New Books in Popular Culture The Tourist’s Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City with Henry Sapoznik
Mar 8, 2026
Henry Sapoznik, award-winning musicologist and founder of the YIVO Sound Archives, guides listeners through a century of Yiddish New York. He explores theaters, music, eateries, architecture, crime, and Black-Jewish cultural interactions. Short, lively stories reveal theatrical restaurateurs, knish culture, lost skyscrapers, radio pioneers, and unexpected archival finds.
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Book Sparked By A Rediscovered Recording
- The book project began during the first COVID lockdown when Sapoznik started a blog and reissued research after a Thomas LaRue Jones recording surfaced.\n- His first blog on the Schwarzer Chazonim drew ~100,000 hits, proving strong public interest.
Restaurants As Engines Of Jewish Mobility
- New York's Yiddish food scene mapped social mobility and cultural identity through four restaurant types: dairy restaurants, delicatessens, Romanian restaurants, and cafeterias.\n- These venues were community hubs run by performers-turned-owners like Moskowitz and Tomaszewski who blended entertainment with hospitality.
Communist Cafeteria Opened Before Crash
- Prolect was a Communist cafeteria on Union Square that opened a large new venue in September 1929, three weeks before the stock market crash.\n- It became a slumming destination where uptown crowds sought novelty, showing unexpected cultural crossovers.
