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How the Lower East Side has changed since the 1988 rom-com ‘Crossing Delancey’
(New York Jewish Week) — The classic and very Jewish 1988 film “Crossing Delancey” is one of those movies that feels both extremely of its time and also completely timeless.
Director Joan Micklin Silver’s film has all the classic rom-com trappings: A woman who’s torn between two men (and to that end, two worlds); complaints about how hard it is to meet a man in New York City (as true in 1988 as it is in 2022), and a “mother” figure who knows better (here, a Jewish grandmother known as Bubbe, and in this case, she actually does know better). You could pluck all these specifics and drop them into a present-day film — and, if told with the heart and care of “Crossing Delancey,” still have a pretty good movie.
Yet there’s one thing about the “Crossing Delancey” that fully anchors it in the past, and that is its late-1980s Lower East Side setting. While our heroine, Izzy (Amy Irving), lives and works on the Upper West Side, she pays frequent visits to her Bubbe (Yiddish theater actress Reizl Bozyk), her grandmother, downtown. From the moment that Izzy steps off the train at Delancey Street, she’s transported to another world: a bustling Jewish enclave with market-goers shopping for produce, friends and neighbors in the streets kibbitzing and a Hasidic child sitting outside the subway, enjoying a treat from a local bakery.
This dichotomy between the “Old World” of the Lower East Side and the “New World” uptown is the central conflict of the film: Izzy’s inability to reconcile her Jewish roots with her desire to live a secular, intelligentsia lifestyle, as represented by her two love interests (Sam the Pickle Man and Anton, the self-important author).
However, rewatching the film in the present day, I can’t help but wonder: Would Izzy run from the shtetl if she knew that in a few years, it wouldn’t exist anymore? That due to rising rents and a shift in population, many Jewish businesses would meet their end — or, somewhat ironically, be part of the flight to Brooklyn that began in the early-to-mid 2000s? In some ways, 1988 itself was the beginning and the end: It marked the opening of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, an effort to preserve the neighborhood’s immigrant past, and it was the very same year that Mayor Koch created a new redevelopment proposal for the Seward Park Extension, a canary in the coal mine for the sea change of development the city would see over the next 30 years.
Re-watching the film in 2022, it struck me how the Lower East Side’s bustling Jewish enclave — the same place where my grandparents were born and raised — has since been lost to time, gentrification and re-zoning plans. These days, the neighborhood paints a different picture entirely: giant buildings hog entire city blocks, with construction promising even more sky-high buildings. There’s no specific character to the neighborhood, no story to tell, few places more integral to the city’s fabric than the Delancey-Essex McDonald’s.
Of course, if you’ve lived in the city long enough, you know there’s no getting comfortable. New Yorkers have to, in essence, harden their hearts. We must accept that the local business you love that’s here today very well could be gone tomorrow — even if that business is a Duane Reade. The Lower East Side of today is not the neighborhood of 1988, or 1968 or 1928.
But amongst all of the present-day residential developments, upscale clothing stores and fast food chains, old-school Jewish businesses like The Pickle Guys, Kossar’s Bagels and Bialys and Yonah Schimmel’s Knish Bakery are still thriving. (And, I’d like to think that if you look hard enough, you’ll find some meddling but well-meaning bubbes and yentas, too.)
While we might not be able to fully experience the Lower East Side as the cast and crew of “Crossing Delancey,” here are four places from “Crossing Delancey” that you can still visit, and four that are sadly gone forever.
What Remains Today
Bubbe’s Apartment
154 Broome Street
The interior shots of Bubbe’s apartment, where Izzy fulfills all of her granddaughterly duties, like singing with her grandmother in Yiddish and plucking her chin hairs, were filmed at 154 Broome Street. The 181-unit building sits at the mouth of the Williamsburg Bridge — which is why Bubbe has that spectacular view — and is part of the New York City Housing Authority’s Seward Park Housing Extension. So while you still can visit the exterior of Bubbe’s apartment building today, don’t linger too long — it might weird out the current tenants.
Essex Market
108 Essex Street
This one is a little complicated. The original Essex Market, where Bubbe shows off her Korean-language skills, still stands today. (If you get off at the subway at Delancey Street, you can’t really miss it.) But that iteration of the market closed its doors in 2019 — in order to relocate to a building across the street so big and so glassy it would make Michael Bloomberg blush. In addition to apartments, office space and a movie theater (it’s a truly mixed-use building for our modern times!), Essex Market does boast local, independent vendors, such as Essex Olive & Spice, Porto Rico Importing Co. and Puebla Mexicana food. Per the New York Times, only one of the market’s vendors decided to forgo the move, opting instead for retirement. But you might want to pay a visit to the original Essex Market while you still can — even if only to give it one last look. Following the move, Essex Market initially housed some avant-garde art installations, but it has since seemingly closed its doors for good. According to Gothamist, it’s to be razed to create — what else? — more condos.
Seward Park Handball Court
Essex Street between Grand and Hester Streets
From the moment Sam and Izzy meet, he makes no effort to hide his ardor. In fact, I’d say he uses every weapon in his arsenal to demonstrate his interest — even going so far as to try to impress her with his handball skills when she unexpectedly drops by the court. (You might also clock his CUNY sweatshirt, as I most certainly did.) The handball court is still there, should you decide you want to play a pickup game, but sadly the court’s colorful mural depicted in the film has since been painted over.
Bonus: Gray’s Papaya
2090 Broadway
While this article is focused on the film’s Lower East Side locations, and with good reason, we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that one important New York institution Izzy visits triumphantly remains: The Upper West Side Gray’s Papaya. There, Izzy celebrates her birthday with a friend and a hot dog — the right way to do it, in my opinion — when a woman bursts in singing “Some Enchanted Evening,” for everyone and no one in particular. It’s one of many of the film’s classic New York moments.
What’s Been Replaced
Steinberg’s Dairy
21 Essex Street
When Izzy emerges from that train at Delancey Street, director Silver takes great care to immerse us in this world. The camera stays on Izzy as she walks from the subway to Bubbe’s apartment, passing a host of local businesses along the way. Among them is Steinberg’s Dairy, which once lived at 21 Essex Street. Steinberg’s Dairy, which also had an Upper West Side location, offered staples like herring, egg salad and vegetarian chopped liver for less than a dollar back in 1941. Today, if you’re in the area, you can grab a drink at the punk rock bar Clockwork, which opened in 2013.
Zelig Blumenthal
13 Essex Street
Izzy also takes us by Zelig’s Blumenthal (also known as Z & A Kol Torah), where three older women sit outside, enjoying the sights and sounds around them. Once a popular Judaica store, it unexpectedly closed its Lower East Side doors in 2010 after 60 years in business. At the time, then-owner Mordechai Blumenthal made the decision to relocate the store to Flatbush due to a dwindling Orthodox population and foot traffic in the area, and a landlord who made clear he “wanted him gone.” It’s unclear if the Flatbush location remains open today, but a vintage clothing store called Country Of has taken up its original spot.
Posner’s Pickles (AKA Guss’ Pickles)
35 Essex Street
Posner’s Pickles, as run by Sam the Pickle Man in the film, was never exactly a real place to begin with. Filming took place at the world-famous Guss’ Pickles, which first opened on Hester Street in 1920, before relocating to Essex Street, where there were once over 80 pickle vendors for locals to choose from. After a stint on Orchard Street, Guss’ Pickles followed in the footsteps of so many others by then, leaving Manhattan to open up shop in Brooklyn’s Dekalb Market in 2017. While Guss’ Pickles is today based out of the Bronx, their delicious pickles are available to order no matter where you are in the country, via Goldbelly. Today, 35 Essex Street is home to Delancey Wine — appropriately named, but doesn’t offer possibilities for a slogan like “a joke and a pickle for only a nickel,” as Posner’s Pickles did in the film.
Schapiro’s Kosher Wines
124 Rivington Street
For 100 years, Schapiro’s Kosher Wines proudly served the Jewish community as the only kosher winery in New York City. It’s where Bubbe chides Izzy for her lack of interest in Sam, and while today the pair couldn’t have this conversation outside Schapiro’s, they could grab brunch at the restaurant Essex. Home to New York City’s “longest-running Brunch Party,” Essex salutes its Lower East Side roots with dishes like potato pancakes and Israeli couscous.
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He photographed the defining image of 9/11 – and Jewish history for 50 years
Robert Cumins stood on his ninth-floor balcony in Verona, New Jersey, camera in hand, when he saw a plane heading toward Lower Manhattan. He figured it was just another flight out of Newark. He snapped two quick frames anyway — a plane against a skyline, nothing more — and kept watching.
Then came the fireball.
He had no idea, in that instant, that he had already taken the photograph that would define his career — that he was, in fact, photographing the last seconds of the 65 people aboard United Airlines Flight 175, en route from Boston to Los Angeles. He wouldn’t even remember the plane was in the frame until he saw the developed film an hour later. For that hour, he believed he only photographed the explosion, not the moments before.
Twenty-five years on, Cumins, now 78, still lives in that apartment. He still faces the same skyline — a skyline he has spent 25 years learning not to search for two towers that are no longer part of it.
That photograph made Cumins famous. It is one entry — the most-viewed one, certainly — in a career now entering its sixth decade, a career that has put him, again and again, at the edge of history he did not make.
He straightened Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s bow tie backstage, 10 days before the prime minister was assassinated, then flew to Israel to photograph his funeral. He spent 10 days documenting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. He stood close enough to photograph the signing of the Oslo Accords, the Camp David Accords, the Israel-Jordan peace treaty — three of the defining diplomatic moments of the modern Middle East.
Call him the Forrest Gump of Jewish history.
‘Turn around, kid’
Cumins’ workday on the morning of September 11, 2001, started with a red light.
He was driving down the hill from his apartment, headed out for coffee, when he stopped at the bottom and, out of habit, flipped on the radio. A WCBS helicopter reporter was already mid-report, something about a tower. By the time the light turned green, an anchor had cut in with the words: the World Trade Center.
Cumins turned the car around. He drove back up the hill. The elevator was sitting there, waiting. He rode up to the ninth floor. Before he was all the way inside his apartment, he could already see smoke pouring off the North Tower, 15 miles across the water. He ran for his camera, loading film and changing lenses as he crossed the living room toward the balcony.
He got there at 9:03 a.m. — four and a half minutes after the stoplight turned green. He’s gone over that stretch of time so often he can repeat it without thinking. A slower elevator, and he never gets the shot.
Cumins believes it was his mother, who died about a month before 9/11, who led the way. “Sometimes I say it was a spiritual thing,” he said. “She was watching over me at that red light. ‘Turn around, kid. This is big.’”
A convertible and a Kinko’s
By the time Cumins got his film to the photo lab in New Milford, he had already forgotten about the plane entirely. The fireball, he remembered — that part was impossible to forget. The plane itself, the thing he’d actually pointed his camera at, was gone from his mind completely.
Cumins stood over the technician’s shoulder as the scanner worked backward through the roll of Kodak film — 19 frames total — hunting for the explosion. They found it. Then he asked to see the beginning of the roll.
The first frame showed the plane against the skyline, smoke already rising from the first tower. In the next, a red dot flared just above the plane’s tail. Then came the explosion. The moment took three frames of film. Getting the picture to an editor took the rest of the day.
Cumins called his agent, who reached an editor at People — the magazine wanted the image immediately, as large as he could send it. Cumins had an AOL account with a 16-megabyte limit. Every file he tried to send bounced back, too big.
He hopped in his Audi TT convertible, top up, and sped to a Kinko’s on Route 3 in Clifton, and spent the day with a store clerk, the two of them trying to coax something too large through a connection too small. Confirmation came at 9 p.m., just ahead of deadline. The photo ran on People’s cover as a double-page foldout.
The top of his car stayed closed for weeks after that. “I could not bring myself to put down the roof,” Cumins said, “to enjoy the simple pleasures of light and fresh air during such a dark time.”
Documenting modern Jewish history
Cumins built a career on trust. At 14, he sent a telegram to President John F. Kennedy’s press secretary asking to visit Washington. The press secretary said yes. It wouldn’t be the last time a powerful person said yes to him.
It was almost by accident that his persuasiveness led him into Jewish photography at all. In 1970, a colleague asked him to shoot a Jewish Federation breakfast in Miami. His first Jewish communal assignment — a parlor meeting in a private home in Elizabeth, New Jersey — followed a few months later. It was the first of hundreds. Over the next five decades, he photographed scores of events and made roughly 250 trips to Israel, building trust as he went.
In 1988, that trust bought him 10 days inside Yitzhak Shamir’s daily life — meetings and meals, including moments when no one else was in the room. “He was very kind to me,” Cumins recalled. The photographs ran in The New York Times Magazine, in Life and in newspapers across the globe.
In October 1995, Cumins was backstage at a black-tie reception in Washington when he noticed Yitzhak Rabin’s borrowed bow tie had come loose from his collar. Cumins walked over and fixed it. “I had spent a lot of time previously with Rabin,” he said. “Otherwise, I would never have gotten near his neck.”
Ten days later, Rabin was assassinated. Cumins flew to Israel and back in a single day to photograph the funeral — soldiers saluting the casket, an aide reading from the blood-stained speech recovered from Rabin’s jacket. Two weeks before, at that reception in Washington, he’d photographed President Bill Clinton and Leah Rabin laughing together. Now he photographed Clinton consoling her as a widow — two photos, worlds apart, taken by the same man.
Even after 9/11 made him famous, Cumins kept doing what he had always done. He signed on as one of Hillary Clinton’s photographers during her first Senate campaign. After she won, he asked to come along, at his own expense, when she made her first trip to Israel as senator. He wanted total access. He got it, as he generally did.
On that trip in 2002, in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office, Clinton introduced Cumins to those gathered: “Mr. Cumins, he took the great picture of 9/11,” she said. Later that trip, at a dinner in Tel Aviv, Cumins caught a quiet moment between Clinton and Shimon Peres, one of his more striking portraits.
‘Split second of innocence’
Somewhere along the way, the work of chronicling history gave way to the work of storing it.
What’s left of his archive now sits in a couple of private storage units in New Jersey — roughly 600 square feet of file cabinets and boxes, labeled by project, holding a record of Jewish and Middle East history that exists nowhere else. It has cost what Cumins describes as “a fortune” over the years. He’s hoping a philanthropist will buy the collection and gift it to an institution built to care for things longer than any one person can. He hasn’t found one yet.
In the meantime, he’s still in the same ninth-floor apartment in Verona, still facing the same Manhattan skyline. He photographs it constantly — beautiful sunrises and sunsets, weather rolling in over the water — and he says there’s almost always a plane somewhere in the frame, whether he’s trying to catch one or not.
Cumins has a phrase for what he photographed 25 years ago: “the final split second of innocence” this country ever had. Between the first plane and the second, there were 17 minutes in which the country still believed, or wanted to believe, that this might be an accident.
Then reality hit. The U.S. was under attack. Life would never be the same, especially for the man who captured that moment in history.
Some photographs you take. Others, it turns out, take you — and don’t ever quite let go.
The post He photographed the defining image of 9/11 – and Jewish history for 50 years appeared first on The Forward.
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Portuguese artists pull out of Jerry Seinfeld-headlined festival
(JTA) — Several Portuguese artists have dropped out of a comedy festival in Lisbon headlined by Jerry Seinfeld, citing their support for Palestinians and implying opposition to Seinfeld’s support for Israel.
At least six acts over recent days have canceled their appearances at the MEO Commedia a La Carte Fest, a new international comedy festival in the Portuguese capital. The event from Oct. 29 to Nov. 1 has advertised that it will host Seinfeld’s first live appearance in Portugal.
Though none of the artists who withdrew mentioned Seinfeld by name, some hinted at a boycott against his pro-Israel views. The Jewish comedian has become one of Hollywood’s most prominent advocates for Israel since October 2023.
Actress and comedian Inês Aires Pereira announced on Instagram on Saturday that “one of the names” featured at the festival “persistently defends ideas and acts that I consider indefensible,” adding, “We cannot relativize or normalize a genocide.”
The comedy duo Cebola Mol posted a graphic of themselves with a watermelon, widely recognized as a symbol of solidarity with Palestinians. “We will celebrate justice, freedom and joy with you on another occasion,” they said on Instagram.
The festival announced on Friday that performances by the groups Tributo Pop and Conjunto Cuca Monga were also canceled, but did not provide reasons. Two other acts, comedian Pedro Tochas and visual artist Vhils, shared their cancellations on Instagram without further details.
Seinfeld has aligned himself with Israel during its current conflict in Gaza, following decades of largely avoiding commenting on political issues. He visited Israel in December 2023 to meet with the families of hostages seized by Hamas on Oct. 7 of that year. Since then, he has attracted attention for a series of dismissive remarks toward pro-Palestinian advocates.
During an appearance last year at Duke University, Seinfeld compared pro-Palestinian activists with the Ku Klux Klan, saying, “The Klan is actually a little better here because they can come right out and say, ‘We don’t like Blacks, we don’t like Jews.’ OK, that’s honest.”
Representatives of Seinfeld and producers of the MEO Commedia a La Carte Fest did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The post Portuguese artists pull out of Jerry Seinfeld-headlined festival appeared first on The Forward.
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UK, France, Canada to ban goods from Israeli settlements
(JTA) —
The United Kingdom, France and Canada will ban goods produced in the West Bank settlements and Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told Parliament on Tuesday, explaining that all such communities were deemed by his country to be illegal.
The declaration exacerbated the rising tensions riling the traditionally strong Israel-U.K. alliance. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar warned that these steps stoked antisemitism against British Jews in an on-camera statement to reporters in Jerusalem.
Sa’ar charged that the measures were a politicized hostile action deliberately taken ahead of Friday’s Jewish New Year holiday, with an eye toward influencing the country’s Oct. 27 elections.
Israel, he said, is responding by closing the British Consulate in Jerusalem that services Palestinians. It will also remove British representatives from the International Gaza Support Center in Kiryat Gat and halt the British training of Palestinian Authority security forces. He added that Israel would bar the entry of 12 British politicians and other nationals involved in anti-Israel activity.
France and Canada have also announced a ban on the import of settlement goods, Miliband told parliament. He noted that the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Spain and Norway have either banned goods or in the process of doing so.
In the same address, Miliband affirmed Israel’s right to exist, reflected on his own Jewish roots and rejected the notion that there was a connection between the policy steps against West Bank settlement activity and the safety of British Jews.
What is motivating the U.K., Miliband said, is “a deep sense of shame about what has unfolded in Palestine under the eyes of the international community” as well as Israel’s “clear intent to bury the Palestinian state.”
In response, he said, the U.K. “will introduce an import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied [Palestinian] territory” as part of a “new comprehensive sanctions regime” that will be put in place within nine months.
This will include, he said, “action against specific companies and individuals who provide services, such as construction, infrastructure, financing or real estate for settlement expansion.”
To those who “finance or facilitate illegal settlements, let me say this, you will face the full force of U.K. sanctions,” Miliband warned.
Miliband clarified that the ban would not affect the export of religious items or life-saving Israeli medications. He explained that trade with the settlements was minimal and that the greater impact would be the sanctions on services.
As part of declaring the ban, Miliband said that the British government is also adopting the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion that all Israeli settlement activity over the pre-1967 border was illegal.
But others in Parliament pushed back against Miliband’s declaration. MP Richard Tice of Britain’s right-wing Reform party said that the sanctions were a grave mistake that would “embolden the scourge of antisemitism against British Jews on British streets,” endanger ties with the United States and lead to “tit for tat” sanctions from Israel.
Miliband shot back that “no British Jew is responsible for the policies of the Israeli government and it behooves all of us to make sure that there can be no confusion about that,” saying that Tice’s statement “fell foul” of that goal.
The U.K. action is the latest escalation in tensions between Israel and the Labour-led British government headed by Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who took power in July.
The prior government, led by former Labour Premier Keir Starmer, had already angered Israel by recognizing Palestinian statehood in 2025, suspending licenses for the export of arms to Israel and freezing talks toward a free-trade agreement.
France and Canada are also announcing a ban on the import of settlement goods, Miliband told parliament. He explained that the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Spain, and Norway have either banned goods or in the process of doing so.
In concert with Miliband’s appearance at Parliament, Britain and 11 other countries issued a joint statement pledging “their intention to introduce national and/or support European restrictions on trade in goods with settlements which are illegal under international law.”
Those other countries were Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.
The 12-country bloc said it was taking this step to maintain the viability of the two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, describing the situation in the West Bank as “rapidly deteriorating.”
In its statement, the bloc stressed that it was taking this step amid an “unprecedented level of settler violence and settlement expansion, including the unacceptable decision to publish tenders for the E1 settlement project.” That project is seen as cutting through land that would render a Palestinian state unviable.
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