Disciplines

Jewish Studies

Abstract

Beth Anshen Braunstein was born in the Bronx 1954. Both sets of her grandparents immigrated from Russia, with one grandmother stopping in Alexandria, Egypt along the journey and learning Italian, which she used to communicate with Italian families in the Bronx. Her mother’s family lived and had a children’s clothing store on Bathgate Avenue. His father had a store next door and, after they were married, her parents had a health food store off of Pelham Parkway. Braunstein first lived on Bathgate before the family moved to Thieriot Avenue, near Parkchester. In her teenage years she became more religious, attending Temple Emmanuel, the Conservative synagogue in Parkchester, with her sister, before then switching to the Young Israel of Parkchester, which was Modern Orthodox. They attended Hebrew school and junior congregation, including socializing over tea and cake after Shabbat services.

Braunstein remembers the area as primarily Jewish, with most attending public school. She attended PS 102 and Junior High School 127, where her SP classes had a few African American and Hispanic students and the rest were white. She wonders what role, if any, racism had to play in this arrangement. In elementary school she made the music class, learning to play the flute and having the opportunity to gain culture like seeing Leonard Bernstein at Lincoln Center. At James Monroe High School she was in the honors classes, so most of her exposure to different ethnicities was through gym class. By high school she remembers some racial tensions, particularly being asked for money because she was white and assumed to be wealthier. Braunstein also went through a religious shift in high school, attending Jewish summer camp, Hebrew High School, and deciding to become shomer Shabbos.

After attending Queens College, Braunstein was a librarian at various yeshivas in Manhattan and the Bronx. Her time at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School opened her up to the philosophy of social justice, and she took that with her to SAR Academy in Riverdale. Today, after living in a house on Pelham Parkway and raising her family, she still lives in the Bronx in Riverdale, deeply involved in her children and grandchildren’s lives. Her strong Jewish identity has been imparted on the subsequent generations, with all of them being shomer Shabbos, traditional yet modern and open Jews.

Keywords: Thieriot Avenue, Riverdale, Pelham Parkway, Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Parkchester, Co-op City, family, James Monroe High School, Queens College, race, education, yeshiva, social justice, Bathgate Avenue, summer camp, 1967/1968 Teachers Strikes, 67 War, Israel, Holocaust

Download

Share

COinS