Unfinished People

December 2, 1996
In this vivid and informed account, Gay (The Jews of Germany) explores the lives of Jews who fled Eastern Europe and settled in New York City between 1881 and 1911. She describes the poverty and persecution these Jews lived with in Europe and documents the ways in which the relative freedom of the New World impacted upon their language, culture and religious practices. Gay's major focus is on the reminiscences of her parents, both turn-of-the-century childhood immigrants, and her own memories of growing up in a Yiddish-speaking Bronx home. Using evocative descriptions of the furniture, cooking and dress of the period, Gay conveys how immigrants of her parents generation were forced to negotiate between the language and customs of their own parents and the English-speaking world they found at school and at work, and how newfound freedoms coexisted with the unforeseen difficulties of assimilation.

This description and analysis of the Jewish immigrants who flocked to New York from Eastern Europe between the 1880's and 1920's is liberally glossed with personal reminiscence of the author's Depression-era youth. An accompanying CD, available separately by mail order, offers specially recorded performances of music (mentioned in the book) that was central to this culture. Except for odd pronunciations of Hebrew and Yiddish, Anna Fields gives an unidiomatic but competent interpretation of this touching and nostalgic volume. She is best when she allows herself to get caught up in the author's warm descriptions of her youth. Of course, these passages give her the most to work with, for the author has invested much more in her memories than in her thesis, which is lame, and analysis, which is superficial. Fields amplifies the book's primary strength--the making comprehensible a culture that seems alien even to the children of the author's generation. In this light, Fields's GOYIFICATION of the text seems apt, even necessary. Y.R. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine