These two dandies were photographed by The Forward as they meticulously shopped for ritual holiday items on Canal and Essex, back in 1951.

That same illustrated feature in October 1951 that showed the furious shopping in preparation for the fall harvest holiday of Sukkot, also showed the nascent Forest Hills Jewish Center on Queens Boulevard and. 69th Road, nearby the image shown above, breaking ground on a million dollar youth center. The Forward reported it was to have "a swimming pool, auditorium, library and 30 classrooms. " This was a turning point in American Jewish life where communal living was expanding out from the synagogue central to Jewish life. Now, swimming was as important a draw to attract the suburban community as prayer services.

The front page of the paper featured a dais of important folks in the life of The Forward, as the celebrated the new editor in chief, Hillel Rogoff. The festive gathering took place at the Forward building on East Broadway, shown above. In reporting on the special gathering to honor the newest and only the second editor in the paper's history, special attention was paid to the fact that the building itself only existed due to the vision of the founding editor, the late Ab Cahan who had died a mere three months prior, in August. Rogoff not only had huge shoes to fill, so to speak, but perhaps in a nod to the expanding, upwardly mobile, and rapidly suburbanizing New York Jewish community, was also the first American college graduate to become editor of the Yiddish paper. It would be another half century until Rukhl Schaechter, an American born and American college grad would become editor of the Yiddish paper in 2016. Schaechter was also the first woman editor of the Yiddish paper.

At that point, the paper was nearly completely digital, and was no longer located near the holiday pop-up shops on Canal and Essex, but had moved further downtown to Maiden Lane, nearby Wall Street, and around the corner from this breathless image by the great Berenice Abbott who was among the early modern city photogs immortalizing the Lowe East Side's Yiddish inflected street life.

The world, in 1951, was still shaking itself out of a post war mood. Also on The Forward's front page that day in October 1951, was an item about the United Nations. Seems the security council, meeting still in Queens, in the New York City Building at Flushing, was delaying a decision about Britain and Iran's oil crisis. It would wait until January and a vote by the International Court of Justice. That would eventually end the UK's claim to Iran's oil as it was nationalized.

Beneath the day's main headline was an item about the wildcat NYC longshoreman's strike that had just ended. Their union was located at Pier 92 nearby this early image of the excavations that took place to enable larger ocean liners to dock in the city. Union leaders of the AFL affiliated union sided with workers in a strike that had already disabled over 34 docks and harbors in the city and Brooklyn, per the Forward's report. Among other items, the worker's, The Forward wrote, sought a raise of ten cents.

Near the top of the paper that day in October 1951, decades after prohibition and a world war was the news that underworld figure Waxey "Irving" Gordon had pleaded guilty to narcotics charges. His most recent arrest for heroin possession among other things, that past August would prove to be his last. He'd been nabbed on East 68th not far from the image agove. Gordon, a Jewish mobster in from way back, would be sent to Alcatraz, way out on the west coast, where after a lifetime of skipping through the city's plushest hotels, he would now live. By next year's Sukkoth holiday, with the arrival of those ritual pop-up shops on Essex and Canal, and the crush of fervent holiday shoppers, Waxey Gordon would be dead.