My mother told me that when I first reunited with her after my medical examination at Ellis Island, I fell asleep on the train to our relatives at Worcester and when I woke up at the end of the trip, I looked around at the dismal poverty and said, “This is America?”  

No world since has come close to the world I dreamt I was sleeping on that train ride from Ellis Island to Worcester, but each time I return to the US I am filled with that dream.   When I first read Langston Hughes’ poem America, I was reminded of it 

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

The streets where I am staying in New Brunswick reflect that hope, and that despair.  The people I don’t know, as people, are wonderful and seem to manage despite an absence of optimism.  At least here they don’t lock up all the items on the shelves in the pharmacy because theft is so rampant.  But they’re not having the fun I used to feel just feeling a part of their neighborhood.  

It’s my first day here.  I have no right to complain, and the news I hear from Israel is much worse.  It is as though everyone is attempting to impose their dream on the world.  

More cheer soon.