Shayna – Determination A Woman’s Prerogative

Apr 3, 2022 by Two Sues On the Aisle

By Sue Weston and Susie Rosenbluth – Two Sues on the Aisle

Coming of age stories can be endearing and touching, but in Shayna, Miriam Ruth Black’s historical fiction novel about two young lovers in Ukraine in 1919, the genre takes on epic proportions.

Inspired by her father’s life story, Ms. Black’s novel, just published by Kirk House, delves into the plight of Jews fleeing pogroms and dreaming of safety in America, young people forced to assume responsibility for themselves and others on perilous treks across unknown terrains.

According to Ms. Black, her father, Gershon, was orphaned when he was only four years old. Like the young nephew in Shayna, Mr. Black walked across Europe before arriving in America.

Family Life Interrupted

The book unfolds as a retrospective in which an older woman with gnarled fingers brushing across embroidered Ukrainian violet irises, is surrounded by family as she recalls her secret memories: a family’s fascinating and frightening struggle for survival.

The story begins in Obodivka, in the Russian region known as the Pale of Settlement, just as the Ukraine is slowly collapsing. Seventeen-year-old Shayna and Yussi meet and fall in love, but the story takes an unexpected turn when Cossacks invade the shtetls in their region, brutally ravaging everything in their path and filling the streets with death and destruction.

As Ms. Black puts it: “The Cossacks swooped in like a storm and left as quickly. They would be back to steal and murder what remained.”

Flight to Safety

Desperate to find safety, Shayna rescues her newly orphaned four-year-old nephew, Dovid, and with Yussi, now her fiancé, and his mother, Manya, braves a perilous trek across Europe to the port where they can use the tickets sent by her brother to reach America.

Apart from the physical demands of the travel, including brutalities experienced on the road, they struggle with an emotional burden. Shayna suffers from survivors’ guilt for failing to protect her family and frequently recalls her mother’s admonition not to “stretch farther than you can reach.” The reference is to an episode in which she fell into the local river while reaching for irises. The incident becomes a metaphor for Shayna’s approach to life: the need to reach deep inside to find the determination to escape from Europe and create a successful life in America.

On their journey, they must learn to trust strangers who offer kindness, such as Yankel, a former student of Shayna’s father who rescues them from Cossack attackers, offering protection while his wife, Inge, helps Dovid find his voice.

Was America a Lie?

Once they reach the United States, Yussi, a scholar, learns to reconcile his religious identity with his need to survive and take care of his family. He changes his appearance and finds work in a factory instead of learning.

The family’s dreams of a warm, welcoming America, offering them reconnection with a loving family and close-knit community, never materialize. When she finds him, Shayna’s brother has assimilated, becoming a materialistic factory owner. He provides them with housing, but at a price, making his new greenhorn relatives work to repay the cost of passage.

As Manya says, “America is a lie. I work harder here than in Obodivka. No time for celebrations, no time for Shabbos. Rush. Rush. Work and work more. Nothing left for me.”

Success from Talents Within

An emotionally rich novel, Shayna is steeped in the Yiddish culture of the shtetl and its echo on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 20^th century.

After hardships and humiliations endured first to reach and then live in America, borne because they believed in the dream, the family succeeds in re-creating themselves and forging a successful life. Yussi, remembering the advice of his father—“The man who can change, that’s the man who survives”—uses his carpentry skills to create a future.

Shayna accepts guidance from a volunteer at a Jewish rescue organization, but others recognize her talent and help her establish herself as a designer in America.

Shayna is a story of hope, strength, and family. Ms. Black tells a captivating, fast-moving story, that draws the reader with relatable characters who find themselves in situations that demand them to stretch farther than they can reach. The author’s use of Yiddish maintains authenticity as the characters consistently remind themselves of who they are, adapting to America without losing themselves. Fortunately, Ms. Black includes a workable glossary that will position her novel for a wider audience.

Voice to Countless Untold Stories

Shayna, a story that should be shared, shows the strength, determination, and will to survive of Eastern-European Jews. While a great deal of modern-Jewish literature is devoted to the Holocaust, this novel is refreshing in that it addresses the period of the great Jewish migration from Eastern Europe to the New World. There is hardly a Jewish family in the United States whose immigration is not rooted in that era, and too few novels tell that story.

Narratives like Shayna give voice to the countless untold stories of Eastern-European immigrants, many of whom settled in New York. Some, like Shayna’s brother, chose to use the freedom of America to assimilate and create a new life that left the past behind. Others lacked the words, skill, or desire to relive their sagas. As a result, too often, these stories were not shared; too often, they were forgotten.

Fortunately, Shayna, a story that chronicles the challenges that forced these immigrants to uproot their lives and travel abroad, facing danger each step of the way, is not one of the forgotten.

Ms. Black has captured the essence of their struggle, and enough time has elapsed to provide perspective and appreciation for that desperate will to survive. Without people like Shayna and her family, where would American Jewry be today?

***

Two Sues on the Aisle bases its ratings on how many challahs (1-5) it pays to buy (rather than make) in order to see the play, show, film, or exhibit being reviewed. 

Shayna a novel by Miriam Ruth Black received a 4 challah rating