Above, a boy stands before the oldest surviving synagogue building in New York City, located at 172 Norfolk Street. What was then a neighborhood fixture brimming with debates about Jewish identity and rite has, like many other Lower East Side synagogues, since faced…
In response to the massive waves of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe around the turn of the 20th century, leaders of the German-Jewish community in New York City founded the rather forbiddingly named Industrial Removal…
By Moriah Amit, Senior
Reference Services Librarian, Genealogy Coordinator
Although the notion that our immigrant ancestors’ names were changed by clerks at Ellis Island has been debunked time and again by noted scholars in Jewish genealogy (see References below), this myth remains pervasive in the stories that American Jews tell about their family history. The truth, that most of our immigrant ancestors chose…
All images: Collection of Yeshiva University Museum
A sizeable portion of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who streamed into New York at the turn of the 20th century found work in the city’s expanding garment industry. Although only about 10% were actual trained tailors, many Jewish immigrants held experience in both producing clothing–since the garment industry in Russia was one of the only businesses open to Jews–and…
A human-family tree stands by the renovated genealogy institute at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. Photographs of couples, children, families, molecular matter, and, atop the trunk, Rosalind Franklin—the British Jewish scientist whose work helped Watson and Crick imagine the double helix—adorn the branches. (Description via the New York Press.)
