Lower East Side Memories: A Jewish Place in America

Hasia Diner is the Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History at New York University. In Lower East Side Memories: A Jewish Place In America, she recounts the history of Manhattan's Lower East Side in terms of its Jewish community, largely populated by immigrants from Eastern Europe. During the years 1880-1930 it was never ethnically (or even religiously) homogenous. It was a place of tenements, poverty, sweatshops, packs of roaming children, a dark warren of pushcart-lined streets and social work pioneering. Professor Diner surveys its popular culture, and the impact of the Lower East Side as an icon symbol upon such diverse venues as children's stories, novels, movies, museum exhibits, television shows, summer-camp reenactments, walking tours, consumer catalogues -- even photos hung on deli walls. After World War II the Lower East Side was enshrined as the portal through which Jews passed from European oppression into the promise of America. After 1960, the Lower East Side gave secularized and suburban Jews a culturally transmitted story of their origins and heritage. Lower East Side Memories is an exceptional, informative, highly recommended history of a community, a heritage, and a cultural identity arising from one of the most distinctive and unique neighborhoods in American twentieth century history.