Leo Rosen Congregation Adath Shalom

For the past year and more, the photographer Harvey Finkle has documented the life stories of Jewish South Philadelphians. "The neighborhood," he tells us, "possesses a uniqueness that continues to be found in the faces and voices of the people who still live there."

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What makes the neighborhood and its residents unique? One answer is their history. Home to scores of Jewish businesses, synagogues, religious schools, charitable and social agencies, South Philadelphia was the heart of the city's Jewish immigrant community for two generations.

That changed after World War II. Jewish South Philadelphians watched most of their friends and family move away, in search of greener pastures in the Northeast and other sections of the city, and in the suburbs beyond. For those who stayed on — men and women now in their 70s and 80s — fond memories bind them to the neighborhood. In the interviews Finkle conducted, nostalgia runs strong. A warmly remembered past bumps up against a present reality that neighborhood residents alternately celebrate and lament.

Jewish South Philadelphians are proud bearers of an immigrant heritage rooted in the world they knew as children. As Rakhmiel Peltz, a student of the community, has observed, "The Jewish neighborhood life of their youth instilled in all of them confidence in their own adherence to Jewish ways."

For many years Jewish South Philadelphia was stigmatized as a poor, immigrant neighborhood, a place best left behind. Those perceptions are changing, and this exhibition is a reflection of that change.

Finkle's photographs and interviews speak of the value of staying on, of remaining rooted to a place, in a society where many are constantly grasping for the newest, next best thing. Finkle shows us that although most of Jewish South Philadelphia has vanished, what remains continues to inspire Jewish life within the borders of the old neighborhood, and potentially beyond them as well.