Unfinished People

by Ruth Gay

Nearly three million Jews came to America from Eastern Europe between 1880 and the outbreak of World War I. For the most part, they were young, single, unskilled, uneducated, and yet filled with hope of a new life in a new land. In Unfinished People, Ruth Gay fills in the rarely told story of the newcomers in New York in the 1920s and 1930s. Once past the first shock of entry, the young immigrants moved to their dream neighborhoods - in this case the Bronx - where they invented their own version of America. Reveling in the luxuries of steam heat and indoor plumbing, they rebuilt a familiar world of synagogues, schools, and stores, but with a difference. Using homely detail, Gay describes how they dared to become "up-to-date" Americans.