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'The whole city was your neighborhood'

Nathan Reiss chronicles the Jews of the Bronx at Monroe lecture

By Jason Cohen

The Jewish Historical Society of Central New Jersey continued its lecture series Oct. 13 with a presentation on "Jews of the Bronx," at the Monroe Township Jewish Center.

Nathan Reiss, the featured speaker, is the president of the Jewish Historical Society of Central New Jersey, a retired Rutgers University professor, and a genealogist. He was born and raised in the Bronx.

The founder of the Bronx was a Dutch immigrant named Jonas Bronck, Reiss said. 

"He had the first farm, in what we know as the Bronx which was around 1639, this was before there was New York, this was New Amsterdam," he said. "The Bronx at that time was virtually empty, it was wide open land."      

However, the first Jewish person to live in the Bronx was a farmer by the name of Phillip Issacs, Reiss said.

"The land where he lived is now where the Bronx Zoo is located," Reiss said.

Reiss knows much of the history of the Bronx, but much of his research on the Jews of the Bronx came up empty, he said.

"There were so many Jews in the Bronx and I lived there for a long time," Reiss said. "I even paid a visit to the Bronx Historical Society which has lots of books, but when you look in the books, there's hardly any mention neither of the Jews in them nor of any other ethnic group."

Reiss said the first people that came to live in the Bronx were primarily people who were working on construction of the bridge tat connected Manhattan to the Bronx.

"It was called the High Bridge," he said.

At first, Reiss said, the Bronx was sparsely populated.

"Brooklyn and Manhattan were very highly populated, the Bronx was empty, but basically what happened was New York City bought up an area of empty land," Reiss said. "And they caused it to become a borough. New York is one of the few places to be made up of more than one borough."

In order to make getting from the Bronx to Manhattan accessible for everyone, he said the city's transportation system had to be improved.

"They already built a public transportation system and an elevated train system in Manhattan," Reiss said. "Of course, they wanted to make the Bronx accessible to the rest of the city, so the first thing they did was extend the Third Avenue El, which was the elevated train, they extended it straight up to the Bronx and all the way up into the northern Bronx."

Reiss grew up on Walton Avenue right across from the Bronx County Courthouse, he said.

"My old neighborhood was right around Yankee stadium," Reiss said.

People often moved from the decrepit living conditions of the Lower East Side of Manhattan to the Bronx, Reiss said, many of whom were Eastern European Jews.

"The other significant thing they did was, regardless of where you went on the subway, you would pay the same fare," Reiss said. "They wanted people to settle in these areas and get out of these slums in the middle of Manhattan, and the way to do that was they wouldn't have to pay any extra fare when they went to work in Manhattan. All these people who wanted to get out of the slums where they were living on the Lower East Side took advantage of this opportunity."

As more people continued to move to the Bronx, the Jewish population continued to rise as well, he said.

"So what happened is neighborhoods developing very rapidly developing along Elm Street and those were the first Jewish neighborhoods in the Bronx," Reiss said.

There are records that show in the Bronx before 1900 there were 14 temples, between 1900 and 1910 there were 21 temples, between 1920 and 1930 there were 62 temples, between 1930 and 1940 there were 35 temples, and overall until 1962 there were 200 temples in the Bronx. 

After being kicked out of Europe for preaching communism in 1916, Leon Trotsky moved to the Bronx.

"It's the only place in the world that not only that had the original commander of the Red Army, but also a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- Colin Powell, who is also from the Bronx," Reiss said.

The first synagogue he attended was called Hope of Israel, Reiss said.   

"I still remember as a little kid there was a sign that said in great big letters Billiards," Reiss said. "When you went in there -- I didn't even know what billiards were as a 5-year-old -- on the first floor there was pool, and when you went inside there was a long narrow flight of stairs that went to the top and when you went to the top there was a synagogue."

Reiss's family then joined Young Israel of Concourse where he attended Hebrew school, he said.

"It's now a gospel revival center," he said. "It was a thriving synagogue. My Jewish education was better than most kids'. Most Jews that lived in the area were pretty much assimilated."

The decline of the Bronx began in 1960, he said. 

"There were a lot of things that happened that caused the decline of the Jewish community," he said. "A lot of it had to do with the Jews of the Bronx themselves. If you look at the demographics, the people that were living there were second generation or at least third generation Americans."

Reiss said people during that time had the chance to send their kids to college for free and further their children's education, but they chose not to.

"At its peak, about half the people in the Bronx were Jewish," Reiss said. "In 2003, a book I looked at said there were only two synagogues left in the Bronx, but I think the number just from what I know from my own personal knowledge is a bit larger than that," he said.

Certain parts of the Bronx, like Riverdale and Pelham Parkway, retained their Jewish character, Reiss said.   

"Riverdale, which geographically is part of the Bronx, never really went downhill," he said. "It's a much higher income neighborhood."

Adelaide Zagoren, of Monroe, said she really enjoyed Reiss's lecture.

"I thought he was fascinating and obviously everyone enjoyed hearing about their old hometown," Zagoren said. "There must be a lot of people that live around here that live around here that came from the Bronx. It was very successful and we are very proud of him. And pleased to hear about the background of our neighboring communities."  

Harriet Weiss, of Old Bridge, said although she doesn't come from the Bronx she found it very insightful.

"We were fortunate to get someone so knowledgeable to speak," Weiss said.

Ira Donnenfield, a resident of Old Bridge, said he grew up in the Bronx and worked for the Social Security Administration as a field worker there for many years.

"I got to know and appreciate what the Bronx once was," Donnenfield said.

Tina Schwartz, of Monroe, who is originally from the Bronx, said Reiss brought back good memories of growing up on a street with all of her relatives.

Reiss said that besides growing up in a very Jewish area with is family, he loved his freedom.

"Not specifically a Jewish thing, but had tremendous amount of freedom to do things that we wanted to do," Reiss said. "You could go to the zoos and the museums and you didn't have to talk to your parents. The whole city was your own neighborhood."