was a thing for the
fathers and mothers and rabbis to teach to the children--not for the
settlement to teach them. He knew that boys needed the guidance of
religion ... but he felt that it was supplied in even too large doses
already.

"The pity of it is," he said in closing, "that wherever Jewish children
turn away from the faith of their fathers, they have nothing to turn
towards next. They are at sea ..." he gave me another of his quick, deep
set glances ... "and that applies to rich and poor alike. Christians
forget their religion when they feel they have outgrown it ... because
they have lost interest in it. Jews forsake theirs but never forget it.
Under certain circumstances they grow impatient with it, slink from the
inconveniences which it entails ... but their hearts are always
desperate for the Faith. It is a hidden loneliness, a stifled longing to
them."

I thought of Aunt Selina and wondered if she had ever felt that
loneliness, that longing, as I had. I could hardly imagine her happy in
devoutness to Judaism. It was so comical, I laughed aloud ... and got up
and left Mr. Richards, lest he should ask me at what I was laughing.

It was his remark about Jewish children getting all the religion they
need which nettled me the most. I felt that I would like to go out upon
the streets and see for myself. The streets are the East Side's
parliament, its court of law and high opinion.

They were hot and glaring with the noonday sun when first I appealed to
them. Their pavements, white and littered with unspeakable confusion,
gave off a dancing wave of heat. Old women, squatting on their
doorsteps, their coarse wigs low upon perspiring foreheads, dozed and
woke and gabbled to each other and dozed again. Old men, with long grey
beards, long, tousled hair and melancholy eyes shuffled listlessly up
and down, stopping only to make way for playing children or to pat them
on the head. The gutters had their Jewish peddlers, each window its fat
Jewish matron who leaned upon a cushioned window-sill and gazed
apathetically at nothing. There was a Babel of Yiddish and Russian and
guttural English. At one corner there was a crap-game going on in full
sight of the policeman across the street. Young men of my age were in
it; youths with mean, furtive faces and laughs that were cruel and
raucous.

So this was Judea? This was where religion played too strong a part ...
where parents and rabbis taught so fully to their charges t