NY City Council Candidate Rallies At Judaica Shop To Save Manhattan Businesses
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
A candidate for New York City Council is organizing a Tuesday rally against high business rents at West Side Judaica, a much-loved community institution on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that is slated to close due to mounting costs.
“Every one of us has lost favorite stores and restaurants in recent years. These institutions, like Judaica, weave our community together. They give us a shared identity,” Mel Wymore, a Democrat running to represent an Upper West Side district, said in a statement. Wymore’s press release links to a plan to help businesses remain afloat.
“I can’t afford the rent and the internet,” owner Yaakov Saltzer told the West Side Rag about his store’s impending close. His store, which he bought in the 1980s and first opened in 1934, is located between 88th and 89th Streets on Broadway.
The store sells candles and yarmulkes, and Saltzer’s shop is staffed by many in his extended family. He told the West Side Rag in 2014 that the shop was endangered and that he was “just staying afloat.”
Wymore will face a crowded field this fall in order to represent the district. He has been profiled in The New York Times as one of the first transgender people to run for political office.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter, @DanielJSolomon
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
