Customer Reviews

Unfinished People: Eastern European Jews Encounter America

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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If you were too young and/or stupid to interview your grandparents from "the old country", here's your chance to learn about what it was like for them to emigrate to a strange new country while still a teenager. Thoroughly readable, informative, and enjoyable. Will enhance your respect and deepen your love. You will see pieces of your own family, your own history

I read this book to better inform myself on the every day lives of the Jewish immigrants. I am searching my husband's Jewish ancestors and was pleasantly educated during the course of the book on the lives of these immigrants in New York City; their every day comings and goings, customs, work places, religious practices and the heavy influence their "pre-immigration" lives had on their new situations.

Not long after beginning this book I exclaimed out loud "that's Aunt Ethel, that's Aunt Sophie". In her book Ruth Gay explains how an entire generation of immigrants who left Europe as children or teenagers had never actually "finished" growing up and how that affected them, their lives in the New World and their children. I wonder how much of this is true for today's immigrants as well. I truly enjoyed this book, more than most I have read of the genre, and strongly recommend it to anyone seeking to understand their immigrant past.

I am not Jewish. I do not have any Jewish friends. I live in Kentucky and I doubt that there is any Jewish people within miles of me. I wanted to find out more about their culture. This book was excellent. It dealt with the issues that I wanted to know about the every day ones. What they wore, what they ate, their household customs. I enjoyed reading how they were scared to send their children to camp. I liked the part where the women were always cleaning and to have bed bugs was the ultimate shame.