Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul A Summer on the Lower East Side

by Boyarin, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9780823239009
• ISBN10: 0823239004
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-11-01
• Publisher: Fordham University Press

Summary

In these pages Jonathan Boyarin invites us to share the intimate life of the stanton street shul, one of the last remaining jewish congregations on new york's historic lower east side. This narrow building, wedged into a lot designed for an old-law tenement, is full of clamorous voices - thegenerations of the dead, who somehow contrive to make their presence known, and the newer generation, keeping the building and its memories alive and making themselves Jews in the process. Through the eyes of Boyarin, at once a member of the congregation and a bemused anthropologist, the bookfollows this congregation of "year-round Jews" through the course of a summer when its future must once again be decided.The Lower East Side, famous as the jumping-off point for millions of Jewish and other immigrants to America, has recently become the hip playground of twentysomething "immigrants" to the city from elsewhere in America and from overseas. Few imagine that Jewish life there has stubbornly continuedthrough this history of decline and regeneration. Coming inside with Boyarin, we see the congregation's life as a combination of quiet heroism, ironic humor, disputes for the sake of Heaven and perhaps otherwise, and - above all - the ongoing search for ways to connect with Jewish ancestors whileremaining true to oneself in the present.Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul illustrates in poignant and humorous ways the changes in a historic neighborhood facing the challenges of gentrification. It offers readers with no prior knowledge of Judaism and synagogue life a portrait that is at once intimate and intelligible. Most important,perhaps, it shows the congregation's members to be anything but a monochromatic set of uniform "believers" but rather a gathering of vibrant, imperfect, indisputably down-to-earth individuals coming together to make a community.

Author Biography

Jonathan Boyarin is Leonard and Tobee Kaplan Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His most recent books are Powers of Diaspora (with Daniel Boyarin), Jewishness and the Human Dimension (Fordham), and Time and Human Language Now (with Martin Land).