Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the Lower East Side, a neighborhood in Manhattan that was a center of Jewish immigrant culture in the 20th century.
Lower East Side
The Latest
-
News Beth Hamedrash Hagodol Synagogue Has Change of Heart About Demolition
The synagogue that wanted to demolish itself has had a change of heart. The leadership of Beth Hamedrash Hagodol, a historic 163-year-old synagogue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, has suspended a request it had filed with the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to reverse its landmark status, a move that could have paved the…
-
Culture Teenage Girl Pounds Robber
Forward Looking Back brings you the stories that were making news in the Forward’s Yiddish paper 100, 75, and 50 years ago. Check back each week for a new set of illuminating and edifying clippings from the Jewish past. 100 Years Ago 1913 Eighteen-year-old Esther Goldberg, a pretty girl who lives at 20 Pitt Street…
-
News Lower East Side Development Spells Decline of Old Jewish Power Brokers
The five empty blocks along Delancey Street near the Williamsburg Bridge weren’t supposed to spend 50 years housing parked cars. Yet there stand the parking lots, their half-century-long presence a testament to the political muscle of the Jews of Grand Street in blocking unwanted development on New York’s Lower East Side. But new construction on…
-
News Landmark Synagogue Seeks Right to Demolish Itself
With its imposing blocklike twin towers and sober neo-Gothic design, the synagogue at 60 Norfolk Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side has stood like a sentry at its present site since 1850 — long enough to earn landmark status from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission. But now, this synagogue’s own congregation is seeking its destruction….
-
Culture Unlikely Chronicler of Jewish Neighborhood
The president of the New York Tattoo Society is an unlikely figure to launch what may be the most ambitious publishing venture ever to cover the Jewish Lower East Side. Clayton Patterson, a non-Jew whose long beard could be mistaken for that of a biblical patriarch, is the editor of the three-volume “Jews: A People’s…
-
Food Next Food Network Star Takes on Jewish Food
What would a gastronomical visit to New York be without a stop on the Lower East Side for some traditional Eastern European Jewish food? That’s exactly what the producers of The Next Food Network Star were thinking when they sent one group of contestants to the area on this weekend’s episode. The episode was all…
-
Israel News Judaica Store May Close in Sign of Times
At 5 p.m. on the last Wednesday in March, Michael Bolla, a New York real estate developer, stood inside Israel Wholesale & Retail Judaica on the Lower East Side, glancing over tables cluttered with Hebrew prayerbooks and Bibles, spice boxes and candlesticks. The store had thrived on this block of Essex Street, between Hester and…
-
Books Bringing the Lower East Side to Life
Earlier this week, Chris Moriarty wrote about writing her new book and songs of hope and failure. Her blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: One of my main goals…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News Scoop: Heritage Foundation plans to ‘identify and target’ Wikipedia editors
- 2
Music For Bob Dylan’s biographer, ‘A Complete Unknown’ is a dream come true — even if it’s mostly fiction
- 3
Culture In Peter Yarrow’s legacy, an uneasy blend of Jewish values and personal transgressions
- 4
News ‘Do you have the Torahs?’ Synagogue races LA wildfire to rescue its past and future
In Case You Missed It
-
News HIAS cuts 22 staff even as it braces for Trump immigration crackdown
-
Fast Forward A synagogue that survived the Palisades fire has become a ‘refuge’ for many who lost their homes
-
News When fire spread to West Hollywood, a rabbi’s mom chose to grab candlesticks
-
Looking Forward She chronicled life’s magic moments — the milestones and the mundane
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
