Introduction Summary

In the first three pages, the narrator, as of yet unnamed, introduces the reader to his small Jewish neighborhood in the Jewish section of Brooklyn. It had been inhabited by a few Hasidic sects. But by 1950, the population had exploded, because Jews were migrating from lands where they were persecuted. The community began to rebuild and new institutions of education were created. The narrator decided to go into rabbinical school; he grew up among orthodox Jewish believers and his father was writing a book on the Talmud.

However, in the spring of the next year, the narrator met Rachel Gordon at a party. Rachel was the niece of Professor Abraham Gordon, who taught Jewish philosophy and was hated by the orthodoxy. However, they still began to date and were able to spend the summer of 1951 together in Peekskill, a small town thirty miles...