Image of ‘Global Village’ Will Replace Landmark Lower East Side Jewish Mural
![](https://images.forwardcdn.com/image/970x/center/images/cropped/forward-mural-with-bialystoker-1483460976.jpg)
Image by Ari Jankelowitz
The real estate developers who painted over a historic Jewish Lower East Side mural now say they will commission a new one — though they don’t know where it will be painted, or when. And it won’t feature Jews.
The plans for a new mural, reported by dnainfo, come months after the developers destroyed the old mural without warning in November.
Painted on the side of a building attached to the former Bialystoker Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation, the old mural featured scenes of Jewish garment union workers on strike, a depiction of the front page of the Forverts and Jewish religious images.
Just blocks from the old Forward headquarters, the mural was a key landmark of the old Jewish Lower East Side.
Now owned by The Ascend Group, the Bialystoker home and its adjoining office building were first sold to private developers in 2011.
At the time that the mural was painted over, The Ascend Group told the New York Post that the mural posed safety concerns. The building on which it was painted is currently slated for demolition.
According to dnainfo’s report, The Ascend Group will work with a local arts organization called CITYarts to replace the mural, either on one of the luxury apartment buildings that the developer is putting up next door to the Bialystoker home, or elsewhere. The timing is unclear.
The head of CITYarts told dnainfo that the new mural will not focus on the Jewish Lower East Side.
“It will be sort of bringing our families together and their heritage — after all, Jewish people cannot exist without Chinese food, right?” Tsipi Ben-Haim, the group’s executive director, told dnainfo. “Or Latin music, or Italian pizza. We need to think today, in the world we live in, in the global village — we have to reach out and build bridges.”
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected]
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
![](https://forward.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image.png?_t=1722445328)
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO