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WANDERERS
ON THE ROWER)'
By BURTON DONNER
If the expression "homeless
Jew" or “Jewish hobo” seems to
be a contradiction in terms, it isn’t
so in reality. There are some Jew
ish hoboes and, say the experts on
homeless men, there always have
been some.
The idea of a Jew separated
from home and family, a bum wan
dering on the Bowery, begging for
a handout for a tasteless meal and
a flophouse bed, is a startling
thought. The Jew is the proto
type of the family man. How could
even one Jew, let alone a sub
stantial number, ever become sep
arated from the web of family re
lationship which has always been
the matrix of Jewish continuity?
What sort of Jews are these? How
did they become such total out
casts from Jewish society?
That the homeless Jew exists is
a fact. But, says Dr. Boris M.
Levinson, director of the Psycho
logical Center of Yeshiva Univer-
.ty of New York, the homeless
Jew has been so little of a social
problem that very few students
have bothered to study him and
report about him. Dr. Levinson
became interested in the homeless
Jew when he made a study of the
intelligence and personality pat
terns of native born homeless
white men in 1955. During that
investigation, he met a few Jews
and studied them separately.
He began by checking the re-
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search literature on the subject
and found there was very little
information. He did learn that
Jews are a very small proportion
of the homeless male population
and that the experts distinguish
between transient Jews and home
less Jews.
A study made in 1926 revealed
that more than 20 per cent of the
Jewish homeless men taken care
of by the Jewish Social Service
Association in New York City were
diagnosed as either mentally ill
or as suspected of being so. More
than half were considered unable
to hold a job. About 70 per cent
were single. The other 30 per cent
were separated or divorced.
In the depth of the depression in
1931, 834 Jews were included in a
total of 19,861 homeless men ser
ved by the Central Registration
Bureau of New York City, about
four per cent. Of the 120,799
homeless men helped by private
agencies in New York in March
1933, 959 were aided by Jewish
social agencies, or less than one
per cent.
Of the 1,301 first-time appli
cants to the Men’s Shelter in New
York City in March, April and
May, 1948, 22 were Jews. In June
1955, the caseload at the Men’s
Shelter was 1,350 and eight were
Jews — the group that Dr. Levin
son studied. The Men’s Shelter is
the last resort, the place to which
a homeless man turns when he has
lost even the slight initiative and
self-reliance of the panhandler.
Dr. Levinson first gathered all
available information from the
welfare agency records about the
eight Jews, then induced them to
submit to a number of intelli
gence and personality tests. He re
ported his finding in Volume II
of the Yivo Annual of Jewish Soc
ial Science.
Five of the homeless Jews were
native born, two had native born
parents. This contrasted with prev
ious studies indicating that more
than half of Jewish homeless men
are foreign born. Dr. Levinson
found it hard to get any informa
tion about the family status of the
eight Jews. Shrinking from con
tacting relatives, the homeless
Jew finds it expedient to claim he
was never married or has no liv
ing relatives. Four of the eight
claimed to be single and four were
separated or divorced.
All had been on the Bowery for
many years before coming to the
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