The Last Seder in Little Jerusalem is framed by the Afromovitz family's final Passover seder on Fourth Street in 1957. Through this intimate lens, Joshua Resnek and Arnie Jarmak explore the rise and transformation of Chelsea's historic Jewish neighborhood.
The book moves from Jewish immigration and the neighborhood's family, religious, and commercial life to postwar dispersal, Puerto Rican arrival, and civic change. Resnek describes its family scenes as an homage to the American experiment and the promise of America, with Chelsea as a melting-pot city that rose, faltered, and rose again.
Jarmak's photography preserves the faces and places of a community in transition, while Resnek's narrative keeps Chelsea's people at the center of the story.
Family Memory and the American Experiment
The seder frame gives the history a family scale. Faith, class, work, migration, and the life of local institutions appear through the people who experienced them, connecting one neighborhood's transformation to a larger American story.
Resnek describes those family scenes as an homage to the American experiment and the promise of America. The collaboration joins his narrative with Jarmak's documentary eye, preserving both the intimate and civic dimensions of Little Jerusalem.
Chelsea as a melting-pot city that rose, faltered, and rose again.
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