Lower East Side

The 1916 Knish War of the Lower East Side

Extra! Extra! Read all about it: Rival restauranteurs battle over knishes! The 1910s were a bustling time for the Lower East Side shtetl-metropolis, where roughly 2 million Ashkenazi Jews were crammed more than 700 people deep per acre. And on one short block of Rivington Street, two knish-makers went to war. In 1916, Max Green, […]

By Zachary Solomon

from Jewniverse

The Baddest Yiddish-Speaking Jews of Warsaw and New York

Eddy Portnoy’s just-released Bad Rabbi and Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press reminds us that not all Jewish immigrants and migrants did well. Sure, some became doctors, lawyers, and successful business owners. But others became pimps, boxers, and general ne’er-do-wells. Portnoy, Senior Researcher and Director of Exhibitions at YIVO, offers a short […]

from Jewniverse