ABSTRACT
When i was growing up in the hinterland of America I did not know any Jews. In the public schools I went to, there were no Jews, and, later, it would not have occurred to me to see anything in common among the few Jews I came to know. There was the daughter of the rich clothing merchant, the threadbare student who kept me on my toes discussing European philosophy, and the itinerant peddler who kept the farmers supplied with store goods and who stayed on to swap words of wisdom with my grandfather. They all fell, in my mind and in their own, into the usual American pigeonholes which have to do first and foremost with money income. The clothing merchant’s family in Buffalo consorted with the other rich merchants of the city; they made no common cause with itinerant peddler or with schoolboy living on crusts. There was no issue that drew these Jews together.
