By Moriah Amit, M.S.L.I.S., Senior Reference Services Librarian, Genealogy Coordinator, Center for Jewish History Did any of your Jewish ancestors settle in New York City? Have you wondered what life was like for those ancestors who settled on the Lower East Side or any of the dozens of other Jewish neighborhoods that emerged in the city’s five boroughs in the late 19th and early…
By Nicole Siegel, Research Intern and Graduate Student at Fordham University Click here for the first blog post on Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, Charleston, South Carolina http://16thstreet.tumblr.com/post/123372636972/kahal-kadosh-beth-elohim-charleston-south With the destruction of the Georgian Synagogue of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE) in the fire of 1838, the congregation found it necessary to build a new structure, one that is still in use today. The rise…
Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, Charleston, South Carolina By Nicole Siegel, Research Intern and Graduate Student at Fordham University One of the oldest congregations in America, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE) of Charleston, South Carolina, dates back to 1749 and is currently the fourth oldest congregation in the United States. Originally a Sephardic Orthodox Congregation, the community quickly embraced the ideas of Reform Judaism, becoming…
Row of Jewish-owned stores near Great Synagogue, Lumobl, Poland (now Ukraine), 1925. (Collection of Photographs and Measurement Drawings, neg. 23441. Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. All rights reserved. Image courtesy the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress). The prevailing image of the shtetl is the one in Fiddler on the Roof: a small, dirt-poor, strictly Jewish village. But shtetls in…