gather round my friends as we speak of the oneg shabbats of yesteryear

November 24, 2015 10:40 AM

Photos: A Look Inside The 128-Year-Old Eldridge Street Synagogue

Much about the streetscape of the Lower East Side has changed dramatically in the past 50 or 200 years, but not all of it, not by a long shot. The elaborately carved wooden doors of the Eldridge Street Synagogue first swung open in 1887, and despite its advanced age, it's still looking just lovely—now. But it didn't always.

more on the restoration completed in 2007

posted by poffin boffin (14 comments total)

the synagogue was also an important cultural hub for recently arrived immigrants, offering services ranging from meals to help securing housing and loans to arrangements for the sick and dying.

An appropriate paragraph for the forthcoming Thanksgiving, and also appropriate because, well, this is the sort of thing we Americans, almost all of us from immigrant stock, should remember and strive to do.
posted by maxsparber at 10:56 AM on November 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

They have tours as well. It is something worth seeing in person.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:04 AM on November 24, 2015

And it's open for tours on Christmas Day! Post-Chinese-food plan made.
posted by neroli at 11:08 AM on November 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

A quick peek at google street view and it'll be easy to find a chinese restaurant, as in directly across the street.
posted by sammyo at 11:31 AM on November 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Love the old Singer Sewing machine ad. I'm working on piecing out the flyer next to it.
posted by Sophie1 at 12:47 PM on November 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Sad to say but the views, like so much on the net these days, interspersed with ads...see 3 pictures. then an ad...see 3 more, then another ad. Many sites now set up presentations with the need to click to advance, and thus they get you caught up with ads stuck in between those things you want to see . I click and watch but after a time I simply close down, disgusted with the pile of ads dumped on this or sites like it.
posted by Postroad at 12:49 PM on November 24, 2015

OK -- I've gotten as far as Rav (Rabbi) something Peretz Yigal, the Rav of Montreal. On the 3rd of November at 7 in the evening and oy vey my Yiddish is so bad.
posted by Sophie1 at 12:56 PM on November 24, 2015

Okay, in glancing at the post I thought it said "eldritch" synagogue. Discovering that it is an ordinary synagogue has lessened my interest considerably.

That said, I would love to tour this place.
posted by orrnyereg at 1:02 PM on November 24, 2015

If you click on each individual photo underneath the main one you don't see any ads and you are not taken away from the main article page.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:12 PM on November 24, 2015

This is gorge. Well worth preserving. I used to attend the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights, similar kinda gravitas. It's weird to be just attending a regular [half-full 75% old people 10% crying babies] service in a genuine landmark but it does make the warbly singing take on a bit more grandeur in some ways.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:15 PM on November 24, 2015

thanks poffin for the suggestion. I had visited that synagogue twice. In the early days--my mother born in that area--the many Jews found hope and promise. Then, as they prospered, moved out of the area. Now, many of their grand children, having done ok in America, are moving back to the area as it --here comes the hated word--gentrifies.
posted by Postroad at 1:45 PM on November 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

The tour also gives some good context to the community at the time the synagogue was originally built. The guide also told some stories about a moment of activism amongst the women in the congregation - the price of meat was suspiciously high, and so a bunch of women actually started to protest this by going up to the altars of all their respective synagogues during services - because they remembered from services that women could approach the altars if there was some great wrong being committed, and their position was that there sure as hell was.

They made their approaches to the altar to rally supporters, and then lead a charge upon the butcher shops to continue their demonstration there, and the police were called in and everything. The guide drily quoted from one cop's account that one of the women slapped him in the face with a piece of raw liver.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:08 PM on November 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

There is a dilapidated old synagogue on Norfolk st south of Delancey, south of that gigantic parking lot. Sometimes I wonder about it.
posted by pravit at 5:58 PM on November 24, 2015

Pravit - I've been in that one too! The Bialystoker also has an active congregation, and does sometimes give tours, but it looks like it's only by appointment. It's more of an active synagoge than it is a synagogue/museum.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:49 PM on November 24, 2015