The Lower East Side Restoration Project

"By connecting to the Immigrant Experience we honor our parents and grandparents and those who bravely came to our shores." Own a piece of Antique Judaica from this Historic Collection

During the Great Immigration at the turn of the century, over 2 million Jewish men, women and children sought refuge from the hunger, poverty, tyranny and political turmoil of their native countries.

Antique Candelabra
& Candlesticks

Coming from Central and Eastern Europe: Poland, Russia, Lithuania and Ukraine, our parents and grandparents passed through Ellis Island and settled into crowded tenements on New York's Lower East Side.

They carried with them only the clothes on their backs, Shabbos candlesticks and, if lucky, a beloved Menorah, Kiddush Cup, or Samovar from the Old Country.

Samovar
Teapots

The few, rare objects that remain today are a testament to the survival of the Jewish people, despite millennia of persecutions, pogroms and exiles.

Menorahs

In 1539 there was a Polonization of Lithuania and the nobility of these two lands received full legal equality. As the nobility settled throughout the countryside, they encouraged the Jewish populations of Lithuania, Poland, Germany, France, Bohemia and Turkey, to move with them - to work as land managers, tax collectors, tradesmen, administrators, farmers and craftsmen.

Antique Kiddush Cups

Literate and skilled, the Jews were a valuable work force for the nobility, and there arose a proliferation of small Jewish towns, "shtetlekh", in Eastern Europe.

Samovar Trays

Lithuania-Poland was partitioned twice more - in 1772 and 1793, as Russia, Austria and Prussia divided the land. In 1795, Russia confined the Jewish people to The Pale of Jewish Settlement. Life was harsh and dangerous for the Jews of The Pale and elsewhere, and hundreds of thousands began to immigrate to the Americas to escape tyranny, political turmoil and pogroms.

Ritual Items

Yiddish Sheet Music

Those who remained in the Old Country were caught in the ravages of the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, and the Russian Revolution, becoming stateless refugees.

Of those that survived, millions perished in the Holocaust, murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators in all the countries of Europe - virtually wiping out the thousand year old "Golden Age" of Jewish culture and learning.

Copper Pots

So little exists from our past, so much has been destroyed through the sands of time - Be one of the few to preserve a slice of Jewish History in an ever-changing world.

Antique
Samovars

Continue a Jewish Family Tradition... or start a new one...

Choose a beautiful antique from the old country for your family from this Historic Collection - to be passed down through the Generations.

The Lower East Side Restoration Project
(800) 905-6160

Please Visit our Other Antique Site
FireplaceAntiqueStore.com

Fine Antique Andirons, Fireplace Fenders & Surrounds