When my father passed away two and a half years ago, we had to clear out our family home. My family had lived there for about 54 years and in addition to the regular family detritus, somehow we had become the clearing house for stuff from our extended family and friends of family, too! It made cleaning up very interesting.

One day we found a packet of letters and report cards belonging to my father and his younger brother, Mason, who had died relatively young, when he was in his early forties. My Uncle Mason had been a sociology professor and, like me, had traveled a lot for his career: California, Montana, Europe, the Mid-East, New England and then back to Massachusetts. He always sent my sister and me trinkets from his travels — jewelry, dolls and the like — but he died when I was in my early teens and I never got to hear his stories of travel or his service in World War Two.

I was thrilled to find this packet of letters from his time in the service (he was stationed in Europe and Missouri). Most of the letters from abroad were short and censored but he wrote faithfully to my grandparents. This one, though, made my brothers and sister and me chuckle a bit. We never pegged Uncle Mason as a regular shul goer, but this proved us wrong. The letter from the director of the Jewish Welfare Board, although a form letter, is a sweet and heartfelt one, alluding to the darkness of the War yet hoping to comfort my Bubba. I found it curious that it was only addressed to her and not my Pa, although my grandfather had been a founding member of the Waltham synagogue and was one of the loyal minyan.

If any of you reading this have family papers you haven’t looked at in awhile, take some time during this season of festivals and read and share them with one another. The storytelling and sharing are as sweet as the honey and apple!

The streets of the Lower East Side are filled with religious spaces of all shapes and sizes: churches, Buddhist temples and synagogues, to mention a few. Even within a Judaic context, houses of worship vary greatly. The Eldridge Street Synagogue, boasting an ornate stucco façade displaying Stars of David, is a recognizably Jewish space. But, not all synagogues in the area are as easily distinguishable.

I invite you to travel back in time to the turn of the 20th- century, when the streets of the Lower East Side were filled with new immigrants arriving daily from Eastern Europe. A lack of space and a desire to worship with individuals from one’s own community led to the popularity of shtieblach, or storefront synagogues. Some were as cramped as a single room, having space for only a small minyan (quorom of 10 required for prayer). Congregations shared buildings with shops, tailors and even secular newspapers and non-kosher eateries! The Lower East Side became the home to over 500 small shtieblach, some of which still stand today.

Equipped with a map outlined by our Deputy Director Amy Stein-Milford, fellow intern Sophie and I ventured to explore Shtieblach Row, home to an entire block of small, storefront synagogues.

To the casual passerby these buildings appear to be standard tenement apartments, but plaques display the name of congregations whose roots trace back to Eastern Europe. While walking, Sophie and I stopped to take a closer look at 239 East Broadway, Congregation Chevras Yeshuas Yaakov Anshe Sfard. The founders emigrated from Austro-Hungary, and the congregation still hosts minyans. They have even made the transition into the age of the internet, and weekly minyan times are posted online. Just a few steps away is the home of Congregation Beth Hachasidim de Polen, which began in 1904 by immigrants coming from Poland.

Here at the Museum at Eldridge Street our roots also trace back to worship in a shtiebel. The congregation, Kahal Adath Jeshurun, began in 1853 and originally worshiped on Allen St., about 25 years before the doors at Eldridge Street were opened! Even today the congregation’s original ark stands in the lower level Bes Medrash (House of Study), a relic of the time before the Eldridge Street Synagogue became of a part of Lower East Side history!

Eldridge Street Trivia:

How much did it cost to move this ark from Allen Street to Eldridge Street in 1887?

We’d love to hear your guesses, and come on a tour of the Museum to learn the answer!

Searching for a recipe for your Shabbos meal? You can call your bubbe — but if that fails, we’re here to provide your weekly fix. On tap this week is a garlicky summer gazpacho and a sweet sangria for all of your ceremonial needs.

Garlicky Summer Gazpacho

Garlic, the favored seasoning of Jewish cooks worldwide, provides a spicy kick to this summer soup. Easy to make and serve, this promises to be a hit at your Sabbath table.

Ingredients:

• 1 bottle tomato juice
• 5 cloves garlic
• 4 plum tomatoes
• 1 carrot
• 1 large cucumber
• half a bunch parsley
• half a bunch chives
• black pepper and salt to taste

Roughly dice vegetables. Add all solids to blender with tomato juice to cover. Blend until desired smoothness is reached. Add salt and pepper to taste. Voila! A first course that takes no heat and just 5 minutes to prepare.

Summer Sangria

Tired of the same old Manischewitz kiddush wine? Try this sweet sangria as a fresh alternative. With a heady mix of fresh fruit and alcohol, your guests will be saying “Amen!”

Ingredients

• 1 bottle red wine
• 1 mango, sliced
• 2 cups of fresh raspberries (or thawed frozen)
• 1 lime, sliced
• 3 oz brandy
• 2 tbsp of superfine sugar
• 1 can club soda

Combine all ingredients except club soda in a pitcher and refrigerate overnight. Before serving, stir in club soda. For an extra treat, freeze a few of the raspberries and use as ice cubes!

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.

Language is one of the aspects of immigration that we explore through exhibits and education programs at the museum. In our Yiddish newspaper interactive activity, visitors become editors of their very own turn-of-the-century paper, mixing articles from socialist presses with editorials from the Orthodox dailies. The display of Yiddish signs from the neighborhood shows the integration of English words into like “clean” and “fix” into the Yiddish language. A recent article in the New York Times discuss issues of language and immigration, highlighting the ways in which immigration can be a death knell for a rare language.

“Listening to (and Saving) the World’s Languages” explores how New York has become the greatest repository of rare languages:

In addition to dozens of Native American languages, vulnerable foreign languages that researchers say are spoken in New York include Aramaic, Chaldic and Mandaic from the Semitic family; Bukhari (a Bukharian Jewish language, which has more speakers in Queens than in Uzbekistan or Tajikistan); Chamorro (from the Mariana Islands); Irish Gaelic; Kashubian (from Poland); indigenous Mexican languages; Pennsylvania Dutch; Rhaeto-Romanic (spoken in Switzerland); Romany (from the Balkans); and Yiddish.

For many of these languages, there are more speakers in New York than in the area where the language originated .”‘It is the capital of language density in the world,’ said Daniel Kaufman, an adjunct professor of linguistics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. ‘We’re sitting in an endangerment hot spot where we are surrounded by languages that are not going to be around even in 20 or 30 years.’” The City Room blog created a list of the least-commonly spoken languages in New York and how many people are known to speak them. Topping the list is Cayuga, with only 6 speakers! Though the number of Yiddish speakers is considerably higher, it too is vulnerable and on the list of the Endangered Language Alliance. Once the vernacular of the Lower East Side community, it has fallen into a state of near-extinction outside of Hasidic communities.

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.

Recently, James Cooper’s “Painting in the City” class at the Educational Alliance came to visit Eldridge Street for some watercolor inspiration and exploration. James was kind enough to share some of the students’ work with us.

For more work from different sites, check out the class’ blog here. I couldn’t help but think of this historic photograph while perusing through the class’ pictures, taken of a portrait class at the Educational Alliance in1918. Below is a photograph of Cooper’s class, 92 years later. Who knows how many generations of artists have been inspired by the Eldridge Street Synagogue and other East Side landmarks?

While reading Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City over the weekend, I discovered a Yiddish word that I’m adding to my list of favorites: kesselgarden. According to Wikipedia,

Kesselgarden refers to the way “Castle Garden” was pronounced by Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews who settled in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Castle Garden was a facility on the southern tip of Manhattan that received immigrants from 1855 through 1890. Thousands of Jews entered the U.S. through Castle Garden prior to the opening of Ellis Island in 1892. “Kesselgarden” later became generalized to mean any situation that was noisy, confusing and chaotic.

Castle Clinton, renamed Castle Garden, was the first immigrant processing center in New York. This wonderful timeline, created by castlegarden.org, will help you navigate through the building’s history. Though replaced and eclipsed by its far more famous neighbor, Ellis Island, its name lives on (perhaps in infamy) in the Yiddish language. This wonderful example of the integration of American English words and even names into Yiddish is but one example of the intermingling of Americanization and tradition, something embodied in the Eldridge Street Synagogue as well. Check out the clip below for today’s Kesselgarden, a klezmer band bringing the sounds of yesteryear to today’s listening public.

My name is Sonny, and I have been interning at The Museum at Eldridge Street for five months now. As the education intern at the museum, one of my jobs is researching new and interesting facts to include in our tours and school programs. I’ve always been fascinated by history, especially the unusual parts that people are less likely to discuss! One thing I love about the Museum at Eldridge Street are the clues that teach us about the ways that the first congregants balanced their cultural and religious identities with the new American way of life they were now living – many of which are built right into the synagogue itself. Something that sparked my interest when I first visited the museum in 2008 was the snuff box in the Bes Medrash – it seemed totally out of place, as well as perfectly natural, and in my opinion is one of the parts of the synagogue that gives it’s first congregants a more human face. Recently, Miriam Bader asked me to do some research on the history of snuff to share with our docents, and I was very intrigued by what I found out!

What is “Snuff?”

Smokeless tobacco has been manufactured and sold across the globe for centuries, but was most popular in the United States during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The two main categories are dry and moist snuff. Dry snuff is pulverized tobacco, which a user would take a pinch of and sniff into their nose. Dry snuff was typically thought of as a European habit, hence it is also referred to as “European snuff.” In the United States the more typical form of smokeless tobacco has always been moist snuff. Commonly referred to as “dip,” moist snuff is a version of Snus, a Swedish smokeless tobacco which was brought to America by Swedish immigrants in the 19th century. Moist snuff is often confused with chewing tobacco, but their uses are slightly different: rather than chewing snuff, a person would take a pinch of the loose tobacco and place it between their lower lip and their gums. Sucking on the tobacco causes an excess of saliva to develop, making it necessary to spit into a container (or on the ground!), as swallowing can cause nausea or irritation to the esophagus. Long time users, however, can often swallow without any side effect, which is colloquially referred to as “gutting” it. It became popular because it was able to be used indoors, especially during long work days, when an employee might not get a cigarette break or might be required to use both hands to work.

At Eldridge Street

Since smoking was a common habit among Americans during the early days of the Eldridge Street Synagogue, it is not surprising that many of the male members of the congregation would use snuff during long services when they could not smoke cigarettes. Accordingly, the snuff box in the bimah in the Bes Medrash, which is one of the most unusual features of the architecture at Eldridge Street, does not seem so out of place when you consider the widespread nature of the habit at the time of the synagogue’s construction. During the synagogue’s hey-day, the congregation used a portion of their funds every year to purchase new spittoons, and had strict rules regarding spitting on the floor, as noted in the detailed minute books. These facts leave us with the assumption that many of the congregants used dip during services rather than European snuff, as dry snuff does not require the user to spit. Additionally, moist snuff was more popular in the U.S. at the time and therefore it was likely much easier to purchase. However, it is possible that the congregation might have provided dry snuff in the snuff box in the Bes Medrash. Either way, smokeless tobacco was a popular indulgence of the time that many of the congregants took part in, even during religious services.

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!