From Ellis to Eldridge: Immigrant History

Follow the footsteps of the synagogue's immigrant founders. Interact with award-winning digital exhibits about our gateway Lower East Side neighborhood. Discover how the immigrant experience transformed and continues to transform communities today.

Beyond the Façade: Architecture & Preservation

Explore the Eldridge Street Synagogue from bottom to top. Investigate hidden design features that reveal its 125-year story. Get an insider’s perspective into the Museum's commission of a new window by artist Kiki Smith and architect Deborah Gans.

Ways We Worship: Jewish Practice

Experience 120-plus years of Jewish practice in America. See, hear, and touch objects associated with Jewish rituals and culture. Explore how Jewish practice has been maintained, adapted, and innovated upon in America.

In Touch with History

Explore the Museum at Eldridge Street in a hands-on program designed for people who are blind or partially sighted. During this multi-sensory tour, artifacts, music, and special materials bring the story of the 1887 Landmark Eldridge Street Synagogue to life.

Walking Tours

Jewish Lower East Side

Once home to the largest Jewish population in the world, the Lower East Side still bears traces of Jewish life from the turn of the last century. Visit synagogues, Yiddish newspaper buildings, socialist hot spots and the best pickle shop in New York.

Love & Courtship

Before eHarmony and JDate, there were love letters and elaborate courtship rituals. Discover romance turn-of-the-century style as we visit the sites of former dance halls, cafes, synagogues and other places where sparks once flew.

Sacred Sites

Find sanctuary in the city. Visit synagogues, churches and temples encompassing 200 years of religious life in America including sites encompassing the Jewish, African American, Italian, Hispanic and Chinese immigrant experience.

Stoop, Synagogue, Soapbox

Enter the ring of early 20th-century Lower East Side politics, when pious Jews, secular firebrands, capitalist businessmen and impoverished peddlers faced off in the crowded work spaces, residences and cafés of this densely populated area.

Gangster, Writer, Rabbi

Gangster Big Jack Zelig, writer Sholem Aleichem and Rabbi Jacob Joseph all spent time on the Lower East Side. Learn about their political, cultural and religious legacies as we follow the path of these larger-than-life figures.

Five Points in America

The roots of the community that built the Eldridge Street Synagogue lie in the Five Points area and today's Chinatown. Stroll the streets of these historic areas, discovering former synagogues, an early collect pond, and a Jewish cemetery in bustling Chatham Square.