Next Year in Paterson
Ron Goldberg
Independently Published (2025)
ISBN: 979-8218655372
Reviewed by Joan Kirschner for Reader Views (01/2026)
Paterson is a city in New Jersey, on the Passaic River, part of the densely populated area just northwest of New York City and Newark, New Jersey. Its history of industrial development reaches back to the early days of the United States, when Alexander Hamilton himself had a hand in its establishment.
The Great Falls of the Passaic provided waterpower for many industries, including the silk mills that gave Paterson the nickname “Silk City.” The industry employed many thousands of immigrant workers who produced fine silk textiles until the mills closed due to the proliferation of low-cost synthetic fabrics and the exodus of industry abroad.
When Jewish immigration was at its height around the turn of the twentieth century, many brought their skills in weaving and related trades to Paterson. They became a large percentage of the city’s population, and developed a tight-knit community, establishing religious institutions and traditional neighborhood shops. With their further assimilation into American life, many became more prosperous after entering business and the professions. After World War II, they were joined by an influx of more devoutly religious Holocaust survivors who strove to create new lives after the horrors of the Nazi-imposed ghettos and concentration camps.
This all-encompassing Jewish enclave thrived in Paterson into the early 1960s. But due to social, demographic, and economic changes, the community, like that of many others situated in the large and small industrial cities of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, dispersed farther into the suburbs and beyond. Per author Ron Goldberg, by the turn of the 20th century into the 21st, Paterson’s Jewish community was no more.
Next Year in Paterson: Tales of the Great Assimilations by Ron Goldberg is a series of stories that is simultaneously a microcosmic and comprehensive mirror of a distinctive time and place. In the broad view, Jews are a very small minority of Americans, but by contrast, were an unusually substantial bloc in Goldberg’s Paterson. These sensitive and insightful stories reflect the essence of the community.
The mid to late 1960s were a time of great upheaval, expansive social change, and unrest in America, with the rise of the counterculture, the tensions over the Vietnam War, and the draft of young men into the military to fight it. The murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a catalyst that sparked riots in many cities.
Goldberg alludes to that tension in Paterson and the dread of violence in the opening story, “Never Forget.” A young boy, the child of Holocaust survivors, hides in a school’s basement to escape from a gang that has descended on its playground. The title references memories rooted in the Holocaust (or as it is known in Hebrew, the Shoah), which at that time was not far removed. It was a collective wound and scar on the community, a fear of danger and possible victimization.
In “Miss Turner’s First Day,” Goldberg focuses on a young Black teacher, the first of her race to teach in a predominantly Jewish elementary school, and the reactions of the students and parents. In “The Golem of 29th Street,” a strong young Jewish man becomes the protector of the neighborhood.
The penultimate tale, “Next Year in Paterson,” suggests the phrase “Next Year in Jerusalem,” spoken at the conclusion of the Passover Seder by Jews dispersed around the world. It is variously interpreted but often described as a hope or longing for a place of promise and peace. It would have particularly resonated with the Holocaust survivors who had found refuge in Paterson.
These are vivid stories of great insight and sensitivity, but they don’t mask the ambivalence or conflicts found in the emotions of the characters, or shy away from complicated truths. Goldberg wades deeply into reminiscences of the past but never falls into the abyss of simple nostalgia.
The author’s likely readership, the now older Jewish adults, his peers, may recognize their own childhood communities. The characters are likely to spark memories of relatives who have long since passed on and the family stories they told.
For me, mostly unfamiliar with Paterson, but with my own immigrant forebears who worked in similar industrial settings, it was both a fascinating and emotional read that took me back decades. It reminded me of the distant past I had mainly just heard of but occasionally experienced fleetingly during visits to aging relatives still living in fading neighborhoods.
The book’s beautiful cover is the perfect representation of its contents. Its stained-glass design suggests the industrial past of Paterson, the windows of its synagogues, the modest homes of the immigrant community, and with its title in a font that suggests Hebrew characters, there is no doubt as to the orientation of its contents.
Following the concluding story, the author offers a helpful glossary of the possibly unfamiliar (mainly Yiddish and Hebrew) terms sprinkled throughout the book. I was able to learn and add a few that were new to me.
I look forward to sharing my experience of these special stories from Next Year in Paterson with family and friends.
At a Glance: Historical literary fiction told through interconnected stories set in a mid-20th-century Jewish community in New Jersey. The collection explores immigration, assimilation, cultural identity, memory, and social change as a once-thriving neighborhood confronts transformation and decline. Thoughtful, reflective, and rooted in Jewish history and tradition.
Best for Readers Who Enjoy: Jewish historical fiction, immigrant family stories, assimilation and identity themes, interconnected short stories, post-Holocaust narratives, nostalgic community histories, mid-century America, cultural heritage fiction, stories about changing neighborhoods, literary fiction with historical depth