Fun Facts

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The correct answer is "All of the above."

When the Eldridge Street Synagogue was built Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, was president, and the Statue of Liberty made its way from France to America. That pop-drink we all love so much? Created in the 1880s, too.

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The correct answer is "Peter and Francis Herter, tenement builders."

The Eldridge Street Synagogue was the first and only sacred commission for the Herter Brothers, Roman Catholic immigrants from Germany. They were tenement builders. If you travel around the Lower East Side today, you can still see buildings with one of their signature designs – a Star-of-David motif they picked up after designing Eldridge Street.

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The correct answer is "Cantor"

In the late 19th century, a Cantor Craze spread like wildfire through the tenements of the Lower East Side. In an effort to pack the house, the congregation hired Cantor Pinhas Minkowsky, the “Sweet Singer of Israel,” stealing him away from his perch in Odessa, Ukraine. Later, the role of the rabbi, with its emphasis on charismatic preaching and scholarship, gained prominence in America.

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Businessman Isidor Abraham paid $1,100 for his seat back in 1887! That’s roughly equivalent to $25,000 today and at a time when the average salary was $437. Other seats could be rented for $10 a year or purchased for $100. No wonder membership was diverse and included “Lawyers, merchants, artisans, clerks, peddlers and laborers” according to an 1892 account.

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The correct answer is "Scientist Jonas Salk."

No freethinkers or gangsters but scientists Jonas Salk and Linus Pauling, actors Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson, and artist Ben Shahn are all reputed to have prayed here. Mordecai Kaplan worshipped here as a young boy and celebrated his bar mitzvah here in the 1890s before going on to found the Reconstructionist movement.

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The correct answer is "1919."

Just a year before women gained the right to vote in America, and at the height of the suffrage movement, Eldridge Street opened membership to women. No doubt this was due, in part, to the influence of a wealthy widow Sarah Gellis, whose husband was a pioneer president at Eldridge Street and a famous kosher meat manufacturer.

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The correct answer is "United States."

Eldridge Street’s immigrant congregation was proud to be in America. Every Independence Day and on national holidays they would proudly display the American flag from flagpole holders mounted in the Women’s Gallery.