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Jewish Friendship Trail Guidebooks, as of 2020, only are available directly from the author/publisher. To purchase a Jewish Friendship Trail Guidebook, Email: BostonWalks

NOW AVAILABLE - (1) Phoenix Scottsdale Jewish Friendship Trail GuideBook
with 7 Tours of Sites of Phoenix Scottsdale Jewry!
Was $19.95 USD Now $8.00 USD + $3 Media Mail
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(2) BostonWalks Jewish Friendship Trail GuideBook
with 6 Tours of Sites of Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge Jewry!
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(3) BostonWalks The Ten Commandments GuideBook
with creative suggestions for approaching our Ten Commandments!
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Now available!

The Jewish Friendship Trail Guidebook
6 Self-Guided Jewish Boston History Walk Tours
Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge
Softcover 198 pages with maps & b/w photos
Click here
Book Order Form
to order now!

Now available!

The Ten Commandments Guidebook
Ways to Self-Struggle with Classic Morals
In Song, Poetry, and Prose
Covers 10 Commandments Plus One Other!
Softcover 153 pages with practical suggestions pages!
Click here
Book Order Form
to order now!


Celebrating 361 Years


of Jews in America












Storyteller's trail

Ross tours focus on people of Jewish Boston

By Michael Kenney, Globe Staff, 6/10/2000

For Michael A. Ross, what typifies the Jewish experience in Boston is not found in the early immigrant settlements of the North End nor in the later middle-class enclaves of Dorchester, but rather on one short block of town houses at the foot of Beacon Hill.

It is to that block of Otis Place that Ross leads his tours of the Jewish Friendship Trail.

At one end of the block, just off Mt. Vernon Street, is the house where merchant and philanthropist Edward A. Filene lived from 1920 to 1937. At the dead end is the house where lawyer and activist Louis D. Brandeis lived before his appointment to the US Supreme Court in 1916.

Together, says Ross, Brandeis and Filene exemplify the Jewish ideal of tzedakah, or righteous giving, Brandeis as an advocate for workers' rights and social justice, and Filene as a merchant who ''felt an obligation to help his workers.'' Not only did he and his brother, A. Lincoln Filene, expand their parents' department store, but they supported the Filene Cooperative Association, an experiment in employee self-government, and the credit union movement.

It is people, more than places, that are the focus of a Ross tour and of his just-published guidebook. And not just the prominent.

When leading a tour though the North End, Ross says, he is invariably asked how the Irish, the Italians, and the Jews got along in the years around 1900 when the three groups were evenly divided there.

''I say they got along well because they didn't understand each other,'' Ross says. ''One-third spoke Yiddish, one-third spoke Italian, and one-third were Irish. They just smiled and nodded to each other.''

Ross began leading walking tours some years ago, but more and more found them to be ''an excellent tool to motivate me to learn the history and share what I had learned.''

He leads about a dozen tours a year, mainly for synagogue groups. Often someone in the group has a family connection to the sites on the tour. On the tour he led last weekend, Ross says, an elderly woman remarked that her father had worked in one of the cigar-making shops in the Puffer's Building on Cambridge Street. Along with garment ''finishing,'' Ross says, cigar-making was a major occupation for Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe around 1900.

Ross acknowledges with a laugh that his guided tours can run twice as long as the 90-minute self-guided versions laid out in his BostonWalks guidebook.

''I like to talk and I like to tell the stories,'' he says.

A favorite is how the West End House, one of three educational and recreational clubs in the old West End, came to be.

''Originally, it was the Excelsior Club and that started with a group of boys hanging out on a street corner,'' Ross says. ''They wanted to perform Shakespeare plays. Their parents all spoke Yiddish, and they thought it would help them to learn English. They put on a few scenes and James Storrow came to one of the performances. He was president of the School Committee at the time, and he came backstage and invited them out to his house in Lincoln in the summer.''

When the Excelsior Club was established, Storrow, a Yankee philanthropist, paid their rent at several buildings in the West End, and then left money in his will to build the West End House on Blossom Street.

While that was originally a boys' club, the corresponding club for girls was Hecht House - which for Ross, comes with its own set of stories. ''I like the little clubs they had there,'' Ross says, ''like the `soap and water' club. They didn't have plumbing in the tenements, so once a week, they'd take the girls to the public bathhouses and teach them cleanliness skills.''

Ross, 53, is a real estate lawyer-turned-realtor. He grew up in Brookline, just behind the Kehillath Israel synagogue on Harvard Street, went to Brookline High School and then graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and got his law degree at American University in Washington. He ran unsuccessfully for the state legislature from Brookline in the early 1970s, but now lives in Belmont. He practiced law with his brother, David Ross, and they are now partners in Old Cambridge Properties.

History tours are so clearly his passion that Ross even relates his real estate work to them.

''It's truly fun,'' he says. ''I see houses that relate to the history I'm studying and ties in with my walks.'' When he spotted a listing for a house for sale in Weston earlier this year, his reaction was ''Oh, that was Lincoln Filene's house.''

This story ran on page F01 of the Boston Globe on 6/10/2000. Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.





Have you clicked on these other, on-line selections from Michael Alan Ross' new,
The Ten Commandments Guidebook?






Now available!


The Jewish Friendship Trail Guidebook

6 Self-Guided Walking/Bicycling Jewish Boston History Tours

Covers Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge

Softcover 198 pages with maps & b/w photos

Click here
Book Order Form
to order now!



Now available!


The Ten Commandments Guidebook

Ways to Self-Struggle with Classic Morals

In Song, Poetry, and Prose

Covers 10 Commandments Plus One Other!

Softcover 153 pages with practical suggestions pages!

Click here
Book Order Form
to order now!









"West End House" circa 2004
Begun by 35 Jewish boys in 1903!
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Boston's Best!












Yea, Team! The Boston Red Sox and The New England Patriots!


From the Charles River, a red, white, and blue political agenda flows!


Copyright Michael Alan Ross, 2004-2015. All Rights Reserved.

Email: BostonWalks




Chazak Ve-ematz
“be strong and resolute”

(Moses’ words to Joshua in Deut. 31:7)







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Should orthodox women have the same opportunities to participate in learning, davening, and minhagim as men?


Click here for an original, creative, poetic elaboration of such a question,

Sheaylot




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considering the best of the suburban paradigm for our large cities.




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in light of Hillel's If I'm only for myself, what am I?




To be satisfied with life

perhaps, one might consider this raspberry!




Click here for an original, creative, re-interpretation for progressive Jews of Maimonides classic Jewish prayer of affirmation of Jewish faith, "Ani Maamin,"

THIRTEEN PRINCIPLES FOR PROGRESSIVE JEWS

by Michael Alan Ross



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...How many?



When was the last time you really laughed?



We're featuring good Jewish jokes!
Check out this month's featured humor
by clicking here!

We know that there are other belly laughs our there.
Email us at bostonwalks@hotmail.com with your contribution!




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Here's 10 ways to make our hospitals healthier!






Sing Sense to America


Remember the 21st century 1st decade presidential elections by singing some salivatingly satirical and serious song lyrics.
To do so, try these on your tongue:




Question: What's a political mensch?

Answer #1
Answer #2




img FileneimgBest of BostonimgNYC UWSimgBrandeis imgLove Your NeighborimgWatertown, New Town, & Muddy RiverimgWalk Near WaterimgRefute Hate imgWalk West/North Ends imgWe're One imgPray HereimgMeditationimgClubsimgBrooklineimgSensual WalksimgMore LoveimgReportingimgJewish BooksimgTENimgSouth End imgWhat's a political mensch? imgMore "What's a political mensch?"


BostonWalks

Integrating the urban, modern Jewish American city experience with its historical sites and themes in such locales as Boston, MA, Portland, ME, East Bay and Providence, RI, and the Upper West Side of Manhattan, NYC.




Isn't time to make unhealthy hospitals history?

Here's 10 ways to make our hospitals healthier!








Table of Contents of Boston Walks The Jewish Friendship Trail