Upper West Side

The Upper West Side is the Manhattan neighborhood that anchors the contemporary narrative of E. L. Doctorow's City of God. It is the home of the Synagogue of Evolutionary Judaism on West Ninety-eighth Street, the residence of Rabbi Sarah Blumenthal and her two children, and the base from which the novel's central quest—the recovery of the Kovno Ghetto archive—is launched and concluded. The neighborhood functions as the novel's contemporary counterweight to the horrors of the Kovno Ghetto, a place where the past is not merely remembered but actively excavated, and where the central characters' lives and vocations are reshaped by the history they uncover.

Identity and Setting

The Upper West Side is presented as a distinctly residential and cultured Manhattan neighborhood, the kind of place where a synagogue occupies a brownstone between West End and Riverside Drive, reached by a steep flight of granite steps. This is the setting for the Synagogue of Evolutionary Judaism, the small, unconventional congregation that stands at the center of the novel's present-day story. The neighborhood is also the home of Sarah Blumenthal, a rabbi and widow who lives there with her two children, making it the domestic and spiritual heart of the contemporary plot.

The Synagogue of Evolutionary Judaism

The Synagogue of Evolutionary Judaism on West Ninety-eighth Street is the novel's primary Upper West Side institution. When the narrator first encounters it, the congregation is led by Rabbi Joshua Gruen, a trim, serious young man who dresses in a sweatshirt and jeans and who summons the narrator with a voice mail message insisting that a meeting is in their mutual interest. The narrator, a detective and former priest, immediately recognizes Gruen as "not one of the kooks," a fellow religioso. After Gruen's death, the congregation's leadership passes to Sarah Blumenthal, who conducts the Friday evening services. Under her guidance, attendance has dwindled to no more than ten or twelve people, less than half the number who came when Gruen was the presiding rabbi. In response, the Sabbath services are being redesigned to what the congregants consider the basic and unarguable essentials, consisting so far of the Shema, the declaration of the oneness of God, and a Kaddish, the ritual prayer of mourning.

The Quest for the Archive

The Upper West Side is the launching point for the novel's central quest: the recovery of the Kovno Ghetto archive. It is from this neighborhood that Pem, the novel's protagonist, sets off on his self-appointed mission to Eastern Europe, armed only with the names in Joshua Gruen's notebook. The quest transforms him; upon his return, he is slimmed down, his bulk more contained, his hair cut short, his ponytail gone. The narrator observes that setting off on a quest and succeeding can surprise a fellow out of his usual humors, and that Pem's transformation has a literary template—Christian knighthood—made possible by the fact that his lady is Sarah Blumenthal, a rabbi and widow living on the Upper West Side. The quest also carries a darker undertone: a successful competition with a dead man, Joshua Gruen, whose notebook provided the names Pem hunted down in Vilnius.

The Archive's Return and Its Weight

The Upper West Side is also the destination for the recovered archive, which arrives at JFK Airport and is examined by customs officials. The chest, larger and deeper than Sarah had imagined, is hammered together with big heavy nails and metallic corner pieces, painted white with raw lumber showing where the paint has flaked off. As the customs man pries off the hasps, the sound of splitting wood makes Sarah wince, as if her father's history is seeping into the room. Inside are packages wrapped in oilskin, sheaves of paper bound in twine, booklets, manuals, folders, rolled-up blueprints, diagrams, stapled documents, and envelopes labeled in a small, neat Yiddish script. Among the materials is a diary in her father's hand covering the years 1941 to 1944, and reams of documentation, including orders signed by Commandant Schmitz. Sarah holds typed lists of those who died in the ghetto and those taken away and never seen again, each name with a date and place of birth. For her, these pages are not historical but a curve of the universe's light flashing through her, lasing her consciousness into the leaves of paper. Pem hands her an envelope of forbidden black-and-white photographs: a line of men and women marching to work behind barbed wire, a family on a bench with cloth stars sewn to their coats, a body hanging from a gallows, and seven little boys in front of a wood cabin, wearing military-school caps and stars on their breasts, looking into the camera in the full knowledge of death. Sarah finds her father in the first row.

Narrative Significance

The Upper West Side serves as the novel's contemporary anchor, a place of domesticity, religious practice, and intellectual life that stands in stark contrast to the violence and deprivation of the Kovno Ghetto. It is the space where the past is not merely remembered but physically recovered, where the archive's documents and photographs are received and read. The neighborhood is also the site of Sarah's ongoing work as a rabbi, conducting services that have been stripped down to the essential declarations of monotheism and mourning. The Upper West Side is thus not merely a setting but a character in its own right, a place where the novel's central themes of memory, faith, and the transmission of trauma are enacted in the present day.