In the 1930s, a young man from the South moves to New York City to attend college. He had never met a Jewish person before coming to New York. When he hears some of his classmates making anti-semitic remarks in the locker room, he complains to a friend, who mentions that he is a Jew. The young man had no idea. He finds that about a third of his friends are Jewish, and that fact does not bother him at all. In fact, he often forgets that they are Jewish because that label is of so little consequence to him.

One day, he goes to Union Square, where he sees groups of old men arguing about Roosevelt’s approach to World War II. The man gets into an argument with an Irishman, who insists that the young man is a Jew, despite the young man claiming to the Catholic. Heated, the young man leaves, but the next day he realizes: so what? Maybe he is a Jew, an imaginary Jew. It does not matter to him anyway; what matters is the cruelty that Jewish people face.