The Hidden World of Jewish, Irish, and French Psychics on the Lower East Side

Name: The Hidden World of Jewish, Irish, and French Psychics on the Lower East Side
Start: 2025-10-22T19:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-10-22T21:00:00-04:00
Location: 14th Street Y

: October 22, 7 pm – 9 pm.

: Members $15, General Admission $18

Event website

Step with us into the fascinating history of fortune telling on the Lower East Side.

Between 1850 and the early 1900s, the Lower East Side was home to more than a thousand fortune tellers. Who were these psychics and what were their customers seeking? Join Marie Carter (Mortimer and the Witches: A History for Nineteenth Century Fortune Tellers), Eddy Portnoy (Bad Rabbi: And Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press), and moderator, Dan Friedman for an illuminating conversation exploring the lives of Jewish, Irish, and French immigrant psychics and the intersection of religion, gender, and culture on the Lower East Side at the time. We’ll discuss colorful psychic personalities, including “Professor” Abraham Hochman, who along with telling fortunes, was Tammany Hall thug Florrie Sullivan’s official mind reader. Actor Mikhl Yashinsky will join us for a live reenactment of Hochman’s rituals and Marie Carter will demonstrate Madame Le Normand’s fortune-telling card system.

Whether you’re fascinated by history or fortune telling, this evening promises to be a captivating journey into a forgotten world.

This event is cosponsored by Reboot, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Yiddish New York, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. It is sponsored by a Humanities New York Action grant.