The Twilight of the Jewish Lower East Side

Born in 1954, Elliot Jager grew up on New York’s Lower East Side after it had already ceased to be a thriving Jewish immigrant neighborhood. Jager, who now resides in Jerusalem, considers this corner of Manhattan in its present form, and reminisces about its past:

Growing up, my Lower East Side was overwhelmingly populated by Puerto Ricans. The remnant Jewish community of roughly 20,000—many elderly and poor—was preyed upon by neighborhood louts. Raised Orthodox, I worshipped in the Sassover rebbe’s shtibl, or storefront synagogue, on Eighth Street between Avenues D and C. It was within easy walking distance of our apartment in the Jacob Riis Houses project, though a bit risky for a boy wearing a yarmulke. . . .

Now, well past middle age and from 6,000 miles away, I find myself captivated by David Simon’s television tour de force The Wire, set in contemporary Baltimore. In many ways, it’s led me to rethink how I ought to look back at my own New York City upbringing. True, I was fatherless and poor in a tough neighborhood; but I was blessed with an innately capable mother who taught me values, virtue, and empathy. My community, though moribund and imperfect, was nonetheless committed to mutual aid. Ritual and tradition offered a framework for life.

So while I can’t identify with hipsters hankering after tenement museums, potato knishes, and kosher-style delicatessen, this curmudgeon is not shedding any tears that my Lower East Side has been supplanted by something—apparently—kinder, gentler and, I pray, more humane.

Read more at Villager

More about: American Jewish History, History & Ideas, Lower East Side, New York City

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy