The history of Jewish Culture and Socialism:
A brief and condensed history:
-German Jews brought their experience and knowledge of socialism to New York
- Russian Jews brought their more radical experience of socialism and anarchy from the revolution over.
Over many years a blend of intellectualism and radicalism created a socialism that tried to help the plight of the workers. Examples:
coops
general labor strikes
free schools
news papers like the Forward
We took a tour of the Lower East Side to see the site of the Triangle Shirtwaste Factory Fire and the Cooper Union.
http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Day Four: August 7
Today we visited the Tenament Museum and saw the 1880 recreation of Jewish tenament, the 1920's tenaments of an Irish and of an Italian family. Each apartment was about 350 square feet and often would hold families of 10.
1870- One third of all money made in Ireland came from servant Irish girls.
1855-1865- 2.5 million Irish left Ireland.
3 out of 4 Irish immigrants were women and 3 out of 4 immigrants from Italy were men.
Some questions we discussed and reflected on:
What is the relationship between food and class?
Between gender and food?
Between relgion and food?
And ethnicity and food?
1870- One third of all money made in Ireland came from servant Irish girls.
1855-1865- 2.5 million Irish left Ireland.
3 out of 4 Irish immigrants were women and 3 out of 4 immigrants from Italy were men.
Some questions we discussed and reflected on:
What is the relationship between food and class?
Between gender and food?
Between relgion and food?
And ethnicity and food?
Day Three: August 6
Port and Youth Culture:
We had an interesting talk about the earliest history of occupied history of New York City and how the Dutch, Native American, and eventually the millions of immigrants that would settle in New York created the first youth culture. The illustration "Dancing for eels" shows an African American dancing while two Bowery Irish boys were watching. They are at the Catherine Market while a group of people watched. This is supposed to be the first documentation of youth culture: tap dance, a combination of the Irish jig and African tribal dance.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/popmusic/excerpts/raisecaine1.html
We had an interesting talk about the earliest history of occupied history of New York City and how the Dutch, Native American, and eventually the millions of immigrants that would settle in New York created the first youth culture. The illustration "Dancing for eels" shows an African American dancing while two Bowery Irish boys were watching. They are at the Catherine Market while a group of people watched. This is supposed to be the first documentation of youth culture: tap dance, a combination of the Irish jig and African tribal dance.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/popmusic/excerpts/raisecaine1.html
Day Two: August 5
We met downtown near Wall Street to take an African American walking tour and to visit the burial grounds. We learned that at Wall and Broad Streets was a rather large slave market and that the oringinal Dutch New York was built by slaves: the wall that divided Dutch New York from the Indian New York to canals the Dutch wanted built. There once was a lake in lower New York where the bodies of the Africans, enslaved Africans, and Indians were thrown. That is now the site of the finicial district and City Hall. They have discovered hundreds of slave bodies and have built a memorial on the site.
In small groups we participated in a Hunting and Gathering food tour of the Lower East Side. We had to visit 8 from a list of 20 places to eat, interview the workers and owners and try to discover the history of the immigrant interaction from the eatery.
Lastly, Does a building have memory?
We visited St. Augustine's Episcopalian Church, that once heald a rather wealthy congregation. In the back balcony there were the slave galleries, where the slaves would worship and could see the service but did not have to be seen by the rest of the congregation.
In small groups we participated in a Hunting and Gathering food tour of the Lower East Side. We had to visit 8 from a list of 20 places to eat, interview the workers and owners and try to discover the history of the immigrant interaction from the eatery.
Lastly, Does a building have memory?
We visited St. Augustine's Episcopalian Church, that once heald a rather wealthy congregation. In the back balcony there were the slave galleries, where the slaves would worship and could see the service but did not have to be seen by the rest of the congregation.
Immigration, Religion and Culture in the Lower East Side
For one week I will tour the Lower East Side, listen to lectures, and sample cuisine that represents the immigrant experince. This is part of NEH's Landmark seminar series.
From the Museum at Eldgridge Street Site
Sites and Themes
The Eldridge Street Synagogue, a National Historic Landmark, is the oldest East European Synagogue in New York, and among the oldest in the country. It is situated on the Lower East Side, where today’s Chinatown has replaced yesterday’s Little Italy, Kleindeutchland (“Little Germany”), and the even older Five Points section, home to free blacks and Irish immigrants. Immigration, Religion and Culture on New York’s Lower East Side examines the streets and buildings in this iconic neighborhood that tell the stories of how these groups made the Lower East Side their home.
Our summer 2008 Workshops invite you and prominent scholars to pursue two interrelated questions: 1) In what ways did group(s) adapt their religion and culture to New York City? 2) What was the nature of their interactions with other groups on the Lower East Side? We will explore these questions through study of secondary and primary texts, as well as a series of historian- and architect-led walking tours, and visits to related museums and archives such as the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas and the Schomberg Institute. Each day, educator-led workshops will stimulate the production of cogent lesson plans directly applicable to your schools.
The Eldridge Street Synagogue is an ideal space to begin this exploration. The restoration of this elegant synagogue was completed in December of 2007, and visitors experience the grandeur of its opening day in 1887, but also are able to trace its history beyond its heyday, as various elements of the building have been preserved rather than restored. Personal and historical details, such as grooves in the wooden floorboards attesting to daily use by immigrant worshippers and the generations that followed them serve as a wonderful point of departure for the exploration of the choices immigrants made as they adapted their religion and culture to New York. Our research into the history of the Eldridge Street Synagogue’s congregation has demonstrated how the adaptation of culture and religion to the urban context was neither seamless nor clear-cut, but rather a tension-filled process involving both synthesis and rupture.
We then take this theme and these tensions and explore the surrounding neighborhood, paying particular attention to the various groups who have made the Lower East Side their home: African Americans, Chinese, Germans, Irish, Italians, and East European Jews. The Eldridge Street Synagogue is situated in the heart of the Lower East Side, a mere-five minutes away from other notable landmarks such as the Forward Building, St. Teresa’s Church, St. Mary’s Church, and the Seward Public Library, and a 15-minute walk to the City Hall area. Our program uses the neighborhood as a “primary source,” focusing on the tools to investigate an urban neighborhood.
We will learn to use the city as a source in several ways. Equipped with digital cameras, you will be able to take photographs as you tour the Lower East Side. This serves two purposes: 1) we will collect materials for classroom presentation, bringing the immediacy of the Lower East Side to students as far away as Hawaii or Florida; 2) we will learn the techniques to craft tours of your own cities, in turn, learning how to engage students with photo documentation and analysis. To aid in this process, architects will lead walking tours and demonstrations that help you, and by extension, your students, learn how to look for architectural “clues” that tell how a structure has changed over time.
Scholars We’ve invited four scholars who have made a mark not only in their respective academic fields, but as public historians: New York University Professor, Dr. Jack Tchen, founder of the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas; New York University Professor Hasia Diner, author of works on Irish, Italian and East European and German Jewish immigrants; University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Tony Michels, author of Fire in their Hearts: Yiddish Socialist Politics in New York, who revolutionized his field by uncovering the vital interaction between German immigrants and East European Jewish immigrants with regard to socialism; and Christopher P. Moore, Research Director of the Schomburg Institute of the New York Public Library, whose most recent work deals with the discovery and documentation of the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan. These scholars have been selected not only for their scholarship, but also for the diverse and exciting array of methodologies they have pioneered and the creative sources they have mined.
Locations: Historic Sites in the Lower East Side of New York City, including the Eldridge Street Synagogue, Chinatown, the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas, Little Italy, the African Burial Ground, and the Schomburg Institute
From the Museum at Eldgridge Street Site
Sites and Themes
The Eldridge Street Synagogue, a National Historic Landmark, is the oldest East European Synagogue in New York, and among the oldest in the country. It is situated on the Lower East Side, where today’s Chinatown has replaced yesterday’s Little Italy, Kleindeutchland (“Little Germany”), and the even older Five Points section, home to free blacks and Irish immigrants. Immigration, Religion and Culture on New York’s Lower East Side examines the streets and buildings in this iconic neighborhood that tell the stories of how these groups made the Lower East Side their home.
Our summer 2008 Workshops invite you and prominent scholars to pursue two interrelated questions: 1) In what ways did group(s) adapt their religion and culture to New York City? 2) What was the nature of their interactions with other groups on the Lower East Side? We will explore these questions through study of secondary and primary texts, as well as a series of historian- and architect-led walking tours, and visits to related museums and archives such as the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas and the Schomberg Institute. Each day, educator-led workshops will stimulate the production of cogent lesson plans directly applicable to your schools.
The Eldridge Street Synagogue is an ideal space to begin this exploration. The restoration of this elegant synagogue was completed in December of 2007, and visitors experience the grandeur of its opening day in 1887, but also are able to trace its history beyond its heyday, as various elements of the building have been preserved rather than restored. Personal and historical details, such as grooves in the wooden floorboards attesting to daily use by immigrant worshippers and the generations that followed them serve as a wonderful point of departure for the exploration of the choices immigrants made as they adapted their religion and culture to New York. Our research into the history of the Eldridge Street Synagogue’s congregation has demonstrated how the adaptation of culture and religion to the urban context was neither seamless nor clear-cut, but rather a tension-filled process involving both synthesis and rupture.
We then take this theme and these tensions and explore the surrounding neighborhood, paying particular attention to the various groups who have made the Lower East Side their home: African Americans, Chinese, Germans, Irish, Italians, and East European Jews. The Eldridge Street Synagogue is situated in the heart of the Lower East Side, a mere-five minutes away from other notable landmarks such as the Forward Building, St. Teresa’s Church, St. Mary’s Church, and the Seward Public Library, and a 15-minute walk to the City Hall area. Our program uses the neighborhood as a “primary source,” focusing on the tools to investigate an urban neighborhood.
We will learn to use the city as a source in several ways. Equipped with digital cameras, you will be able to take photographs as you tour the Lower East Side. This serves two purposes: 1) we will collect materials for classroom presentation, bringing the immediacy of the Lower East Side to students as far away as Hawaii or Florida; 2) we will learn the techniques to craft tours of your own cities, in turn, learning how to engage students with photo documentation and analysis. To aid in this process, architects will lead walking tours and demonstrations that help you, and by extension, your students, learn how to look for architectural “clues” that tell how a structure has changed over time.
Scholars We’ve invited four scholars who have made a mark not only in their respective academic fields, but as public historians: New York University Professor, Dr. Jack Tchen, founder of the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas; New York University Professor Hasia Diner, author of works on Irish, Italian and East European and German Jewish immigrants; University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Tony Michels, author of Fire in their Hearts: Yiddish Socialist Politics in New York, who revolutionized his field by uncovering the vital interaction between German immigrants and East European Jewish immigrants with regard to socialism; and Christopher P. Moore, Research Director of the Schomburg Institute of the New York Public Library, whose most recent work deals with the discovery and documentation of the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan. These scholars have been selected not only for their scholarship, but also for the diverse and exciting array of methodologies they have pioneered and the creative sources they have mined.
Locations: Historic Sites in the Lower East Side of New York City, including the Eldridge Street Synagogue, Chinatown, the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas, Little Italy, the African Burial Ground, and the Schomburg Institute
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