The story of the tefillin at the bottom of New York Harbor is, as far as I can tell, true. I first heard this story from a classmate at Harvard College, who told of how his great-grandfather saw people throwing their tefillin overboard on the ship that first brought him to New York. I was very struck by this story and thought it was unique to my classmate’s family. However, I then mentioned it to others and soon found that among Jews of a certain generation in America (those now in their sixties or seventies), this story is something that everyone seems to know—I would start telling them the story, and they would quickly supply the ending. Of course, this might mean that the story is simply a popular legend. But then I discovered an interesting piece of evidence. While I haven’t seen it myself, I am told that in a museum in Nova Scotia in Canada, there is an exhibit featuring “A set of phylacteries [tefillin] removed from the floor of the Atlantic.” That clinched it for me. (I did not, however, have the experience of seeing them in a junk shop!)

Other historical details?

I tried very hard in this novel to ensure that the details were historically accurate. This was of course hardest in the story that takes place in the 1890s. However, I had several sources against which to check my facts. A few years ago I wrote a story for a magazine about the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, a museum in New York City located in a restored tenement building that demonstrates how turn-of-the-century immigrant populations lived in this neighborhood of New York, which at the time was a large center for Eastern European Jewish immigrants. All the details about Leah’s family’s living conditions—the square footage of the apartment, the gas lighting, the sink (but without running water), the use of the living room as an extra bedroom, the boarders, other material details—come largely from the research this museum has done into material life at the time.