A year since the Hamas attack on Israel, we mourn for the murdered hostages and soldiers killed in combat, with prayers for those known to be alive in captivity and defending Israel on the battlefield. Many of us will have their names and faces among the Ushpizin this year.
Queens
New York Hall of Science
47-01 111th Street, Corona
www.nysci.org
The child-friendly exhibit Building Imagination: Brick by Brick offers five fun focus areas: Imaginative Play; Underwater; Transportation/Neighborhood; Cloud City; and Garden/Underground. It is open through the end of 2024. The Big Bubble Experiment also offers interactive experimentation for young visitors. Along with these exhibits, there are more than 450 permanent displays in total at the Hall of Science, including rockets from the early years of the space race that stand inside the center’s miniature golf course.
Queens County Farm Museum
73-50 Little Neck Parkway, Floral Park
Sure, our borough has plenty of green rooftops, community gardens, backyard plots, and windowsill spices, but the largest and last true farm in the borough is in Floral Park, taking up 47 acres. In operation since 1697, this farm has livestock, heavy farm machinery, planting fields, and a vineyard. Events on its calendar include a children’s carnival, antique motor show, and a Native American pow-wow. Fall activities here include the corn maze and pumpkin picking.
King Manor Museum
150-03 Jamaica Avenue
In the heart of downtown Jamaica is one of the oldest mansions in Queens, home to a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The park surrounding the King Manor is a 12-acre remnant of a 160-acre farm that belonged to Rufus King, the United States Senator, diplomat, and antislavery activist, who died in the 50th year of this country’s independence. The interior takes us back to the late 18th century, when Rufus King lived here.
Across from Rufus King Park, at 90-40 150th Street, is P.S. 182; but if you find the cornerstone, it offers a detail of local Jewish history. This was the original Yeshiva of Central Queens before it relocated to Kew Gardens Hills in the 1970s.
Bowne House
37-01 Bowne Street
The oldest standing dwelling in Queens, it dates to 1661 when Quaker colonist John Bowne settled in Flushing. He famously stood up for religious freedom when fellow members of his faith authored the Flushing Remonstrance, addressing the Dutch authorities. Nine generations of Bownes lived in this home until it became a museum in 1945. Visitors can experience how they lived with period furniture and guides explaining what Flushing was like as an outpost. On the other side of the playground behind the Bowne House is the Kingsland Homestead, a house built during the American Revolution that hosts the Queens Historical Society.
Lewis Latimer House
34-41 137th Street
Imagine a self-taught genius born to fugitive slaves who worked in the labs of Alexander Graham Bell, Hiram Maxim, and Thomas Edison. Lewis Latimer’s name did not appear on their patents, but he made their world-changing inventions possible. When he wasn’t tinkering with inventions, he painted, wrote essays, and lived in this Flushing house that was preserved and relocated to a park.
Socrates Sculpture Park
32-01 Vernon Boulevard, Astoria
In my childhood, when my parents shopped at the Costco in Astoria, I ventured to its neighbor, Socrates Sculpture Park, which has outdoor sculptures on the East River waterfront with views of Manhattan. Many of the sculptures are designed for interaction, to be touched, walked around, under, and through.
Dr. M. T. Geoffrey Yeh Art Gallery
Sun Yat Sen Hall
8000 Utopia Parkway
www.stjohns.edu/offices-departments/dr-m-t-geoffrey-yeh-art-gallery
On the beautiful campus of St. John’s University is a Chinese-style building that hosts its art gallery. Current exhibits include To Mend the Heat, in which eight artists have works inspired by traditional healing practices of various cultures. On view through December 24.
Laser Bounce Family Fun Center
80-28 Cooper Avenue, Glendale
Located in the Atlas Park mall, under the Regal Cinemas, this indoor amusement center offers many options for young visitors: bouncy surfaces, ball pit, bowling, arcades, laser tag, and virtual reality. For our Long Island readers, Laser Bounce has a location in Levittown at 2710 Hempstead Turnpike. When the weather is as rainy as Yom Kippur a year ago, it is good to have a Laser Bounce close to home.
Arverne East Nature Preserve
190 Beach 44th Street, Arverne
www.nycgovparks.org/parks/arverne-east-nature-preserve
In the 1960s, hundreds of bungalows on the Rockaway Peninsula were demolished in favor of an urban renewal plan that never materialized. In the half century since, lampposts marked ghost streets overgrown by beach grass and covered by dunes. While portions of Arverne were redeveloped in a neo-urbanist design that blends single and multi-family homes, 35 acres were deeded to nature as a preserve with trails, informative signage, and a nature center. The way that the Rockaways appeared before human settlement is how this new park will appear going forward. Having opened last April, it is among the newest parks in Queens.
Manhattan
Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
One of the world’s greatest art museums has something for everyone. In recent years, the museum brought the works and collections of cultures distant from New York and often overlooked in art history courses dominated by western narratives. For a local story that was never realized, the exhibit Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph offers sketches of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have connected the Williamsburg Bridge and the Holland Tunnel. In place of the razed tenements and cast-iron lofts, Rudolph proposed lengthy concrete high-rises to cover the highway.
Lincoln Center
Broadway at West 65th Street
This modernist campus is the home of the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, and the New York City Ballet. Alongside the music, dancing, films, and songs, there is also visual art to be seen with two Marc Chagall murals painted in 1966 for the Metropolitan Opera: The sources of Music and The Triumph of Music. Designed by Philip Johnson, the modernist collection of buildings and plazas were updated at the turn of the millennium to make Lincoln Center appear more inviting. Visitors can learn about its history and cultural role at the gift shop and library, or by taking a 75-minute guided tour that includes backstage access.
One Vanderbilt
1 Vanderbilt Avenue
The glassy skyscraper towering next to Grand Central Terminal has the newest observation deck in Manhattan, titled The Summit. To reach it, visitors take a glass elevator with views of the city as they rise to nearly 1,400 feet above 42nd Street. One can stand on a glass floor that juts out of the top floor and see the nearby Empire State Building from a unique angle that nearly rivals its height. Ideal for sunsets.
Next door, inside Grand Central Terminal, there is the Transit Museum Store, which offers exhibits on the history of the subway and plenty of model trains, toys, and children’s books about it. Our Long Island readers can take the train to Grand Central Terminal, see its new mosaic installations, and then take the elevator to the top without having to go outdoors.
Brooklyn
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn
The beaux arts landmark has its permanent collection of ancient historical art from around the world, a colonial Dutch farmhouse transported inside the museum, and its ancient Egyptian collection. This year, the museum celebrates its 200th year, as one of the city’s oldest cultural institutions. In partnership with the National Gallery of Art, the exhibit Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies contains more than 200 works by the famed sculptor, printmaker, and painter who tells the story of the Black and woman experiences in visual form. On view through January 19, 2025.
Building 92 at Brooklyn Navy Yard
63 Flushing Avenue, Brooklyn
From 1801 through 1966, the Brooklyn Navy Yard was the arsenal of democracy that produced fearsome battleships and weapons that preserved our independence, saved the union, projected American power, and defended our allies. After the Navy left Brooklyn, this complex became a hub of light industry and tech innovation. This free admission museum offers displays on the history and present use of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. And it is within a short drive from Williamsburg, where one can shop for kosher items.
New York Transit Museum
99 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn
Located inside a subway station that was abandoned in 1946 and reopened 30 years later as a museum, its tracks hold more than a century of historic rolling stock. Step inside these old subway cars to see advertisements from decades past. On the mezzanine level are displays and artifacts relating to the construction of the country’s largest and only 24-hour transit system.
Bronx
Bronx Children’s Museum
2 Exterior Street, Bronx
Brooklyn has a children’s museum, and Manhattan, too; and now there’s one for the Bronx, located near Yankee Stadium. The 13,650-square-foot Bronx Children’s Museum offers interactive displays on urban waterways, nature, and neighborhoods. The castle-like building is situated in Mill Pond Park, a waterfront space on the Harlem River, reclaimed from industry, next to the Bronx Terminal Market shopping center. The excitement of visiting a new museum makes this one a worthy choice for Chol HaMoed.
Jewish Content
Museum at Eldridge Street
12 Eldridge Street
The historic synagogue of the Lower East Side opened in 1886 as the crown of the immigrant neighborhood and was restored in the 1990s as a museum of Jewish life. On exhibit at this time is artist Tobi Kahn’s Memory & Inheritance, which offers Jewish ritual objects inspired by American modernism. On display through November 10.
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
This center hosts five vital institutions that document the stories of Jews in America through art, artifacts, and literature: American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Yeshiva University Museum, YIVO, and Leo Baeck Institute, each with their own exhibits and opportunities to research our past.
Currently on view: Jewry Reflected, Refracted, and Recorded on Medals, which shares a collection of coins and medals issued by Jewish organizations honoring its members and supporters. Often associated with governments, these tokens of recognition speak of the sense of Jewish peoplehood prior to the reestablishment of Israel in 1948.
Between Anti-Semitism and Activism examines past anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses and the activism of Jewish faculty and students. It is a timely exhibit in light of current events.
The YIVO exhibit Runaway Husbands, Desperate Families: The Story of the National Desertion Bureau, traces the history of the National Desertion Bureau, a Jewish nonprofit that tracked down runaway husbands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ensuring justice for the abandoned wives and children. Through its detective work, the number of such irresponsible men declined.
Finally, there are paintings by Ruben Shimonov representing the American Sephardi Federation, in which this Samarkand-born artist and educator blends Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian calligraphy. This artistic effort at coexistence previously appeared in many other spaces, including the US Embassy in Tashkent, where the paintings hung in 2023.
Museum of Jewish Heritage
One Battery Place
Along with its permanent collection of artifacts from the Holocaust, the exhibit Speaking Up! Confronting Hate Speech notes the words and actions that inspire violence. The exhibition provides historical and current examples of the connection between words and mass atrocities, while empowering visitors with strategies to counter hate speech in their own communities. On view through June 29, 2025.
LONG ISLAND
Cradle of Aviation Museum
Charles Lindbergh Boulevard, Garden City
This is a former hangar, transformed into a museum of air and space technology. Currently it has exhibits on drones and the early “flying boats” of the late Pan American Airlines. The latter is produced by the Pan Am Museum Foundation, a nonprofit created by former employees and airplane enthusiasts to preserve the history of this pioneering airline company.
Nassau County Museum of Art
One Museum Drive, Roslyn
The grounds of this museum are the former property of naturalist William Cullen Bryant and industrialist Henry Clay Frick. As visitors drive into the museum, the lawns feature sculptures designed to fit into their setting. It is the Long Island version of Hudson Valley’s Storm King Art Center, smaller in size but free and with fall foliage to match the artworks. Then there is the mansion with its Gold Coast opulence. Current exhibits include Seeing Red: Renoir to Warhol, which shares the many meanings, connotations, and associations of this powerful color in art. On view through January 5, 2025.
Adventureland
2245 Broadhollow Road, Farmingdale
I have not visited Adventureland since I was in summer camp. Long Island’s longest operating amusement park struck me as a street fair permanently moored in place with rides that are standard across the country, such as a swinging pirate ship, carousel, and log flume. I had no idea that in 2015, it welcomed Turbulence, a new roller coaster that has become its star attraction. This new ride serves as an extra reason to revisit this blast from the past.
American Airpower Museum
1230 New Highway, Farmingdale
www.americanairpowermuseum.com
Within a ten-minute drive from Adventureland is the American Airpower Museum. If you live on Long Island and have been to the Cradle of Aviation Museum too many times, this former airport-turned-museum is the local alternative. More than a dozen fighter aircraft and parts can be seen at this museum.
Valley Stream Historical Society
143 Hendrickson Avenue, Valley Stream
www.valleystreamlibrary.org/vshistpagan.htm
At the southern tip of Valley Stream State Park is a historic mansion that predates the suburbanization of Long Island, when the Village of Valley Stream had a rural appearance. The Pagan-Fletcher Restoration contains old maps of the area and other displays relating to the history of this village and its surroundings. The state park outside this mansion is one of the smallest, with a playground, picnic area, and paths through a dense woodland.
NEW JERSEY
American Dream Mall
One American Dream Way
East Rutherford, NJ
After hearing about it from our daughter’s classmates in school and bunkmates in camp, my family took the trip to the American Dream Mall in the Meadowlands. Even when it’s not Chol HaMoed, this destination mall is filled with frum families eager to taste popular American foods with a hechsher, and satisfaction that this mall was built by the Ghermezian family, whose philanthropy sustains many educational projects in the Jewish community.
Did we feel like paying for an indoor amusement park when it is sunny outside, or a water park that is only a fraction of Mountain Creek and Splish Splash? Nor did we feel that the novelty of an indoor ski slope was worth the price when we could wait a few months until the slopes of the Catskills and Poconos reopen.
For a family on a budget seeking unique thrills, the indoor skating rink, mini-golf, and candy store would be worth experiencing. If you have friends in Lakewood, Monsey, or west of the City, this mall could be a good place to meet up and have fun.
Urban Air Adventure Park
396 Ryders Lane, Milltown
1600 St. Georges Avenue, Avenel
69 Wesley Street, South Hackensack
When rain and wind interfere with fall foliage and the temperature is too chilly for a walk, Urban Air Adventure Park offers three indoor locations in New Jersey. The family-friendly facility offers ample space for bouncing, climbing, virtual reality, and sports.
New Jersey State Museum
205 West State Street, Trenton
If you’re traveling to Philadelphia or Cherry Hill, the capital city of New Jersey is a few minutes off the New Jersey Turnpike. Like the capital of our state, Trenton is a small city defined by its political role. Another similarity is having a state museum inside a modernist building. The exhibit Discovering Grant Castner honors a local photographer who documented New Jersey’s people, railroads, canals, roads, and landscapes from the 1890s through the 1910s The exhibit Bark! Indigenous Cultural Expression offers examples of art made from tree bark from among the cultures of the Pacific Northwest, South America, the Pacific Islands, and the Native People of New Jersey. On view through May 11, 2025.
Six Flags Great Adventure
1 Six Flags Blvd, Jackson Township, NJ
www.sixflags.com/greatadventure
This year, the largest amusement park in the Northeast marks its 50th year in operation. To remain profitable, customer loyalty is key, as parents experience rides from their childhood and introduce their offspring to new rides relating to popular movies and comics.
Vertical Velocity is the park’s 15th roller coaster, which will be followed this summer with The Flash, a roller coaster reaching 60 miles per hour. Among the original rides, Sawmill Log Flume and Giant Wheel, formerly known as the Big Wheel, were refurbished for the anniversary. Not everything at Six Flags closes at sunset, as it now offers glamping as its overnight attraction, starting in June.
PENNSYLVANIA
Crayola Experience
30 Centre Square Circle, Easton
www.crayolaexperience.com/easton
Many visitors to the hometown of Crayola are surprised to learn that this interactive children’s museum had branches in Minneapolis, Orlando, Plano, and Chandler in Arizona, but it is in the Lehigh Valley where the world’s most famous crayon manufacturer had its beginnings. Facing this museum is a traffic circle with monuments honoring Easton’s Civil War veterans and signs explaining the town’s long history. Four blocks to the west of this circle is the historic Northampton Street Bridge, with its views of the Delaware River.
National Museum of Industrial History
602 E 2nd Street, Bethlehem
If you’re visiting the Crayola Experience in Easton, a 20-minute drive to the west is Bethlehem, which used to be the country’s leading steelmaking city. The factory closed in 1995 with its smokestacks standing as a historical monument. The Electric Repair Shop of the Bethlehem Steel complex received a new purpose as a museum of industry. Walk past the cogs, looms, and pistons from the factory’s heyday, and be sure to speak to the staff, some of whom worked in the steel mill before it became a museum.
Hersheypark
100 Hershey Drive, Hershey, PA
Since 1906, this 121-acre theme park has been a leading attraction in Pennsylvania, where the beloved chocolatier offers a factory tour, water park, zoo, and roller coasters. Most Jolly Ranchers candies are not kosher, unless they have a hechsher, but the 105-foot-high Jolly Rancher Remix coaster offers colorful theme rides based on flavors, with lights, tunnels, and music, as it flips six times on its ride. On the way to Hershey, one can drive through Philadelphia, with its Revolutionary War history and the National Museum of American Jewish history, or Easton with the Crayola factory. A short distance to the west of Hershey is Harrisburg, the capital city of Pennsylvania.
By Sergey Kadinsky
