Commuting from Brownsville to Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary, Podhoretz embodied, between 1946 and 1950, the cultural contradictions among them. Brownsville remained home, for he couldn't afford to live in a dorm or fraternity house. This was no cause for tears. The subway journey, ninety minutes each way, was a time for study, and he developed what he later called “the apparently imperishable faculty of reading with greater concentration and attention on moving vehicles than in such prosaic and conventional locations as arm-chairs, desks, beds, and the like.” He got along with his parents, went dutifully to visit relatives, and, whenever he could, still mixed with his Cherokee pals at the pool hall or on the street corner, even as they began working menial jobs or, in a few cases, taking night classes in accounting or engineering.

Between family and Cherokees there was always a separation, but not the kind that caused anguish. They stayed out of each other's way, and Podhoretz loved them both. As for the Jewish Theological Seminary, lots of bright Brooklyn boys went there, mostly but not invariably to study for the rabbinate. That wasn't Podhoretz's goal. His maternal grandfather M'shitzik, the Hasid, had wanted him to go to a more traditional yeshiva, but his father would have none of it: “Had he cut off his own earlocks in order that his American son should grow a pair?