A savvy traveler looking for a luxury Manhattan hotel will find so much to choose from. The cultural hub for much of the world, this island is a leading importer-exporter for arts and entertainment, business, and hospitality. It’s also one of the most influential cultural capitols of the world, setting trends in fashion, finance, and cuisine. It also has entertainers who are capable of invading the consciousness of a nation.
Jerry Seinfeld is one such entertainer, whose New York roots show through during every one of the episodes of Seinfeld, the show that would shape a cynical and amused nation. In the television show, there are occasional references to his family background, with mentions of an old family back in eastern Europe. This is a very common U.S. story with similar themes and variations, and there are countless citizens who can trace a link between this country and an old world through the ship manifests from immigrant arrivals on Ellis Island. But Jerry Seinfeld is a very funny guy. And he’s been honored recently by the Statue of Liberty – Ellis Island Foundation with a Family Heritage Award.
His first ancestor to arrive here was his grandfather, a Simon Seinfeld, who arrived on Ellis Island as Schimscher Senfeld, at the age of 15, and worked as a fish-seller on the streets of Brooklyn, until making his way through the Bronx, and then to Manhattan. Seinfeld and his sister have been speaking with the press about their memories of how the family got to the U.S. from Ukraine or Austria (depending on the records consulted). Much speculation and musing, then, can be made over the way a family’s journey of migration can be turned into something very culturally significant, wrapped in the disguise of a show about nothing.
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