My American Dream and How It Ended

The American Dream as people of my generation -- the generation that grew up in the 1940s and 1950a -- knew it was a world of comfort and stability, traditional values, and an unquestioning faith in our country and its leaders. My American Dream and How It Ended tells the story of my growing up in this world. It describes a boyhood spent on the playground and dreams of being a sports hero. The book delves into the life of a fully assimilated Jewish family and my quest for an authentic Jewish identity. It describes the gradual development of my sense of self and of my abilities and potential, culminating in my earning a Phd. Finally, it comes to the 1960s, when our American Dream rapidly unraveled. The book begins with my parents' move from Cleveland, where both grew up, to Los Angeles in 1937. A year later, when I was born, they were living in in Beverly Hills; and Dad was working as a movie publicist for Warner Brothers Theaters. The rest of the family remained in Cleveland, and one of the early chapters of the book describes the long train trips across the country I took with Mom to visit them. Much of the early part of the book is devoted to my love of sports. One chapter describes attending football and baseball games with my father. I played every sport available to us boys. At first, I mainly played softball; but as I grew older, my main games were basketball and tennis. Every weekend, I spent hours at a nearby park playing three man basketball. The same park was where I practiced my tennis game alone, hitting balls against a backboard hour after hour. School came easily to me. I attended Beverly High, which was a wonderful high school; but it was only when I got to college that I learned to apply myself to my studies. When I graduated from high school, I went to work in the advertising business Dad had established a few years earlier. It did't take long to discover that I was not cut out for a career in advertising. Instead, I trained as a teacher and spent one frustrating year teaching at an all African American school located near the Los Angeles Coliseum. Finally, I decided to study for a Phd, which I completed in 1968. Thereafter, I taught political science for five years at USC. In 1963, when I was 24 years old, I met Pearlie. She was seven years older than me and the mother of four children. We fell in love; and despite the odds against us, managed to establish a new family. Our two daughters, Julie and Amy, were born, a few years apart. John Kennedy was assassinated not long after our marriage; and, from that point onward, the world around us became more and more chaotic. Pearlie and I worked together on the Robert Kennedy campaign in California in 1968 and were at the Ambassador Hotel when he, too, was assassinated. In 1973, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, Pearlie and I and our three younger children traveled to Israel for what was to be a one-year stay. The Yom Kippur War broke out just two months after we arrived. BY the end of that year, we had decided to make Israel our permanent home. In 1980, Pearlie fell ill with leukaemia. I tell the story of her two-and-a-half fight against the disease. Finally, the Epilogue briefly tells the story of my marriage to my second wife, Tutti, and the next 30 years of our family's life in Israel.