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 on Villager: http://thevillager.com/2015/12/31/seeing-the-les-plainly-for-what-it-really-was/