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View Newsletter With Images    |    View Large Print Newsletter September 2007: Did You Know Fall Events Tenement Artifacts Museum Shop Did You Know: School Lunch School lunch was first served in New York City's public schools in 1908. The first school lunches were not provided by the Board of Education, but by the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor’s School Lunch Committee. The Lunch Committee believed that a “child with skim-milk diet will have skim-milk thoughts.” According to the Committee's 1917 pamphlet, however, immigrant children with mothers at work were forced to purchase their lunches from pushcarts selling “messy, greasy food.” Such a diet, the Committee believed, invited “slovenliness and lack of self-respect.” By 1917, school lunch was served in only 35 out of 208 schools in Manhattan and the Bronx. The School Lunch Committee turned to the Board of Education, suggesting that it was better equipped to provide a nutritious lunch for all of the city’s school children. The School Lunch Committee also advised that “schools attended by both Hebrew and Italian children” should offer both “Italian and Jewish dishes.” The pamphlet recommended that lunch at a multiethnic school such as PS 42 on the Lower East Side should include such items as potato and barley soup, salmon sandwiches, and tomato salad. Tenement Artifacts The Jewish Housewife's Guide Published by Diamond Crystal Salt in 1937, this eight page booklet offers Jewish housewives instructions for "making meat kosher and other important information." Unsurprisingly, the booklet recommends using Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt, which it calls "the salt that complies in every particular with every Jewish Dietary Law."  September Events Sept 17: Akashic Books Night Reading and reception for authors Joe Meno, Mike Farrell & Chris Abani. Sept 18: Writing in Jewish Reading and discussion at the Museum of the City of New York. $5 for Tenement Museum members and subscribers. Reservations required; call 212-534-1672 x. 3395. Sept 19: Your Guide to the Lower East Side Party to celebrate the installation of 28 new signs that honor past and present Lower East Siders. At the Museum Shop. Sept 25: The Challenges of Passing on Jewish Identity Reading and discussion at the Museum of the City of New York. $5 for Tenement Museum members and subscribers. Reservations required; call 212-534-1672 x. 3395. Sept. 27:  At The Edge of a Dream Publication party for the Tenement Museum's new book, At the Edge of A Dream To attend Tenement Museum publication parties or readings, RSVP to bookclub(at)tenement.org Museum Shop: At The Edge of A Dream The Tenement Museum is pleased to announce the publication of At The Edge of a Dream: The Story of Jewish Immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side, 1880-1920. This handsome book blends archival images and evocative text to chronicle the daily lives of New York City’s immigrant Jews. Excerpt: Lunch at the Garden Cafeteria "This famed gathering place opened at 165 East Broadway in 1911...The Garden Cafeteria was the home of a thousand arguments an hour. Anarchists and socialists solved the world’s problems by yelling at each other over a glass of burning tea. The food was dairy, and so the blintzes and matzoh ball soup provided pleasant interruptions to the arguments. The cafeteria became even more famous later when Isaac Bashevis Singer was a frequent customer and wrote a short story set here." Buy At the Edge of a Dream Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Write to us at lestm@tenement.org Did You Know image from  "School Lunches" a pamphlet produced by the School Lunch Committee of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, c, 1917. Municipal Archives, New York City Department of Records and Information Services