The Spirit of the Ghetto

by Hutchins Hapgood

First published in 1902, and illustrated by Jacob Epstein, this evocation of the spiritual and cultural life of Yiddish New York remains fresh and relevant, and an invaluable commentary on one aspect of the formation of modern America.

To an extent unequaled by any outsider before him, Hutchins Hapgood, a descendant of generations of New England Yankees, succeeded in penetrating the inner life of an American immigrant community. Hapgood did not set out to reform and cleanse the ghetto. His aim was to understand and interpret it, to find and know its poets, scholars, dramatists, actors, and artists, as well as its merchants and businessmen. He presents real people, individually identified and described, working out their destiny as part of a vital Jewish world. The sensibility and intentions of this book, as the editor points out, "anticipated a period of unexampled American artistic and intellectual gusto and creativity." Moses Rischin's discerning and affectionate introduction places Hapgood's neglected classic squarely in the mainstream of American cultural development.

Genres: History

315 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1902

About the author

Hutchins Harry Hapgood was an American journalist, author and anarchist.

(wikipedia)

Reviews

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picture Hapgood in the Lower East Side of 1902, really digging it. He's like, "These Russian Jews are fascinating! They are so serious, even the 'nudniks!'" Compare him with hipsters today who might get into some immigrant group ... people like me, actually, probably ... and I think Hapgood will come out looking pretty good. He really knows a lot about turn of the century Jewish New York and he doesn't make caricatures, or make it all out to be sunshine and roses, or make it all out to be misery without end. One of the things he admires about some of the Yiddish writers he profiles is their insistence on capital-T Truth and you can feel that same motivation in his own writing.

I always have a hard time reading stuff like this. I call it the kryptonite thing. You know, you get near a piece of the home planet and all your superpowers fade away? But somehow I didn't have that with this book. At first I was thinking, OK, OK, I know this basic stuff about Jewish immigrants in the US ... the stuff he needs to explain to a goyish audience in the beginning. But when he gets to "the Spirit" part, all the Yiddish theaters and poets and luftmenschen and the socialists and the anarchists and the cafes, it felt good to see "my people" through the eyes of Hapgood.

Most of all though, it is just fun. The edition I read had notes from the 1960s written by someone who lived as a child in the neighborhood Hapgood is describing and it was good to have an 'authentic informant' confirming Hapgood's version and it also added some extra flavor.

Yeah, there are tons of books about that part of NYC at that time, and I will probably continue to recommend Jews Without Money over this one, but if one Jewish LES book isn't enough, you could do a lot worse than this impressionistic journalistic piece.

[M. Newman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book came highly recommended as a window into the lives of the Jewish immigrants of the Lower East Side and I was quite eager to read it. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed. Although Mr. Hapgood was accurate in the portrayal of his subjects, his portraits appeared dry and obviously written by a non-Jewish outsider. His "Spirit of the Ghetto" was actually pretty spiritless and came off as an anthropological study. For a more interesting and realistic picture of these dynamic people, I suggest Irving Howe's "World of Our Fathers" or the fiction of Abraham Cahan. The beautiful drawings of Jacob Epstein, however, compensate for the shortcomings of Hapgood's stilted prose and make this book a worthwhile read.