Jewish New York was once defined by pushcarts and peddlers; immigrants arriving through Ellis Island; densely packed kosher restaurants; lively Yiddish theater and daily newspapers in Yiddish and Ladino. 

Those days are long gone — but that period is just some of the Jewish history captured in documents and ephemera collected and carefully cataloged by the Dorot Jewish Division at the New York Public Library. Their collection includes the very first edition, in 1897, of the Yiddish daily newspaper Der Forverts, matchbooks from Jewish businesses like Schapiro’s Kosher Wines, scripts of plays from the Yiddish writer Sholem Asch and photographs of the Lower East Side from more than 100 years ago. 

A photograph of street life on the Lower East Side taken by Morris Huberland. (Courtesy Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs)

For decades, New Yorkers could request to see such items during a visit to the New York Public Library’s main branch. 

Now, as part of a belated celebration of the Dorot Jewish Division’s 125th anniversary — which was marked officially in November 2022 — the library has curated and digitized select materials from the division’s archives for a new online exhibit. Now, anyone, anywhere can virtually scroll through thousands of years of Jewish history both local and global, from amulets found in Jewish tombs in Jordan dating to the fifth and sixth centuries to a 1903 guide welcoming new Jewish immigrants to the U.S. 

You can read more in an article by Julia Gergely  published in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency web site at: https://tinyurl.com/2rcv33jd.