Since 2006, May has marked Jewish American Heritage Month, 31 days to explore and celebrate the impact of Jewish values, contributions, and culture on the nation’s history and character. Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo are communities rich with sites that showcase and commemorate 350 years of Jewish history in our city. That hyperlocal […]
New York is an immigrant city. It has concentrated populations of various immigrant groups making it the largest city in the world for many groups, or sometimes the largest outside of their countries of origin. New York has the largest Jewish population of any city in the world, and at 30% of its population, New […]
Over 35 cemeteries are located throughout Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo, though most have since been covered over and are no longer apparent. Each tells an important story about the history of our neighborhoods. One that fortunately still survives, and is among the most unique in the neighborhood, is the Second Cemetery of […]
Congregation Shearith Israel, now located at 2 West 70th Street, takes pride in being the very first Jewish congregation in North America, where something like half the world’s Jewish population now lives.
On March 31, 1492, Spain ordered that all Jews living within the kingdom either convert to Christianity or be expelled. Portugal did the same less than five years later. Some of those Spanish Jews converted and remained in Spain, either secretly practicing their faith or genuinely converting (even some of those, however, continued to face […]
Once again, another date has come that lines up with an intersection in the Village, but as the calendar starts to climb, our focus also starts to move westwards. In honor of today’s date, we are taking a look at some of the buildings and history on and around the intersection of 6th Avenue and […]
Burial spaces serve a wide variety of purposes: religious, political, socioeconomic. For example, a graveyard might demarcate the boundary of a church or private property, while the kind of interment that was undertaken (burial, cremation, mausoleum) might give insight into the roles and statuses the deceased maintained in their lifetime. It also gives us insight […]
