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Do you know how many Americans die yearly in car crashes?...
...How many?




BostonWalks

Integrating the urban, modern Jewish American city experience with its historical sites and themes in such locales as Boston, MA, Portland, ME, East Bay and Providence, RI, and the Upper West Side of Manhattan, NYC.




Question: What's a political mensch?

Answer #1
Answer #2



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Celebrating 353 Years


of Jews in America



The Ten Commandments

Click here to peruse Michael Alan Ross' original lyrics
TRY TO SMILE AND LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR

considering what Mr. Ross labels the 11th Commandment
Love your neighbor as yourself.



Now available!


The Jewish Friendship Trail Guidebook

6 Self-Guided Walking/Bicycling Jewish Boston History Tours

Covers Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge

Softcover 198 pages with maps & b/w photos

Print out this
Book Order Form
to order now!



Now available!


The Ten Commandments Guidebook

Ways to Self-Struggle with Classic Morals

In Song, Poetry, and Prose

Covers 10 Commandments Plus One Other!

Softcover 153 pages with practical suggestions pages!

Print out this
Book Order Form
to order now!








Boston Walks The Jewish Friendship Trail presents




Synagogues


of


Boston's North End




Copyright © Michael Alan Ross, 1997-2007.
All Rights Reserved.

Email: BostonWalks

Telephone: 617-489-5020













For the 6.3 thousand Eastern European Jews who settled in Boston's North End between 1870 and 1920, forming a minyan for daily prayer was one of their priorities.

In the course of these fifty years, at least five minyans (prayer groups) evolved into North End shuls (synagogues). Talmud Torahs and heders (Hebrew schools) also developed nearby.

Three buildings which housed these shuls and Hebrew schools still exist today in the North End.



287 Hanover Street

A building commonly known as Cockerel Hall, was home to both a synagogue and to a Talmud Torah.



4 Baldwin Place

and



3 Jerusalem Place

once served as Hebrew Schools and today are nondescript North End alleyway sites. None of these three buildings have plaques.

Beginning in 1875, Boruch Isaac Reinherz, intermittently functioned as hazzan (cantor) and shochet (koshering butcher) for Congregations Chevra Tehillim, Shomre Shabbos, and Beth Abraham. When the latter two congregations merged to become Shomre Beth Abraham in 1886, Moses Z. Margolies, an experienced rabbi and student of the Talmud, became the combined shul's spiritual leader.

Rabbi Margolies, known by the acronym "RaMaZ," also later acted as rabbi for both Congregation Beth Israel (the Baldwin Place Synagogue) - the largest shul of Boston's North End - which for 31 years (1889-1920) was situated at the end of Baldwin Place, and for Congregation Shaarei Jerusalem which for more than 40 years (1903-1945) stood at the end of Jerusalem Place (formerly Carroll Place). Neither of these buildings are extant today.

During the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century, the Baldwin Place Synagogue in particular was considered a central address for traditional Judaism in Boston. In addition, this shul's women's auxiliary created and maintained the nearby Cooper Street B'not Israel Sheltering Home for newly arrived immigrants.

While Jewish backgrounds of 1st generation Eastern European male immigrants to Boston's North End typically were traditional; survival here meant balancing priorities among work, a wife and children (who, initially, were dependents at home), education and Americanization, organizations (clubs, unions, etc.), and shuls/Jewishness.

Work for a sizable number of our 1st generation Eastern European Jewish male immigrants was in the garment industries. Quite a few of the men were tailors, dressmakers, and hat and cap makers.

Other common livelihoods included carpentry and woodworking, shoemaking, clerking and accounting, and painting and glazing. There also were Jewish butchers and bakers, locksmiths and blacksmiths, tinners and metalworkers, watch and clock makers, tobacco workers (particularly, cigar rollers), barbers, furriers, bookbinders, photographers, upholsterers, and jewelers. Not to leave out peddlers and merchants, teachers, and musicians.

In practice, then, due to the demands of earning a living; the men's principal Jewish expressions included making a minyan (prayer quorum), sharing Friday night shabbos dinner, celebrating simchas (weddings and bar mitzvahs) and yontifs (holy days), and feeding the pushkes (the charity boxes). In addition, some of the men participated in a North End Talmud study group (chevra shas) and a burial society (chevra kadisha).

1st generation Eastern European Jewish women immigrants and children constituted approximately half of the North End's Jewish population. A majority of these women were housewives and mothers. While most were not formally educated; many of the women either had or developed skills such as sewing, cooking and baking, cleaning, shopping, child care, and Yiddishkite (performing the rituals of a traditional Jewish wife...from making Shabbos to going to a mikvah).

Some of these 1st generation Jewish women immigrants earned money by sewing piece goods at home, by taking in boarders, and by running (by themselves or with their husbands) small retail shops. It was the daughters of the 1st generation who, along with their fathers, more often became full-time workers in the various garment industries.

Jewish children in the North End were quickly enrolled in public schools, Hebrew schools, and clubs. Jewish girls could participate in Lina Hecht's and Golde Bamber's Hebrew Industrial School. Jewish boys sometimes earned money as newsboys.

When the North End's Baldwin Place Synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, disbanded in 1920; the shul's aron kodish (the holy ark) made of hand-carved mahogany was transferred to Temple Bnai Brith in Somerville, Massachusetts where the aron kodish still is in use today.


JOIN US ON ONE OF OUR LARGE GROUP DISCOVERY WALKS!


We've walked what little remains of the once thriving Jewish communities of Boston's West and North Ends and the South End. Even today, with little of them standing, the few surviving sites make for a fascinating walking or bicycling tour which we lead by arrangement. Click here on BostonWalks for further information or contact us, BostonWalks, via email or by telephone: 617-489-5020!


Links to Boston and New England





LINKS


Walks Around Boston Links



New Interpretations of our Ten Commandments Links






FOR STARTERS: Let's Arrange Your Large Group (25 persons minimum) Walk or Bike Ride.
CONTACT BOSTONWALKS AT: (617) 489-5020!


Copyright © Michael A. Ross, 1997-2007.
All Rights Reserved.

Email: BostonWalks
Telephone: 617-489-5020




Available 2007
BostonWalks' and The Jewish Friendship Trail
Large Group (25-55 participants) Walking Tours


  • BostonWalks' walking tours can be arranged for groups of twenty-five (25) to fifty-five (55) participants.

  • For further information:
  • Email BostonWalks or
  • Telephone 617-489-5020!




  • From the Charles River, a red, white, & blue political agenda flows!




    Now available!


    The Jewish Friendship Trail Guidebook

    6 Self-Guided Walking/Bicycling Jewish Boston History Tours

    Covers Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge

    Softcover 198 pages with maps & b/w photos

    Print out this
    Book Order Form
    to order now!



    Now available!


    The Ten Commandments Guidebook

    Ways to Self-Struggle with Classic Morals

    In Song, Poetry, and Prose

    Covers 10 Commandments Plus One Other!

    Softcover 153 pages with practical suggestions pages!

    Print out this
    Book Order Form
    to order now!









    "West End House" circa 2004
    Begun by 35 Jewish boys in 1903!
    Click here to connect with more of
    Boston's Best!














    Copyright © Michael Alan Ross, 1997-2007. All Rights Reserved.

    Email: BostonWalks

    Telephone:617-489-5020
















    Chazak Ve-ematz
    be strong and resolute

    (Moses words to Joshua in Deut. 31:7)









    Boston Walks

    The Jewish
    Friendship Trail



    Sing Sense to America


    Are you ready to participate in the '08 presidential election
    by singing some salivatingly satirical and serious song lyrics?

    If so, try these on your tongue: