A Special Father’s Day Walking Tour of the Lower East Side

This Father’s Day, spend some time with your dad and the Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy to see where immigrants went to shul, and how a new generation is carrying on these traditions. Your guide has spent his entire life on the Lower East Side, and will give you an “insiders” perspective.

The walking tour starts at the Bialystoker Synagogue, a magnificently renovated former Methodist church believed to be a stop on the Underground Railroad. It is a rare treasure, and one of the few synagogues surviving worldwide that has hand-painted mazaales – signs of the zodiac – historically seen in Ashkenazic synagogues throughout the world. It is now the largest active congregation on the Lower East Side. Learn why there is a lobster painted on the ceiling.

The LESJC is the only touring organization with access to this shul, and a portion of the proceeds of this tour are returned to the site to help sustain communities.

Discuss Beth Hamedrash Hagadol – once home to the first and largest Russian Jewish Orthodox congregation in the United States, as well as the only Chief Rabbi of America. Walk the streets of Historic East Broadway. Sites to be viewed and discussed include: The Educational Alliance, Henry Street Settlement, The Forward Building, Seward Park, Straus Square and more.