The Rise of David Levinsky (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

'The Rise of David Levinsky' takes place amid America's biggest and most diverse Yiddish-speaking community during the early twentieth century. David Levinsky, a young Hasidic Jew struggling to master the Talmud, seeks his fortune amid the teeming streets of New York's Lower East Side. All the energy formerly focused on his religious studies now turns in the direction of rising to the top of the business world, where he discovers the high price of assimilation.