Museum at Eldridge Street

To celebrate the publication of June Hersh's delicious new book Iconic New York Jewish Food (The History Press, 2023), celebrated foodies Niki Russ Federman (co-owner of Russ & Daughters) and this program's moderator Rozanne Gold (four-time James Beard award-winning chef and author) join June in sharing their unique and personal New York food stories in a meaningful conversation about the city’s culinary legacy. With recipes and remembrances galore, the discussion focuses on New York’s remarkable Jewish food history, what it means to be part of it, and how best to nourish the city we all love. June Hersh is the beloved cartographer of the collective memory of Jewish food. A decade after her award-winning book "Recipes Remembered: A Celebration of Survival" comes "Iconic New York Jewish Food," celebrating the moxie of the ingenious immigrants who helped shape the city's culinary streetscape. Food, an undisputedly sacred dimension of the Jewish experience, comes to life as Ms. Hersh brings her superlative skills to storytelling. With historic photos and alluring anecdotes, this is the culinary memoir of a city, as filling and satisfying as a hot potato knish (recipe included). -- R. Gold You can find all Museum at Eldridge Street programming at eldridgestreet.org/events About our Speakers: June Hersh is a food writer, cookbook author, and culinary historian with a focus on Jewish food. Her first book, Recipes Remembered, a Celebration of Survival is a compendium of recipes and stories she gathered from interviewing over 150 Holocaust survivors. It was written in association with and to benefit the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Subsequent to that she wrote The Kosher Carnivore and edited Still Here, Inspiration from Survivors and Liberators of the Holocaust and Yoghurt a Global History. Her latest book, Iconic New York Jewish Food, a History and Guide with Recipes, explores the crave-worthy, binge-able bites that define the culinary imprint of Jewish immigrants in New York City. Her mantra is "Eat Well-Do Good" and to that end, her books are written with a charitable flavor. Her new release benefits the Met Council, the largest kosher food pantry in the country. June is a freelance writer for Westchester Magazine, contributes to a number of online food blogs, and enjoys giving book talks and demos related to her work. junehersh.com Niki Russ Federman is the fourth-generation co-owner of Russ & Daughters, the iconic appetizing shop founded in 1914 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan by her great-grandfather, Joel Russ. Known globally for its bagels, lox, babkas, and other Ashkenazi Jewish food delicacies, Russ & Daughters has been venerated by devoted fans from Martha Stewart to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The shop got its distinctive moniker when Joel Russ decided to include his daughters Anne Russ Federman (1921-2018), Hattie Gold (1913-2014), and Ida Schwartz (1915-2001) in the business’s name in the 1930s. By maintaining its reputation for culinary excellence for over a century in business, Russ & Daughters continues to be beloved by fans of Jewish food and feminists alike and has now expanded into four locations in New York City, including the original store on Houston Street. russanddaughters.com Rozanne Gold, award-winning chef, food writer, and cookbook author, has been a fixture on New York's food scene since 1978 as first chef to Mayor Ed Koch. A four-time winner of the James Beard Award, she was consulting chef to the Rainbow Room, Windows on the World, and three of New York’s three-star restaurants. Considered “Israeli food’s original influencer” by Tablet Magazine, and “one of the most important innovators in the modern food world,” by Julia Child biographer, Bob Spitz, she has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bon Appetit, and Gourmet, among others. Known for her philanthropy, Gold was one of four Women Chefs for Peace on a mission to Israel and established a pop-up kitchen in Brooklyn after Hurricane Sandy. Gold is an end-of-life doula and co-founder of the “Death + Living Project.” She is also a poet. Her chapbook Mother Sauce was recently published by Dancing Girl Press. rozannegold.com

The Museum at Eldridge Street celebrated its 22nd annual "Egg Rolls, Egg Creams, and Empanadas Street Festival" on June 18, 2023! We welcomed a record-breaking 12,000 guests for a day of music, dance, cultural practices and more as we highlighted the diverse cultures that make up our Lower East Side and Chinatown community! Find out more: https://rb.gy/f3eoj The 2023 Egg Rolls, Egg Creams, and Empanadas Festival is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council; and the Jewish Community Youth Foundation. Thank you to our partners: National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, NYC Cultural Affairs, Jewish Community Youth Foundation (JCYF), Brooklyn Seltzer Boys, Chinatown BID, Economy Candy, CaringKind, Community Security Service, 14th Street Y Educational Alliance, Essex Market, Grand Tea and Imports, Henry Street Settlement, Green Tile Social Club, Kehila Kedosha Janina, The Loisaida Center, Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, Mia’s Cocina, New York Chinese Cultural Center, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Pickle Guys, Saint Jean Baptiste High School, The Bronx High School of Science, Welcome to Chinatown, Wo Hop Restaurant, Zaro’s Family Bakery Videography by David Tan

The Museum at Eldridge Street is housed in the Eldridge Street Synagogue, a magnificent National Historic Landmark that has been meticulously restored. Opened in 1887, the synagogue is the first great house of worship built in America by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Today, it is the only remaining marker of the great wave of Jewish migration to the Lower East Side that is open to a broad public who wish to visit Jewish New York. Exhibits, tours, public programs and education tell the story of Jewish immigrant life, explore architecture and historic preservation, inspire reflection on cultural continuity, and foster collaboration and exchange between people of all faiths, heritages and interests. The mission of the Museum at Eldridge Street is to restore and preserve the National Historic Landmark 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue, and to provide cultural and educational programs that serve a broad public.

Program Date: April 20, 2023 You can find all upcoming programming from the Museum at Eldridge Street at eldridgestreet.org/events We are excited to present this panel with scholars Ken Smith, Joanna Lee, and Regina Stein, and folklorist Ilana Harlow. Learn about Jewish and Chinese traditions regarding ritual objects associated with protecting the home, including when these traditions began, the religious and social concepts behind these ideas, the imagery depicted on these ritual objects, and what happened to these traditions in the diaspora. This panel discussion was the last in the program series for our exhibition featuring "Upon Thy Gates: The Elaine K. and Norman Winik Mezuzah Collection." Examples from the collection span the past two centuries, come from all over the world, and are made from an array of materials. About our Speakers: Joanna C. Lee and Ken Smith - Trained as a pianist with a doctorate in musicology, Joanna C. Lee was a faculty member of the University of Hong Kong and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University’s Centre for Asian Studies (2002–2014). She has served as an English-Chinese translator for such organizations as the Hong Kong International Film Festival, Kennedy Center, and Carnegie Hall. Journalist and author Ken Smith has written about arts and culture on six continents for a wide range of print, broadcast, and internet media. A winner of the 2020 SOPA Award for arts and culture reporting and the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music writing, he is the author of "Fate! Luck! Chance!...the Making of 'The Bonesetter’s Daughter'" Opera. Their Hong Kong-based consultancy Museworks Limited has worked on a wide array of projects, including the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, David Henry Hwang’s bilingual Broadway comedy "Chinglish," Bright Sheng’s "Dream of the Red Chamber" for San Francisco Opera, and "Kung Fu," a musical based on the life of Bruce Lee for New York's Signature Theater. They served as co-music directors for a recording series of Chinese minority folk traditions for Hong Kong’s Mediafusion Group and were co-founders of the Dimen Dong Eco-Museum in Guizhou province. Co-founders of Museworks Books, they are the publishers of Pocket Chinese Classics and the annual Pocket Chinese Almanac. Ilana Harlow - Folklorist Ilana Harlow has served as Folklife Specialist in Research and Programs at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and also as the folklorist for the borough of Queens - one of the nation's most ethnically diverse counties. In Queens she documented traditional life and arts and presented artists in public programs. She also attained a White House-conferred National Millennium Trail designation for the route of the NYC #7 train - also known as "The International Express." She is co-author with Steve Zeitlin of Giving a Voice to Sorrow: Personal Responses to Death and Mourning. Her dissertation fieldwork was on traditional narrative in Ireland. Regina Stein - Dr. Regina Stein is the Scholar-in-Residence at the Museum at Eldridge Street. She has taught for Temple Emanu-El’s Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning, the Wexner Heritage Foundation, CLAL, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel, the Academy for Jewish Religion, and the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. Dr. Stein is formerly the National Director of the Hadassah Leadership Academy. Upon Thy Gates was produced by the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education with generous support by the Andy Fund, established in loving memory of Andrea M. Bronfman by her children. Mounting of the show and related programs at the Museum at Eldridge Street are made possible, in part, by the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Recorded on May 10, 2023 Visit us at eldridgestreet.org/events for all upcoming programming at Eldridge Street! Discover how open spaces represented both societal and infrastructural change on the Lower East Side. 100 years ago, the Lower East Side was the most densely populated neighborhood in the world! Residents lived, worked, and shopped in cramped tenements and busy streets, and there was a desperate need for open space, especially for the neighborhood’s children, the first generation to grow up in such crowded conditions. Join Scott Brevda of the Museum at Eldridge Street and Andrew Fairweather of the Seward Park Library (NYPL) to learn about the history of open spaces on the Lower East Side.

Recorded on April 30, 2023 Please find all upcoming programming at eldridgestreet.org/events! The Eldridge Street Synagogue, which now houses the Museum at Eldridge Street, was built by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in 1887 to herald their new life in America, and their pride in their faith and their heritage. Millions of Jews fled Eastern Europe to the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but how did they end up in Eastern Europe to begin with? Approximately eighty percent of the world's Jews have a connection to Eastern Europe, and all of them once lived in a unique country called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Join Zachary Mazur, Senior Historian at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, to discuss the key question of why Jews settled in Eastern Europe and what their lives looked like there. While discussing the larger historical narrative, we will focus on the stories of those living in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to paint a picture of the past long before emigration or the Holocaust. This virtual seminar will incorporate POLIN's Core Exhibition, a journey through 1000 years of the history of Jews in Poland from the Middle Ages to the present day. Museum at Eldridge Street: eldridgestreet.org POLIN Museum: polin.pl/en About the Speaker: Zachary Mazur earned his PhD at Yale University and is currently a Senior Historian at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. His research interests include twentieth-century Eastern and Central Europe, national identity, law, and economics.