Doc Chat, Research at NYPL
Doc Chat Episode Forty-One: Photographing the Rise and Fall of the Lower East Side's Synagogues
On December 16, 2021, Doc Chatters took a before-and-after virtual walking tour of the Lower East Side's historic synagogues.
A weekly series from NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs an NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Forty-One, Lyudmila Sholokhova, curator of the Dorot Jewish Division at NYPL, and Vladimir Levin, Director of the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explored the photographs of Morris Huberland, a passionate photographer of New York City with particular interest in the Jewish Lower East Side. They analyzed Huberland's images as a source for studies of the complex and historical influences of synagogue architecture and discussed the photographer's role in documenting these institutions from their heyday to their decline in the 1960s and 1970s, when many were repurposed or demolished.
Doc Chat Episode 41: Photographing the Rise and Fall of the Lower East Side's Synagogues from The New York Public Library on Vimeo.
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode.
Episode Forty-One: Primary Sources
Our speakers explored several photographs by Morris Huberland, including:
All of Huberland's synagogue photography can be accessed on NYPL's Digital Collections.
Episode Forty-One: Readings and Resources
Hasia R, Diner, Jeffrey Shandler, and Beth S. Wenger Remembering the Lower East Side: American Jewish Reflections (Indiana University Press, 2000).
Jo Renee Fine and Gerard R. Wolfe, The Synagogues of New York's Lower East Side (Washington Mews Books, an imprint of New York University Press, 1978).
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, The Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art, the Center for Jewish Art.
Ellen Levitt, The Lost Synagogues of Manhattan: Including Shuls from Staten Island and Governors Island (Avotaynu Inc., 2013).
Joyce Mendelsohn, The Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited: A History and Guide to a Legendary New York Neighborhood (Columbia University Press, 2009).
Deborah D. Moore, Diana L. Linden, Daniel Soyer, Howard B. Rock, Annie Polland, and Jeffrey S. Gurock, Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of a City and a People (New York University Press, 2017).
The Museum of Family History, "The Synagogues of New York City," 2011.
Gerard R. Wolfe, The Synagogues of New York's Lower East Side: A Retrospective and Contemporary View (Empire State Editions, an imprint of Fordham University Press, 2013).
Additional questions? Email photography@nypl.org to reach our knowledgeable reference team.
More Doc Chats in 2022!
Doc Chat has wrapped its Fall 2021 season. You can catch up on past episodes and explore helpful resources on the Doc Chat Channel of the NYPL blog. We'll kick off another lively and thought-provoking season in the the coming weeks. Make sure you don't miss an episode by signing up for NYPL's Research newsletter.
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