Fanya, a young Polish Jew, living and working on the Lower East Side, attends a lecture by a famous educator, Henry Scott, that seems meant specifically for her. Scott calls America "the meeting ground of all the nations of the world" and exhorts Americans to "blaze a trail to a future where people would be judged not by membership in a group . . . but as individuals on their own merits." On an impulse, Fanya goes to Scott's university office and...