About This Item

  • Call NumberBJHP_0021
  • SummaryJacob playing backgammon in front of home with friends, Sally watching.
  • Date[1955?]
  • Physical Description1 image file : digital, JPEG, black and white
  • Creator[unknown]
  • CollectionBrooklyn Jewish History Project
  • Cite AsBrooklyn Jewish History Project, Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History
  • Formatstill image
  • Genreblack-and-white photographs
  • NoteTitle supplied by cataloger. Original document digitized in November 2019 as a JPEG. Donated for capture by Sally. Only first name given. Collected through the Brooklyn Jewish History Project of Brooklyn Public Library. This project is funded by the David Berg Foundation.
  • SubjectPortraits
  • PlaceBensonhurst (New York, N.Y.)
  • RightsThis work is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Users are free to share and adapt the work for non-commercial purposes as long as appropriate credit is given to the source and new material created with this work is shared under the same conditions.
  • TitleA Syrian Jewish family. Men playing backgammon at table on the sidewalk. 
  • Biographical NoteThe family of Isaac and his younger sister Sally is from Aleppo, Syria. Their father, Jacob, arrived in the United States in 1914, and first lived in the Bronx. He married Mollie and moved to the Lower East Side. They eventually settled in Bensonhurst in a small Syrian Jewish Community from Aleppo. Jacob and Mollie raised three daughters and three sons. Their children went to public school and attended Hebrew after school. The neighborhood was a mix of Italian and Jewish. In 1945 Isaac, the third child, joined the United States army and was sent to the Pacific. When Isaac and Claire married they moved to Ocean Parkway then Midwood where their four daughters attended public school. Isaac says: They became more American than Syrian. Nevetheless, the family preserved their Syrian heritage and traditions through religious practices and food. Sally, the youngest, stayed in Brooklyn where she raised her son and daughter. Sabbath observers, the family has perserved their 100-year-old Syrian traditions.