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7 of 8 found the following review helpful:
An Accessible, Authentic View of the Old Family Neighborhood Jan 31, 2008
By Henry Neugass
My late mother was born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in the early 20th century. That's about all I know about her early life, so I was eager to read Sylvia Schildt's book as soon as it became available.
I learned that Brownsville was quintessentially American with an overlay of Old-World Jewish culture. While I read, I kept thinking, "If a bunch of Jewish emigrants showed up in my hometown, something very similar would have evolved." That fundamental familiarity is comforting.
I feel the author makes the Brownsville Jewish culture accessible, not at all on a pedestal, but right down here on the kitchen table among the breakfast dishes.
Her text is terse and staccato. This portrays Jewish Brownsville as composed of individuals, all with their own motivations, tastes, methods, and aspirations.
Throughout, Sylvia Schildt demonstrates a strong commitment to authenticity, which she accomplishes with affection. That's an impressive achievement.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Brownsville: The Jewish Years --- Celebrating hope, hard work, tolerance & the triumph of the human spirit Jul 31, 2008
By J. H. Minde
"Everything I need is right here"
The title of this excellent little vanity published book is just about as long as the book itself. The editing and typesetting are somewhat sloppy. This is not a scholar's history of Brownsville, it is an oral history written down. As such it is priceless.
This is a gold mine of reminiscences and muzzy photographs. This enclave of the working poor was in many respects very similar to the rest of the communities surrounding it. In the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, Brownsville, a neighborhood in Brooklyn USA, was almost entirely populated by East European Jewish immigrants and their progeny. During the time of "Jewish Brownsville" 200,000 people lived within its two square miles. It was an area of astonishing diversity in its commercial establishments and offered many cultural and educational outlets geared toward the populace, which, although overwhelmingly Jewish, ran the gamut from strict orthodoxy to fully assimilated, non-literate to professionally educated, and politically rightist to the far left. By and large, Brownsville families relied on the small trades for support. Except for work and special occasions, most of Brownsville's people lived their lives essentially within its bounds.
Brooklyn neighborhoods were (and are) very unique in that they were (and are) small, densely populated, and largely ethnically homogeneous in and of themselves, being cheek-by-jowl with other such neighborhoods (sometimes groups shared neighborhoods, with varying levels of ease). Hence, there was largely Jewish Brownsville; there was (and is) largely Italian Bay Ridge; there was (and is) a Norwegian enclave in Bay Ridge, too; there was (and is) Hasidic Crown Heights and Hasidic Borough Park, and (was and is) African-American section of Crown Heights.
In the midst of this mosaic, there were (and are) central gathering places for the "tribes" of Brooklyn. Brooklyn had (and has) Prospect Park, far better than Central Park, even in the minds of their joint creators. Coney Island means the Cyclone Roller Coaster, Nathan's, and the more recent Brooklyn Cyclones baseball team. Longer ago, there was Ebbets Field and the Dodgers, still beloved. Even Ms. Schildt, who doesn't care for baseball, swears she will be there at the Dodgers' return, wheelchair, oxygen tank and all, rooting against the Yankees.
These communities change, but slowly. The Russians live now in Brighton Beach. Brownsville went from Jewish to Black to Puerto Rican, to Central American in fifty years. Canarsie went from a Jewish-Italian mixed area to Russian to West Indian in the same timespan. For the most part, these neighborhoods coexist peacefully and change gracefully, but sometimes the mix and the shifts are violent and volatile. Unfortunately, these rare but real flashpoints make the news.
Sylvia Siegel Schildt grew up on the same street---Herzl Street---as my Mother, and at about the same time. Having been raised with stories of the Loews Pitkin, Belmont Avenue's pushcarts, and Fortunoff on Livonia Avenue, this book is not only familiar and comforting to me, but I feel that Ms. Schildt has managed to memorialize an era that vanished even as we watched it fade.
My Mother wept as she examined the pictures, remembering, and read Ms. Schildt's brief but poignant paragraphs on neighborhood characters like "Drunken Stanley," street games like "A, My Name Is Anna," Brownsville institutions like the shul across the street, Betsy Head Park, and Kishke King, and the general air of raucous contentment that seems to define Jewish Brownsville for those who were there. It wasn't perfect by far, but it seems much superior to the present day. Utterly cut off from Europe by the Holocaust, Brownsville became the "Old Country" for my Mother's generation. "We didn't know we were poor," Sylvia Schildt writes, and I can't recall how many times I heard that same sentiment expressed growing up.
They weren't poor. They just didn't have "stuff."
I myself was born in Brooklyn's East New York (a few intersections away from Brownsville). I attended the Brownsville Boys Club. Brooklyn was on the cusp of change: The Dodgers were gone, though Ebbets Field's ruins still dotted Sullivan and Bedford. A horse-drawn cart still clopped down our street some days. Still, seismic social change was occurring. It was the '60s. We left East New York for Canarsie, left Canarsie for Long Island, and left Long Island for Boca Raton in due course, following what has become a stereotyped migration pattern. But, like the salmon swimming upstream, we long to return home.
This book is a treasure map to the past. Too soon, people like my Mother and Ms. Schildt will be gone, and this will be their legacy.
Thank you Ms. Schildt.
Thanks Mom.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Brooklyn Jul 16, 2008
By Jackie Avondoglio
Brownsville years is excellent for anyone who comes from Brooklyn, especially Brownsville from the 30's to the 60's. Also relates to the political and social climate at that time
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