The Edith and Carl Marks Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst, known as "the J", was incorporated in 1927 and has helped over one million Jews in the Bensonhurst section of New York City's borough of Brooklyn. It initially served as a community center for Eastern European Jewish immigrants and their children. As the complexion of the Jewish community in Bensonhurst changed, its community center changed in accord. During the 1940s and 1950s, a large influx of Syrian Jews immigrated to the area. It was during this period that Sandy Koufax, the son of Syrian Jewish immigrants, played on the basketball courts of "the J".
In the 1980s, a third wave of immigrants, this time from the former Soviet Union, once again shifted the focus of the community center to that of a settlement house.
Former members include:
- Harvey Fierstein - Tony Award winning writer of Torch Song Trilogy and gay rights activist
- Gary David Goldberg - creator of television series such as Family Ties, Spin City and Brooklyn Bridge
- Sandy Koufax - Baseball Hall of Famer
Famous quotes containing the words edith, carl, marks, jewish, community and/or house:
“Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.”
—Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)
“Oh no, it wasn’t the aviators, it was beauty that killed the beast.”
—James Creelman, screenwriter, Ruth Rose, screenwriter, Merian Cooper, and Ernest Schoedsack. Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong)
“The legislator must be in advance of his age.
Across the mind of the statesman flash ever and anon the brilliant, though partial, intimations of future events.... Something which is more than fore-sight and less than prophetic knowledge marks the statesman a peculiar being among his contemporaries.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class, the novel is serious, the novel is work, the novel is conscientious application—why, the novel is practically the retail business all over again.”
—Howard Nemerov (1920–1991)
“Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.”
—Marian Wright Edelman (20th century)
“The shifting islands! who would not be willing that his house should be undermined by such a foe! The inhabitant of an island can tell what currents formed the land which he cultivates; and his earth is still being created or destroyed. There before his door, perchance, still empties the stream which brought down the material of his farm ages before, and is still bringing it down or washing it away,—the graceful, gentle robber!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)