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
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Food Future of Legendary Essex Street Market Uncertain
A gastronomic fixture of the Lower East Side for seventy-one years, the Essex Street Market faces a precarious future. Recently approved guidelines for the nearby Seward Park Urban Renewal Area development project include the possibility of demolishing the current market in favor of a larger, more modernized facility at a new, still undetermined, location. In…
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Food Schav Returns to Greenmarkets This Spring
One sure sign of spring in my Brooklyn neighborhood is the first sighting of the Mr. Softee truck. A hundred years ago, Jewish residents of the Lower East Side knew it was spring by the appearance of sorrel, or schav in Yiddish, on the neighborhood pushcarts. While the pushcarts are gone, nowadays you can find…
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The Schmooze Orthodox Neighbors Angry Over Pornographic Exhibit on Lower East Side
While adolescent yeshiva students may not share their dissatisfaction, Orthodox Jewish neighbors of a Lower East Side art gallery have issued a chorus of complaints over a current exhibition involving pornographic images According to the New York Post, the Allegra LaViola Gallery’s new “Pornucopia” show “features a slew of sexy nude images of men and…
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The Schmooze Getting to the Bottom of Show Business
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Much has been written of late about the ways in which celebrated American musicals such as “Oklahoma” or “South Pacific” carry considerable Jewish freight. While most audiences come away humming rather than thinking, the American musical, many scholars suggest, is actually where American Jewish playwrights, lyricists, choreographers and designers…
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Food Jews and Chinese Food: A Christmas Story
Chinese food is the most prolific cuisine on the planet, and, aside from the Chinese themselves, no one loves it more than American Jews, according to Andrew Coe, author of “Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States.” On Christmas, noodle, rice and savory dish consumption quite possibly peaks among Jews,…
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The Schmooze Slideshow: Jews of the Fillmore
With the opening of San Francisco’s Jewish Community High School of the Bay’s (JCHS) new building on Ellis Street in 2002, the city’s organized Jewish community finally returned to the Fillmore. Only local Jewish history buffs appreciated the significance; the neighborhood in which the school is situated — now called The Western Addition — was…
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The Schmooze A Window for the Ages on the Lower East Side
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was the Lower East Side’s Eldridge Street Synagogue — not the first time, and not the second time either. The synagogue, which was originally erected in 1887, has just announced the completion of a 24-year-long restoration process, with the installment of a 16-foot circular window, commissioned by…
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Life A Kinky Stroll Though the Old Neighborhood
Looking to put some kinkiness into your weekend? The kind that even your rabbi might (might!) approve? The group KinkyJews is hosting an afternoon stroll replete with “Jews, Sex, and Politics” this Sunday on New York’s Lower East Side. Back in April, The Forward reported on the kinkiest Seder (more S&M than bitter herbs) put…
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News Scoop: Heritage Foundation plans to ‘identify and target’ Wikipedia editors
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Fast Forward Their Pacific Palisades synagogue is standing, but all three rabbis lost their homes
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News ‘Do you have the Torahs?’ Synagogue races LA wildfire to rescue its past and future
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Music For Bob Dylan’s biographer, ‘A Complete Unknown’ is a dream come true — even if it’s mostly fiction
In Case You Missed It
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News LA fires won’t stop bar mitzvahs this Shabbat, as joy and pain meet
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News HIAS cuts 22 staff even as it braces for Trump immigration crackdown
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Fast Forward A synagogue that survived the Palisades fire has become a ‘refuge’ for many who lost their homes
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News When fire spread to West Hollywood, a rabbi’s mom chose to grab candlesticks
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