Sukkat Shalom Reform Synagogue

When I was in 10th grade (age 15-16) the big event in Hebrew School (only the Orthodox call it Cheder in America) was the trip to New York City. In exchange for going along to various Jewish places of interest – two of the largest synagogues in the US, a mikvah and cheder in Brooklyn etc. – we got to go on a tour of the NBC Studios (home of television shows like ER, Friends and Seinfeld), a light show at the planetarium and a Broadway show. To be honest, my main memory of the Jewish sites of interest was that some of the boys in the group though it was hilarious to ask everywhere we went how the light bulbs in the high ceilings were changed. Despite numerous trips to New York in the years since, I had never been back to the Jewish sites I first visited on that trip until my visit to New York earlier this year.

On Saturday morning, I attended a service at Central Synagogue

http://www.centralsynagogue.org/)
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Central is one of the older Reform synagogues in the US, founded in 1839.

The 19th century sanctuary building has Moorish influences, though the congregation has always been Ashkenazi rather than Sefardi. In the mid 1990's – between my two visits to the building – Central suffered a devastating the fire. The building was out of use for many months and the restoration was extensive. I am pleased to report though, that it has been entirely successful. Had I not known about the fire, I would not have realised what extensive building works had taken place between my two visits. The Saturday morning service was well-attended. But despite the b'not mitzvah going on that morning, the massive sanctuary still felt a bit empty. However, like many large American synagogues, they also have a dial-in service where people who are housebound or otherwise cannot attend services can phone a special number and listed to the whole service over the telephone.

The service was taken by two of the synagogue's rabbis, one male and one female. There was also a cantor (female) who led the singing and played the guitar at some points. In the choir loft at the back of the synagogue there was a small choir and what sounded a bit like a Klezmer band, complete with clarinet and violin. Needless to say the music was beautiful, but the tunes were mostly unfamiliar to me. The b'not mitzvah girls did a very nice job, but they were only involved in the Torah service. For the rest of the time they sat with their family in the main part of the sanctuary.

After the service, there was an oneg Shabbat in the social hall downstairs. It was less elaborate than many I have been to in the US, but there was tasty fresh fruit in addition to the cakes. Later that afternoon I visited the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. (http://www.tenement.org/).

When I visited the museum on that long ago Hebrew school trip, it had not yet opened to the public and was not set out the way it is today. Today five of the apartments in the tenement building have been set up to reflect the way their inhabitants would have had them in different periods of history. To see the apartments, you must sign up for one of three guided tours. At first I thought this was annoying, but when I saw the small size of the rooms in the apartments and the delicacy of the historical artefacts they contained, this constraint made perfect sense. I chose the tour that focused on the garment industry. My mother's family were tailors from Poland and lived and worked on the Lower East Side in the late 19th and early 20th centuries before they moved to Los Angeles and built their own garment factory there.

At the beginning of the tour the tour guide, herself a Slovak immigrant to New York and resident of the Lower East Side, asked the group members to say where they were from and whether they had any ties to the garment industry or other specific reasons for taking the
tour.

To my surprise, a large proportion of my fellow tour goers were British – either tourists or expats living in the US. Aside from a Dutch woman, the rest were Americans, many with ancestors who had come through New York when they first immigrated to the US. The garment worker tour includes two apartments, one set up as in the late 19th century and the other from near the end of the building's active life as housing in the early 20th century.

Each of the apartments in the building had the same floor plan, a large front room with a window, a middle room where the kitchen was located and a small back room with only space for a double bed and no other furniture. Toilet facilities were shared and located on each floor.

During the 19th century many garment 'factories' and sweat shops, I learned, were actually located in people's front rooms, which was the case in the first apartment I visited. The tenants of the apartment were the owners of the factory and would work there alongside hired staff. Conditions were poor and at the end of the day when the factory workers went home the front room would be converted to sleeping space for the family's children and any lodgers while the parents had the relative privacy of the poorly-ventilated back room.

In particularly big families or those with lots of paying lodgers, even the kitchen might be pressed into service as a sleeping area. The later apartment seemed more spacious since it lacked the industrial equipment of the sweat shop, but the residents would have been poorer.

Instead of owning their own factory, by the early 20th century most tenement dwellers were working in larger factories further up-town. This was the result of increased enforcement of health and safety rules on smaller factories and the increasing industrialisation that made larger factories more profitable. Not only did these later immigrants have less control of their working lives but also longer commutes and, in many cases, unsafe working conditions.

The family on whom the second apartment was based, like the first, was Jewish. The second apartment was set up for a shiva, recognising that the father of the household had died in 1918. After a slightly confused explanation of the rituals of shiva from the guide, supplemented by input from some of the other Jews in the group, the tour was over.
I would highly recommend both of these visits to anyone visiting New York. Central synagogue is architecturally amazing and the service is well-conducted. The Tenement Museum, as well as the surrounding area, is educational and interesting.

One of the other tours is specifically aimed at families and has a more interactive approach, so it is a suitable attraction to anyone capable of climbing the steep tenement stairs.