During the summers of 1949 and 1950, Podhoretz worked at the Hebrew-speaking Camp Ramah in northern Wisconsin. His particular role, besides teaching the prophet Jeremiah to teenagers, was to be the drama coach: he would write up skits of biblical stories in Hebrew, which the campers, after swimming or archery, would act out. Other counselors included Gerson Cohen and Moshe Greenberg, both of whom went on to become notable Jewish scholars. Cohen then and forevermore called Norman “Nifty” (from his Hebrew name Naphtali), and Nifty, for his part, would always remember Greenberg with “a copy of the Kittel edition of the Masoretic text under his arm. I think he even went swimming with it.” They were comrades.

At the end of the second summer, Podhoretz was invited by another counselor to his family's cottage in Glencoe, Illinois. It was a nice place. The mother showed him to his room and, when the door latch clicked firmly behind him, he burst into tears. At first confused by this meltdown, he quickly realized what had caused it: the doors in his family's Brownsville apartment had been painted over so many times that they never clicked shut. What he felt, besides a trace of self-pity, was – to pursue the distinction marked at the end of the previous chapter – not envy but jealousy. He didn't resent his friend's family having their bit of luxury; he simply wanted some for himself.