Colorful Stripes

Jewish NY: Making Crowds, Escaping Crowds: Life on New York’s Lower East Side with Dr. Sharon Keller.

Friedberg JCC 15 Neil Court, Oceanside, NY

n 1654 a small group of Portuguese Jews landed in what was then the New Netherlands and they settled in what was to become the Lower East Side. Some 250 years later, by the turn of the 20 th Century, the Lower East Side was arguably the most densely populated area in the world; jam packed with immigrants, mostly Jewish, from Eastern Europe. These new-comers and their families lived in cramped, crowded, often stifling apartments, and the streets were no better. Join us as we look at more than 100 years of life on the Lower East Side. We will […]

$15

Jewish NY: History of Brooklyn

Friedberg JCC 15 Neil Court, Oceanside, NY

Brooklyn remained an independent city until it was gobbled up by the power-hungry politicians and business titans of Manhattan on January 1, 1998. Little known is the remarkable American and Jewish history of what was then the third largest city in the USA, after Manhattan and Chicago. At that time, the Jewish population of Brooklyn was pushing a million and its synagogues, yeshivas, libraries, and businesses outnumbered those of Manhattan and every other city in the USA. From the first Syrian and Egyptian Jews of Bensonhurst to the Jewish entertainers on Coney Island, from the pious Hasidic Jews of Williamsburg […]