Rabbi Hasker Besser talks about his experiences with violent antisemitism in pre-war Berlin, right before Hitler became chancellor.

In this clip, learn about Joseph Stein and Sheldon Harnick, the playwright and the lyricist of the quintessential Jewish American play. Both have impeccable show biz credentials dating back to the 1940’s – Stein was one of the first comedy writers on the legendary “Your Show of Shows” – and both are still remarkably active in the theater today. In this clip, they recall what it was like working with the astounding array of Jewish talent that converged on Manhattan in the heyday of the Broadway musical, and talk about the decision to create a play with overtly Jewish themes for a wide, mainstream audience. (In the mid sixties when the play opened, there were predictions it would flop because it was “too Jewish”). They also talk about how the play’s themes echo their own family histories.

Rabbi Haskel Besser represents a slice of New York history little understood by most Jews, let alone most New Yorkers. In the 1940s and early `50s more than 50,000 Hasidim immigrated to New York from Poland and Hungary, where their once vibrant communities had been wiped out by the Holocaust. Rabbi Besser escaped from Poland in 1939, after a harrowing encounter where a group of soldiers threatened to throw him from a moving train. His aunts, uncles, cousins and grandfather were killed in concentration camps. In his adopted city, Rabbi Besser has amassed an impressive array of achievements: not only has he succeeded in the commercial real estate world and the diamond district, but he has presided for 40 years over a small synagogue on the Upper West Side and he invented the miniature talmuds often read by devout Jews on New York subways. This extremely engaging character, who has met with world leaders and addressed crowds of thousands at Madison Square Garden, tells his life story with wisdom and wit.

The extraordinary role Jews have played in shaping the city’s political life will be told in part through the story of New York’s second Jewish mayor. In a wide ranging interview, Ed Koch told us about his family’s immigrant story; his boxing match with an anti-semitic soldier when he served in the army during World War II; his dealings with evangelical Christians when he was a member of Congress; and his decision to put his Jewishness front and center throughout his political career.

Jacob Schiff emigrated to the U.S. in the late 19th Century and led an investment banking firm, Kuhn, Loeb & Co., which rivaled the house of J.P. Morgan. But his mastery of Wall Street was not his greatest accomplishment.  One of the city’s most generous philanthropists, Schiff poured much of his personal fortune into establishing charities to support the Russian Jews who came to escape the pogroms, including the 92nd Street Y and the Henry Street Settlement to help poor Jews. His philanthropic legacy extended to non-Jewish institutions as a founder of the New York Zoological Society and an early board member of the NAACP, and he encouraged his family members to follow his example of sharing their wealth. A German Jew, Schiff was an ardent supporter of Russian Jewry; he lobbied Congress and President Grover Cleveland to prevent the passage of legislation which would have prevented the massive wave of Russian Jewish immigrants from whom most current New York Jews descend. His son Mortimer Schiff, also an investment banker, was an early leader of the Boy Scouts of America, and his granddaughter Dorothy Schiff spent 40 years as publisher of “The New York Post.”

Founded in 1852 as “The Jews Hospital in New York,” Mount Sinai has a fascinating, storied history which is little known to the general public. The hospital, founded to serve indigent immigrant Jews in desperate need of medical care, expanded from a brownstone on 28th Street to a 20-building complex serving 400,000 patients annually. A striking number of the major medical advances of the past century and a half began there, among them: the field of pediatrics, the modern method of blood transfusion, the use of oral medication for diabetes, and combination chemotherapy. Mt. Sinai opened its doors in the 1930s to Jewish doctors escaping Hitler’s Europe.

Dr. Arthur Aufses, who served for 21 years as the Chief of Surgery, and still works at the hospital today. His father, the son of German-Jewish immigrants, was a surgeon at Mount Sinai dating back to the 1920s – an era when strict quotas made it difficult for Jews to get into medical school. In addition, Dr. Aufses has written two published books on the hospital’s history.

Around 1905, Joel Russ emigrated from Poland to New York’s Lower East Side and began selling herring from a pushcart, one of some 25,000 pushcart peddlers working the crowded Jewish ghetto. Joel was successful enough to open his own modest storefront in 1914. He married and had three daughters who started working in the store as children. As the girls grew into beautiful teenagers, they proved a big asset to his “appetizers” store; customers chose Russ’s shop over dozens of competitors because they enjoyed flirting with the lovely girls who pulled herring from the barrels.

In a remarkably forward thinking move for his day, Joel Russ named the girls partners, and passed the business on to them when he died. One of the daughters in turn passed Russ & Daughters Appetizers to her son, who is now in the process of passing it to his daughter and his nephew. The store is still located on the Lower East Side, and still very successful (they’ve branched out to sell lox and cream cheese, caviar and other delicacies). We interviewed three generations of the family who told us the story of their family and their store in sparkling detail.