The
Spirit
of the
Ghetto

THE SPIRIT of
THE GHETTO

STUDIES OF THE JEWISH
QUARTER IN NEW YORK

By
HUTCHINS HAPGOOD

With Drawings from Life by
JACOB EPSTEIN

NEW YORK AND LONDON
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWO

Copyright, 1902
by
Funk & Wagnalls
Company

Printed in the
United States of America

Published
November, 1902

NOTE

A number of these chapters have appeared as separate articles in "The Atlantic Monthly," "The Critic," "The Bookman," "The World's Work," "The Boston Transcript," and "The Evening Post" and "The Commercial Advertiser" of New York. To the editors of these publications thanks for permission to republish are gratefully tendered by
The Author.

PREFACE

The Jewish quarter of New York is generally supposed to be a place of poverty, dirt, ignorance and immorality—the seat of the sweat-shop, the tenement house, where "red-lights" sparkle at night, where the people are queer and repulsive. Well-to-do persons visit the "Ghetto" merely from motives of curiosity or philanthropy; writers treat of it "sociologically," as of a place in crying need of improvement.

That the Ghetto has an unpleasant aspect is as true as it is trite. But the unpleasant aspect is not the subject of the following sketches. I was led to spend much time in certain poor resorts of Yiddish New York not through motives either philanthropic or sociological, but simply by virtue of the charm I felt in men and things there. East Canal Street and the Bowery have interested me more than Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Why, the reader may learn from the present volume—which is an attempt made by a "Gentile" to report sympathetically on the character, lives and pursuits of certain east-side Jews with whom he has been in relations of considerable intimacy.
The Author.

CONTENTS