Amy and Hanna in front of Streit's

Dim Sum, hand-pulled noodles and dumplings are a few of the food attractions of our neighborhood, but last Sunday visitors flocked to Eldridge Street for a completely different culinary experience: our annual Passover Nosh n’ Stroll.  Amy Stein-Milford, the Museum’s Deputy Director, and Hanna Griff-Sleven, Director of Cultural Programs, walked people through the streets of the Lower East Side, visiting food establishments that have been Passover favorites of the Jewish Community here for generations.

Nosh n' Strollers tasting hand-ground horseradish at The Pickle Guys

#1. The Pickle Guys

The Nosh n’ Stroll began with a brief history of the Eldridge Street Synagogue, and from there visitors followed the smell of fresh horseradish to the Pickle Guys, located just a few blocks away on Essex Street. Following the Eastern European tradition of letting the pickles sit in salt brine with garlic, spices, and no preservatives, the Pickle Guys offer an array of tasty treats, bringing their patrons back to the days of pushcarts and pickle barrels. As a pickler myself, I recommend the pickled pineapple! (Just be warned, this tangy treat can become addictive!)

#2. Vanished Eateries like Gertel’s Bakery

Gertel’s Bakery used to sell shmura matzoh, the delicious, round hand-baked stuff. The former site of Gertel’s is now an empty lot on Hester Street (pictured here). As Amy pointed out, it has left a literal hole in the community.

Schapiro's Kosher Wine

#3. Shapiro’s Winery The dynamic duo not only led us to local shops that are in the midst of Passover prep, but pointed out others that are no longer in business, but have still left their mark on the neighborhood.  The sign for Schapiro’s Kosher Wine can still be seen from the street and is a reminder of the changing times (and of many a person’s first drunken seder experience).

#4. Economy Candy

We recommend their chocolate-covered macaroons!

#5. Streit’s Bakery

Our stroll came to an end at Streit’s Bakery, which has provided Passover staples since 1925. Before even entering the bakery, the smell of fresh matzah (which Judy, the Education Director, and I realized smells remarkably similar to popcorn!) fills the air. As soon as you step into Streit’s, you are surrounded by Passover goodies: macaroons, candies and my personal favorite, chocolate covered matzah!  Amidst the flow of Passover shoppers, you can even see the matzah coming straight out of the oven. What better way to get our Passover preparation started than with a little nosh of warm, fresh matzah!

Click on the following link to see Matzah Coming Fresh Out of the Oven at Streit’s!

\What are your favorite Lower East Side food landmarks – Passover-themed or otherwise?

Intern Courtney Byrne-Mitchell and Docent Herb Kass

Herb celebrates his one-year anniversary as a docent this month. He became a tour-guide at the museum with the hope of reconnecting with his Jewish roots. I had the pleasure of speaking with Herb about his year as a docent, and during our conversation he explained that one of his favorite things about the museum is having the opportunity to meet visitors from all over the United States and the world. Herb has been able to connect with fascinating individuals, one of his fondest memories involving a family that had come from Turkey.

The family, Herb explained, brought to the museum their own family’s immigration story. Their ancestors emigrated from Spain 500 years earlier, and today the family still speaks Ladino, the traditional language of Sephardic Jews. The family was celebrating their son’s bar mitzvah, and despite a limited knowledge of English, they were still able to connect over the beauty of the space and shared traditions. Herb’s own paternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from Grodno (modern day Belarus) in the late 1800’s during the largest wave of Eastern European Jews to pass through Ellis Island. They, like many of the founders of the Eldridge Street Synagogue, lived on the Lower East Side before they moved out to Williamsburg, and eventually East New York and Queens where Herb grew up.

Herb Kass' family portrait after his uncle's bar mitzvah - early 20th century

Like the story of the Turkish family, each tour Herb gives is an opportunity for individuals to come together in a space in which people have found meaning for over a century. The Museum at Eldridge Street does more that provide Jewish history, it encourages visitors to explore and share the experiences of their own families. As I was writing this entry, it hit me. I truly became aware of the space’s role as a catalyst in forging connections, even between complete strangers. This is truly the magic of the Museum at Eldridge Street.

Liana Finck with a panel of her Bintel Brief graphic novel at Eldridge Street

What led you to the Bintel Brief?
My Grandma Helen had a copy of the collection of letters edited by Isaac Metzker. I found the book two years ago on a trip home from Belgium, where I was living, and loved it immediately.

What is it about the Bintel Brief that made you want to undertake this project?
The simplicity of the letters moved me. I have very specific taste in narrative: I like books and movies that are simple, full of emotion, and also told with a bit of distance and understatement. I think my taste comes from having loved poetry before I learned to love books or movies or art. The Bintel Brief letters touched me immediately, and this was especially wonderful because art usually seems to me like an escape from the ‘real world,’ specifically, in my case, from New York; from Judaism, from mundane life…these letters felt deeply familiar, but they had the special wildness and strangeness I usually look to art for.

Why the graphic novel and not another medium?
I’m not sure. I never liked to read graphic novels until very recently, and the discipline required to be a graphic novelist is something I’ve had to struggle to teach myself. It’s a slow and arduous medium and I still feel in over my head a lot when I’m working. Still… Here is why I chose to make graphic novels:

A page from Liana Finck's "A Bintel Brief"

When I was a teenager I developed a passion for books, but I’d been drawing obsessively since I was a baby, and I knew that drawing was my natural ‘language,’ much more than written and spoken words. I thought of drawing as a responsibility that I had to hold onto, even if I wanted to become a writer. I never loved graphic novels, but I did relate more than anything to cartoonists and illustrators who seemed to have figured out how to ‘write’ with pictures. Some of my favorites were Maira Kalman, Roz Chast and Saul Steinberg. I decided to be a graphic novelist instead of a cartoonist or illustrator because it’s an exciting time to be a graphic novelist: the medium has suddenly become somewhat popular and very interesting in America. It’s also a relatively unexplored medium: there’s much more room to break ground today as a graphic novelist than as a writer or an artist. This sounds a little crazy but I do believe it. Somewhat, at least. And I deeply enjoy the challenge of using drawing -which comes naturally to me- in a way that does not come naturally.

How do you feel about exhibiting your work at the Eldridge Street Synagogue?
So excited and honored. The building is so beautiful, comforting and also awe-inspiring–such a perfect mixture of art and Jewish history, like the Bintel Brief letters. I feel so calm and glad whenever I go there. It’s also right in the neighborhood where most of the Bintel Brief letters were written – the Lower East Side – and is a stone’s throw from the old Forverts building on East Broadway. The synagogue has felt like the center of the Lower East Side to me since I first went into the sanctuary a few months ago.

Liana Finck’s A Bintel Brief opens on March 21 an 7pm and will be on view at the Museum at Eldridge Street through May 31, 2012.

In preparation for our Tuesday, March 6 In Conversation kick-off event, we are providing an insider’s look into the world of blues and jazz and the creative genius behind these chart-topping hits: an evening in conversation with composer Mike Stoller and musician, Corky Hale Stoller.

Mike Stoller’s compositions fed the boogie-woogie scene and were made famous by artists such as The Coasters, Elvis Presley and Billie Holiday. The Museum at Eldridge Street is recognizing him for his contributions, along with the late Jerry Leiber, to the worlds of both Jewish and black music. For Stoller, a young boy growing up in New York City, music was a powerful source of inspiration. In his autobiography Stoller writes that his attraction to music,

“…was purely visceral. And as much as I loved symphonies and tone poems, it was black music that excited my deepest passion. I heard the lyricism in Richard Strauss, I felt the elegance of Bach, but boogie-woogie really reached my eight-year-old soul.” (Leiber & Stoller. 2010. Hound Dog: The Leiber & Stoller Autobiography. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. p. 5)

When Stoller and Leiber started making music, they were not feeding music to mainstream artists, but to the scene on the fringes that catered to predominantly black audiences, the blues. Stoller and Leiber forged their way into the music scene of the 1950’s, recording songs with a plethora of record labels over the course of the next thirty years including Atlantic and A&M. At the beginning of their career, larger labels were ignoring black artists, but with encouragement from mentor and producer Lester Sill, the duo continued to make the music they loved, following the trend of many other Jewish label owners. Sill explained,

The classic Coaster lineup

“They [bigger labels] don’t think it’s worthwhile, artistically or commercially [to invest in black music]. Well I don’t have to tell you how wrong they are… Look at the way the big iron and steel companies threw the scraps to the Jews. That’s how Jews started in the scrap metal business. Same thing in music. The majors see great artists like Jimmy Witherspoon as scrap. They don’t want to deal with what they consider junk… Through experience, they learned what some see as junk might actually be precious jewels.”

Stoller and Leiber created songs that were, in fact, scooped up by the public like precious jewels, and their accomplishments are not only a source of pride for the Jewish musical community, but also a testament to the fluidity of community and importance of following one’s passion. In the slightly re-worked words of a Leiber and Stoller classic:

“You just put on your coat and hat

And walk yourself to the Laundromat

And when you finish doin’ that

Come to the Museum at Eldridge Street to

Yakety Yak…”

In Conversation: Mike Stoller and Corky Hale Stoller

Tuesday, March 6 at 7 pm

Grammy Award-winning composer Mike Stoller, who with the late Jerry Leiber wrote Jailhouse Rock, Stand by Me and other hits, is joined by his wife, acclaimed jazz pianist, harpist and singer Corky Hale. In this public conversation they talk about their extensive careers working with a Who’s Who of the popular and jazz music worlds ranging from Elvis Presley, The Coasters, Peggy Lee and The Drifters to Billie Holiday, Tony Bennett, and Barbra Streisand.

When I think of Presidents’ Day, I think of George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson – the founding fathers of our country, individuals whose ideas and values shaped the American landscape. Transported back to my American History course, buzz words: liberty, freedom & pride, rest on the tip of my tongue. At the Museum at Eldridge Street, Presidents’ Day is a great time to reflect on our own set of founding fathers, those of the American-Jewish Community here on the Lower East Side.

During the late 1800’s and at the turn of the 20^th century, New York City was experiencing the largest influx of East European Jewish immigrants in history. The streets were lined with Yiddish, Shteiblach, and Kosher vendors, creating an Eastern European microcosm. Yet, American ideals and mainstream culture permeated everyday life, forcing the community to reconcile a new life in the city.

The congregation even had a Constitution, modeled in name and in form on the American Constitution, outlining the guidelines for worship and synagogue life! Anthropologist Riv Ellen Prell writes,

“Immigrant Jewish organizations, secular and religious, and large and small all had constitutions because they epitomized the exercise of democracy. Rules were clearly articulated; rights and responsibilities were laid out formally.”

New Rose Window, Kiki Smith & Deborah Gans. photo: Peter Aaron / Esto

The Eldridge Street Synagogue is an architectural testament to this intersection of the old life in Eastern Europe and the new in America. Throughout the building Jewish Stars are a prominent  feature, depicted, for example, in the stained glass and lighting fixtures. Alongside the Star of David, if you search for other star motifs in the building, you will notice celestial imagery above the ark. There are golden, five-pointed stars, the same image we see on the American Flag. Our stunning, new stained glass window boldly reinforces the same sentiment that the Eldridge Street Synagogue’s founders felt:

We’re Jewish, We’re American, and We’re Proud!

Click here to learn more about the intersection of the Jewish and American experience at the Eldridge Street Synagogue and the congregation’s Constitution.