Alec is a Jewish tailor working in the sweatshops of 1930s Whitechapel. He is part of an immigrant community which fills the streets around Brick Lane with colour and vitality. Yet he is weary of the stifling poverty and his Jewish bosses exploiting his labour. Rejecting the pull of Zionism, Alec instead chooses a unity that crosses racial and religious boundaries, finding his salvation in socialist politics and the arms of a gentile. Jew Boy captures the magic of a multi-layered Cockney culture and the common goals that linked the masses before the war.
