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20th century. Asch harrowingly narrates the infamous Triangle shirtwaist factory fire, in which over 100 young sweatshop workers died in 1911, and he is equally notable as a master in rendering the everyday details of Jewish life. Further reading: Many of Asch’s books, like East River, were translated into English soon after (or even before) their publication in Yiddish. His best-selling novels may be The Nazarene (1939), The Apostle (1943), and Mary (1949). Those interested in the descriptions of the garment industry found in East River will also want to look at his short novel Uncle Moses (1920). Ben Siegel’s The Controversial Sholem Asch (1976) remains one of the only full-length biographical publications on the author, but recently renewed interest in his work (a conference at Yale in 2000 resulted in a collection of essays, Sholem Asch Reconsidered [2004], that includes an exhaustive and masterful analysis of East River by Dan Miron) suggests that more sources may be forthcoming soon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38pThe Amboy Dukes By Irving Shulman DOUBLEDAY, 1947. 273 PAGES. T he Amboy Dukes comes as a sensational shock: was there really a time, not so many years ago, when Jewish teenagers lurked on the streets of Brooklyn, armed with knives, brass knuckles, and homemade pistols, terrorizing each other and the law-abiding citizens around them? Picture Boyz ’n the Hood, except everyone’s named Goldfarb, Bronstein, or Sachs, and they’re still young enough to fit into their bar mitzvah suits. It sounds ridiculous, and Irving Shulman undoubtedly exaggerates a little, but the world of The Amboy Dukes isn’t total fantasy. During World War II, as parents worked overtime and older boys fought overseas, 16-year-olds could swagger through their tough neighborhoods and, in some cases, land themselves in serious trouble. Frank Goldfarb, the protagonist of Shulman’s novel, isn’t the most violent or unbalanced member of his gang, the titular Dukes: he isn’t the one who suggests that the boys steal back the money they’ve paid to a prostitute who has serviced each of them in turn, and he isn’t the one who stabs an innocent Puerto Rican on a whim. He contents himself with smoking “reefers” and making time with the neighborhood’s loose girls, one of whom is only 12 years old. Thanks to his buddies, though, Frank has soon graduated from such petty crimes to being accessory to a capital offense, and despite his desire to be a supportive brother to his lonely sister, Alice, and a couple brief flirtations with reform in the form of basketball at the local JCC, his fate looms, sordid and grim. Though hardly subtle, Shulman’s prose is taut and propulsive, and he has a remarkable eye for details of dress, architecture, and other cultural artifacts. The novel’s immediate aim was sociological; Shulman insists that problems in the schools, in labor conditions, and in the real estate market exacerbate the natural 59 Titles American Jewish Fiction wayward tendencies of youth. Though he is more famous for writing the screenplay for Rebel without a Cause (1955), the impact of The Amboy Dukes, Shulman’s first novel, was hardly insignificant: it sold more than 4 million copies in paperback. Strangely, though, the paperback copies aren’t quite the same book; every last trace of Jewishness—copious Yiddishisms, all of the Jewish names, references to kosher meat and Passover—was excised from them, and from the film adaptation of the novel, titled City across the River (1949). This transformation was noted by Henry Popkin in an article in Commentary in 1952; Popkin wondered why these edits were deemed necessary, as Shulman’s book “says no more than that the Jews, like other groups in America, have the problem of juvenile delinquency.” What Popkin may not have realized is that within a few decades, after demographics and stereotypes had shifted, Shulman’s association of Jewish teens with gang activity would come to seem utterly unbelievable. Further reading: Shulman wrote two sequels, Cry Tough (1949) and The Big Brokers (1951), and other novels including Children of the Dark (1955), the basis for Rebel without a Cause. Those interested in a scholarly history of the neighborhood in which the novel is set can consult Wendell Pritchett’s Brownsville, Brooklyn (2003). Mathieu Kassovitz’s Hate (1995), originally titled La Haine in French, is an outstanding film centered on a thuggish Jewish teen in the gritty ghettos near Paris. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39pMy Glorious Brothers By Howard Fast LITTLE...

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