, the book of letters from the Jewish daily Forward brought to me the realism of life as a Jewish immigrant. The times were rough on them, they used the “Bintel Brief” to reveal there problems and to get answers. When I started to read the book I was looking for specific answers to some questions. What do the letters reveal about how immigration was a large part a culrutal process that lasted well after Jews and other immigrants arrived in the U.S.? What was the dominant definition of what it meant to be an American at the time ....