Heart of Wisdom
by: Jacqueline Seewald
September 5, 2023 Historia
256 page
Review by: Steve Slavin
Coming of age in the 1960s, anti-Semitism is very personal to me. Corporate recruiters studiously avoided college placement day at Brooklyn College, even though it was one of the best colleges in the nation. Only a handful of companies controlled by Jews — like Macy’s and Gimbel’s were represented.
Two decades later, University Press of America published my first book, The Einstein Syndrome: Corporate Antisemitism in America Today. In it, I mentioned how one of our nation’s largest banks, Morgan Guaranty often held its officers’ picnic on Yom Kippur. The Jewish officers were welcome: they just couldn’t eat anything. Of course, there weren’t any Jewish officers — and even today, there are just a handful.
Back in the 1960s, three quarters of the lawyers in New York City were Jewish, but none of the huge “white-shoe” law firms had even one Jewish partner. Since, then, things have gotten much better on the employment scene, but violent attacks on American Jews are on the rise.
Jacqueline Seewald’s new book, Heart of Wisdom, provides a window on Jewish life during the two decades between the world wars, when conditions for Jews — especially recent immigrants — was considerably worse than it’s been in recent years. Indeed, some of the most successful Jews were gangsters. Newark had the second highest concentration after New York City. You’ll get to meet some of them in this wonderful page-turner.
Like immigrant groups before them, the Jews in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, were not just harshly discriminated against, but they, quite literally, had to be twice as good to get half as much. They were forced to take low-paying jobs, or else earn livings as criminals.
And yet, against heavy odds, the Jewish immigrants of Newark — and other Eastern seaboard cities — climbed the economic ladder, eventually gaining almost full American acceptance. Aside from its being a griping story, Heart of Wisdom provides a window through which to view American immigrant life almost a century ago.
Find It: Goodreads| Bookshop | Amazon
A recovering economics professor, Steve Slavin earns a living writing math and economics books. The proceeds finance his writing short stories. Over the last eight years, Fat Dog Books has published four volumes of “To the City with Love.” He still hopes to write the great American short story.
