Northeastern Manhattan from 139^th Street down to 96^th Street, sandwiched between the East River and Fifth Ave, is home to the neighborhood known as East Harlem, or El Barrio. Walking the streets of East Harlem today, it’s difficult to pinpoint the origin of the community; the streets are lined with bodegas and Mexican fruit stands, but in the midst of the dominant Hispanic culture can be found a prevalent black community, as well as the left-over signs of an Italian past; bakeries, streets named after previous Italian activists and celebrated citizens, and the annual Giglio Society festival. Despite such a conglomerate of cultures, the atmosphere is surprisingly welcoming and peaceful. To be fair, the day of my venture into East Harlem was unseasonably warm and the water on the pond in the northeast corner of Central Park was glistening under the bright sunshine. Everyone was out and about, soaking up this taste of summer along with the ices being peddled on the sidewalk. I take a seat on a bench facing the water, next to a black woman in her early seventies, her name Marie. I asked her if it was always this beautiful, to which she replied, “Honey, I’ve been living in Harlem my whole life, and we’ve come a long way, but it didn’t always used to be like this…”

The origin of East Harlem dates all the way back to the 1800s, but its first phase can be summarized as the fulfillment of housing necessity. The area acted as an extension for public housing and offered many community based programs, which appealed to poor German, Irish, and eastern European Jewish immigrants. The beginning of the Italian history can be traced back to the employment of Italian strikebreakers that labored on the first-avenue trolley tracks, many of whom moved in around the seventies. In fact, this was the first official “Little Italy” in Manhattan. The 1900s held tough times of poverty for many in Italy, who decided to seek greater opportunity abroad in America and moved to the designated Italian neighborhood; East Harlem. The neighborhood peaked in the thirties, crowded with 100,000 Italian-Americans with a strong sense of cultural pride. However, after the wave of Spanish and Latin immigrants in the 1940s and 1950s, Italian dominance fizzled out gradually.

The flood of Puerto Ricans to East Harlem can be attributed to wartime diaspora. Italians began to move into the Bronx, Brooklyn, and upstate, and the Hispanic populace branched out to encompass the entirety of east Harlem.   By 1950, numbers had reached 63,000. The evidence of their prominence wasn’t just in the population, but with the introduction of bodegas and botanicas, restaurants and street stands.

The neighborhood faced difficult times going into the sixties; large areas in Harlem were leveled for urban renewal projects in the 60s, there were race riots, gang warfare, drug abuse, overcrowded tenements, poverty and crime. The turmoil in the neighborhood affected everyone; different ethnic groups battled for dominance both in the streets and in politics. They had come to New York City for better opportunities and to escape war-torn societies back in Latin America only to be faced yet again with similarly destructive conditions. In attempts to rekindle feelings of independence and power, gangs like the Young Lords began to form to bring change into the communities when it seemed like all outside resources were useless. The Young Lords were a nationalist group that came to New York City in 1969 with the goal of empowering the barrios. They sought to gain independence for Puerto Ricans, as well as democratic rights for all [poor] Latinos. They proved successful because the group saw themselves as the “People’s Struggle,” fighting against and providing solutions to everyday injustices faced by the average subjugated citizen; tenement’s rights, police injustice, health care, day care, education, meals for children. The Young Lords were powerful, and very influential all the way into the early eighties.

The fights for Latino self-determination in the community place was an inspiration to many who felt they now had the passion to make changes themselves in the neighborhood. From this instilled pride grew young professionals, political leaders, activists, and artists. Specifically in New York City in the 1970s, this was known as the Nuyorican Movement and is equated to a renaissance of passionate writers, musicians, and artists. Notable names range from singer Marc Anthony, actor Al Pacino, poet Julia de Burgos, congressman Fiorella La Guardia, and writer Ernesto Quiñonez.

Ernesto Quiñonez is a born-and-raised East Harlem Puerto Rican, and also the author of the “Bodega Dream” and is declared a “New Immigrant Classic.” The novel parallels “Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald in numerous ways; a paradigm of life at the time in New York City; a socially-powerful figure with great dreams who enlists the loyalty of a poor everyday citizen who just wants to make an honest name for himself. “Bodega Dreams” is a bit different; it highlights the various aspects of life in El Barrio, including struggles with the dispassionate education system, the drug business, religious prevalence, and the ethnic pride and brotherhood that often conflicts with morals and legalities. Quiñonez attempted to capture a wide-range of experiences faced by those in El Barrio, as well as the struggles with having fanciful dreams that face constant impediment from restrictions due to the oppressed status of Puerto Ricans in New York City. Oftentimes he is asked if the story is autobiographical since the main character faces such realistic predicaments, but Quiñonez says he created an archetype of El Barrio youth. Quiñonez elaborates; “Growing up in Spanish Harlem, you learn that in order to not take a beating everyday, you have to fight sometimes.   ’Should I fight? How do I fight? Is there ever a just cause for violence?’”

A powerful theme in this book is the importance of culture and community in shaping who we are and who we become. The Hispanic community gained that sense of pride and unity after going through such a challenging battle together, and it is one reason many other ethnic groups felt challenged by their power. Marie described the way with which Puerto Ricans entered the neighborhood, “acting like they wanted to run the place, and tried to take it over. But we were here first.” The reality is that everyone living in Harlem faced difficult times, and found resolve in having a culture-based community support system. The bonds they each formed seemed like threats to the other cultures at the time, when everyone essentially just wanted their voices heard and to make impressions and changes. Marie explains that after the sixties, racial tensions were slowly assuaged because “what other choice did they have? We can’t just overpower each other and all try to rule the neighborhood; we have to share and get along.” In no way does Marie believe that we have reached a peaceful status of perfect symbiosis and stresses that Harlem has a long ways to go, but she re-iterates how much better today is than yesterday. “Just look, you and I have been sitting here for an hour and no one has bothered us.” Quiñonez shares this view that the neighborhood is in a far better place than it once was, but stresses the need to not let up. “I think that now the Latin community is more aware of this, but it is still an uphill battle. Though we’ve made some progress, you are basically still talking about a population with very little wealth, one that’s outnumbered and outgunned.”

East Harlem today is simultaneously trying to preserve a past and create a future. The average citizen is low to middle income, first and second generation Puerto Ricans and African American, but with growing Mexican, Dominican, Asian and white populations.   The 2000 census reported that just over half claimed Hispanic origin, 35% non-Hispanic black, 7% non-Hispanic white, and 3% Pacific-Islander non-Hispanic. Another interesting statistic: almost a third of the population is eighteen or under, a larger than normal proportion. Walking along any street in East Harlem, evidence of these reports is obvious in the everyday life; crowds of black children in uniform entering after-school facilities, markets with written signs in only Spanish, Mexican bakeries, Dominican frozen ice stands on the side walk. There are five museums with ethnic themes ranging from African Art to Jazz to El Barrio history, seven cultural centers that inspire people to get involved in social justice, art programs, and music, and a broad range centers for cultural workshops to educate and get people involved.

The late seventies was a culturally active time; there was funding for community projects, and many aspiring youth emerging from the renaissance into a very active art scene. In 1978, Hank Prussing and apprentice Manny Vega painted a mural on 104th and Lexington. Entitled, “The Spirit of East Harlem,” is was the first public mural in the neighborhood, and has become accepted as a landmark. Vega was assigned to renovate the mural, which spans an entire building façade, in 2004 after the Puerto Rican flag had been graffitied. The response was unexpectedly angry; the Puerto Rican citizens loved the mural and what it stood for, and the fact that they became so riled up just proved that the community pride was lying dormant, not deceased. Vega suggested a forum for citizens to come and discuss why they were so upset, and how we can gain a collective of opinions that can be channeled into creating new murals.   “Change is good. We can’t forget who we are,” Vega says. “Collective memory means the imagery that we live through merges us together and creates us as a community.” Clearly the importance of continuing to fight for change, to create a voice, and to ban together is alive today in East Harlem. One can walk through East Harlem and see the thirteen different murals, all colorful, vast in size, and depicting pride for those that helped mold the community, like Julia de Burgos and Reverend Pedro Pietri (historical figure and founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café).

The past is also continued in the infrastructure of the neighborhood. Just as when it stated, East Harlem remains a primary place for those seeking public housing. During the tumultuous seventies, many buildings were subject to arson and destroyed, then renovated and designated by the city as low-income housing. These complexes dominate the neighborhood, blatantly obvious by the thirty-story buildings that stand in groups like twins or triplets. “The neighborhood contains the highest geographical concentration of low-income public housing projects in the United States.”[1] However, with property values rising everywhere, East Harlem has seen a decline in affordable housing, an increase in luxury condos and co-ops, and with that, gentrification and the growth in young professionals. However, according to locals, this has not yet affected the demography or general atmosphere of the neighborhood just yet. According to 2012 Community District Needs for the borough of Manhattan, “East Harlem has the highest concentration of shelters and facilities in Manhattan, with eight homeless shelters, 36 drug and alcohol treatment facilities and 37 mental health treatment facilities. It also has the highest jobless rate in the entire city, as well as the city’s second highest cumulative AIDS rate. The asthma rate is also 5 times larger than national levels.”

The fights and struggles of past passionate and determined activists have helped paved the way for those today to savor the fruits of revolution. It’s clear to anyone willing to stroll through East Harlem that the neighborhood has a covered a lot of ground, but it still has a heavy battle before it. As I sit on the bench with Marie, listening as she rants about her local senior-citizen group’s recent trip to Atlantic City, I can’t help but notice how peacefully diverse East Harlem is, and how, after all my research, I would never have thought I’d ever think that. Marie isn’t surprised by my revelation. “Honey, I am a born-and-raised New Yorker, and have been living in that apartment across the street for thirty years. This neighborhood is definitely changing, but it’s for the better.”

“We all live in the traces of one another’s lives,” said Richard Rabinowitz.¹

 It’s a curious concept the idea of an area evolving over time, but those central themes and characteristics remain obvious to anyone who can decipher the evidence.  The Lower East Side was the primal homeland for most Jews, and although the neighborhood has lost so much of that palpable culture, there is still an existing connection.

Getting of the train at Grand Street, I pass through what has become Chinatown; Chinese groceries, small stationary stores selling origami and beautiful floral notebooks, dumpling and noodle bars.  This is definitely not a Jewish district anymore.

 But as I step into the century-old tenements, I can feel the history.  I see not only the physical artifacts, but also the preserved memories of a family that moved from their home to a complete unknown city and had to assimilate.  It was evident that circumstances were tough, money was tight, and sacrifices had to be made, but what was also clear was the vehement attempt to keep their old culture alive.  I can’t help but think of my grandparents moving to Mount Vernon from Israel; what if they had moved to New York City instead?  This is the place so many came in a similar situation; religious persecution, looking for a place of acceptance, opportunity, and a fresh start.  Wouldn’t they have moved into a tenement in this Jewish neighborhood, and lived in a similar fashion?  My grandmother is a seamstress; is that sewing table in the corner where she would sit all day and do her work while her husband went out into the city to work?  Is that shared cramped bedroom where my mother Ziporah and uncle Erwin would play and distract themselves between school and sleep? 

 As I depart, I walk along Orchard Street, the shops morphing into their previous layer; bohemian cafes and pricey boutiques fade into Russ & Daughter’s, Ezra Cohen Overstock Emporium, and Gertel’s Bakery.  I think as if I were Esther in this new world…

The smell of fresh breads awakens memories from home, and it’s comforting to know authentic challah could be found right next-door.  I miss being in Israel, but I’m not alone, and knowing that our culture from home is recreated in this new world assuages the wistfulness.  Maybe I’ll pick up some baklava for Ziporah and Erwin as a treat when they get back from school. 

I leave and walk over to Houston Street.  Practicing the kosher diet was one thing we all feared would be difficult when moving to America, but the delis like Katz’s and are a haven.  In the Lower East Side, they understand the predicament, respect the need, and support it.  Jews from all over the city can come here and find multiple places to buy high quality kosher meats among other foods.  Some of the restaurants are quite progressive; Schmulka Bernstein is a kosher Chinese restaurant.  I feel welcome here.

 A few blocks more and I find J.S Hosiery.  I want to compare their supplies with the ones in my own store.  The storeowner and I chat in Yiddish about their children and school, and going to the synagogue.  Just speaking the language again makes me feel more like myself.  I walk to Eckstein’s on the corner of Orchard and Grand, a store stocked with affordable clothing.  Many of the local clothing stores understood that the circumstances of poor immigrants; there is no shame; everyone scrambles around looking for Levi jeans, Mary Janes, and stockings.  You have to haggle for lower prices and be smart enough to play the back-and-forth game.  The salespeople don’t reveal the cheapest price right off the bat, but the Jews are known for being skilled at the sport of bargaining.  It’s a talent I’ll never loose.

Next stop; Guss’ Pickles.  Founded by a fellow-Pole, Isidor Guss, this is one of eighty or so local pickle shops in what is, no surprise, known as the “pickle district.”  Guss’ pickles are authentic, New York Style, and gaining notoriety.  He is an archetype; an immigrant who came here for opportunity, and found lasting success.  He is an inspiration to the community, and with business growing as it is, maybe he will be here some ninety years from now…

 Guss’ Pickles opened in 1910, and closed about twelve years ago.  It is one of the more well known Lower East Side Jewish businesses, but I personally find Gorelick’s more inspiring.   Gorelick’s clothing store is one of those old-time places, like Louis Kaplan’s or Levine & Smith, that were run by master tailors that sold extremely well made articles, but also did beautiful repairs.  That kind of craftsmanship is lost on today’s generations; why go invest in these small stores, why even bother getting a nightgown patched when you can just go to a big-name and get a three-pack for less?²

Bernard Gorelick has owned this store for seventy years, and today, it’s windows carry signs that read “Going Out Sale.”  The steel shelves carry cardboard boxes packed with underwear.  No computers, paper bills, a calculator.  It feels exactly like my grandmother’s store in New Rochelle.  She had mannequins that looked like fifties housewives with their hairdos and postures.  The ceiling was adorned in the same style that I saw on the ceilings of those tenements, there were paper and plastic boxes of garments with index-card descriptions, a massive cash register with buttons that looked like those of a typewriter.  All the elderly customers that came not only bought something, but also stopped and had a full conversation with Esther about life.   Some of them speak in Yiddish, and all I understand is their laughter. 

My walk through the Lower East Side has deepened my understanding of Esther and her struggles, but my understanding of Esther has simultaneously deepened my understanding of Jewish immigrants in the Lower East Side.  Like Bernie Gorelick, she built up a life inspired by a culture, and thus created a business that is more sentimental and deeply connected than one would realize at first glance.  However, peel back those layers, and it becomes a major key to the past. 

 Citations

1. Rasenberger, Jim. “Searching for Charles.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 19 May 2001. Web. 12 Mar. 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/nyregion/searching-for-charles.html>.

• Berger, Joseph. “Crisscrossing Generations on the Lower East Side.” The World in a City: Traveling the Globe Through the Neighborhoods of the New New York. New York: Ballantine, 2007. N. pag. Print.

Tracing the lineage of the Herrmann/Elstein…I guess it would be simple and sensible to start with the great-grandparents.

In Germany, around the 1920s, Werner Herrmann was born to two German parents.  Despite the tumult of Germany during this time period, the real reason my great-grandparents decided to leave was for a “personal” reason.  They wanted to be together and build their relationship and family in a new place, so they came to Manhattan when Werner was only twelve.  He was drafted for World War II in his early twenties, and granted citizenship on the exact same day (neat little short-cut, isn’t it?)  Somewhere in all this, he met and married my grandmother, Agnes.  She grew up in a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania before moving to New York with her family.  Werner and Agnes moved into the Bronx and started a family together, consisting of my father Peter, and his three other older siblings.

Flash back to Europe, but this time during 1930 and in Warsaw, Poland.  Here we meet my Jewish great-grandparents on my mother’s side, who had just welcomed Esther as their youngest child of three.  Esther’s story is devastating and heart wrenching, but I will attempt to summarize it justly.  Her town-turned-ghetto was occupied by the Nazis when she was just a young girl, and as the families were being rounded up to board trains to the concentration camps, Esther’s mother pushed her out of the line when the guards weren’t looking.  Her Aryan complexion of blond hair and blue eyes acted as a shield for the duration of the war, but especially in that moment when the guards were convinced she wasn’t a Jew and refused to let her back with her family.  Esther desperately wanted to be with her family, even if it meant dying with them, but knew when her mother made that decision that it would be the last time she would ever see them.  Esther was an orphan at twelve, and struggled trying to survive; being so young and alone, hiding that she was Jewish, working as a nanny or maid.  Even after the war ended, Poland was not a safe or welcoming place for Jews, and Esther no longer saw it as home.  She met and married Abba, a Jewish doctor, and together they immigrated to a place they knew would be welcoming of their religion: Haifa, Israel. They had my mother Ziporah there, but moved to Mount Vernon, a town in Westchester, when she was nine.  They saw America as a place they could both broaden their occupations and family.  They had another child, and Esther, being an amazing seamstress, opened a lingerie store.  New York, for the Elsteins, was a place of growth and escape from a difficult past of religious persecution and degradation.  They hoped, and were successful, in finding a place to raise children in a welcoming environment with good education where they too could explore options of higher achievement.

I had never realized how much war shaped my existence, and I think it’s incredible that both of those countries from which I am descended were in such conflict, yet still produced a solid union.  Its always interesting to watch the expression on someone’s face when I tell them I am of German and Israeli descent, but I know that under the circumstances of both of my parents being primarily American, it’s really not so odd.  Given, it was not easy for Ziporah to convince Esther to be open-minded about her boyfriend, but I think in some way, knowing that he was a good man with pure intentions helped break down her bias.  After all, New York was the destination for all looking for a new start, and everyone could relate to that dream.