Description

I didn't know it then, but I know it now, that what I said to Harold was like crossing a Rubicon. I had declared myself, there was no turning back. I said what I said with feeling and to someone who up to that moment was like a god on Mt. Olympus. He became Harold St. James, secular savior and friend. I could talk to him. I didn't have to choose my words. I could be Izzy Goldstein.

What will later become the legendary St. James-Goldstein duo at Yale begins on the day World War II breaks out in Europe. Harold St. James and Izzy Goldstein meet on the train to New Haven, Connecticut, and both learn that they will be working together in two different departments in the same building at Yale.

Their oddball friendship becomes fodder for snide comments and campus newspaper articles. But it's a strong friendship that carries them through an initial anti-Semitism, Harold's marriage and his wife's premature death, the House Un-American Activities Committee, the Vietnam War, and the Black Panthers.