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Oral histories are intimate conversations between and among people who have generously agreed to share these recordings with BHS’s archives and researchers. Please listen in the spirit with which these were shared. BHS abides by the General Principles & Best Practices for Oral History as agreed upon by the Oral History Association and expects that use of this material will be done with respect for these professional ethics.
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[Last name, First name], Oral history interview conducted by [Interviewer’s First name Last name], [Month DD, YYYY], [Title of Collection], [Call #]; Brooklyn Historical Society.
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Eli Cohen
Oral history interview conducted by Matthew Birkhold
May 26, 2017
Call number: 2016.027.1.14
504
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Interview Description
Oral History Interview with Eli Cohen
Rabbi Eli Cohen was born in Manchester, England in 1955. He moved to the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn in 1973 to study Lubavitch Hasidim in Morristown, New Jersey. He organized Mitzvah tanks, the roaming vehicles promoting and teaching the orthodox religion, in the mid-1970s. The rabbi became director of Chabad at New York University in 1985 before becoming Executive Director of Crown Heights Jewish Community Council in 2003.
In this interview, Rabbi Cohen talks about moving to the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn at the onset of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and the sense of celebration that existed in Crown Heights throughout the war. He describes relationships between the New York Police Department and the Hasidic community at different points over his forty year history in the neighborhood and reflects on crime in Crown Heights, and the relationship between Jewish and Black communities within that context. He briefly reflects on the blackout of 1977, the summer of 1991, crime, and Kingston Avenue's appearance over decades. He describes the Hasidic community as politically involved and narrates the emergence of Community Board Nine in South Crown Heights. Interview conducted by Matthew Birkhold.
This collection includes oral histories conducted by Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS), Brooklyn Movement Center, and Weeksville Heritage Center beginning in 2016 and collected and arranged by BHS in 2017. Each organization's interviews form a series within the collection. This oral history is one in the BHS series. The assembled collection was part of broader programming efforts by the three organizations to commemorate and examine the transforming Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn a quarter-century after the August 1991 conflicts and unrest sometimes called "the Crown Heights riot." The oral history collection features a broad range of narrators; educators, community organizers, activists, entrepreneurs, artists, bloggers, and longtime neighborhood residents, who describe the changes they have observed in their neighborhood over decades.
Citation
Cohen, Eli, Oral history interview conducted by Matthew Birkhold, May 26, 2017, Voices of Crown Heights oral histories, 2016.027.1.14; Brooklyn Historical Society.People
- Cohen, Eli, Rabbi
- Community Board No. 9 (Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.)
Topics
- African Americans
- Community development
- Community organizing
- Crime
- Electric power failures
- Hasidim
- Jewish neighborhoods
- Police-community relations
- Race relations
Places
- Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)
- Crown Heights (New York, N.Y.)
- Eastern Parkway (New York, N.Y.)
Transcript
Download PDFFinding Aid
Voices of Crown Heights oral histories