It’s hard to believe that a cookbook published in 1936 would have much relevance to today’s cooks, other than as a culinary artifact. But Dr. Erna Meyer’s “How to Cook in Palestine” — widely regarded as the first “Israeli cookbook” — offers lessons and recipes that are just as valuable to cooks in 2011 as…
When the anti-immigration laws of the early 1920s effectively sealed the gates of the United States to would-be immigrants, the Jews of Eastern Europe who had arrived en masse between 1880 and 1920 could no longer hope to see their loved ones join them in America. Instead, those who could afford to traveled abroad, visiting…
This fall, eight guest editors are helping to shape the Forward Forum by commissioning opinion pieces. This week, it’s Morris J. Vogel, the president of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum since June 2008. He graduated from Brandeis University, received a doctorate in American social and urban history from the University of Chicago, and served…
American Jews instinctively understand their deep stake in the national conversation about immigration. While it would be hard to point to any policy consensus, it is clear that many Jews are troubled — even offended — by the anti-immigrant hysteria growing in the blogosphere and by the demagogic exploitation of the issue in the political…
The U.S. government forced Rabbi Gail Diamond to make aliyah. She and her family have a good life in Israel — she teaches at a yeshiva in Jerusalem and her children are happy in school. But she didn’t move to Israel entirely by choice. She had to leave the U.S., and her Massachusetts congregation, when…
University Settlement, the first settlement house in this country, will soon be celebrating its 125th anniversary. Founded in 1886 to serve primarily Jewish immigrants to New York City from Eastern Europe, the Settlement has remained true to its original mission while adapting to the changing Lower East Side. The connection of past and present has…
Jane Ziegelman’s new book “97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement” (Smithsonian Books/HarperCollins) delves into the pantries of the lower East Side in the early 20th century. The book, slated for publication in June, will be released in conjunction with an expansion of the Lower East Side Tenement…
It’s Passover time, and a heady mix of liberation, freedom and matzah fills the air. While we recount the tale of the Children of Israel’s escape from Egypt, a strange inversion of this story unfolds in France. In this nightmare exodus, the Israelite (a non-Jewish klezmer clarinetist) flees Egypt (Moldova) and makes it to the…
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