Remembering the Lower East Side (HB)

Description

Remembering the Lower East Side: American Jewish Reflections (Hardcover) by Professor Hasia R Diner (Editor), Jeffrey Shandler (Editor), Professor Beth S Wenger (Editor) .... For more than a century, the Lower East Side of New York City has been recognised and scrutinised as having been the largest and most vibrant immigrant Jewish neighbourhood in America when East European Jews flocked to American shores. In recent years a spate of art works, performances, and tourist productions have fostered increased interest in the neighbourhood as a place of American Jewish heritage. This lively book explores the dynamics of Lower East Side memory and considers the changing ways that this unique neighbourhood has been embraced by American Jews over the course of a century.Part 1, The Dynamics of Remembrance, investigates multiple facets of life on the Lower East side and considers the emerging repertoire of memory that took shape around the neighbourhood. Themes include the naming of the Lower East Side, a century of photography of the neighbourhood, and the colourful histories of synagogues and schools, restaurants and caberets.Part 2, Contemporary Recollections, examines the recent upsurge of interest in the Lower East side as a site of Jewish heritage and cultural innovation. Topics include the creation of the Tenement Museum, walking tours of the neighbourhood and visits to popular 'period' restaurants, the experience of a documentary filmmaker, and the performance of memory in a refurbished synagogue. A generous selection of photographs enhance the book's wide-ranging insights into how the Lower East Side became a touchstone of Jewish identity and history, a canvas on which successive generations designed their founding myth to fit their own social and cultural concerns.