Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the Lower East Side, a neighborhood in Manhattan that was a center of Jewish immigrant culture in the 20th century.
Lower East Side
The Latest
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Opinion Memo to All Those Who Are Visiting the Tenement Museum To Fight About Immigrants
As a trustee of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, I am proud of our 28-year history of celebrating the lives and cultures of immigrants — what brings us together as Americans, not what divides us. This is an apolitical mission; from the museum’s founding, we have neither endorsed a single candidate for public office…
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Breaking News Lower East Side Developer Paints Over 43-Year-Old Jewish Mural Paying Tribute to Forward
A Lower East Side real estate developer abruptly painted over a 43-year-old Jewish heritage mural Monday — sparking outrage among neighborhood residents and one of the artists who created it nearly a half century ago. Sara Krivisky was a teenager when she helped paint the mural, which features themes including the Holocaust, immigration, sweatshops —…
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News Sheldon Silver’s Handpicked Successor Is Trounced in New York Primary
The electoral thwacking suffered by the handpicked successor to New York State Assembly leader Sheldon Silver looks like the last nail in the coffin of the old Lower East Side political order. Alice Cancel, a longtime Lower East Side activist who won a special election in April to complete Silver’s forfeited final term, came in…
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News How One Funeral and 2 Dead Men Walking Herald Epic Shift on the Jewish Lower East Side
There was more than one corpse in the sanctuary of the Bialystoker Synagogue on the day that Heshy Jacob died. The July 23 funeral for the Lower East Side’s last Jewish power broker drew rabbis, politicians and real estate developers to the imposing stone building just off Grand Street that serves as an anchor for…
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Culture The Forward Building: From Labor Citadel to Luxury Condos
At the corner of East Broadway and Canal, in the heart of Manhattan’s now chic Lower East Side, young men and women lined up on a recent Saturday night, waiting patiently to be seated at Mission Chinese Food, a downtown fixture decorated with a bright red awning and thick curtains. With faces turned to the…
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Culture They Were the Good Kids on the Lower East Side
The three alter kockers looked much younger than their years when they greeted each other at the Seward Park Library on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Mentally sharp, with considerable color in their skin and dyed hair, they seemed giddy that they’d been chosen to be the first formal interview subjects for The New York Public…
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Culture Jewish Psychics of the Lower East Side — and Why We Need Them
I usually fall into the cynic camp when it comes to psychics or any sort of mystical readers. Or at least I used to. In July, I visited a reader named Monte Farber in East Hampton. He was a source for a story I was writing, and I dropped by to introduce myself. He operates…
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Culture The Lewisohn Sisters Put the Ooomph in Do-Gooding
Manhattan’s Lower East Side of yesteryear conjures up images of dense and inhospitable streets filled with immigrants determined to get on with the business of becoming American, as well as with social reformers equally determined to accelerate that process. Though well intentioned and good hearted, these reformers, we’re apt to think, were often tone deaf…
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Fast Forward Why neo-Nazis marched in Ohio this weekend, and almost every weekend in the US
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Opinion The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
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Opinion Just about every interpretation of Trump’s narrow election victory is wrong
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News Your complete guide to Trump’s Jewish advisers and pro-Israel cabinet
In Case You Missed It
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Culture At 95, Shaindel Schreiber is still dispensing babka and advice on the Lower East Side
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Fast Forward Fighting antisemitism is ‘an American issue’ not a Democratic or Republican one, says House Democratic leader
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Fast Forward Netanyahu now faces arrest in several Western countries following ICC warrant
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Film & TV Bonhoeffer biopic tells of a pastor turned would-be Hitler assassin — but is the story true?
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