tours

Free Monday Mornings & More

In this tough economic year, the Museum received important funding to introduce our Free Monday Mornings at Eldridge Street from 10 am to 12 noon. Free Monday Mornings opened the Museum to low-income, recently unemployed, and others who could not otherwise afford to participate in tours of the Museum. This offering quickly made Monday our most popular weekday tour time, and second most popular day of the week after Sunday. More than 1,750 people participated, and we are thrilled to be able to have partial funding to continue this initiative in 2010.

Other new offerings in 2009 that made our Museum accessible to new audiences: Our Traveling Landmark program, serving communities in the tri-state, Florida, Chicago, and Los Angeles areas who cannot make it to the synagogue. This is a wonderful opportunity for less mobile and long-distance lovers of Jewish and Lower East Side history to learn about our landmark site through a beautifully illustrated slide lecture. This year, also saw growth in our national and international audience with approximately one-third of our visitors coming from outside the tri-state area. To better serve this audience we introduced written translated materials in French, German, Spanish and Russian.

2009 funds for the Free Mondays Program have been provided by the Elias A. Cohen Foundation, the Charles Cohn Foundation, Manhattan Borough President’s Office/Borough Needs Program, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York City Department for the Aging, The Martin R. Lewis Charitable Foundation, the Judith and Stanley Zabar Fund, and The Zankel Fund.

Tours at the Museum on Eldridge Street

Walking Tours

In the fall of 2009 we introduced a full line-up of walking tours led by Education Coordinator Nina Cohen. According to Cohen: “The immigrants who populated our historic Lower East Side neighborhood didn’t log onto Twitter or Facebook to interact with the world around them. Living in cramped tenement apartments, they spent as much time outside as possible, socializing in municipal parks, debating in smoky cafes and preaching political gospels from every street corner. By walking through those same streets today, visitors of all ages physically engage with history. Making the streets come alive with the ideologies and people of the past is the best part of my job.”

Ways We Worship

In 2009 the Museum received seed funding for Ways We Worship, our new interfaith initiative. Comprising a new tour, lecture series, school programming and exhibit, Ways We Worship provides a welcoming environment for people of all faiths to explore Jewish practice and ritual. We will use the specific story of the Jewish community at the Eldridge Street Synagogue to shed light on the universal experience of people encountering, adapting, and forging new traditions in America. What would the immigrant parishioner have encountered upon entering the synagogue? How was it like or unlike what they had left behind? Who are the people associated with the service (rabbi, cantor, lay leaders, etc.) and how did these roles change in America? Using our landmark sacred site, this program will give people the opportunity to see, hear and touch elements related to Jewish practice. Our goal is to create a memorable, one-of-a-kind experience that is inspired by the history and spiritual significance of our landmark site and that has relevance for a broad public.

Ways We Worship is supported, in part, by The Bernice and Albert B. Cohen Family Charitable Trust, the Edouard Foundation, The Joyce and Irving Goldman Family Foundation, Stella and Charles Guttman Foundation, Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, The Samuel M. Levy Family Foundation, New York Council for the Humanities, the Leo Rosner Foundation, and the Joseph and Sylvia Slifka Foundation. List as of 12/31/09.