Steven Margolis Branford CT 12/30/2012 I have several remembrances going back to the 60’s of my time at the JCH of Bensonhurst. I am from New Haven – the New Haven JCC and the “J” had a fierce basketball rivalry. I was captain of the New Haven JCC varsity basketball team. When I stepped off the bus after the two and one half hour ride from New Haven I saw a… Read More »JCH of Bensonhurst
Submitted by Judith Greenwald Among our early members was Civil War hero Brigadier-General Leopold C. Newman. At the age of 22, already a lawyer and engaged to be married, he volunteered for duty in the 31st New York Infantry Regiment. Newman fought in seventeen engagements and was promoted for valor to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. On May 3, 1863 he led his company in the charge of Mary’s Heights in… Read More »Kane Street Synagogue’s Heroic Congregant
Home Is a Place Over the Bridge Brooklyn informs most of writer and television producer Gary David Goldberg’s work. Goldberg, probably best known for the television series Family Ties, grew up in Bensonhurst in the 1940s and 1950s with his grandparents, parents, and older brother. They were three generations living under one roof. (Goldberg’s grandparents, immigrants from Russia and Poland, lived downstairs in the apartment building.) In 1991, he created… Read More »“Brooklyn Bridge” Teleplay
A Leader Among Many: Rabbi Jacob S. Kassin of Bensonhurst Submitted by Sarina Roffe Rabbi Jacob S. Kassin was born in 1900 in the old city of Jerusalem and is a descendant of an unbroken chain of rabbis dating back to the mid-16th Century. Of Aleppan descent, he became the first Chief Rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community in Bensonhurst in 1933. A qualified Dayan (judge), shochet, mohel and kabbalistic… Read More »Rabbi Jacob S. Kassin of Bensonhurst
