Lower East Side Memories: A Jewish Place in America [Paperback]

Hasia R. Diner (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691095450 | ISBN-13: 978-0691095455 | Publication Date: February 11, 2002

Manhattan's Lower East Side stands for Jewish experience in America. With the possible exception of African-Americans and Harlem, no ethnic group has been so thoroughly understood and imagined through a particular chunk of space. Despite the fact that most American Jews have never set foot there--and many come from families that did not immigrate through New York much less reside on Hester or Delancey Street--the Lower East Side is firm in their collective memory. Whether they have been there or not, people reminisce about the Lower East Side as the place where life pulsated, bread tasted better, relationships were richer, tradition thrived, and passions flared.

This was not always so. During the years now fondly recalled (1880-1930), the neighborhood was only occasionally called the Lower East Side. Though largely populated by Jews from Eastern Europe, it was not ethnically or even religiously homogenous. The tenements, grinding poverty, sweatshops, and packs of roaming children were considered the stuff of social work, not nostalgia and romance. To learn when and why this dark warren of pushcart-lined streets became an icon, Hasia Diner follows a wide trail of high and popular culture. She examines children's stories, novels, movies, museum exhibits, television shows, summer-camp reenactments, walking tours, consumer catalogues, and photos hung on deli walls far from Manhattan.

Diner finds that it was after World War II when the Lower East Side was enshrined as the place through which Jews passed from European oppression to the promised land of America. The space became sacred at a time when Jews were simultaneously absorbing the enormity of the Holocaust and finding acceptance and opportunity in an increasingly liberal United States. Particularly after 1960, the Lower East Side gave often secularized and suburban Jews a biblical, yet distinctly American story about who they were and how they got here.

Displaying the author's own fondness for the Lower East Side of story books, combined with a commitment to historical truth, Lower East Side Memories is an insightful account of one of our most famous neighborhoods and its power to shape identity.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

New York City's Lower East Side is understood by many to be the epicenter of Jewish American heritage, culture and history. From egg creams to the Yiddish theater, from "real" rye bread to Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer, this "Jewish ghetto," as it was known in the 1920s, was thought to be the place where all Jews immigrated and lived. In this inventive and often startling reevaluation of popular belief, Diner (the Steinberg professor of Jewish American history at New York University) examines the historical reality of the Lower East Side. In accessible prose, she charts "the sacralization" of this neighborhood in the 1940s, and shows how "the Lower East Side has become fixed in American Jewish memory as the site from which a single story has been told," even though there were Jewish communities all over New York City and the rest of the country. Likening the legend of the Lower East Side to that of Plymouth Rock, Diner examines such diverse texts as Irving Howe's The World of Our Fathers, Mickey Katz's Jewish comedy records of the 1950s, Disney's animated film An American Tale, Henry Roth's Call It Sleep and the famous "Simpsons" parody of The Jazz Singer, to show how postwar and post-Holocaust Jewish culture mythologized immigration to the Lower East Side and, after that, integration into mainstream American culture as a universal story of Jewish freedom. Diner's research and conclusions are both convincing and original. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Yiddish is a near-dead language. Anti-Semitism, once openly expressed, is now frowned upon, at least publicly. Many American Jews feel threatened by the drive for assimilation. Thus, for many Jews, including those outside of New York, the Lower East Side conjures up an image of a lost world and elicits a wistful nostalgia. Diner is professor of American Jewish history at New York University. Of course, she examines the Lower East Side as it actually existed, and that reality included considerable squalor, disease, and hopelessness. But she is also concerned with the creation of a "memory culture." In that culture, this predominantly Jewish neighborhood was a shining light of Jewish homogeneity, where Jews could be "fully Jewish," untainted by assimilation, suburbanization, and ascension to the middle class. This is both an enjoyable and an important contribution to local and ethnic history. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (February 11, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691095450
• ISBN-13: 978-0691095455
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #230,742 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exceptional, informative, highly recommended history, January 10, 2001

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lower East Side Memories (Hardcover)

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.