“I was lucky to find a teacher, a guide — Rabbi Joseph Singer, 62, born in Poland to a family of rabbis, the 10th-generation descendent of Gershon Kitover, who was the brother-in-law of Baal Shem Tov, founder of the hasidic movement.”
"In America, people sometimes hope New York will die before the close of the century. And so the spectre of another Yankee Frankenstein rising from the ash of urban blight is enough to turn stomachs from Shawnee Mission to Walla Walla"
“When I actually made myself look at Harlem, what I saw was so bizarre that, even with the help of those homicide detectives, I found it bewildering — another country, another planet.”