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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. When was the Sabbath extra special for the author?

2. How did the author feel when he walked into his synagogue?

3. What is the name and nickname of the third street the author mentions in Part 1, pages 30-47?

4. Did the author's mother believe her son's generation would succeed?

5. The author preferred the movie house over the synagogue, why did he favor the movie house?

Short Essay Questions

1. How has the author's childhood neighborhood not changed?

2. How does the author describe his childhood perception of the distance between Brownsville and New York?

3. What is the nickname the author's father gave him? What is the meaning of the nickname and did the author like his nickname?

4. What is prohibited on the Jewish Sabbath?

5. Who does the demolished part of the author's childhood neighborhood remind the author of and why was she so important to him?

6. Why did the author have such a hard time when his mother, cousin and her friends started talking about "Heym?"

7. How does the author describe the Episcopalian church in his childhood neighborhood?

8. What time of day was the loneliest for the author's mother and why? What brought her out of her loneliness?

9. What kind of geographies does the author describe in the last part of 'From the Subway to the Synagogue'? What do describing these geographies lead to?

10. Describe the feelings the author first has when he enters his childhood neighborhood.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The author walks through his childhood neighborhood describing significant places and moments. What could his reasoning for walking through his childhood be?

Essay Topic 2

In what ways did the author choose to escape his daily life? Why did the author feel he needed to escape and why is he "walking" through a time when he felt the need to escape? What is he trying to escape from that he wrote the memoir/

Essay Topic 3

In the second section, the author is given a nickname by his father. This nickname deeply affects the author. With specific examples from the text, please describe how it touched the author and how his view of his father changed at that point.

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