All around them they see grocery, delicatessen and butcher stores run by their co-religionists, with ham and bacon in the windows.
They mutter in their beards over the moral decadence of the youth. They are teased and taunted by the young Jews as cruelly as, generations ago, all Jews were mistreated by their Gentile neighbors, especially the Irish during the heavy immigrations that followed the potato famines and divided this whole section into an unending battlefield. The Jews by tradition are not cowards, though they have through modern history been compelled to be on the defensive as a minority everywhere.
Out of these early conflicts rose some of the toughest and most murderous gangsters in American history—Little Augie, Kid Dropper, and the Murder, Inc. mob led by Lepke and Gurrah. Once they learned they had to battle, they became fierce warriors with knife, gun and every other equipment.
There are still four Yiddish daily newspapers, all prosperous and all with different policies as to politics, orthodoxy and the never-ending controversy of the Jew in every land to which he drifts—assimilation.
One organ pleads for organization and Americanization, even intermarriage and decentralization of the ghetto; another is passionately for rigid maintenance of Jewish customs and traditions and all the age-old tenets, such as Sabbath observation, kosher food, even the mikveh, according to which every married and marriageable female is expected to bathe in a community establishment at certain times.
Between the completely "emancipated" and the extremely orthodox there still remains a segment which has cut away from the old but still fears to ignore completely the God of Israel.
As a result there are thousands of Jews who pay no heed to the ways of their forefathers excepting on the high religious holidays—Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashana and the Passover. For these there is a rush to get room in the few remaining synagogues. It is not impossible that the ticket scalpers will yet take these bonanza days over.
One of the pet stories having to do with this condition is told of a shabby little tailor who rushed up to the "schul," the synagogue, on one of these holy days. The pews had been sold weeks in advance at high rentals. The sexton stepped in and barked: "Ticket!" "I have no ticket." "If you have no ticket you can't get in." "But I got to get in. I got to see my rich brother. He is in there." "That's a lot of hooey." "But I tell you I got to see my brother—it's a matter from life and death." "Well, if it's life and death O.K. Go in and see your brother and come right out ... and don't you let me catch you praying!"
Upper Broadway, from 72nd Street to 110th, is now a mid-Europe in miniature. Many of those who sought refuge here during the 1930's—especially Austrians, Czechs and Hungarians—settled thereabouts and the atmospheric night life of middle Europe followed.