I Love A Parade

Living in a large, multi-cultural city like New York, you get used to the ethnic parades that come through town. In early fall, there’s the German-American parade with grown men wearing too-tight leder-hosen and sidewalk venders selling copious amounts of bratwurst and pretzels. In the heat of the summer, there is the Puerto Rican day parade. Subway cars fill with enthusiastic teenagers dressed in as many variations of the PR flag as possible—tank tops, bandanas, shorts—until they spill into the streets to demonstrate their pride. In the early spring, it’s the turn of the Irish with their bagpipes, shamrock-colored wigs, and Kiss-me-I’m-Irish pins (do those ever work?).

This year, stuck once again in the midst of tipsy, ebullient parade crowds on my way to work, I started to think about the Jews. As in, where is our parade? There is, of course, the Israel parade, an annual event launched in 1964 described by its official website as “a major vehicle for Zionist expression [that] enables our communities to come together in a non-partisan, apolitical show of unity and solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Israel.” Festive as that is, however, it’s not really about celebrating the American Jewish community, which has its own unique identity and history.

So, I started to wonder: if we did launch a Jewish-American parade, what would it look like? Would teenagers stick matzo stickers on their cheeks? Would the shtetl nostalgia come out in force with marching bands playing songs from Fiddler on the Roof and women dancing horas dressed in schmattas and headscarves? Or we maybe would go the more intellectual route with a reading of Emma Lazarus’ poem, “The New Colossus.” Perhaps the Jewish contribution to the New York garment industry could be represented by Tim Gunn and Christian Siriano (they could be made honorary Jews for the occasion…right)?

Even if the parade did devolve into little more than stereotypes of the American-Jewish immigrant experience—and really, what parade doesn’t involve some type of over-generalization—there is no reason that we, too, can’t celebrate our place in American society in style with loud music and tacky clothes. Then again, maybe since bagels are now sold in Dunkin’ Donuts and Oprah gives out ‘Chutzpah awards,’ we don’t need a parade to make our presence felt. Maybe next year I should just crash the Chinese New Year parade. I do love Chinese food. And really, what’s more Jewish-American than that?

Tired of Fighting the Crowds at Ellis Island?

Then I have a suggestion for you...The Tenement Museum. Located on the Lower East Side and housed in the only remaining untouched building in New York City, it is an amazing piece of living history. Unfortunately I don't remember the exact statistics, but from the time 97 Orchard St was open to residents in 1863 until 1941, when it was condemned by the city of New York and boarded up, thousands of families passed through its walls. Since all visits to the museum are guided tours, in large part because of the fragile state of the physical building, I just took one tour that told the story of Jewish immigrants who lived in the building both in the late 1890s when they operated sewing factories out of their apartments and in the late 1910s when such work had been relegated to large garment factories that dotted New York city. The conditions in which these immigrants lived, especially before 1901, when outwardly facing windows were the exception rather than the norm, was pretty incredible. The fact that so many of these immigrants and their families (often large families with 6 people per apartment in a space of a studio apartment today) not only survived but thrived to the point that they were able eventually to move into larger homes, is a testament to the will of the immigrants to carve out a better life for themselves and their children.

I took a few pictures of the outside of the building, but unfortunately couldn't get any of the inside of the apartments. But, hopefully this will whet your appetite to go and see the real thing!

97 Orchard Street