#nyc jews

[todaysjewishholiday]

22 Sivan 5784 (27-28 June 2024)

Today, New York City has the largest Jewish population of any urban area in the world, with three times as many Jewish residents as Jerusalem and four times as many as Tel Aviv. It’s without a doubt one of the great Jewish cultural centers of the modern world, and is famous worldwide for its varied and diverse population. Today, on the 22nd of Sivan, we celebrate the first Jewish immigrants who helped create that multiculturalism.

Four hundred years ago, Amsterdam was an early European testing ground of religious freedom, having thrown off Spanish rule and celebrated in part by accepting Sephardi refugees. The Dutch were also a mercantile powerhouse determined not to let the British outdo them at overseas colonization.

The Dutch West India Company was established by Dutch merchants to organize colonial ventures in the western hemisphere. The company appointed Peter Stuyvesant as Director General of its overseas operations and Stuyvesant set out for the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam. Ironically, much like the English Puritan settlers who left Amsterdam for Massachusetts because they were distressed by the wide cultural toleration of Dutch society, Stuyvesant yearned for life in the new world in part because he wanted to build a new society in which religious and cultural toleration had no place, ruled strictly by and for members of the Dutch Reformed Church. Stuyvesant had no interest in creating an inclusive religious environment for fellow mainstream Protestants such as Lutherans or new sects like the Quakers, much less Catholics or Jews.

But Stuyvesant’s ambitions of intolerance almost immediately ran up against the ideals and mercantile values of the company that paid his salary. The Dutch West India Company had Jewish merchants among its stockholders and didn’t want to risk offending any potential settlers willing to bring their capital to the new colony. In 5414, the first Jewish settlers arrived. They included a small contingent of Ashkenazim who had come directly from Amsterdam, and a boatload of Portuguese Sephardim who had begun practicing Judaism again in Dutch occupied Recife, and then fled to avoid the Inquisition when the territory was again seized by Portugal. Stuyvesant was horrified, and immediately wrote to the West India Company board seeking permission to expel the Jewish arrivals before a Jewish community took root. The board refused Stuyvesant’s request.

The next ten years, right up until the English conquest of the colony, consisted of Stuyvesant’s repeated attempts to impose restrictions of one kind or another on the Jewish colonists, Jewish protests against these restrictions through the courts or through appeals to Dutch Jews with influence on the company, and a string of letters from the West India Company reiterating the policy of toleration and insisting that Stuyvesant give the Jewish community of New Amsterdam all the rights that Amsterdam’s Jewish community enjoyed.

The 22nd of Sivan 5416 is the date of the board’s third letter to Stuyvesant overturning his attempts to restrict the rights of the Jewish settlers. In classic Dutch fashion for the period, it emphasized the rights of minorities to “quietly and peacefully” engage in business, and to privately practice their religion so long as doing so did not intrude on the public sphere. This final limitation meant that although New Amsterdam’s Jewish community regularly met for prayer and Torah services in each other’s private homes and had two licensed kosher butchers, the first official synagogue wouldn’t be built until seventy-six years after the first Jewish colonists arrived.

So today we celebrate the first Jews of New Amsterdam, who continued to fight for their rights through numerous bigoted attempts to restrict them, and for the victories they won. Their efforts laid the groundwork for a vibrant and thriving city that Jews—and many other minorities— now consider a beloved home.

Today is also Erev Shabbat. Prepare to welcome the sabbath queen when the day is almost over and the sun starts dipping under the horizon.

[tomi4i]

[nycreligion]

Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret.

Detail of publicity poster for movie On Mother’s Day, how about seeing the movie based on Judy Blume’s young adult novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, which was released on April 28th. Its lead question is as relevant today for mothers, fathers, and children as it was when the book was released in 1970. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers have left the city during our pandemic era.…

[kropotkindersurprise]

November 26, 2023 - Over 1500 American Jews with Jewish Voice for Peace and their allies blocked traffic on the Manhattan Bridge in NYC for three hours, demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an end to Israeli occupation. [video]

[nesyanast]

On November 23, 1909, more than twenty thousand Jewish Yiddish-speaking immigrants, mostly young women in their teens and early twenties, launched an eleven-week general strike in New York’s shirtwaist industry. Dubbed the Uprising of the 20,000, it was the largest strike by women to date in American history. The young strikers’ courage, tenacity, and solidarity forced the predominantly male leadership in the “needle trades” and the American Federation of Labor to revise their entrenched prejudices against organizing women. The strikers won only a portion of their demands, but the uprising sparked five years of revolt that transformed the garment industry into one of the best-organized trades in the United States.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Young members of a Black Jewish congregation in Harlem, ca. 1955 .

Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images Instagram

[tikkunolamresistance]

hi i’m back to share a kindness i received today and some somber words:

a jewish tenant just came into the office and gave me a honey cake and prosecco to say thank you for helping her with rosh prep (getting her balcony cleaned up and some paint touch ups before the holiday) and to bring me some positivity and love on the one year anniversary of the October 7th Massacre.

i wasn’t going to say anything at all today because it’s just too much and there are far more eloquent people out here but this moment reminded me that even in our darkest times we have each other so why would i not share my thoughts with all of you.

today as i think about the last year, i am reminded of the strength of our bonds and the lengths we are willing to go to stay together. i am in awe of my community and how we have come together in the twelve months to fight for our ongoing existence in so many ways. i see how we have all been affected by this war so differently and yet we each take responsibility to stay true to our values in the face of hate and violence.

judaism isn’t just an ethnoreligion, we are a family. when one of you hurts i feel it too. when so many of us are hurt, we grieve together. we build back together, we grow together.

a year ago today, October 7th 2023, my friend evyatar david was kidnapped and today, October 7th 2024, is still being held in gaza as a hostage.

if there is ever a day to cry am yisrael chai, today is that day. i need to believe it.

i need him to hear it.

we will dance again.

we will bring them home.

am yisrael chai.

i love you all so fucking much.

please take care of yourself, be safe, and be proud of who we are.

[nimrochan]

When a hundred Israeli hostage posters are vandalized but the one with the dog remains pristine

[liminalweirdo]

“I’ve been masking for the last several years to avoid COVlD infection and its long-term complications. Nonetheless, I caught COVlD in August 2023, and now have Long COVlD. Prior to my infection I wore KN95s; I now wear an N95 in all indoor spaces (including daily subway rides) and in crowded outdoor settings.”   Behind the hot pink KN95 is Michal (outofnapkins), children’s media writer, and recently a co-writer of the jews4maskrights petition.   “Last week, New York politicians floated the idea of a mask ban, which would endanger the most high-risk New Yorkers. Any kind of ban would be dangerous, and exemptions would be unenforceable: a ban would place an undue burden on vulnerable populations (and still healthy people taking reasonable precautions) to prove they deserve masks; it would exclude high-risk people like me from public life; it would keep visitors out of New York, including those who visit for critical medical care; it would further stigmatize masking, and enable stopping and bullying of people who mask. A ban would endanger everyone.   As a Jewish New Yorker at high risk for COVlD complications, I was especially horrified to see antisemitism cited as an incentive for a ban. We would be safer if everyone masked, not if masking were reserved for a select few. A mask ban would place everyone at greater risk, which goes against Jewish law and Jewish values. Contrary to the governor and mayor’s narrative, the Jewish community does not want a mask ban. So several COVlD-cautious Jewish friends and I have created an open letter.   If you’re Jewish, please sign it at  www.jewsformaskrights.com. We’re also @jews4maskrights on social media. Even if you’re not Jewish, please share it!  Share it with your network, with clergy, with organizations you’re active with.   You don’t have to be a regular mask-wearer, or live in New York, to sign! You just have to care about someone who is, and to care about the Jewish value of the sanctity of life. Please help us protect our right to protect ourselves.”

[dostoyevsky-official]

urban voting patterns: white american leftists hate america and voted D, poc immigrants love america and voted R

[low-cole-timothy]

Antisemitism in 30 minutes or less!

NYC Dyke March: we want it to be clear that we recognize the pain of the Jewish community and the rise in antisemitism. We want to make it clear that Jews are welcome and safe within our community.

~~~30 MINUTES LATER~~~

NYC Dyke March: Someone in our team posted saying Jews are safe and welcome in our community. We understand how hurtful this statement is and we want to make it clear that we are NOT antisemitic however, Jews are neither welcome nor safe in our community. We wish to reiterate again the fact that we are NOT antisemitic though.

[nycreligion]

Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret.

Detail of publicity poster for movie On Mother’s Day, how about seeing the movie based on Judy Blume’s young adult novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, which was released on April 28th. Its lead question is as relevant today for mothers, fathers, and children as it was when the book was released in 1970. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers have left the city during our pandemic era.…

[secular-jew]

[kick-a-long]

Apparently nyc is trying to reinstall anti mask legislation that helped break the KKK. the protesters in front of the nova exhibit calling for Hitler and saying if Hitler should be alive to finish Jews off and protesters taking over subway cars looking for Jews has finally passed the point where the city can hold up freedom of speech over public safety.

I hope it passes. It was a law you couldn’t wear masks until 2020 when the pandemic hit, so it shouldn’t be a difficult decision.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Two men talking, 1936.

Photo: Russell Lee via the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

[the-first-man-is-a-cat]

East Broadway and Canal Street, Photographed by Rebecca Lepkoff, 1948