The first Jews arrived in Manhattan from Curacao in 1655 but were not welcomed. Peter Stuyvesant was a rabid anti-semite who tried to ban them. His employers, the Dutch East India Company, had Jews on its board, and he was overruled. Eventually, Manhattan's Lower East Side became the fertile ground which nurtured American Jewish culture.

For decades, it was more congested than Calcutta, India. The peddlers and
shops on Orchard Street gave rise to Bloomingdale's, Abraham and Strauss,
and others. Lillian Wald, pictured above, began the first visiting nurse service in the United States. By the twentieth century, the American woman was regarded as the world's best dressed, largely because of the Russian Jewish garment industry. Also, the lecture will take a look at Katz's Deli, Yonah Shimmel, and Streit Matzos after one hundred years.

This lecture is a joyful look at Jewish life in New York in the first third of the twentieth century. It includes great photos and soundclips of classic Yiddish and klezmer tunes plus memorabilia and fun items.