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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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The post How the Lower East Side has changed since the 1988 rom-com ‘Crossing Delancey’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Anti-BDS order will test Mamdani on day one
Outgoing New York City Mayor Eric Adams is immediately testing his successor’s position on the boycott Israel movement as Zohran Mamdani takes office, at a moment when the city’s Jewish community remains divided over the next mayor’s priorities and his stance on Israel.
On Wednesday, Adams signed an executive order barring city agencies from participating in Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions efforts, which would pre-empt any moves by city officials to divest from Israel Bonds and other Israeli investments. Mamdani, a strident critic of Israel, has pledged to end the city’s decades-long practice of investing millions in Israeli government debt securities and has said he would order the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York.
Mamdani’s transition team had no immediate comment.
But Adams was prepared for a response. “If the incoming administration wants to reverse” the executive order, then “that is on their watch,” he said.
Why ban BDS now?
Adams announced the measure in remarks at the North American Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism, organized by the Combat Antisemitism Movement, in New Orleans, Louisiana. “You are being targeted,” Adams said. “And we have to be as intelligent and as focused, as strategic as possible. … That’s why I am signing an executive order today to deal with BDS, so we can stop the madness that we should not invest in Israel.”
Fabien Levy, the deputy mayor for communications, said the move, weeks before Adams departs, was “a flag in the ground” to state that the current administration “will not waver in the fight against antisemitism.”
New York City is home to the largest concentration of Jews in the United States. Many Jews view the bonds as a bulwark against the BDS movement, whose co-founder has stated that the goal is to apply economic pressure on Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank and to abolish Israel as a Jewish state.
The city’s investment in Israeli bonds was a flashpoint in the Democratic primary for mayor and in the general election. Mamdani, who co-founded the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Bowdoin College, pledged to publicly back the movement to boycott Israel. In an interview with the Forward in April, Mamdani said he would end Adams’ policies that he regarded as a violation of international law and human rights.
The city’s Jewish voters split in the competitive mayoral election last month — with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo receiving the support of most voters who identify as Jewish and dominating in Hasidic and Orthodox strongholds, while Mamdani got 31% of the vote and swept progressive Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan on his way to a citywide win. A recent poll of 745 American Jews by the Jewish People Policy Institute found that 64% of respondents view Mamdani as both anti-Israel and antisemitic, and 67% believe his election would make New York City’s Jews less safe.
Nonetheless, Mamdani’s positions on BDS and stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resonated with a plurality of voters. Nearly half of Mamdani voters, 49%, said his position was a factor in their support, according to a CNN exit poll.
Levy, who is Jewish and accompanied Adams both on his four-day farewell trip to Israel and to Louisiana, said that the mayor is sending a message about what the city’s values are, “even if hating Israel has suddenly become ‘the cool thing’ by some.” In meetings and public remarks during his swing in Israel, Adams pointed out that Mamdani won with 50.4% of the vote, and that his policies were not popular. Mamdani met with Adams at Gracie Mansion earlier this week, a meeting that was kept private.
Mamdani will also have to decide whether to disband the recently-created mayor’s office to combat antisemitism, which has pursued a measure adopting the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which considers most forms of anti-Zionism as antisemitic. He’ll also need to decide whether to take action on Adams’ new New York City–Israel Economic Council, an initiative to strengthen economic ties with the Jewish state.
What the executive order says
Adams’ anti-BDS order bars agency heads, chief contracting officers and other mayoral appointees with contracting authority from adopting practices that discriminate against Israel or Israeli citizens. It also directs the city’s chief pension administrator and pension trustees appointed by the mayor not to support divestment from Israel Bonds or other assets.
Brad Lander, the outgoing city comptroller overseeing pension fund investments and a Mamdani ally, ended the city’s half-century practice of investing millions in Israeli government debt securities in 2023 when the holdings matured.
At the time, the city’s pension funds held $39 million in Israel Bonds, with a roughly 5% return. Lander, who is Jewish, maintained that he was following the city’s policy of avoiding foreign sovereign debt, treating Israel the same as other countries rather than giving it special treatment in the pension portfolio.
City pension funds also held more than $315 million in Israel-based assets, including nearly $300 million in common stock and over $1 million in Israeli real estate investment trusts.
Mark Levine, the comptroller-elect who is also Jewish, pledged to repurchase the bonds as part of the city’s portfolio. “This has been a rock-solid investment for decades,” he said. “Israel has never missed a bond payment, and a good, balanced portfolio should have global diversity.”
The post Anti-BDS order will test Mamdani on day one appeared first on The Forward.
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Senate Foreign Relations Committee advances Yehuda Kaploun as antisemitism envoy, with some dissent
(JTA) — Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun moved a step closer to becoming the next U.S. antisemitism envoy on Wednesday, as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to advance his nomination in a divided 14-8 tally that reflected the partisan tensions surrounding his bid.
All 12 committee Republicans supported Kaploun, while only two Democrats — Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada — joined them.
Kaploun, a Chabad rabbi, businessman and 2024 Trump campaign surrogate, used his November confirmation hearing to highlight his personal encounters with antisemitism and to emphasize education, particularly about the Holocaust, as the central tool for combating hatred.
But Democrats focused instead on the administration’s approach to right-wing antisemitism, pressing Kaploun on Trump’s failure to denounce the extremist influencer Nick Fuentes after a recent interview conducted by Tucker Carlson. Kaploun avoided direct criticism of Trump, stressing free speech principles while asserting that the administration “is clear in condemning antisemitism.”
The vote came two weeks after 18 House Democrats urged the Senate to reject Kaploun’s nomination, citing his past partisan comments and legal controversies previously reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Shaheen said Wednesday she remained concerned about those remarks but hoped Kaploun would “be above partisanship” if confirmed, according to Jewish Insider.
Speaking soon after the vote at the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s North American Mayors Summit in New Orleans, Kaploun framed the challenge in civic terms.
“Antisemitism is anti-American. Racism is anti-American,” he said. “Myself, the president, the secretary of state, and the entire administration are going to work tirelessly to make sure religious liberty, justice, and restoring respect for humanity for everybody is the goal.”
The post Senate Foreign Relations Committee advances Yehuda Kaploun as antisemitism envoy, with some dissent appeared first on The Forward.
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Campus Frontlines: Professors and Students Continue to Fuel Antisemitism
A pro-Hamas group splattered red paint, symbolizing spilled blood, on an administrative building at Princeton University. Photo: Screenshot
There may be a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but on university campuses globally, antisemitism has yet to end. The encampments that took up space both on the lawns of universities and on the front pages of newspapers may be gone, but the new form of antisemitism, one that student leaders and professors are driving, is not.
The top global universities are expected to train students to become the next leaders in society. That requires complex courses to be taught with accuracy and objectivity.
This is not the case at Princeton, however. One course, entitled Gender, Reproduction, and Genocide, is scheduled for the spring 2025-2026 semester.
Taught by Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, the course is said to explore “genocide through the analytic of gender” and specifically will focus on the “ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
In the course, students will “engage reproductive justice frameworks,” suggesting that Israel is committing genocide by deliberately targeting institutions that would prevent women from becoming pregnant. However, this claim, spread by the UN, has no factual basis.
UN’s fake “genocide report” accuses Israel of intentionally striking Gaza Al-Basma IVF clinic to destroy embryos to “prevent births” and “destroy future of Palestinians.” This claimed attack is a key aspect of the claim. But there is ZERO evidence for any of it. Analysis: 1/ pic.twitter.com/t6n855r5an
— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) September 17, 2025
The UN report relies on a 2024 ABC News story that claimed an IDF shell was deliberately fired at an IVF clinic in December 2023, allegedly destroying more than 4,000 embryos with the intention to “prevent births.”
But even ABC News and its sole source, who was not present at the time, could not verify that an IDF shell caused the damage. In fact, a wide-angle photo of the scene shows a nearby high-rise building visibly damaged, while the IVF clinic itself appears fully intact.
If the course’s entire framework being held up by falsified information wasn’t enough, it also seeks to compare the history of the “genocide” in Gaza to other genocides, including the Holocaust. There is no lack of moral clarity more evident than flattening the Holocaust into a political talking point. No comparison can be made between a war of defense and the industrialization of murder that the Nazis waged against the Jewish people.
Yet, this vile comparison does not come as much of a surprise, considering the professor herself has, in the past, denied the murder and assault of Jews.
Antisemitism from faculty is not limited to academic courses. A Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at University College London hosted Samar Maqusi as part of a series titled “Palestine: From Existence to Resistance.” Although the lecture was advertised as a discussion on the origins of Zionism, Maqusi instead promoted classic antisemitic tropes, including that Jews require the blood of gentiles for making their “special pancakes,” referring to a medieval blood libel in which Jews use the blood of gentiles for making matzah.
Antisemitism at UCL Event With University Research Fellow
A StandWithUs UK student shared this recording with us, exposing awful comments made by a UCL academic during a lecture at University College London.
During a lecture titled “The Birth of Zionism”, delivered by Dr… pic.twitter.com/0RF9Ooz3d6
— StandWithUsUK (@StandWithUsUK) November 13, 2025
Unfortunately, many discussions of Zionism on university campuses come from those with hostile and thus inaccurate beliefs on what it truly means to be a Zionist.
Even in an interfaith discussion at the City College of New York, a Hillel director was told he was “responsible for the murder” of Gazans and caused “disgust” in other participants because he was a Zionist. Activist and student groups further condemned the interfaith discussion. Not in favor of defending the Hillel director whose sole wrongdoing was being a Jew, but because interfaith efforts were causing the “normalization of Zionism.”
In warping the definitions to fit the narrative of the speaker or lecturer, lectures and campus spaces have become breeding grounds for bias and thinly veiled antisemitism.
Antisemitic Student Voices
Student leaders and activists have also frequently isolated their Jewish peers.
At The Harvard Crimson, one column suggests that there are some “visions of Zionism more morally objectionable” and therefore one might “feel wary of staying friends with Zionists.” It should then be no wonder to the author why Jewish students feel isolated on campuses.
This becomes all the more problematic when the students elected to represent the entire student union are not neutral nor representative on complex issues, particularly regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at large.
At the University of Oxford, the Oxford Student Union elected Arwa Elrayess as the incoming president. She has been part of a no-budget documentary on the pro-Palestine protests that erupted after October 7. In one post promoting the film, Elrayess makes the moral equivalence between the Holocaust and the war against Hamas in Gaza by comparing the deaths of Anne Frank and Hind Rajab, a Gazan civilian.
Elrayess is meant to represent all students equally. Still, her posts suggest otherwise and are part of a worrying trend of using Jewish trauma to uncritically discuss Israel’s war.
As the current academic year continues, it remains clear that the issue of antisemitism on campus has not gone away, nor can it be afforded to be swept aside and ignored. When courses are built on debunked claims and student leaders use Holocaust inversion to further their anti-Israel narratives, it becomes evident that this issue is not isolated but rather is systemic, requiring urgent and sustained action.
Jewish students on campuses worldwide deserve the same safety and respect as any other student, and all students deserve an education grounded in truth and accuracy. The moral and intellectual integrity of higher education depends on confronting antisemitism directly, rather than allowing it to fester under the guise of activism or academic freedom.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.