60 pages • 2 hours read
Letters from Rifka
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Themes
America as Land of Opportunity
Letters from Rifka is a first-person description of immigration to America, informed by Hesse’s memories of her own great-aunt. The novel positions America as a land of hope and opportunity, with the intention of realistically representing what motivated waves of immigrants to come to the US in the early 20th century. For Rifka, whose family flees from Russia due to the persecution of Jews, coming to America seems almost miraculous. In her first letter to Tovah, she writes, “I can hardly believe that I too will soon live in such a place as America” (15).
Rifka sees America as a place of possibility. She writes, “I will do everything there,” in contrast to the confinement she and her family faced in their hometown of Berdichev (38). The United States, for her, is more than an escape; it is a place of rebirth: America, she writes, “is not simply a place you go when you run away. America is a place to begin anew. In America, I think, life is as good as a clever girl can make it” (91). Rifka looks forward to relying on her own wits and building an independent life for herself in America, vowing to “work in America and find a way to do everything,” including even writing poetry (74). Thus, Rifka sees immigration to America as a path to individuality.
However, as Rifka makes her way through various trials, her perspectives on America gather nuance. Shortly after crossing the Polish border, for instance, she notes that Poland is not very different from Berdichev, and she wonders whether it will “be like this in America too,” if the ideal doesn’t hold true (20). Later, while she recovers from ringworm in Antwerp after her family has already arrived in New York City, she compares their description of their safe but cramped apartment building to her own comfortable accommodations in Antwerp, which include her own room. Rifka’s perspectives on America change further once she arrives on Ellis Island and is barred from entry unless the immigration officials approve not only her health but her marital prospects. While detained in a hospital, she rejects the officials’ reductive approach to her life, and instead develops herself further as a poet, as an empathetic friend to people like Ilya, and as a thoughtful helper to the hospital staff and family. Thus, when Rifka is finally permitted to enter the US, she does so with her own independent perspectives on the country, instead of mere idealizations based on others’ anecdotes.
Empathy for Suffering Individuals
Letters from Rifka centers on the story of Rifka’s family fleeing Russia to escape the persecution they faced there as Jews. Given their dire circumstances in Berdichev, the family is resistant to all things Russian as they make their way across Europe and to the United States. Saul, for instance, is initially critical of Rifka not only for becoming friends with a Russian peasant boy (Ilya) on Ellis Island, but also for merely reading a Russian book of Pushkin’s poetry.
Rifka is not so quick to be judgmental. She carries the Pushkin book because it was a gift from her cousin Tovah, but also because she enjoys the poetry itself, no matter that it is Russian. As Rifka spends more time in various locations and meets a diverse range of people, she builds on this perspective of openness to develop into an empathetic person. On the crowded train to Warsaw, for instance, Rifka sees a poor Polish peasant girl holding a baby and does not shun the girl for being from a different culture or because of her ragged appearance. Instead, she offers to fix the girl's hair, telling herself, “I do not know what made me offer. Maybe it was the sweetness of the baby, maybe the friendliness of the girl” (36).
When Rifka arrives on Ellis Island and meets Ilya, she thinks more precisely about how and why she develops empathy for the Russian peasant boy. At first, she is upset that he is on hunger strike because he wants to return home rather than stay in America, while she, unable to leave Ellis Island, knows that returning to Russia would mean her death. She also realizes that as a Russian peasant, he represents the very nationality that persecuted her fellow Russian Jews. She writes to Tovah, “Maybe it is not very clever to feel what I felt about this Russian peasant, this enemy of my people” (102). Yet she once again looks past the abstractions of cultural differences and sees Ilya in human terms: “Tovah, he was just a little, hungry boy” (102). She realizes that she and Ilya have more common ground than cultural differences. Both characters grieve worlds they have left behind, and both are “trapped between two worlds” (118). In the detention hospital, Rifka further practices empathy by caring for a Polish baby ill from typhus.
As someone who lives across multiple countries, ethnicities, languages, and cultures, Rifka is poised to see both differences and commonalities. Learning to navigate the worlds of Russia, Poland, Belgium, and the US, Rifka decides to care for others, drawing on empathy as an alternative to judgment. Rifka does not hold on to misperceptions of who individuals are; she sees people not as stereotypes, but as individuals with humanity and dignity.
Writing as Freedom
Writing in general is a constant theme in Letters from Rifka, given that the novel comprises Rifka’s letters to Tovah. Poetic writing in particular is another presence in the novel, as Rifka writes these letters within the pages of a book of Pushkin’s poetry, and the novel includes excerpts from Pushkin’s poetry at the start of each letter. Initially, it is Pushkin’s writing that provides Rifka solace, accompanying her as she makes her way out of Russia and toward freedom. At the same time, Pushkin’s writing has a more literal utility in helping her family toward freedom: Early in the novel, when Rifka sits on the train platform as Russian soldiers search the boxcars (near her hiding family), a soldier asks what is in Rifka’s bag that makes it so heavy. She insists that it is books, saying, “I like to read,” and holds up her volume of Pushkin as proof (12). The soldier moves on, and Rifka’s family secretly escapes.
In a more personal sense, writing provides Rifka the freedom to express herself when she has no other outlet. She writes her letters to Tovah within the pages of the Pushkin book, the only paper she has, knowing that she can never actually send the letters to Tovah; if her family’s escape is discovered, their friends and relatives in Russia will be punished. Within the pages of the book, however, she can write freely about her movements toward America, about the challenges and tragedies she faces, and about her feelings throughout. Introspective, Rifka writes for a connection to her friend Tovah and a forsaken homeland. Her letters are a chronicle or diary of her personal development amidst tumult. They recall the diary of Anne Frank, which takes the form of letters written to a fictional friend named Kitty, written while Anne and her Jewish family were hiding in Nazi-controlled Holland during World War II.
As the novel goes on, writing plays a key role in Rifka’s independence during her time in Antwerp, on the transatlantic voyage, and in the detention hospital on Ellis Island. Aboard the ship, for instance, she writes, “Sometimes, when I read Pushkin’s poems, I want to write poems of my own. […] I do have something to say, and I feel as if I will explode if I don’t write down what is in my head and in my heart” (80). She is compelled to express herself through writing, and ultimately she does begin to write her own poetry—and become her own person in the process.
The climactic final letter describes how Ilya reads aloud one of Rifka’s poems during the immigration hearing in which the officials are preoccupied with Rifka’s marital prospects. The poem contains the line “I leave behind my cousins, young and dear; / They’ll never know the freedom I have known” (140). The words impress the immigration officials, ultimately convincing them to grant Rifka’s entrance. They recognize Rifka’s talents, and the official says, “Whether you wish to marry or not is no business of mine” (141). Thus, by becoming a poet and sharing her work, Rifka grasps freedom on her own terms.
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By Karen Hesse
