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:
“The ghost of the heart of manred Cain
And the more murderous brain
Of Man, still redder Nero that conceived the death
Of his mother Earth, and tore
Her womb, to know the place where he was conceived.”
—Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)
“The millere was a stout carl for the nones;”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“if we are to win
that title I want to see how.
But I don’t want to see
any marks when you’re dressed,
he said. He said, Now.”
—Gary Gildner (b. 1938)
“It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class.... I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says “there is no wisdom without leisure.””
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“... no community where more than one-half of the adults are disfranchised and otherwise incapacitated by law and custom, can be free from great vices. Purity is inconsistent with slavery.”
—Tennessee Claflin (1846–1923)
“Yet the day wears,
And door succeeds door;
I try the fresh fortune—
Range the wide house from the wing to the centre,
Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter.
Spend my whole day in the quest,—who cares?”
—Robert Browning (1812–1889)