An Orphan in History is my story as an American Jew. I

have spent years retrieving the religious and cultural

legacy which had evaporated, in my family, under the

pressure of assimilation. But. with only slight variations

in personal and cultural details, it could be the story of

Frankie Ruggio, whose grandfather spoke Italian and was

named Dante: or of a midwestern computer technician

named Peter Holmes. whose Scandinavian-born grandfa-

ther was a fisherman named Per Hansa: or of Joe Martin.

whose father. Jose Martinez was a highly skilled cigar

maker from Havana. In a way, it is the story of millions of

immigrant families who left the economically and culturally

confining Old World towns where they were raised, and

paid for the freedom and prosperity this country offered

with their pasts.

At first, it must have seemed like a marvelous bargain.

For most of the twentieth century, melting-pot America

was like the pot of gold at the end of history s rainbow. In

this land of limitless possibilities, one s past seemed to be

an encumbrance: something that was filled with atavistic

superstitions, that was anathema to enlightened people,

that presented an obstacle to personal progress.

But now, America s power is waning; we are living in a

post-Copernican age, where we are no longer the center of

the world. The country no longer seems to promise my

generation----or my children s--the degree of social or

physical mobility it promised my parents and grandparents.

As a result, many people who might have once ex-

plored the nation s physical or economic frontiers are

journeying inward: they are Kit Carsons of the soul. Some

adopt creeds that are new to them Eastern religious, or

an all-embracing burn-again Christianity. But many, like

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