Jay Lloyd's Getaway: The Lower East Side
This week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur seemed an interesting time for KYW's Jay Lloyd to spend a getaway at the place where Jewish identity in America was forged.
Surrounded by blocks of former tenements, sweatshops, and streets that echoed with pushcart hawkers stands the imposing tower of the Jewish Daily Forward (below).
By the early 20th century it was the center of Jewish immigrant life on the Lower East Side in New York. And it was here that I recently met Debbie Rex of Media, Pa.:
"I'm interested in my roots and where I came from, and teaching my children the same."
At one time the Forward -- published in Yiddish, a language created to accommodate German, Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian Jews -- was this city's largest circulation paper.
Nearby, the historic Eldridge Street Synagogue (below) boasts that its congregation hasn't missed a Sabbath service since 1887.
Rex notes that the surrounding tenements were about 325 square feet each, and often home to a dozen people:
"I can't imagine my father, three siblings, and his two parents living in a tiny apartment."
Now, people return to sample some of the same foods -- the fishes and knishes -- served up by the descendents of their grandparents' neighbors.
(Photos by KYW's Jay Lloyd)
