Me included.
"So, being Jewish under these circumstances had a considerable impact. I knew I was an outsider; I thought like an outsider; and therefore I learned to be continually skeptical of what insiders with power said they believed (like, 'America the beautiful land of pluralism') by contrast with what they did. As I grew older, I wasn't in the least surprised that the most prestigious Yankee clubs--supposedly heirs in spirit to the goals of Emerson and Thoreau--had no places for Jews. And, of course, during those years, many colleges had Jewish quotas--a cutoff point on the number of Jewish applicants accepted, no matter how qualified they were."1
At age ten, after passing the entrance examinations, Hentoff entered the prestigious Boston Latin School, the oldest public school in America. "I would not have been at Latin School had it not been for Miss Fitzgerald, my sixth-grade teacher at the William Lloyd Garrison School, where nearly all the students were Jewish and nearly all the teachers were Irish.
"[I] knew quite well, even at ten, this was the way to penetrate the great mystery of my life.
This is a free page. This page contains 180 words. This
biography contains 5,768 words (approx. 19 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Nat Hentoff Access Pass.
