From Neighborhood to Manhood

In the 1940s and 1950s Boston's Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods were an enclave of working-class Jewish families, whose social and cultural lives revolved around the synagogue, Jewish home life, and institutions such as the AZA, a youth group, sponsored by B'nai B'rith. In this collection of personal essays, the Boys of Blue Hill Avenue, now in their early to mid-seventies, take the time to reflect on their lives and their friendships, looking at the themes of their common origins as working-class kids in Boston: the drives and ambitions of first- and second-generation immigrant offspring; the role of great educational institutions in the making of these men (Boston Latin School and Harvard University); the routes their lives have taken over the last five decades; and, especially, the Haym Salomon Chapter of B'nai B'rith AZA that brought them together in the first place and that, as it turns out, provided an everlasting glue.