1,500 kosher vegetarian egg rolls. Check! 200 bottles of Fox’s U-bet syrup. Check! 24 cases of vintage seltzer. Check! 100 pounds of challah dough. Check!  Flying acrobats, klezmorim featuring Michael Winograd and countless mah jongg mavens. Check! We are in high gear for our 13th annual Egg Rolls & Egg Creams Festival.

Peking Opera at Egg Rolls & Egg Creams Festival

Our joyous annual festival pays homages to our block – where Chinatown meets the old Jewish Lower East Side. Where else will you find a Hebrew and a Chinese scribe sitting side by side, alternating Chinese and Yiddish language lessons, tzit tzit making and Chinese knot tying, challah making and a Chinese tea ceremony, and mah jongg games – both Chinese and Jewish.

Mah Jongg for all at our Egg Rolls & Egg Creams Festival

Why a Jewish-Chinese festival, you ask? Our landmark synagogue was built in 1887 when this neighborhood was the heart of the Jewish Lower East Side. Today, our area is part of a vibrant Chinatown. We are proud to tell the story of our landmark and the Jewish community it represents but also celebrate the continuing immigrant story of the area.

Celebrate with us on Sunday, June 9 from 12 to 4 pm. The event is free. Egg Roll & Egg Cream combo is $5.

Egg rolls and egg creams make people happy

Debbie Soffer & grandchildren

How did you first hear about Eldridge Street?

My husband and I moved from Chicago to New York in 2007, after he received a job transfer. One day, my girlfriends and I were visiting the Tenement Museum, and our tour guide told us about a beautiful synagogue in the neighborhood that was currently undergoing restoration. We were very interested, so we walked over and were amazed to discover the building in its fragile state.

What inspired your connection to Eldridge Street?

When you go into the main sanctuary, and you feel the ridges in the floor, you know the building has a living history unlike any other.  Also, when you stand in front of the ark, on the right-hand side, you’ll notice an indentation on the railing.  According to congregants, the first rabbi was such an exuberant speaker he would dig his nails into the railing. The building itself tells a story.

My father’s parents were from Eastern Europe, and at some point they came to Manhattan.  I know they lived on Hester Street.  I would like to imagine they attended services at Eldridge.

You now volunteer at the Museum. How did that happen?

I have a background in accounting, so when we originally moved here, I was thinking of pursuing a part-time position.  As soon as I was introduced to Eldridge Street, I knew I wanted to volunteer there. In 2007 I started training to be a docent and remember anxiously preparing to give my first tour.  Well, I didn’t get to at the time.  Shortly after I arrived, the Museum closed to visitors in order to complete the restoration for the grand re-opening that winter.  I put myself to use helping in the office with the design of the original gift ship and the selection and organization of the inventory.  When the Museum re-opened that winter, I finally got the opportunity to give my first tour.  From there, I got into a rhythm and began sharing with visitors my rendition of the inspired history of Eldridge Street.

Debbie and Gary Soffer at the Museum’s 2007 re-opening ceremony. Photo: Kate Milford

If you were to bring a friend to Eldridge Street, what would you make sure to point out?

I love the vestibule, the space between the building entrance and main sanctuary because it represents the transition from the chaotic life outside and beautiful sanctuary inside.  The neighborhood was completely different at the turn of the century, so the synagogue now creates a startling yet vivid contrast with the outside world.

I have a love for the building, and I want to continue sharing that love with other people.

The “bones” of the Eldridge Street Synagogue; Photo: Peter Aaron/Esto 

When people come to the Eldridge Street Synagogue they are wowed by the beautiful main sanctuary. What they don’t see right away is the care and deliberation that went into restoring it. Here I wanted to share special areas in the synagogue that reveal our preservation philosophy – one that focuses on authenticity and the human touch.

The un-restored panel of lath and plaster above is one of my favorite places in the synagogue. More than 60% of the sanctuary looked like this before the Museum stepped in to restore the building. It is a reminder of how this building so easily could have been lost. I like, too, that you can see the “bones” of the building, or the materials with which it was put together. If you look closely you can even discover bits of horse hair, which were used to bind the plaster together 125 years ago! In Judaism, there is a tradition of leaving a portion of a building unfinished in memory of the Temple so it serves as a reminder of that, too.

Bare bulbs around the Ten Commandments. Photo: Kate Milford

When you enter the sanctuary is it beautifully illuminated with electric lights. But that was not always the case. In 1887, when the synagogue opened, it was lit by gas. The congregation did not electrify until a generation later in 1907. By the point, they must have realized they needed electricity to keep technologically up-to-date. (Electricity back then = the Wi-Fi of today.) So taken were the congregants with the new electric technology they installed this crown of bare bulbs around the Ten Commandments. What looks somewhat carnivalesque today was most impressive back then. Our restoration retained this feature because it tells this story. Electrifying!

Another favorite feature I like to point out is the synagogue’s floorboards. They are a simple pine showing their wear and tear. When you move your feet back and forth along them you feel a dip – and that is exactly the point. Rather than replacing them with new flooring we retained the original wood. It bears the imprint of the many people who gathered at the synagogue and left their mark – quite physically – in the building. By saving the original wood floorboard we are reminded of those many people who worshipped and gathered here. When you visit the Eldridge Street Synagogue, you walk in the footprints of those who came before.

Worn wood floorboards remind us of those who came before. Photo: Ed Cheng

Are there aspects of the building you are curious about? In future posts, I will share more about the Museum’s preservation choices. 

Tags: Eldridge Street, Restoration, Synagogue

Have fun making instruments out of recyclables at our Tu B’Shvat Festival. Photo: Geoffrey Berliner

Our WinterGreen festival this Sunday, January 27, will celebrate Tu B’Shvat – one of the lesser known of Jewish holidays. Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish New Year of Trees, celebrates trees and the start of spring in Israel. In recent years, this “Jewish Arbor Day” has becoming increasingly popular as a day to reflect on Jewish cultural and environmental roots. There are a number of holiday customs, including the eating of the 7 foods of the Land of Israel. (You will have to come to our event to find out what these seven foods are and enjoy tasty samples courtesy of The Pickle Guys and The Sweet Life.)
 Check out Hazon’s website for great resources about Tu B’Shvat.

There will be many opportunities to explore both Jewish environmental heritage and roots on Sunday. Genealogist Roger Lustig will be on hand in our FamilyHistoryCenterto answer questions about how to conduct family research, tracing your ancestry back to earlier generations. We’ll also have activities for kids, including creating a family tree and making musical instruments out of eco-friendly materials followed by a concert by Bash the Trash. The Lower East Side Ecology Center will be on hand to conduct composting workshops (love those worms). Barley and olives are two of the foods associated with the holiday so we’ll have beer and olive tastings.

Museum educator, Mattie Ettenheim, will conduct a Tu B’Shvat seder for those who are curious to learn more about holiday customs.  And in celebration of all things environmentally-friendly, I’ll be leading “green” synagogue tours that showcase the eco-friendly aspects of our restoration of the Eldridge Street Synagogue. Come and learn how we have used recycled milk jugs and denim jeans in hidden spaces in the building!

In all, our WinterGreen Festival: A Tu B’Shvat Celebration promises to be a special day focusing on trees and roots – of both the physical and family genus.

Thank you to the Lori and David Moore family for sponsoring this special day!

Tell us if you do anything special to celebrate Tu B’Shvat. 

Tags: Family History, Green, Sustainable

Allen Mogol, a friend of the Museum, shares his thoughts about Adult Education at Eldridge Street.

If you’ve ever been to the Museum at Eldridge Street, you know that every visit is a step back in time. You can almost hear the whispers of the synagogue’s founders as you walk in their footsteps. Your eyes follow the sunlight as it streams through the rose window, shedding light on the original sanctuary benches.

Dr. Regina Stein

My joining some of the Museum’s scripture-based adult education discussion groups this fall sheds light in an entirely different way. The force driving these discussions is Dr. Regina Stein, the Museum’s Scholar in Residence. Regina makes familiar–and sometimes not so familiar–passages from scripture both eye-opening and powerful, provoking us to look at our lives in new ways.

On a Tuesday morning last month, Regina led an enthusiastic discussion around the museum’s conference room table. How is it possible, she asked, for man to be created in God’s image, and for man to also be created from dust and returned to dust?

Regina reached into her bag and pulled out a visual aid – a key chain. On each side was one of the relevant verses. Sometimes we need to be reminded, she said, that we have the greatness of God within in. Other times, we need to be reminded  that we are but dust.

Seeing that key chain and thinking about what it represented sparked questions as I walked home (the subway would have broken the spell). When is it appropriate, even necessary, for us to summon up and convey hubris, and when should we be feeling and acting with humility? Wouldn’t it be useful for us to carry around with us each day an awareness of the continuum from supreme confidence to utter humbleness, applying it as needed?

I’ve tried to keep Regina’s eye-opening spark in mind over the past several weeks, and it’s made me pause more than once. Have I earned this confidence, or is it just bravado, I’d ask myself as I was about to tackle an unpopular point of view in a meeting. Another time: am I selling myself short, downplaying the value of my opinion?

No easy answers, but provocative questions and thoughtful discussions are just about guaranteed at each of Regina’s classes. I hope to see you at one soon.

This Spring, three new Adult Education series will be offered at the Museum, all led by Dr. Regina  Stein:
American Jewish History from A[rrival] to Z[ionism]
8 sessions, Tuesdays, starting January 15. $10 per class, $70 for all 8.

Spiritual Jewish Workshop
4 sessions, Thursdays, starting January 17.  $10 per class, $30 for all 4.

Truth AND Consequences
4 sessions, Thursdays, starting February 14.  $10 per class, $30 for all 4.

 Click here for more information and to reserve your spot.

These classes are part of the Museum’s Morris Kaplan Scholar-in-Residence Program funded, in part, by the Alice Lawrence Foundation.

Tags: Adult Education, Eldridge Street, Regina Stein

Storywalks is just the coolest thing. It’s a new, free smartphone app that will debut at the Museum at Eldridge Street with a launch party on December 6th. Why is it so amazing? Because it brings history to life by restoring voices from the past to our exquisite sanctuary. It’s a beautiful marriage of old and new technology.

Max Smith

Here’s a sample – you can sit in the women’s balcony in the synagogue and listen to Max Smith talk about sitting up there with his mom when he was a kid:

Storywalks began when Carlin M. Wragg and Anna Pinkas came to Eldridge Street as interns from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU. They had a mission: collaborate with the Museum to develop a new way to use interactive technology to enhance a visitor’s experience at the historic Eldridge Street Synagogue. “We have a passion for creating experiences that lie at the intersection of art and education,” they said. Carlin is a creative writer who uses archival media and the latest expressive technologies to tell stories about ordinary lives. Anna is a visual artist with a background in animation whose work with collections and series excavates the extraordinary slumbering within the mundane. They’ve both since graduated from ITP.

Carlin Wragg (left) and Anna Pinkas created Storywalks.

“A place like Eldridge Street invites you to wonder what it was like to be there when its benches were filled with congregants and the voices of famous cantors lead the congregation in prayer,” said Carlin, recalling how Storywalks got started.  ”The Museum at Eldridge Street has worked for years to gather congregants’ memories of that time on cassette tapes and CDs. There is something special about these voices — their accents, the way their speech is infused with Yiddish phrases — that only comes through in the audio. From the beginning, the oral histories were core to the experience we set out to design; we wanted to create a way for these congregants to speak through time to tell visitors their stories.”

Carlin and Anna began developing this new app in January 2012 and had a prototype ready in May, which they presented to the Museum’s staff. As the Museum’s archivist, I was familiar with the oral histories they used for Storywalks—I’d seen the old cassette tapes in the archives and read the transcripts. But hearing what Carlin and Anna did with them was completely new and exciting! Suddenly the people – and the synagogue – came to life. These voices from the past told about what it was like to be part of the Eldridge Street community and its Lower East Side neighborhood in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. It was magical!

We all loved Storywalks, but there was the question of funding. “As a former arts administrator, I appreciate the limited resources museums have to experiment with innovations in interactive technology,” explained Carlin. “To create the experience of our dreams we need to hire a developer who has the expertise to build a boundary-pushing smartphone app.” The project needed money to move forward.

Ever resourceful, Carlin and Anna undertook a Kickstarter campaign and successfully crowdsourced the needed budget. “Storywalks shows what makes nonprofits special,” said Carlin, “A passion for mission, community support and a commitment to collaboration can drive innovation.”

Now ready to launch, Storywalks uses cutting-edge interactive technology to guide visitors along a sonic pathway of voices, music and environmental sounds, highlighting the synagogue’s architectural treasures, fascinating history and long musical tradition. It infuses the landmark Eldridge Street Synagogue with the voices of more than a dozen past congregants, making these voices from the past available to the public for the first time. Storywalks also features prayers sung by renowned cantor Edward Smith, son of Eldridge Street congregant Max Smith whose voice is featured in the clip above.

This smartphone screen shows one of the floorplans used in Storywalks.

The app uses a map of Eldridge Street and simple floor plans of the synagogue’s three levels to orient the visitor.  Voices are triggered by a touch on the screen. “We didn’t want Storywalks to feel impersonal and glossy, like so many smartphone apps,” said designer Anna. “The intimate and picturesque testimonies from this oral history archive lead us to a narrative that reflects the synagogue’s multi-layered history. We use the building’s floor plan to situate users, allowing them to immerse themselves in the splendor of the site rather than constantly calling attention to their hand-held screen.”

This public art piece is a collaboration between the Museum at Eldridge Street, Carlin M. Wragg (Producer and Narrative Designer) and Anna Pinkas (Visual and Interaction Designer), with custom software by creative technologists Chien-Yu Lin and Lia Martinez, a soundscape composed by musician Mercedes Blasco, and location recording and sound mixing by Ryan Billia.

“Storywalks is an unbelievable Chanukah gift,” said the Museum’s Deputy Director, Amy Stein-Milford. It’s a gift we feel very fortunate to receive – and one we can’t wait to share.

Come for a preview. The Storywalks Launch Party is on Thursday, December 6, from 6:30-8:30, at the Museum. The event is free.

Tags: Anna Pinkas, Carlin Wragg, Eldridge Street, Smartphone app, Storywalks

Our visitors often tell us that the Museum at Eldridge Street is one of New York’s Hidden Gems.  They are often surprised to find a majestic old synagogue tucked away on a narrow Chinatown street.

New York is a city filled with hidden gems.  We have compiled a list of fun and affordable things to do and visit, covering all five boroughs.  Whether you have been living in the city for decades or are a recent transplant, we hope you will enjoy going on a treasure hunt for these lesser known New York attractions.

WAVE HILL, THE BRONX
Wave Hill is a 28-acre public garden and cultural center in Riverdale, Bronx, overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades. It used to be a private home and its famous residents included writer Mark Twain. Some of the highlights of Wave Hill gardens are the stunning views of the New Jersey Palisades and the romantic flower garden, which is surrounded by a rustic cedar fence.

Monica at Wave Hill on a lovely sunny day. Click to enlarge.

Address:
West 249th Street and Independence Avenue (main entrance)
Bronx, NY  10471
http://www.wavehill.org

Admission:
$10 General, $5 Students and Seniors (over 65),
Free for Members & Children under 12.

THE MORGAN LIBRARY AND MUSEUM, MANHATTAN
The Morgan Library and Museum is a museum and research library built to house the private library of J. P. Morgan, the famous American financier and banker who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time. Highlights of the Morgan collections include a Gutenberg bible and original Mozart and Beethoven manuscripts. A must see is the room with walnut bookcases that reach 30 feet from floor to ceiling. Morgan’s library is a delight for any book lover.

The Library’s East Room. Click to enlarge. Photo: Graham Haber

Address:
225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street
New York, NY 10016
www.themorgan.org

Admission:
$15 Adults; $10 Children (under 16); $10 Seniors (65 and over);
$10 Students  (Free for Columbia students with a valid ID)
Free to members and children 12 and under (must be accompanied by an adult)
Admission is free on Fridays from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

MERCHANT’S HOUSE, MANHATTAN
If you want to experience how a mid-19th century upper middle class family in New York City lived, take a step back in time and visit the Merchant’s House Museum located just a few minutes away from Washington Square.

Merchant's House. Click to enlarge. Photo: Merchant's House Museum.

The Merchant’s House is the only family home in New York City from the 1830s to survive intact.  It is also considered to be “the most haunted house in Manhattan.”  When the weather is nice, be sure to spend a few minutes in the lovely garden!
Address:
29 East Fourth Street (between Lafayette and Bowery)
New York, NY  10003
www.merchantshouse.org

Admission:

$10 Adults; $5 Students and Seniors (over 65)

Free for Members and Children under 12.

ROOSEVELT ISLAND  TRAMWAY, MANHATTAN TO QUEENS
Often referred to as the “Little Apple” of the “Big Apple,” Roosevelt Island is located between Manhattan and Queens. Historically, it has been a prison and a quarantine hospital, but today it is a residential neighborhood.

Roosevelt Island Tramway. Click to enlarge. Photo: manhattanstyle.com

nigun (Hebrew: ?meaning “tune” or “melody”, pl. nigunim) or niggun (pl. niggunim) is a form of Jewish religious song or tune sung by groups. It is vocal music, often with repetitive sounds such as “bim-bim-bam” or “ai-ai-ai!” instead of formal lyrics. Sometimes, Bible verses or quotes from other classical Jewish texts are sung repetitively to form a nigun. Some nigunim are sung as prayers of lament, while others may be joyous or victorious.

I am a hummer.  When I was a kid, I would often hum songs I heard on the radio.  I never could and, in fact, still can’t remember more than the first line of most songs.  When I started working at Eldridge Street and was charged with curating concerts that would fit the space and mission of the Museum, I remember finding musicians who had re-discovered nigunim and their haunting beauty.  I shared their recordings with my father, the king of hummers in our family, and much to my surprise, he knew many of the tunes.

It turns out his father and uncles were also hummers, but of the religious sort.  He told me that as a young boy some of his favorite memories revolved around my grandfather and my grandmother’s brothers sitting around the Sabbath table singing tune after tune, the afternoons often stretching into the evening and the end of Sabbath and calling for a new set of tunes.

Joey Weisenberg

I am certain my fondness for humming tunes and my cavalier attitude towards the words are the pop descendants of these nigunim.  I am thrilled that Joey Weisenberg will be performing them at Eldridge Street on Sunday and know that my mishpocha  in heaven will be there humming along.

Click here to see and hear Joey Weisenberg.

Find out more about this Sunday’s concert, Joey Weisenberg Ensemble – Transformation of a Nigun,  October 21, at 3 pm at the Museum at Eldridge Street. 

Order your tickets here.

Remember the scene in Woody Allen’s 2011 film Midnight in Paris? Owen Wilson, as Gil, is sitting on a Paris street corner at midnight. The clock bells chime and he’s transported back to an earlier era. Same corner, same street, same city, only now, he’s in the city of his dreams: Paris in the 1920s.

How many times have I wished to do exactly that here in New York City? Stroll along Riverside Drive when it was lined with mansions; climb the stairs of the Eldridge Street Synagogue in its heyday; walk into a photograph of old New York and just keep on going.

Where’s Woody Allen when you need him?

Seward Park and environs. Click to enlarge (Photo courtesy Museum of the City of NY)

This wonderful photograph, taken in 1928 just minutes from the Eldridge Street Synagogue, is a favorite of mine. Here at the crossroads of Essex, Canal, East Broadway, and Division Streets was the heart of the Jewish Lower East Side, and for hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants, the heartland of their America.

Walk here today – as you will on our October 14th Nosh and Stroll – and you’ll see streets that look remarkably the same. Long gone are the soapbox preachers, Yiddish speakers, and newsboys, but neighborhood landmarks endure. Seward Park, here in the middle of the photo, the Seward Park Library, just above, the Educational Alliance across the street – all remain in form and function. The tall building on the right of the photo also still stands, though only its landmark façade is the same. In 1928 this was the Jewish Daily Forward building. Today it’s a condominium and unlikely that anyone inside still uses a typewriter.

But just imagine.

Imagine a split second after this moment was captured. Pedestrians frozen mid-stride take another step … and keep on walking. Cars move and honk, city sounds and smells (more on those smells in a moment!) fill the air, black and white is infused with color and we’re in. In the photo and it’s nearly a century ago.

Abraham Cahan

Now, the sound of clattering typewriter keys is surely spilling from the windows of the sixteen-year-old Forward building. Chances are Abraham Cahan, the founding and impassioned editor of the paper, is inside. Perhaps he is editing his famous advice column, the “Bintel Brief” at this moment. Yiddish for “Bundle of Letters”, each letter was a story, each column a nuanced portrait of immigrant life.

“Dear Editor,” the letters would begin.

“We are a small family who recently came to the ‘Golden Land.’ I had opened a small grocery store here but soon lost all my money…”

“Worthy Editor, I beg you to print my letter as quickly as possible and advise me how to save myself…”

“Dear Editor, I hope you will allow me to unburden my heart in the ‘Bintel Brief’…”

For Jewish immigrants, there had never been and was nothing else like the “Bintel Brief.”

“The essence,” Cahan reflected in later years, “Surely is to be found in the quiet tragedies of our lives – true, incredible pages from the ‘book of life.”

Children's Room, Seward Park Library. Click to enlarge. (Photo courtesy New York Public Library)

Cross the street now and walk into the Seward Park Library. Opened in 1909, the library rarely closed and on this day, the day of our photo, it will be crowded. People come after school, they come after long hours of work, they come any time the library is opened, often from 6am to 1am, nineteen hours a day.

“If I could read the whole world of knowledge was open to me.” Rose Cohen, a sensitive, young sweatshop worker, wrote in her poignant memoir, Out of the Shadow: A Russian Jewish Girlhood on the Lower East Side. A New York Times reporter, moved by the sight of so many immigrants using the library in 1913, shared Rose’s feelings:

“…what (books) contain can feed a starving mind and a hungering imagination with such royal richness as their lives could never afford them; and that their contents can lead him, step by step, along the journey to success and power and dominance. It is not far-fetched to say that many of the statesmen of the future are now in the making at Seward Park library.”

Certainly on the streets around the library, many of the comedians of the future were in the making. Vaudeville, Broadway, and Hollywood star Eddie Cantor didn’t say much about the neighborhood library in his autobiography, My Life is in Your Hands, but he had plenty to say about candy stores, street life, and something an old black and white photo just can’t capture: those Lower East Side smells.

“There had long been a movement on the East Side for fresh air”, he remembered. “But the East Siders were not clear on the subject of air and could never quite distinguish it from food vapors.

“Each street had its own favorite flavor which it cherished with a certain local and civic pride. If, for instance, the tang of herring was missing from Hester Street, the Hester Streeters thought they were walking in a vacuum.

“Similarly, the Italian quarter had its air pockets filled with garlic; under Williamsburg Bridge blew strong fish breezes, and no rich supply of ozone was complete without the ingredients of a dozen stables and the thousand and one fumes arising from vegetable pushcarts, poultry and meat markets, pickle works, and refuse cans.

“If one walked down Orchard Street toward Rivington, one knew definitely that here air was literally cheese, sometimes fragrant cream cheese blended with cottage, and sometimes it was stale Roquefort with a dash of Gorgonzola. Subtract the cheese from this region and people would die for lack of air.”

Born in 1892, “in a small gas-lit bedroom on Eldridge Street” Eddie Cantor lived far from the smells of his childhood on the day this photo was taken. Did he ever step into the Eldridge Street Synagogue? We don’t know for sure. We do know that he crossed paths with Isaac Gellis, a founding member of the Eldridge Street Synagogue, and perhaps better known in some circles as the Delicatessen King.

“I was the trusted emissary, or maybe ambassador, of the Isaac Gelles Wurst Works in those years,” Eddie Cantor recalled, “and carried their daily supply of pickled meats from the factory on Essex Street to their big store at 14 Market Street. I used to start out with an empty stomach and a full basket and wind up vice versa.”

At the end of Midnight in Paris, Gil (not to mention, the audience) reluctantly returns to the present. But forever changed, he holds onto the best of the past. How about this? As you sample a taste of the old neighborhood this Sunday on our Lower East Side Nosh & Stroll, remember the voices from the past. Imagine the smells. And hold onto Eddie Cantor’s early 20th century advice: “start out with an empty stomach and wind up vice versa”.