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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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If Trump makes good on offering Canadian Jews refugee status, will they come?
(JTA) — TORONTO –- Sari Watson was too afraid to attend Yom Kippur services. Concerned by rising levels of antisemitism in Canada, she was safely at home 25 minutes away when a gunman charged at her childhood synagogue.
“My internal alarm has been going off, and you begin to think about escape routes or backup plans,” said Watson, 39, who lives in Quinte West, Ontario, about 15 miles west of Belleville, where the attack during Kol Nidre on Sept. 20 culminated in a shootout that left the gunman dead and one policeman hospitalized. “The only reason I wasn’t at synagogue was because I have been terrified of this exact situation, or worse, happening.”
Florida Sen. Rick Scott, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and President Donald Trump himself, all Republicans, have proposed extending refugee status to Canadian Jews who fear the spike in antisemitism in their country.
“’It’s so amazing to know that the Republicans understand the level of antisemitism we’re dealing with here,” she says. “President Trump gets the climate and the danger.”
Still, Watson has mixed emotions about the thought of leaving her home country. “I want to stay here and fight for our safety in Canada,” she said. “The option to come to the U.S. is really important, but we shouldn’t have to need it.”
The Trump administration has imposed stringent restrictions on immigration and is carrying out mass deportations, but is inviting South African whites – and now, potentially, Canadian Jews – refugee status. Critics accuse Trump of playing politics with refugee status, but some Canadian Jews see it as a lifeline.
Talk of Jews feeling compelled to leave Canada gained momentum last week when a well-known Jewish journalist posted publicly on social media about getting a foreign passport. Neil Herland, a newsreader for the national broadcaster, the CBC, wrote on X about his encounter with pro-Palestinian protesters outside Toronto’s Meridian Arts Centre, where Yom Kippur services were being held. Herland said that, concerned about rising antisemitism in Canada, he recently acquired his Austrian passport as a safety precaution. (Independent Press Gallery, a press freedom advocacy group, condemned the CBCfor reportedly suspending Herland after pro-Palestinian advocates lodged a complaint about his post.)
Some Jews are past the precaution stage. Sheldon Shugal, 64, and his wife are currently researching how to move to the United States.
“If I were able to claim refugee status to come to the U.S., I’d do it without hesitation,” said Shugal, who lives in Calgary. “I used to love our country … but it’s just not a place that I want to continue to live in.”
Shugal, a property manager, said he has seen increased antisemitism in Canada in the wake of the deadly Hamas raid in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the war it launched. He said he and his wife have been struggling to overcome the complexity of acquiring an American visa.
“The Jew-hatred is no longer rising in Canada, it’s fully immersed here,” says Shugal. “It’s not the country I grew up in. I don’t feel affinity to Canada anymore.”
Shugal’s concerns are reflected in the findings of B’nai Brith Canada, which recently reported a 9.3% increase in antisemitic incidents from 2024-2025. According to this report, online harassment has surged dramatically, while Ontario saw the greatest total number of antisemitic incidents out of all the Canadian provinces and territories.
Antisemitic attacks have proliferated. In March of this year, Toronto synagogue Temple Emanu-El was shot at following Purim celebrations. The next week, two more Toronto synagogues were hit with gunfire over Shabbat, causing damage to the buildings, though no injuries were reported. In late April, assailants allegedly fired replica guns at “visually-identifiable” members of the city’s Jewish community, with one of the men sustaining minor injuries.
Shugal said reports of antisemitism have rattled him as well as the pro-Palestinian encampment his daughter encountered on her campus. “There hasn’t necessarily been anything I’ve personally experienced. It’s just what I’ve seen throughout the country,” Shugal said.
Lauren Cohen, an immigration lawyer based in Boca Raton, Florida, said that since the Oct. 7 attacks, about half of her Canadian clients cite antisemitism as a primary reason for wanting to leave Canada for the United States.
“In the past three months, I’ve noticed a very significant increase in the number of people between 55-70 who are contacting me,” said Cohen, who is originally from Toronto. “They have grown children or no children, and they have a little bit more money,” she said. “They want freedom.”
Antisemitism is not the only consideration for her clients, Cohen said. “The economy’s struggling. It’s not just antisemitism,” she said. “That might be the straw that broke the camel’s back, but it’s so many other factors as well.”
Cohen founded the Jewish Community Collective, an organization which helps Jewish Canadians and “displaced Jews” find connection in America. Another option for Jewish Canadians looking to make a new home in the States is Lech L’Tulsa, a program cosponsored by the Jewish Federation of Tulsa that helps settle Jewish newcomers, “designed to help Jewish Canadian citizens relocate to Tulsa.”
Some Canadian Jews do not see greener grass south of the 49th parallel, however. They point to Canada’s more expansive social safety net as one of the many reasons life in the Great White North” is better.. “Unquestionably, the answer to whether I’d consider moving to the States is emphatically ‘no,’” said Lawrence Stanleigh, a dentist in Calgary.
“I believe our country is a better place to live,” said Stanleigh, 67. “The U.S. doesn’t have a public healthcare system. Why would I want to leave our safety net for the U.S.?”
Stanleigh said the idea that the United States is a safe haven for Canadian Jews is misleading. “As bad as things are in Canada, I think they’re worse in the United States,” he said. “It’s not a better place for education or for healthcare. The whole idea of moving there for our safety is a fantasy that the Republicans believe in.”
Substituting the United States for Canada is shortsighted, Stanleigh said. “There are failures on behalf of Canadian leaders to stand firm in their support of the Jewish community,” he said. “But as bad as things are, I think they’re worse in the States. Our American cousins are blithely unaware of the problems they have at home.”
Anthony Housafather, a Jewish Canadian Member of Parliament representing a riding, or electoral district, in Montreal, is skeptical of the notion that the United States would offer Jews better protection.
“I think this idea is inspired by some right-wing Jews who have decided that their mission is to attack the Canadian government, and to make it look like somehow, Donald Trump and the Republicans are the savior of the Jewish people,” Housefather said in an interview.
Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney are at a low point in their relationship, with tensions over trade intensifying – and Trump seeks opportunities to take potshots at Carney.
Housefather also does not believe that leaving for the United States is gaining traction among Canadian Jews. “There are some people who have decided that Florida or Israel is a greener pasture,” he said. “But that does not represent a significant or a predominant view, and the idea that everybody’s leaving Canada is actually not true.”
The increase in antisemitism is universal – and should be treated holistically, he said. “What I do agree with is everywhere there’s a very serious problem with antisemitism,” he said. “Everywhere Jewish communities don’t feel safe, and all levels of government need to keep doing more.”
Housefather encourages his Jewish countrymen to remain proud Canadians. “Antisemitism has grown to an unacceptable level in this country,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that you should have less pride in being Canadian because there’s a loud, angry, small group of Canadians trying to make us scared.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post If Trump makes good on offering Canadian Jews refugee status, will they come? appeared first on The Forward.
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UK foreign secretary: The threats to Israel don’t justify its treatment of Palestinians
(JTA) — British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband called Palestinian suffering in Gaza and the West Bank a “stain on the conscience of the world” at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool, his most blistering attack on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government yet.
His attack comes a number of weeks after he told the British Parliament that his country planned to reset its relationship with Israel and ban trade with its West Bank settlements.
In an initial nod of support to the Jewish state, Miliband, who is Jewish, described how three years ago “Hamas’ murderous attack on Oct. 7th united the vast majority of the world in rightful condemnation.”
The Labour Party, he said, will battle antisemitism and “will always recognise the threats Israel faces and stand emphatically against those who seek its destruction. But this cannot justify the suffering the Netanyahu government has inflicted in Gaza and the West Bank.”
He had a message, Miliband said, for the millions of people who had been moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people: “We hear you. You were right.”
He said the government would call out “ethnic cleansing by the settler terrorists in the West Bank,” the “evidence of war crimes in Gaza” and Israel’s “illegal occupation of Palestine.”
Britain remains committed to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said, and to helping prevent the destruction of that option.
Miliband repeated his government’s pledge to ban West Bank settlement products and prevent his country’s financial institutions, construction companies and service industry from operating in Israeli-controlled areas beyond the pre-1967 lines.
Laying out the global challenges, he spoke of Iran, Russia, climate change and AI, but he focused on Israel more than on any other issue.
He recalled his Jewish parents’ experiences fleeing and surviving Nazi persecution and finding sanctuary in Britain, “a country that was a beacon of light against the darkness.”
Now, as then, Miliband said, Britain has to confront global challenges by fighting for its values, “the values my parents saw in Britain, values which today are more important than ever.”
His parents did not think it was enough to simply live in a country with values: “They taught me that I have a responsibility to fight for them too,” Miliband said as he spoke of the idea of survivor’s guilt.
“I think my parents had something else. Survivor’s responsibility,” he said, adding that it’s a message passed to the next generation to leave the “world a better place than we found it” by never being “bystanders to oppression and injustice.”
The Palestinian ambassador to Britain, Husam Zomlot, responded to Miliband’s speech on X: “Thank you to the millions of people in Britain and around the world who stood firmly on the side of justice, on the side of Palestine.”
Israel currently has no ambassador posted in the U.K. Tzahi Braverman, Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, was appointed to the post but has been unable to take it up while under criminal investigation for obstruction of justice, fraud and breach of trust and is barred from leaving the country.
Tensions have been rising between London and Jerusalem. Until the Gaza war, Britain had been one of Israel’s staunchest allies. Ties frayed under the former Labour government of Keir Starmer, which last year recognized Palestinian statehood. Relations have been even more strained since Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s new government was sworn into office in July.
In the aftermath of the U.K.’s decision to ban imports of Jewish West Bank settlement products, with France and Canada joining that move, Israel took a number of retaliatory measures. These included closing the British consulate in Jerusalem and removing its representatives from the International Gaza Support Center.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post UK foreign secretary: The threats to Israel don’t justify its treatment of Palestinians appeared first on The Forward.
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Republican incumbent Rep. Lawler and Democrat Conley spar over antisemitism, Israel in NY debate
(JTA) — Incumbent U.S. House Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York, faced off against Democrat Cait Conley in a fiery debate on Monday night, sparring over their respective commitments to tackle antisemitism in America.
The friction was immediately palpable when the candidates, who are vying for New York’s hotly contested 17th District seat, one of the most Jewish districts in the country, jousted over everything from military assistance to Israel to the most effective ways to combat religious hatred.
“Israel is our greatest ally in the Middle East,” Lawler said. “They are a beacon of hope and opportunity and freedom and democracy.”
“They have not committed a genocide,” he continued, adding that some of his Democratic colleagues have “wavered in their support” for the country.
Lawler called out New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat, on his anti-Israel positions, describing him as someone his “opponent says she respects.”
In response, Conley stressed that she is “absolutely disgusted by the rising antisemitism that is happening within both political parties,” describing the phenomenon as “fundamentally un-American.”
She then voiced her support for the bipartisan Jewish American Security Act, legislation that was introduced first as a Senate bill and then as a House companion bill co-led by Lawler.
When Lawler then pressed Conley on whether she denounced not only antisemitism but Mamdani himself, she deflected the question. But he continued to push the matter, noting that he denounced Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, right-wing personalities who regularly lash out against Israel and who Jewish organizations have said cross the line into antisemitism.
Conley responded by noting her “firm disagreements with members of the DSA,” referring to the Democratic Socialists of America faction that includes Mamdani.
When Lawler reiterated that she had not condemned Mamdani, Conley accused her opponent of failing to denounce President Donald Trump, whom Democrats revile as a bigot, and said he voted “with him 100% of the time” — a claim Lawler decried as “provably false.”
Lawler rattled off multiple bipartisan efforts with Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat from New Jersey, to advance relevant legislation such as the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2025.
“Jewish Americans are under attack in this country, and we have a responsibility to stand up and ensure everyone’s safety,” Lawler said. “No one should be in fear of going to synagogue.”
Conley likewise recognized the rising hate against members of the Jewish community, stressing that this hostility has “absolutely no place here in America.”
New York’s 17th Congressional District, the lower Hudson Valley region north of New York City, is home to one of the biggest Jewish populations nationwide, as noted by News 12 debate moderator Tara Rosenblum.
“There are few places in the country where the conflict in the Middle East hits closer to home,” Rosenblum said.
More than one in five voters in the district, which includes all of Rockland and Putnam counties, as well as parts of Westchester and Dutchess, are Jewish, according to Rosenblum. She also noted, however, that there are growing Muslim communities across the Hudson Valley.
Asked whether there were any circumstances under which they would vote to withhold those funds, the candidates both voiced their support of Israel.
Conley, an Army veteran who served multiple combat tours in the Middle East, emphasized both Israel’s “right to exist” and the importance of ensuring “the safety and security of the people of Israel.”
“I also criticize Netanyahu when I believe he’s doing the wrong thing for Israel and for America,” she added.
Conley stressed that like her opponent, she would have voted against a House amendment that sought to cut $3.3 billion in annual aid to Israel. The amendment, authored by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, would have “stripped assistance packages and other forms of reconstruction,” Conley argued.
Lawler, meanwhile, described U.S. assistance to Israel as “in our interest, especially with respect to our military personnel in the region.” He noted not only the significant number of bases in the Middle East, but also the 700,000 Americans living in Israel.
Both candidates agreed that Israel’s actions in Gaza do not constitute a genocide and that U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state should be conditioned on the disarmament of Hamas. Where they differed was on the expansion of West Bank settlements. Conley opposed such growth, while Lawler said that Israel is operating within its legal authority.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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