The Seven-Branched Candlestick: The Schooldays of Young American Jew

This autobiography introduces the readers to the life of the author as a child who also happens to be Jewish. He specifically highlights the seven important years he spent as a student – two of them occurred while he was at high school, one at a military school on the Hudson, and four while studying at city's university. In his own words, he describes his experiences as follows: «Because they were not altogether happy, I have no right to think of them as lean years. For each one of them meant much to me—means as much now as I look back and am chastened and strengthened by their memory. Each is as a lighted candle in the dark of the past that I look back upon. And I like to imagine that, since there are seven of them, they are in the seven-branched candlestick which is so stately and so reverent a symbol of my Faith.»