Unfinished People

Eastern European Jews Encounter America

By: Ruth Gay

Narrated by: Anna Fields

Nearly three million Jews came to America from Eastern Europe between 1880 and the outbreak of World War I. Filled with the hope of life in a new land, most were young, single, uneducated, and unskilled. Many were children or teens. They were, in a sense, unfinished citizens of either the old or the new world.

Within two generations, these newcomers settled and prospered in the densely populated Yiddish-speaking neighborhoods of New York City. Against this backdrop, Ruth Gay narrates their rarely told story, bringing alive the vitality of the streets, markets, schools, synagogues, and tenement halls where a new version of America was invented in the 1920s and 30s. An intimate, unforgettable account, Unfinished People is a unique and vibrant portrait of a resilient people's daily trials and rituals.

©1996 Ruth Gay (P)1997 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

"An enjoyable, easily digestible introduction to her parents' and her own generation's uneven and sometimes uneasy acculturation." (Kirkus Reviews)
"[This] memoir of Jewish life in the West Bronx in the 1920 and 30s....deftly blends personal remembrance and social commentary." (New York Times)
"Fields amplifies the book's primary strength¿the making comprehensible a culture that seems alien even to the children of the author's generation." (AudioFile)

Wonderful for genealogists

This book was extremely informative and gave me fascinating insights into the lives of my great grandparents and grandparents

Great book

This is exactly what I wanted. Informative and thorough on a subject that had always interested me: American Jewish history. Worth every penny.

Took my breath away.

I am the family historian in my generation, a serious enough hobbyist that I am currently halfway through a professional certification in genealogy and enrolled to start this fall in a university certificate program in Genealogical Studies. My mother's side (Icelandic/Norwegian) is well-documented but my father's side (German/Russian Polish) is far less so. My father didn't even know the names of his paternal great-grandparents until I had traced his line back just that little bit.

Much to his surprise, the family story of his side being basically all German with a few Polish incursions was completely false. His mother came over from Germany at age 6 with her parents, true, but his father, my grandfather, turns out to have been a first generation American, born to two parents who were young Jewish immigrants, travelling to the USA from "Russia" (Russian Poland during the Third Partition) in the first decade of the 1900s. The parents spoke Yiddish and little English. They were in their 40s and 50s, with multiple children. My great-grandparents had been betrothed to each other by a matchmaker in the old country but did not wed until they were both in the USA and could (theoretically) support themselves.

I could not stop listening to this book. This, in a nutshell, explained so much about my grandfather's life and the stories he told, even my German grandmother's personality. The places are the exact places and times my great-great grandparents, great-grandparents, and grandfather grew up and lived. I recognized the street names, the food the customs. Things Grandpa did but never could explain why - it was "just the thing to do." His two older brothers had their bar mitzvahs, but his older sister and he did not have any such ceremony, and he adopted the Lutheran faith when he married my grandmother. I had always heard tales about there being Jewish heritage in my family, and my DNA results are heavily weighted that way, but now I know. To hear the description of life for these first generation Americans like my grandfather was simply breath-taking. I kept flipping through my photo books of early New York City (Jacob Riis photos, mostly) and I could see it all unfolding before me. Growing up in North Central NJ, I was around it all the time, yet never knew just how close to me it all was.

Amazing book. I hadn't even finished it before J HAD purchased a gift copy for my mother to share with my father. Unfortunately, Grandpa passed away almost a year ago, but I will continue to do this work in his memory and for the answers my father has always wanted but never knew how to obtain. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

(It's telling that I finished listening to it, looked at the rating section, muttered, "oy vey" and wondered how on earth to explain how fantastic a resource and story this is.)

Not a bubbe meyse', but your bubbe's meyse'!

Was like my Grandmother was sitting next to me, telling me our family story. Not just the chronological events, but what it meant to experience a fresh roll with butter. If you come from that cloth you know what I mean. The smells, the tastes, the experience of all the senses, most of all the heart. Enjoyed the readers style,

Very interesting and well done

I am not of Jewish heritage but I enjoyed this VERY much. It is well written and well narrated. I found the history of these immigrants and decendents to be very similar to most US immigrants yet very different and unique in their own ways. I highly recommend this and Part 2.

Perfect for audio

Great book. Period.
A very even look at a time and people that helped shaped America as much as any immigrant wave in our history.

Memoir of Growing Up in Immigrant New York

The title is misleading: it sounds like an objective history, but it's actually a memoir of growing up in the Russian Jewish community of New York in the 1930s.

Ruth Gay was the daughter of parents who had emigrated to America in their teens. As far as I can make out, she was born in the mid- to late-1920s. The book doesn't focus on herself, but rather on the day-to-day life of people in her community, with personal anecdotes used to enliven the story. This is history from the ground up, recounting how people lived by someone who was there.

I found it delicious light listening, touching and funny. My only complaint is that the author sometimes forgets that she is writing about a certain subset of the Jewish immigrant community--Russians, Poles, and other Eastern European Jews--and makes sweeping generalizations about all Jewish immigrants. My own family came from the old Austro-Hungarian empire, where life was the same in some respects and different in others. Eastern European Judaism, for instance, was strongly influenced by Hasidism, which was completely foreign to other Jews. Many were not religious at all.

The narrator was appropriately chosen in that she is a woman who can pronounce Yiddish correctly, but I found her tone of voice rather monotonous. I got used to it, however, and it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book.

Great book, poor narration

The narrator's ignorance of the Yiddish language and its pronunciation makes this otherwise great book painful listen to listen to, at times.