Between 1880 and 1920 most of the two million Jews from Russia, Poland, Austria-Hungary and the Balkans who arrived in the United States settled in New York and made their homes on the Lower East Side. They lived in the thousands of tenements thrown up cheaply and quickly by small builders. They were usually five stories tall, with four tiny apartments on each floor. Large families and their borders were squeezzed into the ill-lit and crowded rooms. With little fresh air and minimal plumbing, sanitation was inadequate and health inevitably suffered. High infant mortality rates and widespread tuberculosis testified to the shocking conditions. Nonetheless, Jewis culture and religion flourished. Hundreds of synagogues and religious schools were established, ritual baths built, and religious goods manufactured. There were Yiddish theather companies and literary societies, Yiddish and Hebrew publishers, and Yiddish newspapers: the most famous was The Jewish Daily Forward. Jews who had emigrated from the same village or town or city in europe set up landsmenschaften, social and mutual aid groups which provided insurance, burial benefits and even cemeteries. New arrivals in the Lower East Side settled into their new lives with the assistance of Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
It was all sort of easy, it had all come and gone, the snowstorms, the street lamps telling us there was no school at midnight, the couch, the heater with all of us rolled up beside it in the thick blankets, the dogs, it was lovely,... studying the cub scout handbook, playing Ping-Pong, reading National Geographic. Mickey Mantle was my hero and Joan Marfe was the girl i liked best. It all ended with a bang... 
