mour’s parents, Julius and Bessie Epstein, had emigrated from Russia and landed in Brooklyn, both of them with eighth-grade educations. They lived in Crown Heights, where Julius owned a house-wrecking company. Before landing a job with the city, Seymour had worked with his father. They were kind people, says E

my parents and grandparents, who lived insular lives in the Jewish shteles of Galicia, Poland, the Lower East side of Manhattan, and the Williamberg, Crown Heights and Boro Park Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods (also “shtetles”) of Brooklyn. My parents and grandparents had little formal education. They rarely trave