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.

But how, you ask, did the Catskills come to be such a popular destination for the Jewish community?
There is no simple answer, but let’s look at a few key factors. With the post-World War II economic boom, the concept of “going on vacation” became a feasible reality for many American families. Yet, at the time, the Jewish community was still facing social discrimination. Restrictions based on ethnicity barred Jews from many mainstream country clubs and resorts. Still hungry for the opportunity to escape the city, Jewish owned establishments began to pop up in the Catskills at the beginning of the 20th century. Grossinger’s, one of the most famous, became so popular that by time it closed in ‘86, it had its own airstrip and post office!

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

On Wednesday, March 21 the Museum will exhibit work from Liana Finck’s graphic novel-in progress based on the Bintel Brief, the beloved Yiddish advice column of The Forverts newspaper. When I first saw Finck’s drawings I was taken with the range of emotions she was able to express with her beautiful drawings and text. Also, I am struck by the continued resonance of this century-old column, which was launched in 1906 by The Forverts editor Abraham Cahan and so poignantly (and, at times, humorously!) captured the condition of the Jewish immigrant on the Lower East Side.  The letters continue to speak to readers today. Here Liana Finck shares her thoughts on the project.

What led you to the Bintel Brief?
My Grandma Helen had a copy of the collection of letters edited by Isaac Metzker. I found the book two years ago on a trip home from Belgium, where I was living, and loved it immediately.

What is it about the Bintel Brief that made you want to undertake this project?
The simplicity of the letters moved me. I have very specific taste in narrative: I like books and movies that are simple, full of emotion, and also told with a bit of distance and understatement. I think my taste comes from having loved poetry before I learned to love books or movies or art. The Bintel Brief letters touched me immediately, and this was especially wonderful because art usually seems to me like an escape from the ‘real world,’ specifically, in my case, from New York; from Judaism, from mundane life…these letters felt deeply familiar, but they had the special wildness and strangeness I usually look to art for.

Why the graphic novel and not another medium?
I’m not sure. I never liked to read graphic novels until very recently, and the discipline required to be a graphic novelist is something I’ve had to struggle to teach myself. It’s a slow and arduous medium and I still feel in over my head a lot when I’m working. Still… Here is why I chose to make graphic novels:

When I was a teenager I developed a passion for books, but I’d been drawing obsessively since I was a baby, and I knew that drawing was my natural ‘language,’ much more than written and spoken words. I thought of drawing as a responsibility that I had to hold onto, even if I wanted to become a writer. I never loved graphic novels, but I did relate more than anything to cartoonists and illustrators who seemed to have figured out how to ‘write’ with pictures. Some of my favorites were Maira Kalman, Roz Chast and Saul Steinberg. I decided to be a graphic novelist instead of a cartoonist or illustrator because it’s an exciting time to be a graphic novelist: the medium has suddenly become somewhat popular and very interesting in America. It’s also a relatively unexplored medium: there’s much more room to break ground today as a graphic novelist than as a writer or an artist. This sounds a little crazy but I do believe it. Somewhat, at least. And I deeply enjoy the challenge of using drawing -which comes naturally to me- in a way that does not come naturally.

How do you feel about exhibiting your work at the Eldridge Street Synagogue?
So excited and honored. The building is so beautiful, comforting and also awe-inspiring–such a perfect mixture of art and Jewish history, like the Bintel Brief letters. I feel so calm and glad whenever I go there. It’s also right in the neighborhood where most of the Bintel Brief letters were written – the Lower East Side – and is a stone’s throw from the old Forverts building on East Broadway. The synagogue has felt like the center of the Lower East Side to me since I first went into the sanctuary a few months ago.

Liana Finck’s A Bintel Brief opens on March 21 an 7pm and will be on view at the Museum at Eldridge Street through May 31, 2012.

Maybe something can be done about the weather…

As the Museum’s archivist, it has been a treat to be able to look at each item in our collection.  What are my favorites?  It’s so hard to say, but this sign, from the Museum’s sizable collection of Hebrew and Yiddish signs collected from around our Lower East Side neighborhood, is on my list.

It’s small, about the size of a standard sheet of paper.  Its frame is nicked and worn, and the sign itself is stained.  Why do I like this so much?  I like how it looks, its authentic patina of age.  But the deal was sealed when I found out what it says.

The Hebrew writing is the beginning of the Blessing for Dew:  “V’ten Tal u’Matar“; in English, “And give rain and dew.”  This sign signals that this blessing should be added to daily prayers, and it would be hung on the synagogue’s bimah during the dry season in Israel, roughly from fall through early spring.

I was curious about why the sign had clearly gotten wet — its letters are blurred and its hanger is rusted.  I wanted to think that it had hung outside and that its instructions had produced results — that it had worked and brought rain.  But probably, like so much else at the Eldridge Street Synagogue, it fell victim to the elements when the main sanctuary was shut in the 1950s.  Still, I love that the cycles of nature are part of prayer and faith, and that asking for rain would be a community aspiration.

As this brutal winter drags on, maybe we should organize a collective prayer for an early Spring!

Written by Nancy Johnson, Museum Archivist

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!

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.

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.