by Linda K. Jacobs | Aug 24, 2015 | Uncategorized
Even today, successful women entrepreneurs are as rare as hen’s teeth. Imagine what it took for a nineteenth century woman from a conservative Arab immigrant community to become one of the premier jewelers in New York. Marie El-Khoury was that woman. The Azeez Family...
by Linda K. Jacobs | Aug 16, 2015 | Uncategorized
The friends eventually went their separate ways. In early 1894, Haddad went to Europe to participate in the Antwerp fair and then returned to Syria, while Kheiralla decided to settle down in Chicago and become a “spiritual healer” as a way to make a living. His...
by Linda K. Jacobs | Aug 8, 2015 | Uncategorized
Most early Syrian immigrants to the United States led relatively straightforward lives: they followed a limited number of occupations, practiced the faith of their fathers, married within the community, and had children. Those who strayed from the path make for...
by Linda K. Jacobs | Aug 1, 2015 | Uncategorized
There are more than 300,000 Chaldeans in America today, with large communities in Detroit and San Diego; in the nineteenth century, there were virtually none. The Chaldeans, sometimes called Assyrians or Nestorians, are Christians from Iraq and other Middle Eastern...
by Linda K. Jacobs | Jul 27, 2015 | Uncategorized
Syrian women were important contributors to the economy of the Syrian colony of New York from its very beginnings in 1880. They worked in the needle trades, either in their homes (where they made lace or sewed) or in factories owned by Syrian men sewing kimonos,...
by Linda K. Jacobs | Jul 20, 2015 | Uncategorized
We’ve all heard the story: “My grandfather came over from the old country with nothing but the clothes on his back. His uncle [or cousin or friend], God bless him, supplied him with a shenta [pack or satchel] and goods on credit and sent him out to peddle. He couldn’t...