JBC Features The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side

Posted on April 25th, 2013
by FUPress

The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side: A Retrospective and Contemporary View, Second Edition
Gerard R. Wolfe; Joseph Berger, fwd.

REVIEW by Carol Poll

The eminent architectural historian Gerald R. Wolfe captures early synagogue and community life on the Lower East Side and recent synagogue restoration efforts in his fascinating book The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side: A Retrospective and Contemporary View (Fordham University Press 2012, 232 Pages $29.95, ISBN: 978-0-8232-5000-4). The history of American Jews is very much entwined with the history of New York City’s Lower East Side. Four out of five Eastern European Jews can “trace their ‘roots’” to the Lower East Side. Close to 500,000 Jews came to the United States in the 1880s to be followed by another 1.5 million in the period between 1990 and 1924 and the majority settled on the Lower East Side. The passage of the National Origins Act in 1924, with its tiny quotas for Southern and Eastern Europe immigrants, put an end to large scale Jewish immigration. READ MORE

The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side: A Retrospective and Contemporary View, Second Edition Gerard R. Wolfe; Joseph Berger, fwd. REVIEW by Carol Poll The eminent architectural historian Gerald R. Wolfe captures early synagogue and community life on the … Full Story →

REVIEW: The Jewish Week

Posted on January 22nd, 2013
by FUPress

1/20/13

The Tangled History of Shuls and Real Estate

By Sandee Brawarsky

Had it been two blocks south and a bit farther east, the 16th Street Synagogue would have been included in Gerard R. Wolfe’s excellent new edition of his classic work, “The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side: A Retrospective and Contemporary View” (Empire State Editions/Fordham University Press). That shul, formerly the Young Israel of Fifth Avenue, is being evicted from its building, after a long dispute with a developer.

Those interested in New York City’s building genealogy and the intertwining connections between real estate interests, immigrant history, shifting populations and synagogue life will find much of interest in Wolfe’s book, first published in 1978. He details the active synagogues (12) and the “lost” or endangered synagogues (24), and also includes a great chronological chart documenting shul mergers and breakaways in New York City, 1654 – 1875.

Wolfe, an architectural historian, unpeels layers of the past behind the congregations and their buildings. He pays careful attention to the special features of the buildings (the Bialystoker Synagogue, built as a church, may have been a station on the Underground Railroad, sheltering runaway slaves) and their architects (the Erste Warshawer Congregation, First Warsaw Congregation, now repurposed to art studios and residence, was designed by Emery Roth, known for designing the Sam Remo apartment house on Central Park West); and their struggles, some ongoing.

Sadly, in this edition, Congregation Beth Hamedrash Hagadol on Norfolk Street moved from the active synagogue to the endangered section, shortly before the book went to press. That shul ‘s sanctuary has magnificent wall paintings and carvings, along with a storied history of distinguished rabbis, most recently, the late Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, who had been the rabbi of the Kovno ghetto. A group including his son-in-law and leaders of the Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy is trying to secure funding for restoration and renovation. READ MORE

1/20/13 The Tangled History of Shuls and Real Estate By Sandee Brawarsky Had it been two blocks south and a bit farther east, the 16th Street Synagogue would have been included in Gerard R. Wolfe’s excellent new edition of his … Full Story →

NYT Bookshelf: The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side

Posted on December 17th, 2012
by FUPress

by Sam Roberts

Gerard R. Wolfe, joined by the photographers Jo Renee Fine and Norman Borden, has completely overhauled “The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side” (Empire State Editions, $29.95), originally published in 1978. This volume, which is illustrated with black and white photographs and has a foreword by The Times’s Joseph Berger, uses historic houses of worship as a prism to explore immigrant life and culture.

Jewish Book Council Recommended Reading

Posted on December 11th, 2012
by FUPress

The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side: A Retrospective and Contemporary View, 2nd Edition by Gerard R. Wolfe was included on the most recent JBC recommended reading list. Here is what they had to say:

It has often been said that nowhere in the United States can one find a greater collection of magnificent and historic synagogues than on New York’s Lower East Side. As the ultimate destination for millions of immigrant eastern European Jews during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it became the new homeland and hoped-for goldene medinah (promised land) for immigrants fleeing persecution, poverty, and oppression, while struggling to live a new and productive life. Yet to many visitors and students today these synagogues are shrouded in mystery, as documentary information on them tends to be dispersed and difficult to find.

With The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side, Gerard R. Wolfe fills that void, giving readers unparalleled access to the story of how the Jewish community took root on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Originally published in 1978, The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side became the authoritative study of the subject. Now completely revised and updated with new text, photographs, and maps, along with a glossary, Wolfe’s book is an accessible source for those who want to understand the varied and rich history of New York’s Lower East Side and its Jewish population.

Fordham University Press, 2012. 232 pp. $29.95

The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side: A Retrospective and Contemporary View, 2nd Edition by Gerard R. Wolfe was included on the most recent JBC recommended reading list. Here is what they had to say: It has often been … Full Story →

Primo Levi

Posted on May 23rd, 2011
by FUPress

Answering Auschwitz

The Chronicle Review spotlights Stanislao G. Pugliese’s new book, Answering Auschwitz: Primo Levi’s Science and Humanism After the Fall.

May 22, 2011

Here There Is a Why: Primo Levi, Humanist
By Carlin Romano

Writers closely identified with the Holocaust rarely escape their literary cells. Elie Wiesel has written 57 books—try naming a few of them besides Night. When Imre Kertész, the Hungarian-Jewish novelist and Auschwitz survivor, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002, the Swedish Academy understandably cited his “writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history,” even as Kertész, the first Hungarian to win the prize, expressed hope that it might more generally shine light on the “ignored literature of Hungary.”

And then there is Primo Levi. When he plunged to his death down the stairwell of his Turin apartment building on the morning of April 11, 1987, only minutes after answering the doorbell of his third-floor apartment and thanking the concierge for his morning mail, a single question—”Did he commit suicide?”—threatened to turn Levi’s entire life and work into a simplistic verdict on the possibility of a Holocaust survivor’s transcending demons of the past.

One triumph of scholarship, however, is that it can ride the force of established reputation like a wave, and take us into new dimensions of a writer or subject. At first glance, Answering Auschwitz: Primo Levi’s Science and Humanism After the Fall, a new collection of essays edited by Stanislao G. Pugliese (Fordham University Press, 2011), looks to be more of the same—another deserved monument to 20th-century literature’s most disciplined witness to the Holocaust, that flinty, unsentimental voice like no other. But Pugliese, a professor of modern European history and Italian studies at Hofstra University, offers us a fuller portrait. . . . READ MORE

The Chronicle Review spotlights Stanislao G. Pugliese’s new book, Answering Auschwitz: Primo Levi’s Science and Humanism After the Fall. May 22, 2011 Here There Is a Why: Primo Levi, Humanist By Carlin Romano Writers closely identified with the Holocaust rarely escape … Full Story →