:38:02
came over two years earlier...
67 years ago.
:38:05
Worked like a son of a bitch
to earn our passage.
:38:09
Pardon my French.
:38:11
You don't want God in the ceremony,
so you're probably familiar with it.
:38:15
My father worked 14 hours a day
in a sweatshop on lower Broadway.
:38:19
Number 315. Our first apartment
was a five-flight walk-up...
:38:24
four-and-a-half room
cold-water flat...
:38:26
with the bathtub in the kitchen
and the toilet down the hall.
:38:31
142 Hester Street.
:38:34
Three families used the toilet...
:38:36
an Italian family,
a colored family...
:38:39
a Jewish family.
:38:41
Three families with different faiths.
:38:44
But one thing each of those families
had in common.
:38:47
They had in common the sacrifices
they had to make to get where they were.
:38:51
What they had in common
was... persecution!
:38:57
Persecution!
:39:00
So they weren't so glib about God.
:39:04
God was in my mother's
every conversation.
:39:07
How she got her family
out of Russia, thank God, in one piece.
:39:11
About the pogroms, the steerage.
:39:13
About those that didn't make it.
:39:15
Got sick and died.
:39:17
Who could they ask for help?
:39:19
If not God, then who?
:39:22
The Great Society?
:39:24
The department of welfare?
:39:26
Travelers Aid?
:39:28
This city was a... a concretejungle
to the families that came here.
:39:33
They had to carve homes
and lives out of concrete.
:39:36
Cold concrete.
:39:39
You think they didn't call on God,
those poor, suffering greenhorns?
:39:43
You see this suit I'm wearing?
:39:45
Expensive? Custom-made.
:39:49
My father... thank God
he's not alive today...
:39:51
worked 16 hours a day
in a shop on Broome Street.
:39:55
And his artistry for a 10th
of what you pay today...
:39:57
makes meat loaf
out of this suit.