Why We Left, Why We Came book

Sandwiches with pastrami, bagels with lox and cream cheese, blintzes, knishes, and pickles on the side: Jewish delis have a long tradition in the city of New York.  Many of the foods brought by Jewish immigrants in the 19th & 20th century have become iconic foods associated with New York City.   There was one job that was open to all; immigrants of all social standing found opportunities for work as pushcart vendors. The streets of New York's Lower East Side were crammed with pushcarts and stalls and people.    In the mid-19th century, many German Jews   emigrated to the United States.   Later came the influx of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe.    These immigrants hoped to leave behind the poverty and pogroms of the Old World to find a better life in America.   Artist:  Ben Katchor The blintz originated from Eastern Europe from a Jewish community called Ashkenazi. ...

Poverty, natural disasters, political corruption and upheaval caused Italians to go to America. Italy’s agricultural problems were numerous and complex. In the first place, land was concentrated in the hands of a few owners with landless peasants working the soil. Post-war poverty had given a new impetuous impetus to emigration, and many families from Minturna left for the United States. Colomba Romano followed earlier family members to America.  Colomba tells of her first impressions of the United States.   Colomba Romano "I saw a different world, a world in motion, as opposed to the static nature of our lands. A world that moved under the impulse of modernity. And then I was struck by the freshness of the people, something other than the dullness and roughness of our people. They all seemed cheerful, lively, serene and not tired at all. For me that was a nation of justice, of free and smiling people , where it was necessary to work, without wasting time, and where it was a...

 EVICTION IN IRELAND During the famine years in Ireland it is estimated that over a half million Irish were made homeless as a result of eviction. Many Irish rented small plots of land from absentee British Protestant landlords.   Half of all landholdings were less than 5 acres in 1845. The Irish potato famine was not simply a natural disaster. It was a product of social causes. Under British rule, Irish Catholics were prohibited from entering the professions or even purchasing land.   The Cruel British Landlord The Coyles made their livelihood on a small, rented farm of 6 acres in the Fanad peninsula of Ireland, where there was little arable pasture; a hard, barren land.   In April 1869 Eunice Coyle travelled to the local justice of the peace.  Their landlord, the Englishman William Sydney Clements, 3rd Earl of Leitrim, had informed the Coyles that he had decided to reclaim the land and therefore was evicting Eunice and her husband.  The Earl...

Pogroms began after Imperial Russia, which previously had very few Jews, acquired territories with large Jewish populations from the Polish, Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Ottoman Empire from 1772 to 1815. Assassination of Tsar Alexander II Victim of Pogrom, 1906 The event which triggered the pogroms was the assassination of Tsar Alexander II for which s ome bla med "agents of foreign influence", implying that the Jews committed it. One of the conspirators was of Jewish origins, and the importance of her role in the assassination was greatly exaggerated. The Pale of Settlement:   Originally formed in 1791 by Russia's Catherine II, the Pale of Settlement was a region designated for Jews. Very few Jews were allowed to live elsewhere. The area mostly falls within today's Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, and Moldova. Crowded into this small area of Russia, the Jews struggled to find jobs and pay rising rent prices. The word pogrom literally means ...