Feb 20, 2009
In the four short stories contained in A Contract With God, Eisner examines life in the 1930’s Bronx tenements that sprung up in New York after WWI. These neighborhoods accommodated the influx of immigrants and bred a close neighborliness ripe for mining stories. Eisner does this brilliantly.
In the title story, a young Russian Jew has come to American to escape the pograms that were sweeping through his country. When tragedy strikes, he becomes bitter, rejects the contract he had made with God, and quickly accumulates vast material wealth. Predictably, he realizes that money can’t buy the