Florence Schumacher's Oral History

Florence Schumacher, healthcare marketing executive, was interviewed by Christa Whitney on July 16, 2010 at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. Florence talks of growing up in Winnepeg, Manitoba in Canada to immigrant parents. Her father arrived to Canada from what was then Rumania, present day Maldova, as a Yeshiva bocher, in 1927. He spent one year working as an itinerant Hebrew teacher in the southern farming communities of Manitoba. After he moved to the city (Winnepeg), he was very involved in the socialist/communist movement and especially union organizing. He and Florence's mother met while they were both working in the garment industry. She describes her parents' relationship as egalitarian, though there was tension between her father's socialist/communist views and her mother's Zionist views. Her brother remembers more about her father since he was five years older, and she was sixteen when he died. Florence grew up bilingual, since her parents both spoke Yiddish. Eventually, they learned Yiddish, but she recalls having to write her absence excuses to teachers and ask her mother to sign them, since her mother could not write English well enough. She did not have a religious education and went to public schools. However, many of her mostly Jewish friends went to Jewish day schools. Florence became involved in many Jewish organizations and a summer camp through her friends. When she went to the University of Los Angeles, she describes her attempt to push away her Jewishness; exemplified by how she did not join Hillel or a Jewish sorority. Twenty years later, after she was married and moved to the Boston area, she became more involved in Jewish institutions. Today, her Jewish identity, as she describes it, is largely centered around being the member of a temple in Newton, MA, and celebrating holidays. She appreciates institutions like the National Yiddish Book Center for maintaining and preserving the culture. She still goes to Yiddish theater and plays whenever she can. She describes herself as the Jewish representative of the family.