Sarina Roffe, interviewed May 30, 2012, Brooklyn Borough Hall: My most favorite memories from growing up as a Jew in Brooklyn are playing street ball and street games with the Italian neighbors that I had growing up in Bensonhurst. I used to live on 69th Street between 21st Avenue and Bay Parkway, and all of the kids, and all my cousins would go to the Marboro Theater, and we would go for matinees… Read More »Growing Up In Bensonhurst
Brooklyn synagogues are important centers for Jewish communities. For generations, synagogues in Europe and the Middle East were primarily for adult male prayer and study. In the US, they began to expand their roles to include other spiritual, cultural and educational activities for the whole family. The synagogue became a place to congregate, to celebrate life cycle events and social occasions. Many synagogues began to build social halls where a… Read More »Synagogues and Jewish Centers
Bazaar in Bensonhurst, 86th Street east from Bay 32nd Street, Brooklyn.
Emigration to New York began in about 1907, although a few arrived earlier. The Syrian Jewish community in New York originally consisted of two groups, Jews from Aleppo and Jews from Damascus. At first the convergence of the two groups was not easy. The Aleppan Jews, or Halabis, thought themselves superior, largely due to their history in Syria as a center of Jewish learning. They followed the traditions of Aram Soba. The Damascene Jews, or shammies, prayed in a different house of worship, although the two groups lived side by side, socialized and intermarried.
After living on the Lower East Side, in the 1920s the Syrian Jews began moving to Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood, where they established a cemetery (first in Queens, then on Staten Island), two synagogues, a Talmud Torah and a ritual bath. The Damascene Jews prayed at Ahi Ezer Synagogue on 71st Street, led by Rabbi Murad Maslaton, while the Aleppan Jews prayed at Magen David Synagogue on 67th Street. With few exceptions, the families follow Orthodox Jewish religion, following Jewish law and the traditions and values of Sephardic and Syria tradition. They are highly respectful of their elders and of family values. In 1933, Rabbi Jacob S. Kassin, a Talmid Hakham from Jerusalem and a descendant of an unbroken chain of rabbis dating back to 1600, was hired as the community’s chief rabbi.
Brooklyn is famous for its writers, as well as its visual and performing artists. Much of the latter talent has been forged through the public high school system. “SING,” an annual Brooklyn high school tradition of student-run musical theater production, which was started by a music teacher at Midwood High School in Brooklyn in 1947, continues today across the city. Students develop their skills in choreography, singing, lighting, building sets,… Read More »The Arts
Brooklyn-born, Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche, died on Tuesday in Danbury, Conn. He was 83. The cause was complications of a recent stroke, said Michael di Capua, his longtime editor. Mr. Sendak,… Read More »Remembering Maurice Sendak
By JOHN LELAND , New York Times Published: March 9, 2013
Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times
At age 6, he was a budding yeshiva student, in white shirt and black hat, with little contact outside the Orthodox Jewish world. At 16, he discovered some things he liked better, punk rock and drugs: marijuana, LSD, eventually crack and heroin. At 26, on the Thursday before the holiday of Purim last month, he was back among the faithful, sort of: side curls flailing, knees jackknifing up around his torso, leaping, crouching, shouting a Scriptural message from the Book of Ramones: “Avraham was a punk rocker.”
It was a little after midnight at the Ocean Parkway Jewish Center in Kensington, Brooklyn, and the crowd in a narrow, fluorescent-lighted side room watched Yishai Romanoff, now the singer for the band, Moshiach Oi!, in varying states of catharsis and confusion. As always at this weekly gathering, it was a mixed lot, at odd angles to Orthodox Judaism. Some in the audience were refugees, or “X-O’s”; others were formerly secular Jews wanting in.
Read More »Moshiach Oi! Merges Orthodox Judaism and Punk Rock
By Malya Levin, The Jewish Daily Forward, March 12, 2013
“How could a kosher restaurant have opened in Park Slope without my knowing about it?” I unceremoniously asked of the first person to greet me as I walked into Chagall Bistro, who happened to be Dan Gicquel, the restaurant’s owner. Ten minutes before, I was settling in for a Sunday night dinner of hard-boiled eggs when a scan of my Facebook newsfeed turned up a friend’s posting: “New kosher restaurant on 5th Avenue and 5th Street!” I shared the news with my husband, who joined in my incredulity that this critical information had slipped past the vigilant watch we keep over all of brownstone Brooklyn’s Jewish news. A moment later, our phone rang. It was a foodie friend of ours who happened to be driving through the neighborhood. We shared the news, called the Facebook friend who had started it all, and a few minutes later, the four of us were scrutinizing the meat menu posted outside of the restaurant’s doors, its kosher certification prominently displayed, and I was demanding answers.
Read More »Kosher French Fare Comes to Brooklyn’s Park Slope
Sarina Roffe: Culture and tradition are passed down from one generation to another in a family through foods. Esther Cohen Salem was the first to own a Syrian catering service in the Syrian Jewish community. In 1920, Esther and her two younger brothers, Sam, 13, and Joe, 11, came to America from Beirut sharing a passport issued by the French Troops of the Levant. Esther and Selim built a kitchen… Read More »Traditions in Food: Esther Cohen Salem
The devastating storm surges and high winds that wreaked havoc on so many
The devastating storm surges and high winds that wreaked havoc on so many as Hurricane Sandy made landfall on the East Coast may well be the largest catastrophe many of us have ever experienced, yet while the disastrous superstorm left a gargantuan trail of destruction in its wake, it still proved to be no match for the most powerful force of all – that of human resilience and the belief that everything in this world happens for a good reason.
Residents of coastal communities including Manhattan Beach, Far Rockaway the Five Towns, Belle Harbor, Long Beach and Seagate are struggling to cope with the staggering losses many of them have endured. Yet despite the lack of housing, running water, electricity and the loss of all their earthly possession, the indomitable spirit of the Jewish soul continues to put its unwavering trust in G-d’s benevolence, vowing to rebuild once again.
Read More »Sandy Wreaks Havoc
The Brooklyn-born and raised, world-acclaimed superstar will perform a concert on Thursday, October 11th, in Brooklyn at Barclays Center, the new 19,000-seat sports and entertainment venue. Streisand will be making a triumphant return to her native borough. Raised in the Flatbush neighborhood and a graduate of Erasmus Hall High School, Streisand will perform publicly for the first time in Brooklyn. Streisand stated, “Brooklyn to me means the Loew’s Kings, Erasmus,… Read More »Babs Brings it Back to Brooklyn at Brand New Barclays
