I haven’t paid enough attention to East Broadway in my wanderings, so I hope to rectify the situation as we edge into 2019. I was on the thoroughfare a few days ago; it had been called Chatham Street, but was renamed in the 1800s as NYC continued its mania to recall Broadway in disparate neighborhoods; Laurens Street was renamed West Broadway in the same century, and there’s a Broadway Terrace in Inwood and a Broadway Alley in Kips Bay. East Broadway traverses Chinatown and the Jewish sections of the LES. Your webmaster found himself in a packed Chinese restaurant in Bay Bridge, Queens on Christmas, and I must have been the only old Irishman in the joint.
Here’s a handsome building, the Mesivtha Tiferes Jerusalem Yeshiva, in buff and brown brick at 141-147, just off Strauss Square where East Broadway meets Canal Street. Established in 1907, this is one of the oldest yeshivas in America. It moved to this yellow-brick 3-story building in 1922. The all boys and men’s school offers classes from kindergarten through advanced rabbinical studies post-high school. Its Rabbinical Seminary was established in 1937 and is a leading center for Jewish scholarship.
Alumni of the yeshiva serve as rabbinical, professional and lay leaders in Jewish communities nationally and internationally.
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12/26/18
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Headed by Rabbi Moses Feinstein between 1937 and 1986, an immigrant from Russia to the Lower East Side and one of the most revered rabbis in orthodox Judaism
I took a tour last summer with the woman who wrote a book about allow the old Synagogues, I think her last name was Levin. So many…all you have to do is look up, into the doorways of many buildings to see remnants. I believe the book is on Amazon if you’re interested.