Jewish historians paint radically different pictures of New York's Lower East Side immigrant experience (1870-1914), revealing a deep divide between secular socialist and religious Orthodox interpretations. Moses Rischin, Irving Howe, and Lewis Feuer's seminal works showcase how contemporary Jewish identity anxieties influence historical revisionism, with recent scholarship increasingly emphasizing Orthodox institutions over secular organizations like the Workmen's Circle. Through comparative textual analysis and pedagogical insights from teaching a Lower East Side history seminar, fundamental disagreements emerge about the forces that shaped immigrant Jewish identity - socialism, religious orthodoxy, and capitalist assimilation. Both secular and religious narratives tend toward mythologization, selectively amplifying certain aspects while diminishing others. History and mythology prove inextricably connected; effective historical understanding requires acknowledging both the organizing myths that give meaning to disparate facts and the partisan perspectives that inevitably shape historical interpretation. Classroom experiences further reveal how modern students' disconnect from historical conditions of repression affects their comprehension of immigrant struggles and choices.