Remembering the Lower East Side

by Diner, Hasia R.; Shandler, Jeffrey; Wenger, Beth S.

• ISBN13: 9780253337887
• ISBN10: 0253337887
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-12-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

For more than a century, the Lower East Side of New York City has been recognized and scrutinized as the largest and most vibrant immigrant Jewish neighborhood in America. In recent years a spate of art works, performances, and tourist productions have fostered increased interest in the neighborhood. This lively book explores the dynamics of Lower East Side memory and considers the changing ways that this unique neighborhood has been embraced by American Jews over the course of a century. Part 1, "The Dynamics of Remembrance," investigates multiple facets of life on the Lower East Side and considers the emerging repertoire of memory that took shape around the neighborhood. Themes include the naming of the Lower East Side, a century of photography of the neighborhood, and the colorful histories of synagogues and schools, restaurants and cabarets. Part 2, "Contemporary Recollections," examines the recent upsurge of interest in the Lower East Side as a site of Jewish heritage and cultural innovation. Topics include the creation of the Tenement Museum, walking tours of the neighborhood and visits to popular "period" restaurants, the experience of a documentary filmmaker, and the performance of memory in a refurbished synagogue. A generous selection of photographs enhances the book's wide-ranging insights into how the Lower East Side became a touchstone of Jewish identity and history.Contributors include Stephan Brumberg, Hasia R. Diner, Joseph Dorman, Paula Hyman, Eve Jochnowitz, Seth Kamil, David Kaufman, Jack Kugelmass, David Lobenstine, Mario Maffi, Deborah Dash Moore, Riv-Ellen Prell, Moses Rischin, Jeffrey Shandler, Suzanne Wasserman, Aviva Weintraub, and Beth S. Wenger.

Author Biography

Hasia R. Diner is Paul and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History at New York University.

Jeffrey Shandler is a Dorot Teaching Fellow in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University.

Beth S. Wenger is Assistant Professor of History and Katz Family Chair in American Jewish History at the University of Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction: Remembering the Lower East Side---A Conversation	1	(12)
Hasia R. Diner
Jeffrey Shandler
Beth S. Wenger
Part 1. The Dynamics of Remembrance
Toward the Onomastics of the Great New York Ghetto: How the Lower East Side Got Its Name	13	(15)
Photographing the Lower East Side: A Century's Work	28	(42)
Deborah Dash Moore
David Lobenstine
Beyond Place and Ethnicity: The Uses of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire	70	(16)
Paula E. Hyman
The Ghetto Girl and the Erasure of Memory	86	(27)
Riv-Ellen Prell
Constructions of Memory: The Synagogues of the Lower East Side	113	(24)
David Kaufman
The One-Way Window: Public Schools on the Lower East Side in the Early Twentieth Century	137	(18)
Stephan F. Brumberg
Re-creating Recreations on the Lower East Side: Restaurants, Cabarets, Cafes, and Coffeehouses in the 1930s	155	(24)
Suzanne Wasserman
Part 2. Contemporary Recollection
Turfing the Slum: New York City's Tenement Museum and the Politics of Heritage	179	(33)
Jack Kugelmass
``Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army'': Sites of Jewish Memory and Identity at Lower East Side Restaurants	212	(14)
Eve Jochnowitz
Tripping down Memory Lane: Walking Tours on the Jewish Lower East Side	226	(15)
Seth Kamil
The Lower East Side in the Memory of New York Jewish Intellectuals: A Filmmaker's Experience	241	(16)
Joseph Dorman
Performing Memory: ``The Matzoh Factory'' on the Lower East Side	257	(12)
Aviva Weintraub
Translating Abraham Cahan, Teaching the Lower East Side: A View from Italy	269	(12)
Mario Maffi
Contributors	281	(4)
Index	285