This is 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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Culture The Lewisohn Sisters Put the Ooomph in Do-Gooding
Manhattan’s Lower East Side of yesteryear conjures up images of dense and inhospitable streets filled with immigrants determined to get on with the business of becoming American, as well as with social reformers equally determined to accelerate that process. Though well intentioned and good hearted, these reformers, we’re apt to think, were often tone deaf…
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Fast Forward Stanton Street Shul Is Burglarized
A synagogue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the Stanton Street Shul, was found to be broken into and vandalized on October 14, The Jewish Press reported, citing an email from the historic Orthodox congregation’s president. In the email to congregants, Rebecca Honig-Friedman said that “no one was hurt and the damage could have been much…
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Food Sunday Is Pickle Day!
This Sunday, October 4th, New York City’s Lower East Side will be a pickle-lover’s paradise. will take place on Orchard Street, paying homage to the days when pickle shops thrived in the neighborhood. It’s going to be a celebration of all things pickled, with sixteen different pickle vendors in attendance, including Brooklyn Brine, Guss’ and…
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Culture The 100-Year Vision of Moscot Eyewear
There’s an old Yiddish expression my Lower East Side grandmother Ida was fond of: “When luck happens, offer it a seat.” Luck happened. My family has been loyal customers of Moscot Eyewear for nearly 100 of its 100 years; my bespectacled elderly father will buy from no one else, and my grandparents bought there when…
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Culture Vilna Becomes ‘Vilnius’ and Lithuanian is Making Itself Heard
100 Years Ago An entire family of Italians is in Beth Israel Hospital for circumcisions after converting to Judaism. Joseph Petrigliano and his three sons, who live on Orchard Street in Corona, part of Long Island, N.Y., decided to convert to Judaism after Petrigliano’s Jewish wife, an immigrant from Galicia, told him of her recurring…
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Food Streit’s Factory Fetches $30 Million
The oldest family-owned matzo company in the United States, Streit’s Matzo, is in contract to sell its Lower East Side factory buildings for a reported $30.5 million. According to New York real estate blog , a deed was filed with the city May 11 confirming the sale of the 90-year-old buildings to Cogswell Realty, a…
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The Schmooze Rising From the Wreckage of the East Village
For days after the disaster, Alan Kaufman says, he felt compelled to look at the ruins. Gazing at the aftermath of the March 26 explosion on Second Avenue and Seventh Street that killed two people and destroyed three buildings on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he remembered how terrifying it was when he was…
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Fast Forward Manhattan Synagogue Members Sue To Block $13M Building Sale
Members of a Manhattan synagogue are asking a judge to halt the sale of their building in a deal made without their knowledge. Worshippers at Sages of Israel, which is also a nursing home, claim that the board selling their Lower East Side Orthodox synagogue building for $13 million to a developer is not legitimate…
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Culture She was a dancer who leapt to the top of her field — then the Trump administration fired her
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Fast Forward Cory Booker has long embraced Jewish tradition. Now he has married a Jewish woman.
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Culture RFK Jr.’s poems to Olivia Nuzzi are peak cringe — so were King Solomon’s
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News DNA test kits spark a surge of online conversions to Judaism in the U.S.
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Opinion Americans are waking up to right-wing antisemitism. We’re still ignoring the root problem
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