Photo courtesy of Katz’s Deli, photographer unknown The Lower East Side: Fading into Jewish History By Hillel Kuttler 26 SPRING 2009 New York — A tan brick wall creased surliness over the abandoned Grand on bialys, but mostly they listen intently. anchors the northern section of the Seward Street Dairy Restaurant. At the corner of Essex and Hester streets, Park apartment complex and its namesake The Rabbi Jacob Joseph yeshiva at one guide displays for her group a black- playground on Manhattan’s Lower East 165–167 Henry Street is now an apartment and-white photograph of the area. It depicts Side. Eight feet up the wall, outside what building, still topped by three engraved the Lower East Side of yore: tenements from once was Sinsheimer’s Café, a plaque com- Stars of David. The Jewish Daily Forward which fire escapes hang, carts of merchan- memorates “the site—60 Essex Street— newspaper no longer is published on East dise, horses, and wall-to-wall people. She where B’nai B’rith, the first national service Broadway, although the Yiddish lettering asks them to consider the present-day vistas organization created in the United States, remains on the original stone structure that with the 110-year-old scene in mind. was founded on October 13, 1843.” housed it—now a condominium. Many The request is eminently doable. Much of Four blocks south, a placard in a Catholic former clothing shops along Orchard Street the tenement stock remains, as do the fairly churchyard at the corner of Rutgers and are now bars and nightclubs. narrow streets. Yonah Schimmel’s is the Henry streets notes that building’s mid-19th Time’s passage demands keener powers of same dumpy place on Houston Street with century Protestant origins. “You’re always recollection to conjure the Jewish past. Nostal- out-of-this-world knishes as when it opened walking in somebody’s footsteps,” it reads. gia, however, doesn’t pay the bills. in 1910. Katz’s Deli, of “When Harry Met “Who will walk in yours?” “The traditional customers who used to Sally” fame, still operates a few doors down. The multi-denominational messages attest come in on a daily basis moved. They be- And as B’nai B’rith International Execu- to the constancy of change in urban America. came younger. Chinatown encroached, too,” tive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin Jews might find such change hard to accept, says Neil Ovadia, whose family runs Kadouri notes, the famous street names—Rivington, though, on the Lower East Side, which each and Sons. “Most of the business was on the Chrystie, Ludlow, Norfolk, Broome, year is losing more of its Jewish character. weekend. It just didn’t warrant keeping the Eldridge, and, especially, Allen, where Just last summer, Abraham Stern accepted store anymore.” Mariaschin’s great-grandfather lived briefly— a multi-million-dollar The company has been in Ovadia’s family remain as guideposts for Jewish visitors. Photo by Yeva Dashevsky offer for his Hester since before his grandfather, Haim Kadouri, On the other hand, how can the Lower Street building, so he shifted it from Iraq to Israel and then, in the East Side maintain its hold on the Jewish closed Gertel’s, beloved mid-1970s, to the Lower East Side. It now soul when the number of Jews living there for its rugelach and calls an industrial zone in the borough of decreases and the institutions that once testi- cookies for 94 years. Queens home and caters solely to wholesale fied to the area’s cultural richness vanish? “The feeling of having customers. Ovadia still lives at 51 Hester For American Jews, that question hits a place like the Lower Street, in the building where a clothing store home—literally so—because the Lower East East Side, which was replaced Kadouri’s colorful bins of grains, Side resonates like nowhere else in the most populated dried fruit, nuts, spices, and candies. the country. Jewish area in New As a resident, he likes the new Lower East While Ellis Island represents the exten- York, is gone,” says Side. Although many of the retail businesses sion of freedom and opportunity, the Lower Stern, who relocated his that provided a Jewish flavor have departed, East Side stands for the harsh, but necessary, bake shop to Brooklyn. worthy successors have arrived, he says. lower rung that set immigrants on the path “It was a beautiful, his- “The neighborhood has changed, somewhat to permanent settlement in the New World. torical neighborhood, for the better. It’s not the same Lower East Most American Jews can trace their roots and it’s gone. There’s Side it used to be, but I am happy to see other to ancestors whose first steps in the United not much left of it.” establishments of substance coming in,” says States led from Ellis Island to the nearby Kadouri and Sons, a Ovadia. “The Seward Park Playhouse has been Lower East Side. dried-fruits-and-nuts re-established. There are wonderful ethnic The neighborhood remains legendary in store next door, also sold restaurants in the neighborhood. You can get the mind’s eye of even third- and fourth- out and moved. almost any type food you can imagine. generation American Jews. Say “tenement,” Preceding these “The ethnicity helps re-establish what the “immigrant,” or “sweatshop,” and we imag- landmarks were Lower East Side was all about. It’s nice to see ine Grandpa dodging horses on Delancey Ratner’s and Shmulka that the Lower East Side is not just another Street on his way to work as a pushcart ped- Bernstein’s, whose corporate part of Manhattan.” dler on Hester Street or as a sofer (scribe) on fresh onion rolls and Essex Street. For that reason, the Lower East B B B Rumanian pastrami, Side is “more than a landmark,” says Mari- respectively, seduced aschin. “It becomes a lodestone, so central to On a windy Friday-after-Thanksgiving generations. And the the American Jewish experience.” morning, clusters of tourists crisscross the spirits of waiters past The Lower East Side, he adds, “was a lively neighborhood. They sample pickles and chew surely hover with in- center of Jewish life and an incubator for fu- The landmark Katz’s Deli, of “When Harry Met Sally” fame, then and now. B’Nai B’rith 27 The recently restored 122-year-old Eldridge Street Synagogue, now known as the Museum on Eldridge Street, is a beautiful testimonial to what once was. Photo by Kate Milford ture Jewish generations, many of whose sons Sporting Goods, remembers when “you ing gloves and speed bags that hang near the and daughters became household names in could get anything you wanted down here,” main counter are made in China. “Business American culture and business. There’s been when bridal, fabric, and linen shops lined stinks,” off 25 percent last October com- a long and continuous presence of Jews in Grand Street; haberdasheries dominated pared to October 2007, Zerling says. “With that place: from 1820 to the present. That’s Orchard Street; and Judaica and book stores the economy going into the sink hole, it’s a long run; almost the entire length of the occupied Essex Street. worse. It makes it tough to survive.” [history of] the United States.” “When the bridal stores left, the linen Why, then, is he still here? Hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in stores left. When there were six bridal stores, Zerling shrugs. “Tradition,” he says. the area at its peak of 1890, when the 980 you’d go from one to the next and shop,” he Tradition, indeed, has become the neigh- residents per acre made it “the most crowded says, interrupting to serve a young, black- borhood’s greatest Jewish industry. The place in the world [and] almost completely hatted Jewish man searching for workout apartment complexes along Grand Street, Jewish,” according to area resident Lori gloves. “Each place that left—it had an effect between Essex Street and the East River, Weissman, marketing coordinator for on the others. This happened over a period remain occupied by many older Orthodox the Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy of 10–15 years.” families. They are now being joined by (LESJC). The 2000 census, she says, showed Zerling grew up in the area and lives above other Jews who have been moving in ever just 30,000 Jews there. his Essex Street shop, which his father Izzie since those co-op buildings went condo a Some who remain also are concerned for founded in 1944. An Estonian immigrant few years back and prices skyrocketed. But the future of the neighborhood, but plan to who became a lightweight boxer, Izzie used stick it out. Lenny Zerling, who owns G&S to sew everything by hand. Today, the box- Lower East Side, continued on pg. 52 28 SPRING 2009 Outside what once was Sinsheimer’s Café on the Lower East Side, a plaque commemorates “the site—60 Essex Street—where B’nai B’rith, the first national service organization created in the United States, was founded on October 13, 1843.” ter the Essex Street store on this November morning because seven customers filled the cramped quarters. A few steps north, Alan Kaufman extends a smile and a free taste at his Pickle Guys shop. Tours run by the Tenement Museum (around the corner on Orchard Street) and by LESJC are popular. The recently restored, 122-year-old Eldridge Street Synagogue, now known as the Museum on Eldridge Street, is a beautiful testimonial to what once was. For now, the neighborhood effectively addresses residents’ needs.