A Shul on Every Corner: Remembering Synagogues of the Lower East Side
What was once a neighborhood fixture brimming with debates about Jewish identity and rite has, like many other Lower East Side synagogues, since faced abandonment and rediscovery. This blog post explores the diverse life cycles of seven Lower East Side Synagogues, with highlights from the collections of the Center for Jewish History’s partner organizations.
When thinking about the historically Jewish neighborhoods in New York, the Lower East Side or Williamsburg are likely the first to come to mind. What many do not know is that Harlem was at one point the home of the second largest Jewish population in the country. From the 1870s into the 1900s, there was a migration of Jews into Harlem from the Lower East Side, which resulted in a Jewish population of over 175,000 in East and Central Harlem by 1917. At first this migration was slow, but with the introduction of the subway system in the first decade of the 20th century, it accelerated exponentially. This made it not only the second largest concentrated population of Jews in America, but also the third largest in the world.
An Unlikely Journalist: Emile Bocian in Chinatown, A NEIGHBORHOOD IN TRANSITION
Emile Bocian, son of Eastern-European Jewish immigrants, photographed Chinatown from 1974-1986, a period of extreme transition for the community. He used to tell his friend Mae Wong, who rescued his photo archive from his apartment after his death and donated it to MOCA, that he was taking pictures of the streets of Chinatown because he thought they would be a valuable reference, and he hoped to document the changes. Though he was unable to complete that task in his lifetime, CJH art director Shayna Marchese returned to photograph selected sites earlier this year for this exhibition.
As one of the last neighborhoods in Manhattan to undergo gentrification, Chinatown still boasts many of its original structures, in some cases even housing the same business as in Bocian’s day, such as the Hop Shing Restaurant at 9 Chatham Square.