They have picturesque ceremonies for weddings, births and funerals, though all of these are common and frequent enough. For important funerals the tribes gravitate here from all parts of the country. Rejoicing, lamentation and just plain drunken disturbances are of no concern to the police. The gypsies pay no taxes and do not even vote. But they seem to enjoy a feudal duchy almost as immune against authority as it is against soap. Surrounding them are specialized little Jewish groups, mostly arrivals within the last dozen years, comprising Jews of Galician, Russian, Romanian, Hungarian, Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian origin. These are excellent, thrifty, industrious people who bridge the chasm of foreign tongue and customs by hard work, a stubborn pride in their old-country ways and staunch worship of their God and the teachings of their church. They occupy the only islands in this historical portion of New York with local rabbis whom they maintain from their meagre earnings, mostly at new trades which they had to acquire in this mechanized civilization after they had fled from the primitive villages and fenced-in cattle-corrals of the larger European centers. Unlike many of the Americanized, American-born young GI's who cheerfully joined the 52-20 contingent, these oldsters do not go on relief. They appreciate the blessings of freedom and sincerely try to pay for them by good and upright citizenship even before they can become citizens. All around them they see grocery, delicatessen and butcher stores run by their co-religionists, with ham and bacon in the windows. They mutter in their beards over the moral decadence of the youth. They are teased and taunted by the young Jews as cruelly as, generations ago, all Jews were mistreated by their Gentile neighbors, especially the Irish during the heavy immigrations that followed the potato famines and divided this whole section into an unending battlefield. The Jews by tradition are not cowards, though they have through modern history been compelled to be on the defensive as a minority everywhere. Out of these early conflicts rose some of the toughest and most murderous gangsters in American history--Little Augie, Kid Dropper, and the Murder, Inc. mob led by Lepke and Gurrah. Once they learned they had to battle, they became fierce warriors with knife, gun and every other equipment. There are still four Yiddish daily newspapers, all prosperous and all with different policies as to politics, orthodoxy and the never-ending controversy of the Jew in every land to which he drifts--assimilation.