First Draft Reply Paper

Jewish Immigrants in New YorkIn her text “Health conditions of immigrant Jews on the Lower East Side of NewYork:1880-1914,” written January of 1981, Deborah Dwork firmly conveys the terrible situation that Jewish immigrants living in New York went through. Dwork talks about the conditions in which Jews lived. She starts the text by stating the reason why Jews had to migrate to the United States of America and the amount of people that migrated. The conditions that Jewish immigrants lived in were not the best. They lived in tenements where rats and roaches slept in the beds with the people. There was only one bathroom for the whole block. In the text Deborah Dwork pg 8 states, “Our tenement was nothing but a junk-heap rotten lumber and brick”. In addition, on top of the tenements falling down because the walls were rotten, the rent was high. Jews unsanitary style of living in New York led to many diseases. In page8 it states, “During the preceding year (1899), thirteen cases of diphtheria had been reported to the Health Department; during the past five years (1895-1900), thirty-two cases of tuberculosis had been reported”. The quote shows the diseases that arose because of all those families living together in terrible sanitary conditions. Many Jews came to America to get a better life in terms of money, living, and emotionally. Jews thought that America was a wonderland, that things were given easy, and that there was a lot of everything. Furthermore, it wasn’t how they imagined, when they got to New York City things got difficult. The streets were not made out of cheese. Deborah Dwork’s text relates to the poem In the Golden Land which we read in class. The poem is about a mother and her son. He migrated to the “golden land” (United States of America) and she was left behind. The son tells his mom all the good things of the golden land and that he is okay, when he actually isn’t.The poem In the Golden Land relates to “Health conditions of immigrant Jews on the Lower East Side of New York:1880-1914,” because the Jews that came to New York thought that gold was going to roll in the street meaning that things were going to be easy. In poem In the Golden Land: I can feel here, you have not enough bread–In the Golden Land you aren’t properly fed.–Mama, oh mama can you not seeThat here they throw bread into sea, (Halpern lines 7-10)This successfully conveys that things are not as they seem. Moms have a special intuition, they know how we feel and when things are wrong. Many Jewish immigrants were living terribly. Some didn’t eat while, felt sick, and felt tired but wanted to make their family think that they were okay because they were getting more money than where they were.