Jews Without Money

One day, Mike develops an interest in sex. He wants to know what happens inside a prostitute’s bedroom. Along with a friend, he peeps through the keyhole of a door to watch a woman named Susie as she entertains a client. Mike is shocked; he refuses to believe that sex is “the way babies are made” (25), and his friend teases him for being naïve. Mike fights his friend but loses badly. He is too ashamed to tell his mother exactly how he acquired his injuries.

A gang of young men lurks on the street corner. They drink, smoke, and commit petty crimes. They also make a game of sexually assaulting women, but their crimes are typically ignored. Harry the Pimp distinguishes himself from the gang of young men. Though he has 20 prostitutes working for him, he insists that he does not have sex with them himself as he sees himself as a “philanthropic business man” (29). He provides protection to the girls he employs and helps them make enough money to bring their parents across from Europe. Harry sees himself as the model of American success, and others view him in the same way.

Mike’s parents dislike the filthy, crime-ridden nature of their neighborhood, but they see no way out of their situation. With everyone living in such close proximity, privacy does not exist. Mike comes to know many of the local girls as they visit his mother for help and advice. Susie is one of these women. She is an alcoholic and suicidal. Unable to break free of her crushing poverty, Susie swallows carbolic acid and kills herself outside Mike’s front door. At the other end of the spectrum is Ida, a tough former prostitute who saved up her money and became a property owner and a pimp. She scolds the “weak little girls” who are unable to replicate her success (32). The neighborhood pimps closely follow the teenage girls as they grow older, preying on the desperate youngsters by promising them money. Many lives are ruined by the pimps. Mr. Zunzer, the owner of the tenement building, allows the prostitutes to stay because they pay three times the rent and they always pay on time.

Mike remembers his group of friends. They met at school, which he considered to be “a jail for children” (36). The youngsters constantly fought back against their teachers and wanted to return to the fun of life on the street. Mike considers his white, Christian teachers to be emblematic of the prejudiced attitudes that exist in America. Though Americans believe that the European immigrants brought the “gangster system” to the United States, Mike believes this to be a myth. Some of his childhood friends grew up to be very successful, while others died.

The gang of young Jewish children steal from the market stalls, swim in the fetid East River, and “ached for the outdoors” (41). In the densely populated city, they seek out any form of nature. The boys’ nicknames are often crude racial slurs or insulting physical descriptions. They fight against children from neighboring blocks and defend their own territory, giving out and taking beatings on a regular basis. Gangs provide protection and a sense of pride in one’s neighborhood, even if the neighborhood is poor. This lifestyle brings the boys into conflict with the police. The police are corrupt and hated; their only interest seems to be in breaking up the boys’ fun and games. One particularly hated policeman is named Murph. He breaks up the boys’ gambling session and becomes embroiled in a constant war of pranks and violence when the boys try to fight back. Mike remembers an incident in which his gang were attacked and beaten by a rival group of young boys. The dispute, ultimately, came to nothing. One member of the gang named Joey Cohen falls under the wheels of a cart and dies. Nothing much changes, but Mike wonders about his future career. He thinks about becoming a fireman.

Mike thinks about Joey Cohen. He remembers a time when he and Joey walked barefoot along the street on a hot day. They buy candy and watch girls dance as the summer heat makes everyone sweat. The boys greet Jake Wolf, the saloon owner, as they pass by. The saloon has a goat named Terry McGovern as a mascot. Men give the goat beer to make it drunk, after which it headbutts “everything in sight” (54). The boys march to a specific candy store, passing by many tempting ways in which to spend the few pennies they have in their pockets. People struggle to cope in the blistering heat of the New York summer.

The boys do not reach the candy store. A strange, disheveled man yells to them from a doorway. Joey follows the man into a building on the promise of a nickel and then runs out screaming that the man tried to remove Joey’s pants. An angry crowd quickly gathers and savagely beats the man. The arrival of a policeman stops the crowd from beating the man to death. Mike and a weeping Joey slip away. They return to their neighborhood, which seems exactly the same as when they left. For the two boys, however, the world is “forever changed.” They learn that the world is not an innocent place.

On one rainy summer day, Mike and his friends sit on the steps of the rear tenement. The back yard was once a graveyard. The headstones pave the streets, and the boys dig up the bones for fun. A sickly pregnant cat appears in the yard, and the children chase it away. Mike admits that the children often hassled and tortured the alley cats that were everywhere in the city. He blames poverty for the violence and cruelty that were so commonplace in his neighborhood. The plight of the cats makes Mike reflect on the nature of God. He attends a Jewish religious school every afternoon after spending the morning in an American public school. He is taught to memorize long prayers in Hebrew by a Rabbi named Reb Moisha. The Rabbi disgusts Mike, and the chaotic, crowded classes do little for his education. The classes take place in Moisha’s apartment, and his family remains behind a tattered curtain. Mike does not understand why he must learn about religion, but he is fascinated by the idea of God. His mother is very religious, and she passes on her interest in God to Mike.

The neighborhood has a stable, and inside the stable is an old truck horse. Mike loves the “dirty, fly-bitten” horse, which steals fruit from the passing pushcarts (68). The horse is nicknamed Ganuf, based on the Yiddish word for thief. Mike pets and feeds Ganuf when he can. When a belligerent, disabled Irishman named Jim Bush beats Ganuf, Mike can do nothing but watch. Ganuf dies of old age and exhaustion. The corpse lies on the street for a day before it is taken away. The neighborhood children poke and play with the dead horse. Mike wonders whether God could possibly have made Ganuf. He then wonders whether God made the bedbugs that torture him at night and seem to live in the walls of the building.