From the Shtetl to the academy: One person’s journey

Abstract

Williamsburg was not unlike Melbourne’s ‘Shtetl of the Yarra’ with one difference: it was poor and abandoned by Jews who could afford to move to better neighbourhoods. In their wake was a neighbourhood of African Americans, Puerto Ricans and ultraorthodox Hasidic Jews. Like many other slum kids, I grew up in a rundown late nineteenth century three-storey walk-up tenement.