Chag Urim Sameach!

Please join us for a

Freylikhn Chanukah Simchah

at the

Old Broadway Synagogue

With latkes, sufganiyos and the rocking music of...

Lauren Brody (accordion) & 

Pete Rushefsky (tsimbl/hammered dulcimer)

Saturday, December 9, 7:30pm

at the Old Broadway Synagogue

(15 Old Broadway between 125th & 126th Streets in Manhattan)

Free Admission

Sponsored by the Old Broadway Synagogue, State Senator Cordell Cleare and the Center for Traditional Music and Dance

 and Yiddish New York

Join us for a hopping Hanukkah Party at the Old Broadway Synagogue. There will be food, good cheer, not-so-competitive dreydl-spinning, great music and wonderful people sharing the holiday spirit. Music will be provided by klezmer revival pioneer Lauren Brody (accordion) and tsimbl (cimbalom/ hammered dulcimer) player Pete Rushefsky.

Biographies of performers:

Lauren Brody (accordion) is an accordionist, singer, researcher, professional piano tuner/technician and Fulbright scholar from New York City. She is a pioneer of the klezmer music revival in the United States and a founding member of the groundbreaking band “Kapelye”, formed in 1979. She has toured, recorded and appeared on TV and film with Kapelye, and with the seminal all-female ensemble “Mikveh”. Lauren has played the with The Klezmatics, Andy Statman, Michael Winograd, David Krakauer, Alicia Svigals, Frank London, Merlin and Polina Shepherd and many other klezmer luminaries. She was a trailblazer in the domestic Balkan music scene and was the first female gadulka player in the United States. Lauren was an original member of the first Bulgarian traditional folk orchestra “Pitu Guli”, formed in Los Angeles, California in 1970 and has taught and performed at EEFC’s Balkan Camp, Klezkamp, KlezCalifornia, KlezKanada, Ashkenaz, Yidstock, Yiddish New York. Lauren was the recipient of a Bulgarian Government stipend to study Bulgarian folk music during the Communist period, from 1971-73, at the Bulgarian Conservatory of Music in Sofia. As a Fulbright scholar to Bulgaria in 1990 she conducted research on the commercial recording industry and folk music, and released two acclaimed reissues of 78 rpm recordings. Lauren continues to perform, with a particular accent on composing new music for her own Balkan/Klezmer-inspired solo project “Lauren Brody’s Accordion Bytes”, as “Tsoyber” with Yiddish singer Susan Leviton, and with the Bulgaria-based accordion duo Brody-Stoikov.

Pete Rushefsky (tsimbl) A leading performer, composer and researcher of the Jewish tsimbl (cimbalom or hammered dulcimer), Rushefsky tours and records internationally with violinist Itzhak Perlman as part of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, and collaborates with a number of leading figures in the contemporary klezmer scene including Andy Statman, Adrianne Greenbaum, Steven Greenman, Joel Rubin, Eleonore Biezunski, Michael Alpert, Madeline Solomon, Zhenya Lopatnik, Zoe Aqua, Jake Shulman-Ment, Keryn Kleiman, Eleonore Weill, Alex Parke, and Michael Winograd. Since 2006 he has served as Executive Director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, the nation’s leading organization dedicated to the preservation and presentation of diverse immigrant music traditions from around the world. He is a founder of the annual Yiddish New York festival, curated the Yiddish program at the 2013 Smithsonian Folklife Festival and has authored a number of articles on traditional music and culture.

Sanitary Closets and the Old Broadway Synagogue

Not exactly two concepts that you would expect to see in the same title but there is a connection. On August 5, 2007, in his New York Times Streetscapes column, Christopher Gray answered a reader's question about those odd metal bins that are found under kitchen windows in prewar New York City buildings. It turns out that those cast iron metal bins were "sanitary garbage closets," used for storing refuse in summer when it was hot and the garbage would start to smell. One could put the garbage in the sanitary closet, which was ventilated, until it was time take it out. These devices went out of fashion by the end of World War I, and remain as curiosities in some old, unrenovated apartments.

In Christopher Gray's column, he reproduced an ad that was placed by the Montauk Sanitary Improvement Company, which was promoting its product, the "C.S.R. Sanitary Garbage Closet." When I read the article, I looked at the ad, and took a double take when I saw the address of the Montauk Sanitary Improvement Company. It was 15 Old Broadway, the address of our shul today. We knew that there had been a house on the lot when shul stands (what appears to be a two story house with a balcony is visible in a very poor quality 1912 photo of that area in the New York Times) and we even know the name of the person who sold it to the congregation in the early 1920s, but until the article about the sanitary closet, that was about all we knew. And now we know more. Although it is hard to think of 15 Old Broadway as anything other than the Old Broadway Synagogue, the area has been occupied for centuries. Old Broadway gets its name from the fact that it was the original path of Broadway before the modern boulevard of Broadway, as laid out in the 1811 City Plan, was extended to the neighborhood. Indeed, the village of Manhattanville has existed at least since 1807, and perhaps even earlier. In addition to the spirits of those who attended our shul and who are no longer with us, one wonders about those who preceded us. Are their spirits around somewhere as well?
 
Click here to go to an advertisement for the sanitary closets in one of the Quarterly Bulletins of the American Institute of Architects from 1908.