Our last couple posts have explored Jewish Heritage Sites here on the Lower East Side: our Eldridge St. Synagogue, Seward Park and Stieblach Row.

But now, let’s escape the chaos and clamor of the city and take a trip back to another locale at the center of the Jewish-American experience: a summer vacation in the Catskill Mountains!

Fresh air, wide open spaces and, of course, enough embarrassing family photos to last a lifetime! A trip to the Catskills offered this and so much more to city-dwellers needing an escape. The mid-20th century was the heyday of the Catskills as a premier vacation destination for New York Jews. Filled with resorts that catered to individuals of all ages, memories of lounging by the pool, leisurely afternoon walks and a delicious kosher lunch at The Concord are all staples of the resort region.

The Catskills

Like the Museum at Eldridge Street, Jewish resorts in the Catskills represent an intersection between being Jewish and being American. As sociologist Phil Brown states, “ In ‘the mountains,’ Jews of Eastern European descent could have a proper vacation and become Americanized while preserving much of their Jewish culture. They imported their music, humor, vaudeville revue style, cuisine, language, and world views. These vacation spots were not merely resorts – they were miniature societies shaped by the vacationers’ urban culture.” – Take My Memories, Please: Keeping the Catskills Alive

So, what better way to remember the ambiance of a New York summer in the country than by joining us here at the Museum at Eldridge Street on May 16 for our very own Evening at the Catskills! Show off (or brush up on) your Simon Says technique. Indulge in a creamsicle while trying your hand at a game of canasta. Or enjoy the sweet sounds of pianist Steve Sterner and Shane Baker’s vaudevillian theatrics while you wait in anticipation for the caller to pull B9, the only number keeping you from a BINGO! And who knows, maybe you’ll even meet your own Johnny Castle and truly have the Time of Your Life.

To learn more about the history of vacationing in the Catskills here are a few useful resources:

The Catskills Institute, Borscht Belt Memories & The Rise and Fall of the Borscht Belt

Looking for something new

to try for this year’s Passover Seder?

Here are a few recipe recommendations from the staff at The Museum at Eldridge Street!

1. Gami’s Chopped Liver

Courtesy of Sarah Verity, Director of Visitor Services

My grandma never measures or writes down her recipes so these amounts aren’t exact – just my best guess as to what we use every year.

• 1 pound chicken livers
• 2 large onions, chopped
• 6 hardboiled eggs
• Olive or vegetable oil
• Salt

1) In a large pan or skillet, cook half the onions in oil until they are golden. Remove from pan and set aside.

2) In the same pan, cook livers over medium heat until they are cooked through.

3) In batches, blend together cooked liver, sautéed onions, raw onions and hard boiled eggs in the food processor or using a hand grinder. Be careful not to over-blend if you use the food processor!

4) Add salt to taste. Refrigerate over night.

5) Season with salt before serving.

Sarah and Gami

Chopped liver has always been a staple at our holiday meals since I was a kid. Of course as a child I thought it was disgusting and didn’t understand why all the adults went crazy for it. It used to be made each holiday by my grandpa (Papa), who loved liver so much he would order liver and onions in a restaurant (which I also always thought was gross). After he

passed away in 1995, my grandma (Gami) took over making the chopped liver. I don’t remember how old I was when I finally decided to taste it, but it was delicious! Over the years, we decided that Gami needed to pick a successor to learn all her recipes, so I became the designated chopped liver apprentice. For the past few years, my favorite part of Passover prep has been making the chopped liver together. When we first started I was still too grossed out by the chicken livers to cook them myself so I made her do that part, but now I can do the whole process myself (with her supervision and taste testing of course!) We even use the hand grinder that belonged to her mother (my great-grandmother Sarah, who I am named for). I love feeling connected to my ancestors through this very old, clunky kitchen tool while spending quality time with my Gami, and I look forward to someday passing it down to my own children and grandchildren.

2. Passover Chicken – ala Silver Palate Cookbook

Recommended by Sharon Stein, Visitor Services Associate

Passover Chicken – photo courtsey of Simpleyrecipes.com

• 2 chickens cut into 8 pieces each. Murray’s or organic especially.
• 1/2 cup each of olive oil and good red wine vinegar.
• 8 or more clovers of garlic minced
• 1/2 cup of capers and some of the juice
• 1 small jar (you choose size) of stuffed green olives
• 1 or more cups of dried fruit. apricots and prunes or any other dried
• fruit
• 1/4 cup oregano
• Salt & pepper
• 6 bay leaves

1) Combine all of above in big ziplock bag and marinate turning frequently

a minimum of 1 night or over 2 or 3 days. The more you marinate the

tastier it will get.

2) Arrange chicken in pans with all ingredients. Best if you put dark meat

in one pan, white in another. Sprinkle with brown sugar. Add white

wine to pan as well. Cook at 350 for at least an hour basting a few

times. Serve with pan gravy.

Recipe can be doubled, etc. easily. Great leftovers…if any.

Your house will smell heavenly.

3. Carrot Souffle from Koshercooking.com

Courtesy of Hanna Griff-Sleven, Director of Cultural Programs

I first had this soufflé when I lived in Jackson, Mississippi. I got there just before Pesach, and one of the women I worked with who knew I loved to cook gave me this recipe. I am not a big carrot lover, so I was not at first impressed. Then, I had it at a seder I was invited to and couldn’t get enough. It’s delicious, almost sweet enough to be a dessert.

• 2lb fresh carrots, boiled until soft
• 6 eggs
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 6TBS matzoh meal
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 sticks butter, melted
• dash of nutmeg
• 6 tablespoons brown sugar
• 4 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Topping (mix together):

Place carrots and eggs into food processor & puree. Add next 5 ingredients and process until smooth. Bake in greased 9×13 Pyrex pan at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Add topping and bake for 5-10 minutes more.

Can be made a day in advance.

4. Matzah Candy from the Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking by Marcy Goldman (1998)

Recommended by Sarah Verity, Director of Visitor Services

I love matzah candy!

• 12 matzo crackers
  

  Courtney Making Matzah Candy at Home

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 (12 ounce) bag semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line two baking sheets

with aluminum foil. Place the matzo crackers in a single layer on the

lined baking sheets, breaking to fit, if necessary.

Bring the butter and brown sugar to a boil in a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Continue to cook, stirring constantly, until thick and smooth, about 3 minutes. Pour the hot sugar mixture over the matzo, and spread evenly with a heat proof spatula.

Place the caramel topped matzo in the preheated oven for 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and evenly sprinkle the chocolate chips on top. Return

pans to oven to melt chocolate, about 1 minute. Smooth melted chocolate

to completely cover the caramel. Sprinkle with the chopped walnuts.

Chill in refrigerator for 20 minutes, or until set. Break into small

pieces to serve.

Chag Sameach from the Museum at Eldridge Street! Let us know what are your favorite Passover food recipes and memories

For 125 years, the Eldridge Street Synagogue has been collecting stories: memories of life in a faraway country, the struggle of moving to America, the heyday of the Jewish Lower East Side and even life in the neighborhood today. These stories are what give meaning to the building, stories that are literally told by the walls, the windows and worn grooves in the floors. Today it is the docents who translate the synagogue’s history into spoken word and truly give the Eldridge Street Synagogue a voice. It is one of these docents who we are putting in the spotlight today: Herb Kass.

Intern Courtney Byrne-Mitchell and Docent Herb Kass

Herb celebrates his one-year anniversary as a docent this month. He became a tour-guide at the museum with the hope of reconnecting with his Jewish roots. I had the pleasure of speaking with Herb about his year as a docent, and during our conversation he explained that one of his favorite things about the museum is having the opportunity to meet visitors from all over the United States and the world. Herb has been able to connect with fascinating individuals, one of his fondest memories involving a family that had come from Turkey.

The family, Herb explained, brought to the museum their own family’s immigration story. Their ancestors emigrated from Spain 500 years earlier, and today the family still speaks Ladino, the traditional language of Sephardic Jews. The family was celebrating their son’s bar mitzvah, and despite a limited knowledge of English, they were still able to connect over the beauty of the space and shared traditions. Herb’s own paternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from Grodno (modern day Belarus) in the late 1800’s during the largest wave of Eastern European Jews to pass through Ellis Island. They, like many of the founders of the Eldridge Street Synagogue, lived on the Lower East Side before they moved out to Williamsburg, and eventually East New York and Queens where Herb grew up.

Herb Kass' family portrait after his uncle's bar mitzvah - early 20th century

Like the story of the Turkish family, each tour Herb gives is an opportunity for individuals to come together in a space in which people have found meaning for over a century. The Museum at Eldridge Street does more that provide Jewish history, it encourages visitors to explore and share the experiences of their own families. As I was writing this entry, it hit me. I truly became aware of the space’s role as a catalyst in forging connections, even between complete strangers. This is truly the magic of the Museum at Eldridge Street.

When I first envisioned a Chinese Jewish Festival more than ten years ago, I thought it would be good for the neighborhood and for our mission to tell the story of the immigrants who made and make our neighborhood special. I imagined Chinese and Jewish artists and musicians sitting side by side informing the public about their traditions. What I did not expect, but experienced starting at our very first festival back in 2000, is the deep feeling of community and joy that emanates from all the participants and festival goers – this is a New York Moment.

Walking south on Eldridge Street from the B Train on Grand Street, you are in Chinatown: dumpling shops and markets sell more than 20 varieties of soy sauce and all sorts of dried foods in bins, fish so fresh that it still moves and store signs in Chinese with auspicious names like Prosperity Dumplings or Good Lock Locksmith; there is a Buddhist temple, too. However, if you look closely, you might notice Harris Levy Fine Linens and remember that your bubbe went there to buy her wedding linens; or you might see a tenement with Moorish windows and a faded Star of David on the façade – a sign that the building was once a synagogue.

If you’ve been lucky enough to visit us on the first Sunday in June over the past 10 years, you might have thought you had stumbled into a whole other wonderful world. You hear strains of klezmer music and see folks dancing a hora. If you stay a bit longer, the strains of Ray Musike’s Romania Romania slowly change into a Chinese folk song led by bandmaster Mr. Hoy and members of the Qi Shu Feng Peking Opera transform themselves into monkey kings and tigers and flip through the air. You shake your head twice, no three times, and enter the 1887 landmark Eldridge Street Synagogue. Sitting side by side is a Hebrew scribe, demonstrating this sacred art, with a Chinese calligrapher. A bit deeper into the sanctuary there is a tefillin maker, a most holy man who so loves his work that you, too become intrigued by his story and his ritual objects and you feel that you might have just stepped into a shop in Jerusalem.

You learn that the synagogue is still a place of worship but just as important that this neighborhood was always an immigrant neighborhood, that just as years ago the shops had Yiddish signs and sold yarmulkes and tallisim and prayer books, now there are Chinese signs and the mamma loshen and lukshen has been transformed to Chinese and pulled noodles and somewhere this odd juxtaposition of Chinese and Jews has turned into a day of mutual respect and sharing. It’s New York after all, where benign indifference can turn into neighborly love, and egg roll meets egg cream for an afternoon of shared delight

-Hanna Griff-Sleven, Director of Programs

In response to my last School Days post about the cheder at the Eldridge Street Synagogue, former Director of Education Annie Polland sent in some enlightening details. Taken from a paper she presented at a conference about the institution of the Bar Mitzvah at the turn of the last century, the following gives us a better understanding of why the congregation’s school lasted only one year:

Why didn’t these congregations start Hebrew schools from the start? We know that the congregation encompassed far more activities in its domain other than merely worship. Politics, building maintenance, charitable activities, and study for adults all took on formal arrangements in the synagogue. Why then, wasn’t there room for formal children’s education? One reason for the hesitancy in building up their own school was that both individuals members and the congregation as a whole was an early and avid supporter of the Machzike Talmud Torah. Given that strong support, they probably reasoned that duplicating their efforts by exerting energy for a school on their premises would only frustrate those already underway. But by 1901, ideas had shifted: The Board of Trustees met on September 30, 1901 and discussed opening a Talmud Torah for its members: “It will be a good thing for Judaism and also a benefit for our congregation.” Several days later, when the trustees brought the proposal “of establish[ing] a school on Shul premises, to provide instruction for the children of members” and that the school should be under the directorship of the conregation” to the general meeting, it was enthusiastically received, as the members not only unanimously accepted it and appointed a committee [David Cohen at head], but opened up their wallets to pledge individual contributions.

A total of $569.25 was raised over two fundraising efforts in the fall of 1901 and summer of 1902. “Cash” contains a section devoted to the “Beit Sefer” and shows the fundraising efforts engaged upon by the members. In several fundraising efforts, starting in October of 1901, August of 1902, individuals pledged money, amounting to the sum of $569.25 , from which teachers were hired, ledgers purchased, and advertisements placed.

At the end of the term in December, the board studied the books and decided to continue the school, which would hold its next session starting July of 1902. Over the next year and half, the board and congregation seemed pleased with the school, continuing to support it and even overseeing construction at the Bes Medrash level for the creation of classrooms. The Cash book shows expenses for teachers, one of them Leib Matlawsky, the secretary. In 1903, there appears to be hesitation, with the congregation pledging their renewed support, but appointing a new school committee (perhaps the former one had become dormant?). The problem seemed to be a loss of funds: “To this end, the following committee is appointed to take care of this matter properly, to be knowledgeable about the finances, so that the congregation will know how much to appropriate when necessary.” In addition to their interest in the financial management of the school, they seemed to think that scholarly nature of the school needed some professionalism, and thus one of the first acts of the committee was to appoint Rav Yosef Fried, who directed much of their adult study sessions and had just published Ohel Yosef, as an advisor.

As the term continued, the financial difficulties were not resolved, and in April 1903 the general meeting debated the topic, and in May of 1903 decided to end the congregation’s formal administration of the school, instead allowing the two teachers to continue their classes in the shul for the next six months “at their own expense.” Because the Minutes do not go into any details, and the Cash book shows an imbalance between income and expense, it is hard to say what happened beyond financial failure. Around the same time, the Minutes show that the congregation had just started to debate the option of opening an uptown branch. Many of the members of the school committee were among those who were interested in the uptown branch, so it is possible that their energies and interests were simply diverted. If they had moved uptown already, then presumably their children were in school uptown, and they were less motivated to lend the energies needed to establish a new school downtown. Indeed, David Cohen—the leader of the committee and who would emerge as the leader of the uptown contingent, was himself a prime player in the movement to build the Uptown Talmud Torah. So, it is possible that just at this juncture, many of the wealthier members had or were starting to move uptown, thus shifting their educational ambitions northward as opposed to the synagogue.

Thanks, Annie! Stay tuned for more about the local public schools, the foundation of Jewish day schools and education for girls coming up over the next few weeks.

What was education like for worshipers at the Eldridge Street Synagogue at the turn of the last century? On my walking tours, we often pass a local landmark: Mesivta Tifereth Jerusalem, known in the neighborhood simply as “The Yeshiva.” This local Jewish school, chartered in 1907 and still thriving today, very often has visitors asking: Where did the members of the Eldridge Street Synagogue send their children to school? I’ll explore this question over the next few weeks, showing some of the different options available to the Jewish community of the Lower East Side at the turn of the last century.

Today’s post is about school at the shul. Did the Eldridge Street congregation form a cheder, a school for boys, as many other local synagogues did? I found the following in an index of the congregation’s Yiddish books, discovered in the basement at the start of the restoration:

During the turn of the century Cong. Adath Yeshurun ran a Hebrew School, for how many years is not clear. This book has on the inside cover Beth Haseifer, Congregation 12-16 Eldridge Street, NY, October 13, 1901. Beth Haseifer, is what Hebrew schools were called. This is a ledger book for the Hebrew School. On page 9 the date seems to be Dec. 1902. It reads “Take out door of cellar . 50.” None of the other expenses concern the shul building. This book contains other expenses, etc. of the shul, as well as minutes of the Loan Committee of the shul.

It appears that for at least a year there was indeed a cheder inside the Eldridge Street building. However, it seems that the school was short lived, as this is the only mention of any such school in the entire collection. Why did the school close after only a year? What does that tell us about the members’ desire to educate their children in Bible, Talmud and Jewish law? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter.

Next time, we’ll explore the most popular option for LES children: the local public schools.

In today’s installment of The History Detective, we’re continuing our investigation of an Eldridge Street legend, Isser Reznik [click for part I.] As I mentioned last time, I did a bit of quick research on Isser, but found only a few interesting items. I checked first on a favorite research site of mine, footnote.com, which digitizes city directories, census records and all sorts of other historic documents. We actually worked with the people behind Footnote on a recent grant, and have found their resources and insights tremendously helpful. Plugging “Isser Reznik” into the search engine, I found the following:

Here, Isser Reznik acted as the witness for his neighbor Michel Susterman’s petition for naturalization. Here, Isser’s home address is listed as 86 Eldridge Street, which made his walk to work at 77 1/2 Eldridge Street almost ridiculously conveninent. Yes, I am slightly jealous.

Unfortunately it was all that Footnote had for our friend Isser. I then took a look on another excellent site geared specifically to genealogy enthusiasts, ancestry.com. It too had only one search result:

Here we have an Isser Reznik living in Brooklyn, recorded on this 1920 census. He is married to Jenny, and has children Max. Blanche, Sarah, and Sam, who is married to Belle and father to Irving. At first I was dismayed, thinking I had found a classic case of mistaken identity, the pitfall of many an amateur researcher. The original names I was given included Max, Jacob, Shmulkie, and a wife named Zeldah Rivkah!

But as I looked at the original picture of the family, I realized I had forgotten to account for name changes! Many Jewish immigrants changed their names in America, or used one name within the Yiddish-speaking community and a more common American name for legal matters. Shmulkie could easily be Sam, and Max is listed on both the picture given by Isser’s great-grandson and on this census record. It seemed too similar to be coincidence, and got me thinking: Could Isser have another name? Stay tuned for the next installment of The History Detective as I search for Isser’s alter ego.

This story comes to us from Sharon, who manages our fantastic giftshop 3 days a week. Sharon has been involved with what was originally the Eldridge Street Project and is now the Museum at Eldridge Street for over 20 years! She is always ready with a quick suggestion for a local restaurant, advice about what to see in New York, or an anecdote about the Eldridge Street Synagogue from before the heat went on in the early ’90s (that is the 1990s. When dealing with an old building like ours, you have to be specific.)

At a recent staff meeting, she told us all a sweet story about how the Museum brings people together. She was kind enough to write down the story to share with the blogosphere:

A lovely couple from Israel recently toured the Museum at Eldridge Street. As they were leaving after their tour, a woman entered and passed them on the stairs. Both of the women turned to eachother and started laughing. They are cousins who haven’t seen each other in 30 years! The other lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She knew her cousins would be in New York but didn’t know where or how to reach them.

They then went to lunch and got caught up. Both parties are grateful to have been at the Museum at Eldridge Street and re-establish a face-to-face connection. Maybe we should have a motto “Where families and friends got to meet and greet!”

Do you have a family connection to the Eldridge Street Synagogue? Check out our list of known members from 1887-present, taken from our historic congregation’s Yiddish minute books. Use the comment section below to tell us about your family’s ties to our building!