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Meet 29 remarkable women who lived and worked in the historic Lower East Side
(New York Jewish Week) — The Museum at Eldridge Street (probably) isn’t haunted, but ghosts were what artist Adrienne Ottenberg had in mind when she created the works now on view in the new exhibit at the 1887 landmarked synagogue, “On the Lower East Side: 28 Remarkable Women…and One Scoundrel.”
“When I first came to Eldridge Street, it was falling apart,” Ottenberg recalled of her first visit to the historic building in the 1990s, prior to the 20-year, $20 million restoration completed in 2007. “And it’s magnificent. It’s magnificent even when it’s falling apart. And I thought, oh my god, it’s haunted.”
Now, some of these neighborhood “ghosts” are getting a second life, courtesy of Ottenberg’s mixed-media works of art, which are on display at the museum through May 5, 2024. The exhibit features portraits of 29 notable women, born between the mid-1800s and early 1900s, who lived or worked in the Lower East Side or frequented the teeming immigrant neighborhood— including well-known Jewish figures like poet Emma Lazarus and activist Emma Goldman.
But the exhibit also showcases less famous neighborhood women, like Dora Welfowitz, a garment worker and union member who perished in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and Belle Moskowitz, a social worker turned political advisor to Gov. Al Smith. So little is known about one of the subjects that she is identified simply as “Anonymous Chinese Actor,” highlighted here for her participation in a benefit for Jewish victims of a 1903 pogrom in Kishinev.
Researching and creating these portraits was “a gift,” Ottenberg told the New York Jewish Week, explaining that it gave her the opportunity to reconnect with her Judaism and delve into her own family history. Ottenberg’s father was Jewish (a Freudian analyst, to boot, making him a “certain kind of Jew,” she joked) and her mother was not; all told her parents “really didn’t have much interest in bringing us up in Judaism,” she said.
These days, however, Ottenberg, who lives in Chelsea, is married to someone who is “deeply religious” and attends synagogue every Saturday, though she noted that neither he nor his family ever put pressure on her to meet a certain level of observance. “We do all the holidays,” Ottenberg said, later adding, “All the positive things were there for me in Judaism. The warmth, the family, the celebrations…I feel so lucky in that.”
In “28 Women…,” Ottenberg’s portraits are printed on silk and cotton banners and depict the women against or interspersed with street maps of the Lower East Side. “I always start with maps,” Ottenberg, a cartographer by trade, said. “I believe a map can reveal something. A map is about connections, physical connections, but it’s also about other connections as well: emotional connections, connections through time.”
Unfortunately, time is what many of these women’s stories have been lost to — and that fleeting nature of existence is something Ottenberg considered when selecting the medium for her creations. “I wanted that quality of etherealness and the ephemeral quality, which fabric does,” she said. “If you have something on paper, behind a frame, it doesn’t feel ephemeral. But fabric, when you walk past it and it floats in the air, you can sense the transience of, hopefully not just their lives, which are gone, but our lives as well.”
The idea for the exhibit originated in the fall of 2022, after the museum’s curator and archivist, Nancy Johnson had a discussion with Ottenberg about showing her work. As Ottenberg spent time in the synagogue, the idea of spotlighting lesser-known local women took shape, with the early process informed by a friend of Johnson’s who has “made it a personal passion to find out about women from this neighborhood,” Johnson said.
Ottenberg, according to Johnson, “did a lot of reading and talking and walking.” Both conducted research, with Ottenberg citing the Library of Congress, Google Scholar and the New York Public Library as invaluable to her process.
Ultimately, “the selection process really was who moved me, and who I felt had impact, big and small,” Ottenberg said. She also wanted to ensure that a wide breadth of women were included, such as Helen Tamaris, who used dance to speak to the country’s racial injustice, and Elizabeth Tyler, one of the first Black registered nurses and the first Black visiting nurse at The Henry Street Settlement.
“When we have these temporary shows, I always like to do something that kind of resonates in this space, that has to do with the stories that we tell here and the people who pass through this building and this neighborhood, so this did that big-time,” Johnson told the New York Jewish Week. Ottenberg “really looked for connections to this neighborhood, and it turns out that it was a place where a lot of activist women were, either worked here, or lived here, or passed through here, or were inspired by things that happened here.”
For each portrait, there is a corresponding story of the woman’s life available to hear for free via the Bloomberg Connects app. Written by Johnson, the stories are told in the first-person, and recited mostly by the museum’s docents, former staff or those with personal connections to the subjects. (The story of Mirele Poil, a Jewish garment worker who successfully organized a walkout in her workplace, leading to a union contract, is voiced by her great-granddaughter, Diane Shur.)
Some of the women featured in the exhibit played a critical role in creating the world we know today — and until recently, were unknown to Ottenberg and much of the rest of the world. Take Fania Mindell, who co-founded the Brownsville Clinic with family planning pioneers Margaret Sanger and Ethel Byrne and was responsible for translating materials on birth control into languages like Yiddish and Italian. Ottenberg was “delighted” to learn about Cora La Redd, a Black dancer and singer who lived on Broome Street and performed regularly at the Cotton Club.
Ottenberg said the show is the culmination of a year of work, over which time she “fell in love with these women.” And she’s not the only one: As a reporter toured the exhibit on opening day, a museum-goer thanked Ottenberg, saying, “It was so nice to meet Emma Goldman again. I hadn’t thought about her in a while.”
“Don’t you love her?” Ottenberg asked — and the visitor confirmed she did.
Even the “scoundrel” of the exhibit found her way into Ottenberg’s heart. “I could not resist Stiff Rivka,” Ottenberg said of a notorious pickpocket who flew under the radar by camouflaging herself as a rich woman, dressed to the nines for Shabbat.
“It wasn’t just all these amazing women, doing these incredible things — there were people doing really questionable stuff,” Ottenberg said.
Though 21 of the women in the exhibit are Jews, a wide variety of ethnicities are represented in order to honor the truly multicultural history of the Lower East Side. “The unintended consequences of this 19th-century neighborhood mix of cultures and languages and poverty and reinvention was a Lower East Side that let loose new American ideas about education, equality and justice,” Ottenberg said in a press release. “It was a place women could step into a larger role for the people around them, and they did not ask permission to do it.”
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The post Meet 29 remarkable women who lived and worked in the historic Lower East Side appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Flemish Culture Minister Assembles Expert Committee to Help Tackle Claims of Nazi-Looted Art
Flemish Minister for Welfare and Culture Caroline Gennez pictured during a plenary session of the Flemish Parliament in Brussels, Wednesday 02 April 2025. Photo: BELGA via Reuters Connect
Caroline Gennez — the Flemish minister of welfare and poverty reduction, culture, and equal opportunities — is assembling a group of experts who will develop the framework for a permanent committee that will settle claims related to artwork stolen by Nazis from Jews during the Holocaust.
The six-person expert group will include specialists in law, history, and art history. It will be chaired by Bruno De Wever, a historian and emeritus professor of history specializing in World War II who is also the brother of Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever. The group will focus on establishing a permanent restitution commission to advise on claims.
The move marks the first official step by the Flemish government, which governs the northern region of Belgium, to tackle claims of Nazi-looted art from World War II. “Unlike other occupied countries such as the Netherlands or France, we have remained passive for too long,” Gennez said. “We have to catch up. Art that has been stolen or sold under duress must be returned to its rightful owners.”
The World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO), which addresses the restitution of Jewish property stolen during World War II, welcomed Gennez’s announcement. “This is a long-overdue and meaningful step toward justice for victims of the Holocaust and their families,” said WJRP President Gideon Taylor and WJRO COO Mark Weitzman in a joint statement on Sunday. “We commend Minister Gennez for her leadership and call on Belgium’s federal and regional governments to work together to ensure that looted cultural property is returned, and history is acknowledged. Justice delayed must not be justice denied.”
Roughly 66,000 Jews lived in Belgium before the Holocaust, but the Jewish community in the country now stands at around 29,000, with most Jews living in Brussels and Antwerp, according to the WJRO.
The post Flemish Culture Minister Assembles Expert Committee to Help Tackle Claims of Nazi-Looted Art first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Harvard University Maintains Ties to Terror Proxy Groups, Report Alleges
Demonstrators take part in an “Emergency Rally: Stand With Palestinians Under Siege in Gaza,” amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Oct. 14, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University has ties to anti-Zionist nongovernmental organizations and other entities acting as proxy organizations for terrorist groups that warrant scrutiny and reproach, according to a new “preliminary” report published by nonprofit watchdog NGO Monitor.
Titled, “Advocacy NGOs in Academic Frameworks: Harvard University Case Study,” the report presents copious evidence that Harvard’s academic centers, including Harvard Law School, have come under the influence of Al-Haq and Addameer — two groups identified by the Israeli government as agents and propaganda manufacturers for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization. The NGOs, the report added, influence research and institutional culture, tilting the ideological balance of the campus toward anti-Zionism.
“The report demonstrates the major contribution from prominent advocacy NGOs to the atmosphere of propaganda and antisemitism at Harvard, particularly through frameworks claiming human rights agendas,” Professor Gerald Steinberg, who authored the report alongside Dr. Adi Schwartz, said in a statement. “The close cooperation between prominent NGOs and Harvard academic programs warrants urgent scrutiny. The blurred lines between scholarship and advocacy threaten academic integrity and risk further inflaming campus tensions.”
He added, “In this context, it is important to highlight the urgent need for transparency regarding funding for the NGOs and these Harvard academic frameworks.”
One academic center named in the report is the Harvard François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights (FXB), which was until this year formally partnered with a higher education institution located in the West Bank. The center, it explains, farms its research from an interconnected network of anti-Zionist figures and nonprofits, such as Amnesty International. Moreover, it appears to focus less on improving health outcomes than on politics and Gaza, having devoted 40 percent of its public events to the topic.
FXB director Mary T. Bassett, is particularly problematic, the report alleges.
“A review of her publication record reflects the absence of any expertise on health issues in conflict zones, in general, or regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular,” Steinberg and Schwartz write. “She has consistently displayed an anti-Israeli ideological bias, which is distributed widely through the center’s website and the media. For example, a week after [Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel], she published an ‘End-of-year message’ on the FXB website (since deleted), in which she wrote of ‘the potential genocide facing civilians in Gaza.’”
Another academic center, the Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC), has cooperated in presenting research to a United Nations commission of inquiry that has been widely accused of antisemitic bias. Additionally, an instructor there once worked as a fellow for Amnesty International, a human rights organization that legal experts and Israeli officials have lambasted for pushing anti-Israel “propaganda” and “antisemitic blood libels.” The academics and clinicians there, stationed both to teach and mentor students, use the classroom to replicate their biases, accoding to NGO Monitor.
“The clinic prides itself on finding jobs for its alumni at a variety of NGOs around the globe,” the report says. “In this sense, the clinic acts as a training framework and ‘feeder’ for the NGRO ideological advocacy network.”
Steinberg and Schwartz’s research comes amid concerns that Harvard University has become a hub for antisemitism and illiberalism that is glossed with a veneer of progressive values.
“Harvard is an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institute, as are numerous others, with students being accepted from all over the World that want to rip our Country apart,” US President Donald Trump said last month, writing on Truth Social. “The place is a Liberal mess, allowing a certain group of crazed lunatics to enter and exit the classroom and spew fake ANGER and HATE [sic]. It is truly horrific. Now, since our filings began, they act like they are all ‘American Apple Pie.’ Harvard is a threat to democracy.”
In April, the university released a long anticipated report on campus antisemitism and along with it an apology from interim president Alan Garber which acknowledged that school officials failed in key ways to address the hatred to which Jewish students were subjected following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
The over 300-page document provides a complete account of antisemitic incidents which transpired on Harvard’s campus in recent years — from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee’s (PSC) endorsement of the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities to an anti-Zionist faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic cartoon which depicted Jews as murderers of people of color — and said that one source of the problem is the institution’s past refusal to afford Jews the same protections against discrimination enjoyed by other minority groups.
“I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community. The grave, extensive impact of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas assault on Israel and its aftermath had serious repercussions on campus,” Garber said in the statement that accompanied the report. “Harvard cannot — and will not — abide bigotry. We will continue to provide for the safety and security of all members of our community and safeguard their freedom from harassment. We will redouble our efforts to ensure that the university is a place where ideas are welcomed, entertained, and contested in the spirt of seeking truth; where argument proceeds without sacrificing dignity; and where mutual respect is the norm.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Harvard University Maintains Ties to Terror Proxy Groups, Report Alleges first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Ritchie Torres Defends John Fetterman, Says Israel Support Cause of Attacks Over Senator’s Mental Health
US Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) gives an interview in his office in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 18, 2024. Photo: Rod Lamkey / CNP/Sipa USA for NY Post via Reuters Connect
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) defended Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) amid an onslaught of attacks regarding the latter’s mental acuity, claiming that the mounting criticism against the US senator stems from his support for Israel.
“I know a hit piece when I see one. The only reason for the coordinated campaign against Senator John Fetterman is his unapologetic pro-Israel politics. Let’s call it what it is,” Torres posted on social media on Friday. “As someone who has struggled with depression my whole adult life, I can tell you that if you truly care about someone’s mental health, leaking hit pieces against them is a strange way of showing it.”
Fetterman, one of the most strident supporters of Israel in the US Congress, has been the subject of a series of articles which have called into question his mental stability. An article published in New York Magazine depicted the senator as moody, irrational, and conspiratorial. Additionally, the article took a series of swipes at Fetterman’s stance on Israel, suggesting that the senator’s vocal advocacy of the Jewish state stems from his supposedly deteriorating mental health. It also portrayed Fetterman as racially biased against Palestinians, claiming that in conversations he compared Gaza civilians to “a carton of sour milk.”
Another article published in Politico called Fetterman “increasingly alone,” noting that “few fellow Democrats have rushed to Fetterman’s defense” following the publication of the bombshell article in New York Magazine. The publication asserted that “private chatter about primary challenges” against Fetterman have started and that some Pennsylvania Democrats are suggesting he step down.
Though Fetterman campaigned as a progressive, he has surprisingly emerged as a staunch ally of Israel in the months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks across southern Israel. Fetterman has repeatedly condemned anti-Israel voices within his own party in the US Congress, as well as elite universities for tolerating what he has characterized as antisemitic and anti-Israel hate speech on their campuses.
Fetterman’s staunch support of Israel has incensed progressives and sparked an exodus of staffers from his Senate office. Last year, 16 former campaign staffers penned a letter urging the senator to “join the right side of history” by supporting a “ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas. Several of his top communications staffers have fled to join anti-Israel operations such as the Working Families Party or the office of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Three Republican senators — Dave McCormick (D-PA), Tom Cotton (R-AK), and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) — publicly defended Fetterman, arguing that the Pennsylvania lawmaker has been subjected to unfair political hit-pieces.
“It’s time to put politics aside and stop these vicious, personal attacks against Senator Fetterman, his wife, and his health,” McCormick wrote. “While we have many differences, we are both committed to working together to achieve results for the people of Pennsylvania and make their lives better.”
“John Fetterman and I have our differences, but he’s a decent and genuine guy,” he added.
“The radical left is smearing him [Fetterman] with dishonest, vicious attacks because h’’s pro-Israel and they only want reliable anti-Israel politicians. Disgraceful,” Cotton posted on X/Twitter.
“The media ought to lay off Senator Fetterman,” Grassley added.
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) also gave a vote of confidence to Fetterman, claiming the Pennsylvania lawmaker is “doing a good job, and he’s a good legislator.”
The post Ritchie Torres Defends John Fetterman, Says Israel Support Cause of Attacks Over Senator’s Mental Health first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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