Disciplines

Jewish Studies

Abstract

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

‘James,’ born 1951, grew up on Narragansett Avenue in the Bronx. He remembers the neighborhood as heavily Italian, with a sprinkling of Jews, Irish, and others. It was primarily small, private homes, many attached like their own. Their own neighbor expressed a dislike of living next door to Jews, directly to his parents’ faces. Yet, James grew up to become friends with the non-Jewish neighbors. He describes their own practice of Judaism as less prosperous and traditional than other parts of the Bronx.

James attend PS 108 with many of the Jewish kids in the neighborhood, as the Catholic kids went to parochial school, before going to Castle Hill Junior High School, JHS 127, where he started meeting people from different neighborhoods. He would go to Lydig Avenue for Jewish foods, though he loved the Italian food of his neighborhood. James says it was not unusual to see Holocaust survivors in his neighborhood. James’ father owned a wholesale food and produce store in the Bronx Terminal Market after serving in WWII. James’ brother was a hemophiliac, and most of the responsibility of his care was on James’ mother. He remembers his varied relationships with his grandparents, particularly the warmth of his maternal grandparents. The family went to Morris Park Hebrew Center, a “Conservadox” synagogue where James went to Hebrew School and was bar mitzvah’d, and where he later had disagreements with the rabbi.

James speaks on the deterioration of the Bronx and demographic shifts that caused older Jews to leave to Co-op City and the suburbs, in addition to the conflicts surrounding the 1968 Teachers Strikes. In his time, they read the Bible in elementary school, fought to incorporate a Hannukah song in the holiday festivities, and protested to wear jeans to Bronx High School of Science. Outside of school, they played sports and card games and went to “the wall.” He describes the contradictions of modern life with traditional Jewish values, such as the kosher status of certain drugs and the importance of marrying Jewish.

James went on to City College before becoming a Legal Aid Society lawyer in the Bronx. He worked there throughout the crack epidemic, seeing the worst period and then the slow recovery the borough has made. He lives with his family on the Upper East Side, including a daughter and a seriously disabled son. James speaks to the great help he has able to get for his son in New York City and to joining a Reform synagogue in the neighborhood, very different from his own experiences growing up. His parents lived in the Bronx until his father passed away, and his mother eventually moved to 14th Street so she could get around easily on public transport and be involved with her grandchildren. James describes himself as still Bronx centric, knowing the Bronx and its inhabitants should not be written off.

Keywords: Narragansett Avenue, Lydig Avenue, Pelham Parkway, PS 108, JHS 127, Bronx High School of Science, antisemitism, race, racism, Italian, Holocaust, Bronx Terminal Market, WWII, hemophilia, health, Morris Park Hebrew Center, white flight, Co-op City, Legal Aid Society, Vitale, Teachers Strikes 1967-1968, Civil Rights Movement, City College, Yiddish, grandparents, immigration, drugs, gambling, intermarriage, folk music, intellectual disability, education, Temple Shaaray Tefila, crime

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