Looking Back


Looking Back: February 17, 2011

When Barnett Nemeth went to open his safe in his jewelry store on Manhattan’s Broome Street, he was surprised when two men rushed him, held a revolver to his head and said: “Hands up! We want a look in that safe.”Read More


Looking Back: February 10, 2011

A resident of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Freda Levinson, 19, decided to get revenge on her ex-boyfriend, William Kaufman, also from the Lower East Side, after, she claimed, he reneged on a promise to marry her. After hearing the bad news, Levinson bought a bottle of carbolic acid and waited behind the stoop of Kaufman’s tenement.Read More


Looking Back: February 3, 2011

A gang of suspected horse poisoners is believed to be behind the recent murder of blacksmith Louis Blumenthal.Read More


Looking Back: January 27, 2012

Leon Trotsky, in an interview with the editors of Der Veg, a Yiddish newspaper in Mexico City, said it saddens him that he never learned Yiddish, mostly because he wanted to be able to read the Yiddish press.Read More


Looking Back: January 20, 2011

New York City seltzer factory worker Philip Cohen, 23, heard that his boss, Morris Rubin, was anti-union and rumored to have poisoned the horses of some union delivery men. When Cohen was on his way home from work, he happened to see Rubin on East Broadway. Curious as to where Rubin might be going, Cohen followed him. As he got closer, the seltzer boss turned around and lunged at Cohen with a huge knife, stabbing him in the stomach.Read More


Looking Back: January 13, 2011

A fire occurred at New York City’s Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society, a Jewish orphanage on 151st Street and Broadway. More than 700 children live in the orphanage, and they were all on different floors when the fire, which started at a construction site next to the orphanage, broke out.Read More


Looking Back: January 6, 2012

Not long ago, a number of rooms in a hotel in Norfolk, Va., were broken into and thousands of dollars worth of jewelry was stolen. Police fingered one Mendel Rosenthal, who was in possession of some of the stolen goods. After Rosenthal was arrested, his brother, Charles, tried to spring him from prison.Read More


Looking Back: December 30, 2011

The 147 burned bodies, the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, apparently had no effect on the jury, who found Triangle bosses Max Blanck and Isaac Harris innocent of negligence in their deaths.Read More


Looking Back: December 16, 2011

Haym Soloveitchik, otherwise known as the Brisker Rov, is one of the best-known scholars among contemporary rabbis. Considered one of Jewish law’s top authorities, people turn to him from all over the world with their legal queries. For the young generation, Soloveitchik is regarded as a fanatic who is unwilling to recognize that we have entered a new, modern era.Read More


Looking Back: December 9, 2011

One of the most important witnesses in the trial of Triangle Waist Company bosses Max Blanck and Isaac Harris is rag dealer Louis Levin, who would buy cloth scraps from the factory regularly. Levin informed the court that the last time he visited the factory was about two months before the fire, when he collected more than 2,0000 pounds of rags from the cutters’ floor.Read More