Great Reads: "Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels"

In a fit of book straightening fury last week I happened across Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels by Hella Winston in the Tenement Museum’s Jewish interest section. Though intrigued by the content and title whenever the book caught my eye, it was not until a slow afternoon that I finally had the opportunity to open the book’s cover. I’m glad that I did.

The Tenement Museum  engenders critical thinking about issues faced by current immigrant communities by exploring their historical antecedents. In large part, this is done by immersing visitors in the stories of specific families. Sociologist Hella Winston takes a similar approach, delving into the complicated lives of individuals struggling with their Hasidic faith, family, and community in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood through a series of vignettes. As a trained anthropologist, I was particularly curious about this subject.

Unchosen is a quick, accessible read, but it’s by no means pedestrian. The people and Hasidic culture that she describes are compelling and the historical detail is illuminating. Twelve hours and two subway rides after I purchased the book, I had read it cover to cover.

Living in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights neighborhood, I come into occasional contact with the Hasidim of nearby Williamsburg and Crown Heights. These encounters are mainly experienced through a car or bus window and leave me wondering about who these people are and what their lives are like. Maintaining exceptionally strict community and cultural identity in the face of numerous social, technological, and cultural intrusions seems impossible or untenable. Yet, despite the odds (at least from external appearances) Brooklyn’s Hasidim appear to have discovered the formula.

While readingWinston’s book, I had the feeling that I have been asking the wrong questions, or at least framing them incorrectly. Guided by Winston’s insights, I realized that the more important question is not how Hasidic communities preserve traditions, but why--and if--they are ultimately successful. 

Not surprisingly, reading Unchosen piqued my interest in this visible and often misunderstood community. Thankfully we have three other equally intriguing books on the Hasidim: Mystics, Mavericks and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey Among Hasidic Girls by Stephanie Wellen Levine, Holy Days: The World of a Hasidic Family by Lis Harris, and Boychiks in the Hood: Travels in the Hasidic Underground by Robert Eisenberg.

--Posted By Shop Associate Leah Mollin-Kling

Books on the Bowery

The Bowery has a long and celebrated history. Known as one of the greatest entertainment capitals in the country, this American street has inspired countless authors and historians. Tonight, November 16, David Mulkins, the co-founder and chair of the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, joins Tenement Talks to discuss the rich and diverse history of the Bowery (6:30 pm, 108 Orchard Street).

Can’t make the Talk? Read about the present-day Bowery on Bowery Boogie, our co-sponsor for the evening's event, or pick up some of the following books, favorites of both Tenement Talks and the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors.

Banished Children of Eve by Peter Quinn
Set in New York during the Civil War years, this historical fiction traces stories of immigration, gangs, prostitution, performers, war, draft riots, strikes, and racism. Using these issues as a backdrop, Quinn follows the intertwining experiences of common New Yorkers, such as minstrel actors, soldiers, and domestic servants, while emphasizing the lives of Irish Catholic immigrants in the city.

Low Life by Luc Santé
This social history focuses on the messy underbelly of New York City from the 1840s up until World War II. From opium dens to the Bowery’s suicide saloons, Santé illuminates the disease, crime, and corruption that erupted in post-industrial Manhattan.

Five Points by Tyler Anbinder
Anbinder illustrates the history of Five Points, a neighborhood exists today only as a commemorative plaque in Columbus Park. At its height, Five Points was home to more riots, prostitution, corruption, and drunkenness than any neighborhood in America. Anbinder uses letters, bank records, newspapers, and diaries to piece together the slum's history.

The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury
This book is an anthropological study in its own right. Written in 1928, Asbury examines the 19th-century history of the Bowery and Five Points. Asbury describes colorful criminals and gangs that ran rampant in the neighborhood at that time. Like the other books on this list, The Gangs of New York explores the more grisly history of New York City.

No Applause, Just Throw Money by Trav S.D
While some critics view vaudeville as crude, Trav S.D. argues that it was “the heart of American show business” in the years of 1881 to 1932. The author follows the cultural history of vaudeville, including matters of diversity and race in the theater.

- Posted by Alana Rosen

Tenement Talks: Fish out of Agua

Courtesy of IndieBound.org

Join us tonight for Tenement Talks featuring Michele Carlo, author of Fish Out of Agua: My Life on Neither Side of the (Subway) Tracks. You might remember Michele as a regular from our “Lower East Side Stories” series, where she often told tales about growing up in New York.

Well, now Michele has an entire book of stories about her life in the city. She talks about her growing-up years in the Bronx and weaves in stories about her mother and grandparents, who immigrated from Puerto Rico and settled in an apartment on East 103rd Street in Spanish Harlem (El Barrio) during the Great Depression.

When Michele was a child, her abuela showed her a photo of her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. Young Michele was confused - these women, with their dark hair and skin, didn't look a thing like this red-headed, freckly child. Growing up, she faced  pressure from both sides - her aunts criticized her for being raised “white,” and her peers didn’t know what to make of her. This conflict - who am I? - is one many immigrants and their children face.

Michele's writing is full of energy, spunk, and truth—she tells it how it is. Several of our staff are already fans of her work and have been excitedly anticipating her visit.  Please join us tonight at 108 Orchard at Delancey and be sure to pick up a copy of her memoir! You'll support this great author and the Museum, too. Call 212-982-8420 if you'd like to order an autographed copy.

-posted by Devin

Featured Shop Items: Summer Accessories

We’re coming up on the dog days of summer and, if you are like many Americans, you are probably vacationing - maybe relaxing by the beach or going to amusement parks. Here at the Museum Shop we have several items for sale that will be great accessories when you travel this summer.

If you are taking a long car trip and want to keep your family members occupied, you should check out Chuck Klosterman’s Hypertheticals: 50 Questions for Insane Conversations ($14.99). On each card there is a scenario with a question at the end. For example, if you find Shaquille O’Neal in your shower and he doesn’t remember how he got there, would you call the cops? If you have the ability to save your friend from a bear attack, knowing that from then on a perpetual rain cloud would follow you forever, would you intervene? The crazy situations may lead to some surprising (and entertaining) answers from your loved ones.

Maybe you’ll be in the New York City area at some point this summer. You should definitely come to the Tenement Museum, and on your way out you should pick up City Walks New York: 50 Adventures on Foot ($14.95). This newest edition is a book of cards that tells you where to go in New York City. They are organized by neighborhood (card #13 is the Tenement Museum!). There are the expected places - the Empire State Building, the Met, and so on. But you’ll find out where there is a Little Italy in the Bronx and other little known places! It comes complete with a map with the locations numbered so you won’t get lost.

Love New York City history and looking for a summer reading book? For those of you relaxing by the beach or pool, you definitely need to read North River by Pete Hamill ($14.99). A personal favorite of mine, it is about Dr. James Delaney, who mysteriously receives his grandson on the steps of his New York City home one day in 1934. The story will hold your attention from beginning to end as it transports you from the sandy beach to winter in Depression-era New York City.

We have beautiful straw bags currently on sale 30% off ($20-$25). These bags are perfect for packing stuff (like the summer reading book mentioned above!) for the beach, picnics, barbeques, and carnivals - anywhere your summer travel may take you! They are available in an assortment of sizes and bright colors.

If you are interested in any of the items seen on this blog, come stop by the Shop at 108 Orchard Street at Delancey or give us a call at 212-982-8420 to have anything shipped. Have fun on your summer adventures!

-Posted by Devin

Tenement Talks: The Thing Around Your Neck

Join us tonight for an evening of stories about romance and exile, class and privilege, assimilation and the immigrant experience. The acclaimed Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will read selections from her latest work, The Thing Around Your Neck.

This collection of evocative short stories highlights the differences and universalities between Nigeria and America. With compelling portraits of life in Nigeria, Adichie offers a look into her nation that challenges mainstream media representations of Africa.

Her writing provides revealing insights into the hearts and minds of characters as they navigate cultural collisions and craft new lives in foreign lands. Expect her reading at Tenement Talks to explore both the benefits and heartbreaks of immigration to America.

- posted by Bridget

Suzanne Wasserman Previews “Sweatshop Cinderella”

On Tuesday, June 8, noted filmmaker and historian Suzanne Wasserman stood in front of a packed crowd at the Museum Shop to tell Anzia Yezierska’s amazing history. An eclectic mix of visitors both young and old sat to watch Sweatshop Cinderella, Wasserman’s documentary about this Polish-born immigrant, a child of the Lower East Side tenements who fought against prejudice and poverty to become a stubbornly honest, gifted writer. Afterward, Wasserman spoke directly to the audience about her film, its subject’s challenging personality, and how she felt personally connected to Yezierska’s prevailing nostalgia.

The film follows the writer from her youth in a sweatshop and her early career to a romance with famous thinker John Dewey, her brief stint in Hollywood where she was courted by Samuel Goldwyn, and finally her return to New York, where she wrote her most famous novel, Bread Givers, a semi-biographical account of life in the tenements.

Wasserman splices together the major events of the Yezierska’s life with the author’s own wisdom, providing a glimpse into the her enduring outlook on life (“Nothing is real to me but the past”) and her rebellious determination to overcome the simple expectations for a young Jewish woman at the time (“All that I could ever be… was in myself”).

Using archival footage culled from Wasserman’s extensive research, the film is a collage of historic photos, silent films, interviews with friends and fellow historians - Alice Kessler Harris, American history professor at Columbia University, and author Vivian Gornick, who proclaims Yezierska a “literary genius” - and even the sole recording of Yezierska, from a reel-to-reel tape housed at Boston University. These clips, of recycled brown paper bag upon which she would write, of the notebook in which she scribbled at ten years old, espouse many of the same profound ideas and frustrations she held all her life and provide an unprecedented look at Yezierska’s humble genius, even as she was misunderstood by readers and critics alike.

As Harris notes in the film, Yezierska “could write English perfectly well” yet hid this mastery behind a “Yiddish idiom,” for the sake of authenticity and respect for her subjects. This talent, of course, was overlooked – she was labeled an inexplicably successful “Sweatshop Cinderella” by the press and undermined by Hollywood, where her painful, honest characterization of immigrant life was reduced to a simple, raving caricature in 1922’s film adaptation of Hungry Hearts.

Wasserman's biographical film is also deeply personal. She first discovered Yezierska’s work as a grad student in the ‘80s and couldn’t believe the “grittiness of description” that she employed to “bring the Lower East Side to life.” Wasserman immediately felt a connection between her nostalgic memories of childhood in Chicago, represented by home movies scattered throughout the film, and Yezierska’s own yearning for a sense of home in New York, even if it was less than ideal.

In the 1930s, after the Depression hit and people grew disinterested in her stories of hardship, Yezierska was happy to be poor again. When the audience asked Wasserman if Yezierska was a downbeat person, she described her only as “compelling” and “magnetic” even in her troubles.

Appropriately, her film concludes with the great German author W.G. Sebald’s words, “Memory blinds us to life and yet, what would we be without memory… without the faintest trace of the past?” Yezierska gave her life to history, so where would we be without discovering it ourselves?

See the wonderful Sweatshop Cinderella at its next public screening, July 11th at the Yiddish Book Center. And make sure to stop by at another installment of the Tenement Talks series tonight and Thursday.

- Posted by Joe Klarl

Tenement Talks: Sweatshop Cinderella

While women of the 21st century have more choices and more control over their destinies than ever before, some  societal pressures remain. Immigrant women in particular must struggle to assimilate into American society while continuing to respect the traditions of their home countries. Feminist writer Anzia Yezierska was influential in spurring dialogue during the early 20th century about this very issue

Yezierska was born in Poland; her family emigrated at the turn of the 20th century, settling on the Lower East Side. She, her mother, and her siblings worked while Mr. Yezierska, a Talmudic scholar, studied day and night.

Yezierska envisioned a life different than the one traditionally arranged for young Jewish women during that time. While most women married, then stayed home to have and raise children, she attended Teacher’s College at Columbia University and majored in domestic sciences. She felt a passion for writing and published her first story in 1915.

Bread Givers, her most famous novel, was published in 1925. While the work is fictional, there are many parallels to the author's own life. This coming-of-age story follows Sara Smolinsky, who lives with her family on the Lower East Side in a tenement building. Sara struggles with her father’s domination over her family, her assimilation to American culture, and her fight to be an independent woman.

Suzanne Wasserman recognizes Yezierska’s literary influence on American society. In her new documentary, Sweatshop Cinderella, Wasserman explores Yezierska’s life, literary career, and the way her work still resonates today.

Tonight Tenement Talks is excited to present an advanced screening of the film, followed by a discussion with with the director. Join us! RSVPs are requested to events@tenement.org.

- Posted by Alana

Poem in Your Pocket Day

Today we’ll be handing out copies of our favorite poems, including this classic:

We Real Cool
By Gwendolyn Brooks

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

So why did we choose today to celebrate National Poetry Month? Thursday, April 29th is Poem in Your Pocket Day. The idea is to bring poetry into our everyday lives by carrying one of your favorite poems with you to share with others. And couldn’t we all use a little more poetry?

Poem in Your Pocket day has been celebrated in New York City since 2002. For a list of poetry-inspired events throughout the city, check out: http://www.nyc.gov/html/poem/html/home/home.shtml.

Come by to read the rest of our favorites and share yours with us! While you’re here, browse our poetry selections, including I Speak of the City and Beat Poets. You can even pick up a copy of Poem in Your Pocket and carry poetry with you every day.

I’ll leave you with one more selection of verse to ponder as the weather tries to decide which way to turn.

Spring III
By Audre Lorde
Spring is the harshest
Blurring the lines of choice
Until summer flesh
Swallows up all decision.
I remember after the harvest was over
When the thick sheaves were gone
And the bones of the gaunt trees
Uncovered
How the dying of autumn was too easy
To solve our loving.

- Posted by Kat Broadway

Books from the Museum Shop for Mother's Day

(Come in or call and mention this blog post for 10% off your Mother’s Day gifts!!)

Last night we were joined by Dave Isay and StoryCorps for the launch of Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps, a collection of some of their most poignant stories, culled from their over 30,000 interviews with everyday Americans. We had Dave Isay stay a little longer and sign a stack of this new book, which makes a great gift for Mom, so call and get one while they last.

This got us thinking about great books and gifts for Mother’s Day, which is right around the corner. We’ve got lots of other book selections for your mom, whether she’s into history, fiction, or even graffiti.

For foodie mamas who have followed the life of the legendary Ruth Reichl, we suggest the new paperback For You Mom, Finally or choose from one of our wide selection of New York cookbooks.

My mom won’t read anything but fiction, and I’m constantly bringing her books from our New York and immigrant fiction shelves. She’s loved everything from fast-paced historical fiction and mysteries like Dreamland by Kevin Baker or The Alienist by Caleb Carr to contemporary immigration narratives such as The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz and The History of Love by Nicole Krauss.

And if your mother saves her ticket stubs, try a different kind of book, the perennially popular Ticket Stub Diary. Mom can organize the mementos of her favorite plays, movies, and concerts in this cute little book.

No matter what your mother is into, we’ve got the perfect gift for her. No, seriously! We've got a little something for everyone. As an extra incentive, mention the blog when you make your purchase for 10% off your Mother’s Day gifts. Don't forget, buying something is like making a donation to the Tenement Museum. Every little bit helps.

Tenement Museum Shop
108 Orchard Street (Delancey)
212-982-8420
Monday-Sunday, 10am - 6pm

- Posted by Kat Broadway

Give us your Pulitzer picks

Booksellers and literary fans the world over anticipate the annual announcement of the Pulitzer Prizewinners, all the more so because the finalists are not revealed in advance.

What are your favorite picks from 2009?

Tell us your forecast for Pulitzer winners in Literature, History, and Journalism (one per category), and if you’re right, you’ll win a $5.00 gift certificate to the Museum Shop. Leave your guesses in the comments.

This year’s winners will be announced on Monday, April 12, at 3 pm, corresponding nicely with our Tenement Talk with James McGrath Morris, author of Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power (Monday, April 12, at 6:30 pm, 108 Orchard St, FREE).

And when you come in to pick up your gift certificate, consider putting it towards the purchase of a past Pulitzer winner.

Many of these distinguished titles are among our bestsellers, including The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon Reed, and Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace in non-fiction categories.

Some of our bestselling fiction and memoir titles have been past Pulitzer winners as well, including Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon.

Stop by to check them out and for recommendations for further reading on New York history and literature. Don’t forget to send us your predictions for this year’s Pulitzer Prizewinners, and we look forward to seeing you at the Tenement Talk on Monday night.

- Posted by Kat Broadway

Tenement Talks Staff Favorite Books of the Year

We chose our favorite books from this year’s Tenement Talks. A Herculean feat! Each of us who work closely on the Talks chose our Top 5, but it could easily have been Top 10. We loved each of the 75 events we hosted this year, but these were the books that touched us the most personally. Needless to say, they'd all make great gifts, too.

Amanda, Tenement Talk Curator:

-          When Everything Changed, Gail Collins

-          Brooklyn, Colm Toibin

-          The Snakehead, Patrick Radden Keefe

-          Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann

-          Chinatown Noir, Henry Chang

Helene, Museum Shop:

-          Triangle: The Fire that Changed America, David von Drehle

-          Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, Melvin Urofsky

-          Brooklyn, Colm Toibin

-          Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann

-          Red: Teenage Girls in America Write On What Fires Up Their Lives Today, Amy Goldwasser

Kate, Outreach:

-          Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville, David Freeland    

-          Storefront: The Disappearing Face of New York, Karla and James Murray

-          Appetite City, William Grimes

-          On the Irish Waterfront, James T. Fisher

      -          My Red Blood, Alix Dobkin


Don't forget, you can listen to podcasts of some of these talks on the Tenement Museum website.  And 2010 is shaping up to be another great season! Sign up to be on the Tenement Talks list - email us at events [at] tenement [dot] org.

Review: Tenement Talk, The New York Times Book of New York

Who can really claim to know New York? One would think that the 306 contributors to the new anthology, The New York Times Book of New York: Stories of the People, the Streets, and the Life of the City Past and Present, might be good candidates. Still, it seems unlikely that any of them would make such a claim. As Sewell Chan, bureau chief of City Room at the Times and one of the writers featured in the book, pointed out, there is a “humility that comes with covering New York,” in part because the city remains “eternally unknowable.”

At a Tenement Talk on October 20, Mr. Chan and three other of the contributors to this compilation of New York stories addressed a packed house at 108 Orchard. James Barron of the Times’ Metro Section moderated the event. In addition to Mr. Chan, he was joined by celebrated Times writers Anna Quindlen and Joseph Berger. Each offered their own experiences living and reporting in New York.

Love for the “unknowable” city was a common theme that the guest speakers shared. Ms. Quindlen recalled that all she ever wanted to be was a general assignment reporter for the Times in New York because she knew there was a “thrill, beauty, and ease” to writing about the city. “If you can’t write it here,” she quipped, “then you need to go to law school.” While working as a young reporter for the paper, Ms. Quindlen would spend her days off riding the subway and discovering unfamiliar neighborhoods, always in pursuit of the “telling details” that journalists crave and with which New York is ripe.

Mr. Berger started exploring New York at an even younger age when, at eight years old, he convinced his brother and a friend to walk with him from their homes on West 102nd Street to Chinatown and back. As an immigrant himself, Mr. Berger has always been fascinated with the polyglot and polychrome nature of the city, which he argues is even more apparent today than in years past. He shared many stories that he has reported on featuring immigrants living in New York and compared their experiences to those of the former residents of 97 Orchard Street.

“I could be a foreign correspondent in this city,” he said, explaining that it’s possible to visit Ecuador on Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, Russia in Brighton Beach, and Ghana on the Grand Concourse, all for the price of a Metrocard.

It was Mr. Chan’s experience with the New York Times, however, that provoked the most discussion from the audience. Recruited to launch City Room, the Times blog that reports on local issues, a few years ago, Mr. Chan talked about the rapidly changing medium of the Internet. The pace at which news is delivered has become much faster in recent years, and audience members voiced various concerns over the reliability of the information coming out of this new environment.

While the writers agreed that there are challenges, they ensured the audience that all online pieces are subject to the same measures of accuracy and integrity that the Times has employed since 1851. Mr. Chan also pointed out the benefit that blogs and other online media have in their ability to “capture a slice of New York.”

Today, the fact that the number of the newspaper's online readers greatly eclipses the number of print readers triggers different sentiments in different people. But in the end, Mr. Barron brought the discussion back to the book, reminding the audience that if there are indeed still books in 20 years, then the Times will be able to publish a similar anthology, no matter how they get the news to us in the meantime.

-- Posted by Kristin Shiller


Kristin Shiller is a member of the Tenement Museum’s Orchard Street Contemporaries. After moving to New York City a few years ago to work at an education nonprofit, Kristin got involved with the Museum as a volunteer educator, giving tours of the Confino apartment. Last fall, Kristin's interest in immigrant life was reinvigorated when she had the opportunity to do extensive research of her own family tree while helping her mother plan a family reunion. Shortly afterward, she decided to get involved with the Orchard Street Contemporaries.

The Orchard Street Contemporaries is a group of young professionals committed to advancing the mission of the Tenement Museum by connecting the immigrant history of the LES to the vibrancy of the neighborhood today through social events, networking and museum programming. The group provides a forum for exploration of our nation’s immigrant heritage and what that means for us now.

For more info, fan the OSC on Facebook or join the mailing list by emailing osc(at)tenement.org.

Colum McCann nominated for National Book Award

We’re thrilled to learn that Let the Great World Spin by our friend Colum McCann is a finalist for the National Book Award. The National Book Foundation hails this work as “[…] the author’s most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.”

Colum McCann, a frequent guest speaker at Tenement Talks, is a celebrated Irish author who not only lives in New York City but also writes about it in beautiful, authentic prose. Let the Great World Spin, the newest addition to his repertoire (June 2009), has already been describe as “one of the most electric, profound novels I have read in years.” (Jonathan Mahler in The New York Times.)

You may have been here for the book launch last July or perhaps you remember Colum from St Patrick’s Day 2008, when he said that he would like to “try and touch on a little bit of the magic of this city. On a day like today, when you are Irish, then you feel like, well, you’re everywhere when you’re in New York.”

- Posted by Ariel & Amanda

News from Around Town

Clayton Patterson, longtime Lower East Side documentarian, just released a book with his photographs of neighborhood people from the 1980s and 90s. In conjunction with the book is an exhibit and film screening sponsored by Kinz + Tillou Fine Art and Alfie Presents. You can see the show at 157 Rivington Street any time between now and November 8, but Clayton will be on hand to sign books this Sunday from 3-5pm. If you can't make it, listen to him discuss the Lower East Side, as he remembers it, on the NY Times website.


This Saturday, quirky local history organization City Reliquary is hosting a bake sale to raise money for the museum. Lots of your favorite Brooklyn bake shops have gotten involved. You can support City Reliquary by stopping by Havermeyer between Grand and Metropolitan from 12-6pm.


Also this weekend, be sure to check out Open House New York. Over a hundred sites in all five boroughs will be open to the public for free. This is a great chance to visit some of the City's smaller museums and historic sites. Why not check out the Morris-Jumel Mansion, Alice Austen House, Waterfront Museum & Show Barge, or Weeksville Heritage Center?


Finally, our friend Mick Moloney, who recorded all the 19th century songs used on The Moores: An Irish Family in America tour, is headlining a one-night-only show on October 24 called "If It Wasn't for the Irish and the Jews: A Tribute to Irish and Jewish Influences on Vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley." Mick and lots of other players will interpret the music of the period and celebrate "this charming and unexplored story of good-natured ethnic flux, competition, and cooperation that left a lasting imprint on American popular music." Sounds fun, and tickets are sure to go quick. Click on the link for more info.

Could Brandeis be Appointed Today?

On Wednesday, September 30, Professor Melvin Urofsky joins us for a Tenement Talk about Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, his biography of the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice, who sat on the Court during an electrifying time in US history (1916-39). Professor Urofsky will be guest-blogging the next two days to give us a little bit of insight into Justice Brandeis.

Several reviewers of my book ventured the thought that not only would a president not name Brandeis today, but he might not be confirmed, and while I am not completely sure they are right, there is more than a kernel of truth in that observation. One should keep in mind that the 1916 nomination touched off a four-month confirmation battle, and in the end Brandeis received Senate approval because Wilson invoked party discipline and the Democratic majority voted aye.

By the standards of the time, in terms of the type of person normally appointed to the Court, Brandeis was a radical who believed that law should serve not the interests of property but human needs. He was considered a champion of labor.

The last person overtly supportive of labor to be named to the Court was Arthur Goldberg by John F. Kennedy in 1962. More recent Democratic nominees such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor are sympathetic to labor but have no record of being champions of the working person. As for party discipline, that disappeared several presidents ago. Even with sixty votes in the Senate, it is hard to believe that President Obama could get all Democrats to support a controversial nominee.

And, alas, even if the President were willing to make such an appointment and could get Senate Democrats to flex their muscles, who would he name? There is no Louis Brandeis on the American scene today.

Portrait of Louis D. Brandeis by painter Joseph Tepper. Photoengraving on paper. 1939. Harvard Law School Library.

- Posted by Melvin Urofsky. Special thanks to Pantheon Books, http://pantheon.knopfdoubleday.com.

Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis on Labor Issues

On Wednesday, September 30, Professor Melvin Urofsky joins us for a Tenement Talk about Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice and a passionate, outspoken man who sat on the Court during an electrifying time in US history (1916-39). Professor Urofsky will be guest-blogging the next two days to give us a little bit of insight into Justice Brandeis.

History records Brandeis as a friend of labor—the man who devised the Brandeis brief to win Court approval of wages and hours laws, the lawyer that both sides trusted in the great New York garment strike of 1910, and who in 1916 received the full-hearted support of labor leaders like Samuel Gompers when Woodrow Wilson nominated him to the Supreme Court.

Yet there is another side of Brandeis as well. As the attorney for the Typothetae, the association of Boston printers, he broke a strike by going to court to get an injunction, the very judicial tool hated and feared by organized labor in the early twentieth century. He debated Samuel Gompers over whether labor unions should be incorporated. Brandeis believed they should be, so they would be both responsible in court for ill-advised actions and also be able to sue when wronged.

Although some of my fellow historians paint Brandeis as a great liberal friend of organized labor, I think they are mistaken. He believed in the right to organize and bargain collectively, but he would have been just as appalled by the excesses of Big Labor after World War II as he was by the actions of Big Business in the progressive period.

- Posted by Melvin Urofsky. Special thanks to Pantheon Books, http://pantheon.knopfdoubleday.com/.

Books You Should Read About the Lower East Side

PR gal Kate manages all the press & communications for the Museum (including this very blog!) but she also has a background in American history. She’s read what feels like half the books in the Tenement Museum Shop, and here are her top five picks.

There are so many ways to learn about the Lower East Side, and of course my top suggestion would be to visit the neighborhood and tour the Tenement Museum. But you can also get a wonderful sense of the area’s history by reading about it. The Tenement Museum Shop carries the best books, both fiction and non-fiction, about New York, our neighborhood, and the immigrant experience.

Here are my top five books to read to better understand the historic immigrant and working-class experience on the Lower East Side.

Call It Sleep, Henry Roth.

I first read this book in a grad school class on the great American novel. That's how good it is. Essentially a fictionalized account of the author’s own experiences growing up in Brownsville, Brooklyn and on Avenue D in the 1910s, Call It Sleep beautifully explores what it’s like to be a child; a Jewish child; an immigrant; and a family.

You can read many important and interesting history books about New York, but this is my top pick for immersing yourself in the experience of living here in the early 20^th century. It's also a great read.

Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York, Kathy Peiss.

While the author focuses on women, she explores New York City in ways that are relevant across gender and cultures. My favorite chapters are about the rise of theaters and movie houses; the culture of Coney Island’s Steeplechase, Luna Park, and Dreamland amusement parks; and the line between respectability and indecency at the city’s many public dance halls.

Cheap Amusements is chock full of primary source data that gives you a sense of how working-class people in the city really lived – and how their incredibly demanding work led to the creation of an entire industry of leisure-time activities.

How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis; and Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn-of-the-Century New York, Bonnie Yochelson and Daniel Czitrom.

Many people know of Jacob Riis’ 1890 publication, which was acclaimed during the author’s life and then more or less forgotten until it was republished in 1971. Much of Riis’ language and imagery startles modern readers, and this is a fascinating look into the early Progressive era of the 1880s and 1890s.

We sell the 1971 edition at the Shop, which includes many of the photographic images Riis took around lower Manhattan (none of which, by the way, were originally published in the book).

To get a critical opinion of Riis’ writing and his photographic images, you must read Rediscovering Jacob Riis. This small book, published in 2007 by a historian and an art historian, casts an eye on Riis’ methods, as well as giving all-important context to his work.

Banished Children of Eve, Peter Quinn.

This novel, set in 1863, immerses you in the different characters who made up New York in the mid-19^th century. There are Tammany Hall bosses, hustlers and working girls, stockbrokers, stage actresses and minstrel performers. Identity issues form a core of this book, as the City itself goes through turbulent changes.

What’s great about Quinn’s story is the fact that so many real people are fictionalized in the book – from composer Stephen Foster to politician Big Tim Sullivan – as well as character ‘types’ who represent a broad spectrum of City life.

You may email the Museum Shop to order any of these books, or click the links to order directly online.

Last Night's Tenement Talk

Our third annual Poetry evening with Stephen Wolf was a tremendous success. Many thanks to Stephen and to his co-performers: Kevin Coval, (who read one of his own poems featured in the collection) and Christopher Hurt. It was a perfect tribute to the city and a great way to usher in Poetry Month. These talented readers treated the audience to samples from several poets including Derek Walcott, Diane Ackerman and E. E. Cummings.

At the end of the night, Stephen shared one of Tenement Talks Director Amanda's favorite poems by the founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café.

And in case you've gotten too nostalgic about the New York of bygone eras, we thought we'd wrap up our poetry series with a piece by a contemporary author. This excerpt from Kevin Coval's Lured Beneath Your Golden, Calling Lights captures the city's frenetic and ever-changing nature, while showing that some things (like New York's role as a melting pot) have stayed the same.

The all night diner
Where you ordered rice pudding
In Union Square, is a Sports Club
For people who can afford one.

You have changed,
Always been changing.
But
Damn! You look good,
new york
You court me,
Again.
(again?, new york)

At 3rd and Mercer
We felt like tea, and I knew you
Would suggest Café Reggio,
Though I had not been there
Since ’94 and couldn’t remember
Its location or name but felt its windows
Would open to the street and be perfect
After-dinner in spring, sitting
In metal-wire chairs, blackberry supreme
Pot steeping on the two-top wooden table,
I knew I could love you again, (though I know you are not
Mine alone & chicago would not want to hear this, but…)

Your civilized all-hour tomatoes!
Your fresh flower fields littering the fronts of bodegas!
Your subway lines: vast and democratic!
Your bootlegs sleeping on blankets like dominoes!
Your two model per train car city ordinance!
All those mixed babies blurring neighborhood lines!
Your gold space pharaohs slanging veg patties on 125th St.!
Your corner kids up late blaring Biggie out 6th floor apartment
Windows!
My grandfather’s anglicized name tucked in a book on your
Ellis Island!
Your Grandmaster Flash mash-ups! Your Grandwizrad Theodore
Scratch bombs!
Your afro-diasporic puerto rican borough global exports!
Your shtick, new york, each one of you sounds like a jew
And even italians know how to make good bagels!
You are the ultimate reality / check! The last bastion
Of schmer and empire. The american ideal gone
Mad
And perfect

Photographs of Old New York

In honor of National Poetry Month, and in anticipation of the April 7 Tenement Talk with poet Stephen Wolf, we're posting some of our favorite poems from his New York-centric collection I Speak of the City.

By Alfred Corn (1943 - )

They stare back into an increate future,
Dead stars, burning still. Air how choked with soot
One breathed then, the smudged grays and blacks impressed
In circles around East European eyes,
Top hats, a brougham, the laundry that hung
Like crowds of ghosts over common courtyards.
Dignity still knew how to thrust its hand
Into a waistcoat, bread plaited into shapes
How to dress a window, light under the El
Fall as negative to cast-iron shadows.
Assemble Liberty plate by plate - so
This giant dismembered arm still emerges
From folds of bronze and floats over the heads
Of bearded workmen riveted in place
By an explosion of magnetism they've learned
To endure. Then, Union. Rally. March. Strike.

And still the wretched refugees swarming
Out from Ellis Island, the glittering door,
To prosper or perish. Or both...The men
Don't see the women; or see how deftly hems
Can be lifted at curbs - well, any eye would
Be caught by that tilt of hat, profile, bearing.
Others strive to have mattered, too, stolid
Forms that blush and crouch over sewing machines,
Haunt the libraries, speak on platforms.
Did they? And did this woman, who clearly still
Speaks no English, her head scarf, say, Russian?
A son stands at her side, crop-haired, in clumpy
Shoes. She stares straight forward, reserved, aware,
Embattled. The deep-set eyes say something
About the emptiness of most wishes; and
About her hopes. She knows the odds are poor.
Or, the odds are zero, counted from here.
That past survives its population
And is unkind. Triumph no more than failure
In the longest run ever fails to fail.
Is that the argument against shuffling,
Dealing, and reshuffling these photographs?
They are not mementos of death alone,
But of life lived variously, avatars
Energy, insight, cruelty took - and love.
Variousness: the great kaleidoscope
Of time, its snowflake pictures, form after
Form, collapsing into the future, hours,
Days, seasons, generations that rise up
And fall like leaves, each one a hand inscribed
With fragile calligraphy of selfhood;
The human fate given a human face.

Tenement Talks - Disappearing Storefronts

Kimberly is a Museum Shop and Tenement Talks associate. She writes about her experience at a recent Talk:

Barbers, bodegas, appetizer shops, locksmiths, and fabric suppliers all represent the entrepreneurial spirit of New York. These stores also provide a visual record of city life: their facades are recognizable in an instant to those who’ve lived here long enough. Some of their signs are missing letters or the neon has burned out, but they are too beloved to ever be changed. When Russ & Daughters had their neon sign repaired, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing as a flurry of customers feared they had gone out of business.


“Mom & Pop” stores become family. I’ve certainly grown up with a few. I’ve had one place cater a going-away party, another press a key for my first car, and another knows my absolute dependence on half and half for my coffee. Corporations tend to large masses of customers. You can go into a chain store and be ignored and some people like that. I don’t. If I go into my corner bodega someone will always say hello to me and want to talk some more.


Photographers James and Karla Murray joined us for a recent Tenement Talk. Their mission is to visually preserve the Mom & Pop, which they do in Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York. The Murrays’ prints are gorgeous, the film full of grain and naturally highlighting the worn patina of old metal signs and rusty hardware. Some of the featured stores have since closed, their signs removed and sold as scrap. While what comes next can also be a vital part of the community, there are those who will ache for the absence of a lost candy store. These photos at the very least preserve the memory of a closed business’s existence.


If you missed our Talk and would like to see the prints, you can check out the book at the Museum Shop or visit the Murrays’ website, http://www.jamesandkarlamurray.com/.