THIS BEAUTIFUL BOOK TELLS THE NOSTALGIC TALE of how millions of Jewish immigrants entered America through the portal of the Lower East Side. There in New York City they struggled and ultimately flourished in a neighborhood that was the center of Jewish work, family, and culture. For more than fifty years, the Lower East Side spawned newly mined Americans, including entertainment icons like George Burns and Ira Gershwin, gangsters like Meyer Lansky, and an extraordinary array of people who would go on to transform American society.
"Professor Epstein's warm and accessible book, amply illustrated and with informative sidebars, provides a fine armchair tour of the Lower East Side. Colorful primary source materials help illuminate the forces that drove immigrants to the gateway neighborhood; the challenges that awaited them there; and the fertile ground for political, religious, and artistic innovation that the district offered."
—Amy E. Waterman, director, Eldridge Street Project
"The mythical Lower East Side becomes a flesh-and-blood, heart-and-soul reality again in Epstein's book of anecdote, image, and scholarship."
—Lawrence Bush, editor, Jewish Currents
"Offering story after fascinating story, Larry Epstein takes readers on a voyage … the difficult and often heroic journey of the immigrant to America. In these pages, readers will learn insights, history, and lessons not just about the immigrant experience but about how America became America."
—Gil Mann, author, How to Get More Out of Being Jewish Even if . . .
"If you want to smell the brine from the pickle barrels and taste Katz's corned beef with deli mustard on club and listen again to the myriad voices of the pushcart sellers and junkmen crying, 'I cash clothes!"—you'll have it all in this new book about the Old East Side, the crossroads of the Old World's foothold in the New."
—Stanley H. Barkan, poet and publisher, Cross-Cultural Communications
The Tenement Museum is located on 97 Orchard Street in New York City.
Visit their web site at www.tenement.org.
