By Rebecca Szlechter<\/p>\n
On a breezy Sunday morning in the Bronx, about 20 people gathered near the 182nd-183rd Street subway station to explore a side of the neighborhood near Fordham University that is easy to miss today \u2014 its Jewish past.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are so many layers of history that people aren\u2019t aware of,\u201d David Herszenson, a physician and licensed city guide, told JNS at the end of the Aug. 30 \u201cJewish life\u201d walking tour, which ran for two hours.<\/p>\n
Herszenson told attendees that the Bronx used to be called the \u201cJewish borough.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was almost half Jewish,\u201d he told the group, on a tour organized by the Fordham Center for Jewish Studies as part of its Bronx Jewish History Project.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe south Bronx was majority Jewish for a while,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Herszenson\u2019s tour, which he has been leading since the pandemic, didn\u2019t actually cover the campus of Fordham, a private Jesuit school, but it snaked around the neighborhood, including sites that used to be synagogues, movie theaters, businesses and other landmarks, all of which offered glimpses of the Jewish community that once lived there.<\/p>\n
Outside Love Gospel Assembly, a church with two Corinthian columns on the facade and an inscription quoting \u201cthe Lord\u2019s voice cries to the city\u201d from Micah 6:9, Herszenson drew the attention of participants to two Jewish stars embedded in the stones above some ironwork.<\/p>\n
The stars, dwarfed by a large cross closer to street level and traces of the former Concourse Center of Israel, were easy to miss, and participants appeared to be surprised when the guide pointed them out.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey retain some Jewish elements,\u201d Herszenson said of the church, which he said still has the original ark inside. He passed around photos of architectural elements in the interior.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually emailed them asking if we could go in, but they didn\u2019t reply,\u201d he told the group.<\/p>\n
Herszenson also said the site of the former Reform synagogue Tremont Temple Gates of Mercy, which was constructed around 1920 for a congregation that traces its roots back 10 years prior.<\/p>\n
That synagogue, which served German Jews, was converted to a church and has since been demolished. Herszenson shared a photograph of the ark doors, which are preserved at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in Manhattan\u2019s Chelsea neighborhood.<\/p>\n
He said that the synagogue used to be an ornate building, which came to be surrounded by a high-density apartment development, and which is now being developed for housing.<\/p>\n
In addition to the two former synagogues, Herszenson told participants about business and entertainment venues that once drew Jewish crowds, and which have since faded away and been replaced by other kinds of stores.<\/p>\n
Stanley Kubrick used to go to movies at theaters, including the former Loew\u2019s Paradise Theatre, which inspired him, according to Herszenson. He showed the group the facade of the building, a city landmark which still contained the Loew\u2019s name, set in front of a stylized sun and beneath a clock.<\/p>\n
Herszenson spoke about the ice cream parlor Krum\u2019s, which used to be across the street from Loew\u2019s and which once had five soda fountains and 17 \u201csoda jerks,\u201d or people operating the soda fountains.<\/p>\n
On Saturday nights, crowds became so large that people would form a mass several feet deep trying to reach the counter, Herszenson said.<\/p>\n
The tour also took attendees into a Fine Fare supermarket, where signage from the former Dollar Savings Bank and five murals could be seen behind food aisles.<\/p>\n
He told participants that the murals depict \u201cerecting the first stone house,\u201d the \u201coriginal bridge connecting the Bronx to Manhattan\u201d (the Kingsbridge), \u201cwelcoming settlers at Fort Schuyler,\u201d \u201cearly settlers gathering at the first community house\u201d and \u201cJonas Bronck buying the land from the Indians.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mural of the fort, the last of the five to be installed, was placed in 1957, Herszenson said.<\/p>\n
Herszenson said that Fordham developed from colonial-era settlements into an urban neighborhood, as transportation infrastructure expanded, including New York and Harlem Railroad in the 1840s, and the Third Avenue elevated line and the Grand Concourse, in 1909.<\/p>\n
By the 1920s and 1930s, Fordham had become a bustling commercial area, where residents could find shopping, religious institutions, entertainment, transportation and banking within a relatively small area.<\/p>\n
After World War II, the Bronx transformed with new public housing and highway construction and, in the 1970s, with widespread fires and disinvestment. What was once a largely Jewish and Italian neighborhood also changed in its demographics and now has become more black, Puerto Rican, Dominican and, most recently, West African, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople say that the subways made the Bronx and the highways killed it,\u201d he said on the tour.<\/p>\n
As the tour began, Herszenson asked participants to introduce themselves and share why they had joined. Some said that they were curious, and others said that they had personal connections to the area or a broad interest in history.<\/p>\n
I-Fong Wu, 62, of New Jersey, said that although he is not Jewish, a close Jewish friend inspired him to learn more about Jewish history.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m curious about the history of Jewish people in a major New York area,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope to take away an understanding of why they chose to be here and why they chose to move away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Herszenson said that getting reactions like Wu\u2019s is one of the best parts of leading tours.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love doing this,\u201d he said. \u201cI love the Bronx, and I love its history.\u201d<\/p>\n
He began exploring the Bronx more deeply during the pandemic, walking through different neighborhoods and researching former businesses and other historic sites.<\/p>\n
He enjoys introducing tour participants to places they might walk past without appreciating, including, on his recent tour, the former Alexander\u2019s department store site, the Wagner Building and the former Jacob H. Schiff Centre, a Jewish center.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do hours and hours of research and people can learn everything I learned in two hours,\u201d he said. \u2014JNS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Rebecca Szlechter On a breezy Sunday morning in the Bronx, about 20 people gathered near the 182nd-183rd…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-342169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}