitz is not the most academic person in the world, he approves of Lenny going to college. Duddy goes in for self-improvement by trying to improve his word power through Readers' Digest and taking college business courses.

Lenny (short for "Leonard") is six years older than Duddy and is idolized by his younger brother who is always ready to defend him. Lenny is the favored one of the brothers. Uncle Benjamin gives him books and other learning materials to help him. He also pays his way through medical school and gives him heart to heart talks. Lenny shares his bedroom with David. It is almost like the two are living in two different worlds in terms of their being treated. However, Lenny is generous and shares with his brother. When Duddy goes away to work in Laurentian hotels for the summer, his father never writes him although he has written him letters. Max says he is no letter writer. However, Duddy knows that his father wrote to his brother when he was working in various summer camps and even drove to visit him twice.

Another aspect of the complexity of Duddy's character is his relationship with his brother, Lenny. The only unselfish acts he ever does is helping his brother. He is willing to contribute his earnings from the summer hotels to help put his brother through medical school even though Uncle Benjamin is paying for it. He rises to the occasion when his brother runs away from McGill University because he got mixed up in an illicit abortion. Duddy is able to track down his brother and convince him to return. Then Duddy convinces Hugh Scott Calder, a member of the board of medical trustees, to cover up any pleasantness that might come to light, even though it was his daughter that suffered from the botched abortion. Later on, his brother repays him by convincing their father to lend some money that Duddy needs in order to buy some land.

The novel shows that Duddy is willing to use people but shows this is a two-way street. When Duddy quarrels with girlfriend/secretary/partner Yvette Durelle over some of his actions, he points out that he is her ticket out of poverty and drudgery as a hotel chamber maid. People use Duddy, such as the Jerry Dingle, the "Boy Wonder", who has him unwittingly smuggle heroin. Duddy learns from these experiences that these situations are two-way streets. The world is not perfect and he has to do his best. This philosophy is best expressed by Moishe Cohen.

Moishe Cohen, the scrap dealer, has a mutual business cum personal relationship with Duddy. He is capable of bargaining very hard on the proposed filming of his son's bar mitzvah while benefiting through Duddy helping him get a business contract from Calder. At the same time, Cohen gives him practical advice. You have to judge the world as it is, not the way it should be. If he is a goniff (thief) now, he does it so his son won't be. If his partner went to jail instead of him over some stolen goods, it was because he was smarter in figuring out what to do. The partner would not have hesitated to throw him to the dogs if he had beaten him to the punch. He took care of his partner's wife while in jail. If a worker suffered an accident because of bad equipment, then it was best equipment he could afford to buy at the time. He paid off everybody that was involved. Thus, Duddy shouldn't feel bad that a Virgil Roseboro, an epileptic, suffered a driving accident even though Duddy hired him for the job. This is the derech olam (way of the world).

The Jewish background of the novel is very evident. There is the constant use of Yiddish, Jewish terms, and examples of Jewish culture. Max won't contribute to the synagogue while Duddy becomes the tenth man of a minyan (Jewish prayer quorum) one day. The birth of Israel and the Jewish National Fund is mentioned. When Duddy looks for his brother, he goes to the Hillel House of McGill University. He is interested in meeting the right Jewish girl, preferably a very rich one, while living with a French-Canadian gentile. The novel constantly mentions hostile Jewish-gentile relations between the Jews and French-Candaians and the Anglo-Canadians. For example, the adolescent Duddy lead a Jewish gang to chase out a gentile vendor. Another instance is that Duddy Kravitz has to buy land through a gentile intermediary, Yvette Durelle, because the French-Canadian farmers won't sell to a Jew.

Jewish values are mentioned and questioned. The constant money-grubbing of Duddy is looked down by some of his fellow Jews while others see it as a way of upward mobility. As in the aforementioned cases of Cohen and of Jerry Dingle, "the Boy Wonder", examples of positive and negative business enterprises are given. His grandfather Simcha Kravitz emphasizes that people are nothing if they don't own land. When Duddy gets the land, his grandfather says he sold his soul in the process and goes off to pout. These words of wisdom come from a man who won't make the first move when his oldest son Benjamin, Duddy's uncle, is dying from cancer.

Uncle Benjamin is a paradoxical mixture of businessman and idealist. He is a committed socialist who is even out of sync with his fellow socialists because he likes many of Trotsky's ideas. He is a businessman who won't fire thieving workers since he doesn't believe in spying on them, even when Duddy reports thefts are taking place.

A passion for education is expressed in different ways: Simcha Kravitz paid for his grandson Duddy to go to the yeshiva equivalent of middle school; his son Benjamin is paying for his nephew Lenny's medical education.

Above all, family is seen as the most important. Uncle Benjamin helps brother Max get a taxi business, sends his nephew Lenny through college, and gives Duddy a job. Max lends his son money at a crucial moment. Lenny and Duddy help each other at various times. At other times, they can be a pain to each other. Grandfather Simcha Kravitz won't speak to his son Benjamin because of marital difficulties. Benjamin won't divorce his wife, Ida, even though she is unfaithful to him. When Benjamin dies, he leaves a house to his nephew Duddy with the hopes that he will marry some day and have children. Thus, we have the key word, family, the hopes of dynasty that is driving force of Duddy. It is not money. It is only the means toward an end. Unlike Sammy Glick in What Makes Sammy Runs? and David Levinsky in The Rise of the David Levinsky, money is not Duddy Kravitz's exclusive obsession. A good name, a Jewish value, is very important to him. Even while desperate for money, he still manages to donate time and effort for charitable events.

Although his free showing of movies in St. Agathe is motivated to get the good will of the French-Canadians where he is buying land, there is no such motive when he does the same thing for philanthropic events of both the Jewish and the gentile communities in Montreal.

At the end of the novel, Duddy has become the head of the Kravitz family in both moral and financial terms. In the last letter his uncle Max wrote him, it is clear that this has become his destiny. Instead of Duddy's father telling stories about Jerry Dingle, the "Boy Wonder", he is now telling stories about his son, Duddy, whom he had never thought would amount to anything.

Also, Duddy has been able to make a comfortable adjustment between secular and Jewish values, unlike David Levinsky and Sammy Glick. Levinsky feels that he has sacrificed too much of his Jewishness to get ahead in America. Glick has embraced the secular culture of America to the point that he measures everything by what people think of him in terms of material success. One would be tempted to say he has become a total goy (gentile) except he has no spiritual values whatsoever. In contrast, Duddy is both Canadian and Jewish. He is a roughneck ready to defend Jewish honor against anti-Semites in the neighborhood. He is ready to play the great game of life: to mingle with the Canadian mosaic whether it is dealing with French-Canadian Yvette Durelle or Anglo-Saxon Hugh Scott Calder, caretaker and scion of a great Anglo-Canadian family fortune. He has been able to achieve a balance in his life between the values of Canadian and Jewish culture which he integrates into his inner being.

Irwin Shubert is the counterpart of Duddy Kravitz if he had not changed. Although Irwin is the son of a prominent lawyer, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he is capable of mindless adolescent cruelty like Duddy. Unlike Duddy, he becomes even more cruel and hard person who enjoys hurting people for the thrill of it. He gets Duddy's brother Lenny into trouble over an illicit abortion.

Duddy at the beginning of the novel may not have been an admirable person. In the end, he has matured to be a person, who far from perfect, has become a better person. Unlike the movie, the novel concludes on a far more triuimphful hope that he will continue to grow and mature in his social and personal skills. He can be a person who can be admired even though he has faults. He is every man -- not just a Canadian or a Jew -- an imperfect person who will become better.