Michael J. Weinstein, a 1985 graduate of Cornell University, never imagined creating a photobook until after he got involved in visiting Holocaust survivors in 2015. He credits a program of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Coney Island, "Connect 2: Friendly Visiting for Holocaust Survivors," and Mr. Michael Cohen of Brooklyn, NY, with getting him started in "chesed" acts of kindness. Soon after visiting several survivors, he found himself out of his familiar Long Island surroundings and into the heart of close-knit neighborhoods in Brooklyn, from Brighton Beach and Coney Island to Flatbush, Midwood, Borough Park, and Williamsburg. He often found himself traveling up and down Ocean Parkway, where his Father, uncle, grandparents, and great-grandparents lived.

On his journey through every Jewish neighborhood, he visited over 100 Orthodox synagogues and was truly amazed at both the familiarity and remarkable diversity that marked each. He expanded his search beyond Brooklyn to the other boroughs of New York City, first in Queens, where he was born in 1963 and where his parents and maternal great-grandmother lived, and then the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where Michael lived after college. He went back to the Lower East Side, where his Grandfather and paternal great-grandparents lived after immigrating from Russia, where they lived in "shtetls", small towns with large, Yiddish-speaking Jewish populations that existed in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. With very few exceptions, these towns have no Jewish residents or active synagogues and are located in present-day Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.

Although there are books about the Lower East Side, books that show synagogues long gone, and other books showing synagogues around the world, this book is unique, focusing on 180 Orthodox synagogues in the 5 boroughs of New York City: the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. It is a tribute to the "freedom of religion in New York City and the United States of America."