DANIEL FORMAN ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney. Today is December 7th, 2017. I am here in Newton, Massachusetts with Dan Forman. We're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record?

DANIEL FORMAN:Yes, you do.

CW:Thanks. So, we're here mostly to talk about a specific person, a family member of yours. Could you just say who that person is by name and what your relation is to him?

DF:Sure. So, we're talking about my grandfather, my zeyde [grandfather], Solomon Simon, who was my mother's father.

CW:And what do you know about his early life, if anything?

DF:So, I guess what I know is from his books, "My Jewish Roots" -- I guess it 1:00was "In the Thicket" -- and, to be honest, it's a very long time since I read those. I read those when I was a kid. But I've also read other things of -- that he's written that describe some of his early life. And, in fact, I was looking at something last night. I don't think this was ever published. I think it was something that he wrote and submitted to somebody for review and they said, Boy, this is kind of awkward. But it talked about leaving home at the age of thirteen and essentially bouncing from yeshiva to yeshiva, various places through Europe for the next -- I guess about four years or something. Until he was somewhere between seventeen and eighteen, and then eventually getting to the US when he was around eighteen. So, I think the earlier life that I know of from the books 2:00is probably slightly fictionalized. And probably the other thing I read was slightly fictionalized, as well, but -- and probably not in the main, so. He never really talked about his life in Europe with us, with grandchildren as far as I know, and never with me.

CW:And where was he born?

DF:So, he was born in Kalinkavichy -- again, this is what I've been told. I've never been there and I don't know the -- but somewhere in the sort of border area of Russia. I shouldn't say the border area, actually, because -- yeah, actually, that's probably about right. That's probably about right. I was flipping between him and my grandmother, who was closer to the Chornobyl area.

CW:And if you were in -- meeting someone who didn't know who your zeyde was, how 3:00would you introduce him?

DF:Well, you mean, how would I describe him?

CW:Yeah.

DF:Well, I would say that he was a Jewish writer, first. He was also a dentist. And he was also very active in the Yiddish education movement within the New York area and was the president of the Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute for some period of time. That his Jewish writing included both children's writing or children's books, as well as scholarly pieces about the Talmud and about the Torah, and that was, in turn, related to teaching, that he did adult education that he did, which essentially generated some amount of following of people who 4:00sort of considered him to be their teacher.

CW:For how many years did your lives overlap? How long did you know him?

DF:So, he died in November of 1970, right before my fourteenth birthday. You know, in terms of how many years of conscious existence we overlapped -- probably my earliest memories of him go back to maybe before I was five. But I'm not sure, you know? And, I mean, I can remember sitting with him -- I was sitting on his lap, so given that he was a small man, I must have been a small 5:00child at the time. And I remember him reading his stories to me with a Scotch in one hand and a cigar in the other hand. And so, that's probably one of my first memories of him.

CW:Can you just describe what he looked like?

DF:Well, I think the first thing to say is he was short. And, you know, I guess somebody probably has the data on this, I don't know. But I would guess he was probably about five-five or something. He was a little bit of a fireplug kind of guy, and sort of looked like the older generation of what you think of as New York Jews. He didn't have a beard, he had a mustache. He always wore a suit. I'm not sure I can ever remember him not being dressed in a suit and a tie. Even the 6:00tie, I'm not sure. I have a good memory of him not wearing a tie, and -- but always neat and, I don't know, that's probably how I would describe him. He was -- he smiled easily, but also, in general, wasn't like a joker or -- he sort of had a serious air about him.

CW:Did he have any prominent features? When you think of him, are there parts that come to mind?

DF:Yeah, there was one part that was missing, which was his finger on his right hand. Which, as a kid, I was a little creeped out by. Like, what's going on with 7:00this? Because it was really just missing all the way down to his palm. That was a result of not really understanding what x-rays will do to you. He was a dentist, and my understanding is he would hold the film in the patient's mouth with his hand while he was taking the x-ray, so -- and it wasn't just that the finger was missing. His hands, his fingers were somewhat deformed, as well. He had lost the fingernails in that hand, or at least on two of the remaining fingers, and the -- little bits of fingernails still stuck on or something, which was -- for a small kid, was a little weird. It's funny, because I also am missing a piece of the same finger. And my granddaughter is fascinated by this, and I don't think she's bothered by it at all. But I've wondered about that, actually, the difference in her reaction and my reactions as kids to this slight 8:00deformity, so --

CW:So, when would you see him?

DF:Well, holidays. I should say that the major holiday we celebrated as -- when I was growing up was Passover. And so, that would always be a time. And birthdays, most often, they would probably come out to see us for birthdays. For Passover, we would end up at their house or my other zeyde's house, or we would end up at both for two seders. I think there may have been, actually, one or two years where they -- one of them came to the other's and then -- I don't know if we did both seders or not. But birthday parties, when I was a kid, my brother's birthday parties, I remember actually going to my older cousin Dina's birthday party when they lived in Queens and they were there. So, that was numerous times 9:00a year. And then, I would probably get deposited there for weekends periodically. My parents had the three of us in a fairly compressed timeframe. So, I'm only three-and-a-half years older than my youngest brother. So, my mother was kind of the hero, 'cause she was twenty-three when her third son was born. So, she was also overwhelmed. And so, I think that they periodically got rid of me by dumping me with bobe [grandmother] and zeyde Simon or my other grandparents, as well. So, I can't tell you how many times a year I would be there. And then, I think we also just visited with them sometimes for no good reason, particularly.

CW:And where were they living?

DF:All right, so I'm sure you've gotten their address from somebody else. So, I 10:00don't remember what the street address was. Someplace in Brooklyn off of Snyder Avenue or on Snyder Avenue or something like that. I tried to actually look it up on Google Maps by memory as to -- 'cause I can sort of vaguely remember how we went by car, but couldn't exactly pick out the house.

CW:And can you describe the house?

DF:Sure. As you're looking at it from the street, there was kind of the square brick enclosure of a very small piece of dirt. And there was a peony or something planted in the middle of it -- there were no gardeners in this family. So, there was nothing particularly artistic or nice, even, I would say about this little piece of dirt. It was just something that maybe somebody with a 11:00little bit more interest might have made into a prettier, natural thing. But the stairs went up to the right of this thing. And the whole thing -- everything was brick. It was all brick. So, you go in -- the entrance to the house was on the right, and as you go in, to the left is the living room. The house actually, I should start out by saying, is just a very long, skinny, narrow building. I don't know how wide it was, but maybe as wide as this room. Maybe not much more. So, the living room -- as you go in, the living room is on the left. If you sort of turn into the living room on the left and then make another -- face left again to face back out to the front of the street, that was where my zeyde's work area was. So, he had a desk that would face into the living room. And behind him were built-in bookcases along three walls with all of his books, 12:00scholarly books, everything else in those bookcases. So, that was the living room and his work area. If you keep going down the narrow dimension of the house, there was the dining room, which basically consumed the whole width of the building. And the dining room probably was the length of a long dining room table, and that was about it. And there was actually some kind of a piece of furniture on the right, which smelled like grandparents. (laughs) I remember that. I don't know if that's -- means it was mothballs or something else that gave it the grandparent smell. On the left was the stairway to go upstairs. That was also where the one telephone in the house was -- was on a little table at a landing at the bottom of the stairway. On the right was a passageway into the 13:00kitchen, which was in the back of the house. And in the kitchen, they had what actually was probably a piece of outdoor furniture -- it was the kitchen table, as I remember it. And I think that that piece of furniture's actually still in the Blochs's house, in Milton Bloch's house out in Huntington. And they had a Frigidaire refrigerator. It was probably from the '40s or something, I don't remember. It was ancient-looking. And a thing that I think bothered my bobe immensely was that there was a bathroom in the kitchen. So, as you were sort of facing across the room, on the right -- first, there was a door to go outside and there were steps down to the back. But past that door, there was a door that 14:00went into this -- just little closet, and there was a toilet in the closet. So, that was the kitchen. Then, upstairs, there was a back bedroom which had a desk in it and probably like a sofa bed, I think, at least at the time that I was aware, and I probably stayed in that bedroom when I stayed over. Then, there was another bedroom, I think, in the middle bathroom next to that. And then, their bedroom was in the front of the house, overlooking the street. And the back of the house, outside, was just basically -- mostly paved over. There was a garage, and then to the right of the garage was a weed field with some kind of overgrowth. Again, nobody there had any interest in doing anything with it.

CW:So, what do you remember from visiting as a young kid, that house? What would you do or what memories --

DF:Sure. So, probably my earliest memories are going for a walk with zeyde. And he would take me down to the corner -- there was a drugstore on the corner, and I only remember buying two things there. One was these pretzel sticks. And the other were pink Spalding balls that we probably lost every time we went there, so we had to buy more of them, so -- but each time, we only bought one. So, we used to play -- I think we used to play either some version of handball against the garage door outside or something. They were probably more suited for stickball, but there wasn't any space to play stickball, so -- and I remember walking down the street with him, and the kids -- there were kids all over. I 16:00mean, there were kids all over the street. Lot of families. And he was totally popular. I mean, the kids would run after him; probably one reason they were doing this was he handed out candy, which, in retrospect, was a pretty strange thing for a dentist to be doing. But he liked the kids, kids liked him, and he got enjoyment out of that. Made me sort of feel proud: Oh, look at -- all these kids really love my grandfather. So, that was one thing that I remember doing. And there was another time we went -- my bobe drove zeyde and me to someplace where he was gonna talk to somebody about turning "The Wandering Beggar" into a 17:00play. And so, bobe didn't sit in on the meeting for some reason, but I did. And basically, I think the upshot of it was this guy said, "No, this isn't really gonna work for a play." And so, we left. Bobe picks us up, and zeyde starts to relate what happened in the meeting. She says, "Well, he's sort of probably right about that." This turned into a major fight, and the two of them are screaming at each other. And she's driving the car and they're screaming at each other. I'm sitting in the back, completely like, "What's going on here?" And I think I ended up standing up and telling them to stop yelling at each other -- they were scaring me or something. So, they did, actually. They stopped. But I'm sure that that was representative of many discussions that they had. The volume 18:00got turned up, but then, after a while, everything was fine. [BREAK IN RECORDING]. It was clear that he took great offense at her taking this other guy's side, or at least -- and just insinuating that there was some credence to it, so.

CW:I want to just ask a little bit about her. What do you know about your bobe's background?

DF:So, she had lots of sisters, no brothers. Her father came to the US by himself with the promise of bringing them over. That promise didn't materialize for some period of time. There's a photograph that I don't think I have a copy of, but at some point, bobe's mother decided that the only way that they would 19:00get him to bring them over would be to get them all dressed up in nice clothes and get some kind of a portrait taken. So, they had this picture taken and they sent him the picture. And I guess he ended up bringing them over. I think that it wasn't unusual in these situations for the guy who came over first to have started to develop a second life. And whether he did that or not, I don't know the story there. But she came over -- she was sort of, I think, in the middle of the pack in terms of the sisters. And I don't know really how old she was when she got here. I don't think she really had any formal education. I'm certain that she didn't go to college, and I think the most that she probably had was English classes, and always spoke with a Yiddish accent, but was completely 20:00literate in English. And the sort of folklore in the family is that they met at some kind of an anarchist's meeting. Again, maybe it's true. (laughs) I don't know. But it wouldn't be out of character, because bobe was sort of a -- unsentimental, very, very unvarnished truth kind of person. I mean, she was -- I wouldn't say that she was a hard person. She wasn't hard in the sense of being cold. But she just wasn't gonna suffer fools. She wasn't going to give any credence to any kind of superstition or nonsense. She was totally unreligious, 21:00and I'm certain viewed all of that as being silly. At least they were a match in that way. And I think, in some ways, because of his background, he had some more warm feelings and positive feelings towards ritual and the value of ritual, even though he himself sort of jettisoned it. I think she probably had less. She kept a sort of a kosher home because I think that's how she was raised, and that's what you do, and that's what she did. But beyond that, I cannot think of anything having anything remotely to do with religion that ever was a part of 22:00her life. I should also say she was very smart, and listening to her read was a pleasure because she -- it didn't matter what language she was reading. And it could be Yiddish, Hebrew, English; she had an expressiveness and sort of fluidity about the way she would read that was really just very nice, and a comfort with it. And it was almost like she was speaking. She was reading material, and I think that in some ways, she participated in his intellectual life in more of a way than one might think of in terms of her just being -- I mean, she wasn't a professional person. She came off in many ways as just being a traditional housewife. But intellectually, I don't think there was anything 23:00that he would write, any material that he produced that she wasn't fully comfortable with, and I don't know how much they discussed together and whether -- I doubt that she did much in the way of critique of his material. It wasn't like she was out of her league from an intellectual point of view in her relationship with him.

CW:So, can you talk a little bit more about what you remember of their relationship?

DF:Well, so, the fight in the car was not the norm. I would say that it was particularly loud. (laughter) I think maybe I was little, also, so it was 24:00particularly scary at the time. It wasn't really the norm. But then again, there was sort of an energy to the way they interacted as well. And so, I would say that it wasn't so much banter as there was some back and forth, always, that was at some lower level than that. But it wasn't mean or really angry in any way, really. So, I was thirteen when he died. And so, I think that most of my life, I was probably too young to understand, really, the dynamics between a married couple in any real depth, right? But it certainly wasn't uncomfortable. I mean, 25:00they had an interesting relationship in that they -- she was the driver. She drove the car. I never, ever saw him drive a car. I mean, the word was that he had a license. I never myself laid eyes on it, and I'm not sure that he actually had one when I was alive. But supposedly, he knew how to drive and had a license. But she did all the driving. As typical, she ran the house, and his interest, really, was his writing and his studies and the people that he knew in a scholarly and a professional role. And they kind of divided up that way. I mean, he would never have cooked anything -- never would ever seen him cook anything. I'm not sure I would ever remember him getting me dressed or anything 26:00like that. I think that would always be a bobe kind of thing. So, I'm sure that they never shared those kinds of things, which would have been pretty atypical, I think, for a couple of their generation. But I don't know, I mean, maybe this is private stuff and dirty laundry, (laughs) but I remember they had separate beds. Now that you're asking me about their relationship, I remember one time when I stayed over and I was little and I woke up in the morning, went into their bedroom and got into one of their beds, and then the other one wanted me to go into their bed. So, I don't know if that was true their whole lives or just at the end. But --

CW:Do you remember what kind of car they had?

DF:Oh, no, not really. It wasn't a small car, which is only significant because 27:00bobe was such a small person. And I was thinking about this recently, is that how did she even see over the dashboard? I don't know. I mean, certainly in her older age, I don't think -- she wasn't five feet, but I don't specifically remember what they had when I was a kid. One of the funny stories about them was an argument, and I don't know if anybody else has related this to you, but I think they came home one day and parked the car on the sidewalk somewhere in front of the house. And my zeyde said, "You know, there's going to be a storm tonight. You shouldn't park it near the tree." And she said, "No, no, that's 28:00ridiculous." And just park-- "This is fine. I'm parking here." Sure enough, the tree came down in the storm and hit the car. (laughs) So, that was the story and, again, a relationship story and an argument that turned out well for him.

CW:So, I want to sort of shift gears here to talk a little bit about his intellectual life. So, first of all, do you know any more about his education? Your zeyde's education?

DF:Not really. I mean, again, from what I've read, he went through a number of yeshivas in Europe, the idea being that he was talented enough to be a scholar, to be a prize student. This is sort of, I think, according to his account, but 29:00likely to be true. And when he came here, I guess he went to college at some point. I don't think there was such a thing as dental school at the time. I don't know what the education process was for becoming a dentist. Would have happened after World War I, I believe, and I don't know the details of where he went for college, what he did to become a dentist or anything like that.

CW:Well, since you mentioned the dentistry, what do --

DF:Yeah.

CW:-- what are the family stories about his being a dentist?

DF:Well, I guess the first story is that my mother was always afraid to go there, and that was based on experience, I think. So, I think that he may or may 30:00not have believed in Novocain, at least under some or all circumstances. I don't think that he actually ever did any dental work on me. So, I think by the time I would have lost my children's teeth, my juvenile teeth -- just around six or seven years old, he was probably retired at that point from dentistry. And I think, also, my mother probably preferred that I not go to him, and so arranged for me to get local dental work done. So, he never operated on me. I did go to his office at least once. I think I was impressed that he didn't have the most modern drills in existence, or at least -- again, this was his office as he had 31:00turned it over to somebody else. So, it may be that the stuff that I had become accustomed to as a kid in Great Neck -- being sort of normal dental equipment and the high-speed drill and everything -- didn't exist when he was still actively practicing, so.

CW:So, what do you remember it looking like?

DF:Well, you would see cables. It would be an articulated arm with two or three joints and a cable that would run along this thing that would drive the drill. I mean, I don't know if there was actually any difference in the bits that were used in the drill. But it sort of looked clunkier and bigger than what you think 32:00of as a dental drill now. Just nice, ergonomic aluminum handle thing. [BREAK IN RECORDING]. And, actually, I think the dental equipment that he had probably also existed in the dentists that I went to, but wasn't used anymore or something. So, I think it was lower speed, and I think that his approach also was that he would just go fast, is my impression. So, maybe the philosophy was just better to get it over with, no matter how much it hurt, and I think probably he had a couple of chairs going at once. So, I don't know, those are -- again, having never been the recipient of his dental treatment, this is just my impression from, I think, probably mostly my mom.

CW:And what about the stories from the Depression era of --

DF:Yeah. So, I don't know exactly the timing of when he started practicing dentistry. He would have been thirty-ish at the time the Depression hit. And I suspect that he was already practicing by then. Well, I guess I know he was practicing by then. So, first thing I heard of this, really, was at -- when I was at camp, and this is Camp Boiberik -- there were these various old people who would kind of hang around the camp. So, there was one guy, Coco, who was the Yiddish teacher -- at least for maybe the first couple of years I was there. I think he was probably there the whole time I was there. And then, there were 34:00camp mothers who were also equally ancient. And I guess at least once, if not twice, I had people sort of come up and just sort of grab me and say, Your grandfather did dental work for me for no charge during the Depression, and how grateful they were about that. So, I knew about it from that, and then, I guess, more recently, just in talking to my uncle about portraits that we've got floating around the family of him, that he had done the work for this portrait artist, Kallum. It wasn't really for free, it was an exchange for these pictures that were done. The one in my mother's house, I think, is from the '30s, which would have still been Depression-era timing. The one that I've got here is from 35:00the '50s. So, no longer Depression era, but the guy's still trading portraits for the dental work. And I think it would actually be interesting to line up all the pictures that this guy did. And there are probably at least three of them from different years -- to see how his appearance changed in the portraits from one to another. And they say -- if you look carefully at the picture that I've got, he actually has zeyde's hand, his right hand, in the picture. And it's done in a very blurry way. But when I look at it, I know that he's representing the missing finger there, that it's sort of disfigured a little bit, in a way that was the result of the missing finger on his right hand.

CW:Anything else about the dentistry part of his identity that you want to mention?

DF:I mean, not really. We talked about the radiation. I guess, as a kid, I never got the sense that he missed it terribly, that -- when he talked about having to retire from dentistry, I didn't get the sense that it was a great tragedy to him. So, that was probably something that was important to him when he was younger. When he retired, he was probably sixty-ish, and he was probably done with it at that point anyway.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW:Do you have a sense of when he started writing?

DF:Well, I guess this is a fact that could be verified by looking at the books, 37:00but I would guess in the '20s. But I'm not a hundred percent sure of that. I think that that's right.

CW:And again, sort of in the spirit of an introduction, how would you explain what he wrote?

DF:Well, so I guess I would start by saying that, at least in the wider Jewish audience, his Chelm books were the most successful and the most widely disseminated. And I think they were actually reasonably successful in Yiddish before they were translated. My uncle David did the translations of -- both of them? I don't remember. At least of the first one. And I think the second one was originally written in English. I can't recall. I think maybe it was.

CW:And what are those books about?

DF:Well, those are folk tales of his take on life in the shtetl [small town in Eastern Europe with a Jewish community] -- in a humorous slant. And I think that they poke fun at life in the shtetl, which I think was a way of describing the culture without taking it too seriously, but without being overtly negative about it, either. And I think that what is sort of interesting about it is that he rejected that culture when he came here. He was no longer going to be part of the yeshiva system. He wasn't going to be a religious Jew. And the stories are really about religious Jews and the shtetl -- or in many of the stories, there's 39:00a rabbi involved in one way or another. Some of the stories don't have any kind of religious angle to them. But he is sort of distancing himself from them at the same time that I think that he's showing what was valuable and endearing about the culture. So, those were the books that -- when I was at Boiberik, he came and read his Chelm stories to the campers in the auditorium at least once. I'm not sure if he did it more than once while I was there, and I don't know what he did before I was there. Certainly, kids at camp knew those stories and the books. He also wrote "The Wandering Beggar," and actually, I mentioned 40:00earlier that I went with him to see about getting it made into a play. When I was a kid, we had phonograph records which were the recording of "The Wandering Beggar" having been done as a radio play. And I don't know what year that was done in. And I think maybe I still have the cassettes. But in any event, we used to listen to those when I was a kid, and we enjoyed them very much. He had some other children's stories that were probably less successful and less widely known. And then, he had his scholarly writing. Well, actually, I should back up. Late in life, he wrote "The Rabbi's Bible," which was -- textbook for Sunday school, basically, for use in Reform congregations. And that started with the 41:00Torah, but also included, I believe, a volume about the prophets. So, that was also, I guess, in the genre of children's books in some way. And I think that these probably wouldn't be used for high school level education. It was probably younger. And then, sort of the other branch of his writings were scholarly writings. And I don't really know that much about it. Most of it wasn't translated. Very little, I think, was translated. It was, I think, almost all in Yiddish. And I don't really know very much about it.

CW:So, what was your exposure to the children's stories growing up?

DF:Well, I mean, we had the books in the house. He read the stories to us. As a kid, we read them, also. We enjoyed them. And they were sort of just a part of the family. They were an important part of our -- just sort of who we were as a family.

CW:When you say he read them to you or you read them, what language would that have been in?

DF:That would have been in English. I never knew enough Yiddish, really, for him to be able to read those stories to us in Yiddish.

CW:Did you hear any Yiddish growing up?

DF:Yeah. So, certainly when I visited them, there were times when bobe and zeyde would speak exclusively Yiddish with each other. There was NFDK, right, nisht 43:00far di kinder [not for the kids]. So, anything like that would end up in Yiddish. That was true in my house, as well. And so, my parents, who were both fluent in Yiddish, would occasionally speak in Yiddish if they really didn't want us to know what was going on. And actually, I was at a girlfriend's house for dinner once when -- I was probably in seventh or eighth grade. Me, my girlfriend, and her two younger sisters were at the dinner table. Her mother was in the kitchen on the phone, talking to somebody in Yiddish about me. And so, I knew enough that I could sort of explain to my girlfriend (laughs) roughly what her mother was saying. And then, all of a sudden, her mother looked into the 44:00dining room and realized that I was semi-translating and sort of stopped. I got a laugh out of her, too, but I didn't learn enough to really be able to understand any really extensive amount of spoken Yiddish. I could understand phrases, I could understand words, so that I could sometimes get the gist of where the subject matter -- of what was being discussed. I certainly would never be able to put together a Yiddish sentence at this point. I don't know if I ever could. Probably not, yeah.

CW:And you had Yiddish education, too.

DF:Right. So, an interesting question, when I started. I don't know how old I was when I started at the Sholem Aleichem Folkshul. There was a Sholem Aleichem Folkshul in Great Neck, on Middle Neck Road that then -- and I started there. 45:00And I want to guess that maybe I was around seven. It moved to Little Neck Parkway, I think, on the other side of the Long Island Expressway in a YHMA or something. Is that what it's called? YHMA? I don't know. And so, I went all the way through the graduation. So, that was probably about six or seven years of Yiddish school. It was Sunday mornings, probably nine to noon or something. Well, I guess it was probably the same all the way through. There's some amount of learning to read Yiddish, learning some Yiddish vocabulary. But then, also, there was some kind of Bible study, and learning about the prophets and learning 46:00about Judaism and Jewish culture that went up through all six or seven years. I think that the religious part of it really was teaching this is what Judaism is rather than this is what is true. So, the Sholem Aleichem Folkshul and Folk Institute was essentially a somewhat atheistic organization. We were not taught how to pray, for example, in Yiddish school, even though we were taught what was in the Torah, and we were taught other things about Jewish history and about the other books that are part of the Jewish collection of literature. There was no praying and there was no education about, here's what a typical or traditional 47:00service is like in a temple. That didn't exist in Sholem Aleichem. And that was the same about Boiberik, as well. In Boiberik, there was some attempt at teaching some Yiddish. So, my recollection of it is that that might not have lasted for all four -- I was there for four years, and my sense is that maybe that started and then stopped. And I don't know if it started and stopped because they only did it with kids a certain age and then they didn't do it with the older kids, or if they just at some point realized it was a lost cause, that the kids were coming into it without enough connection to Yiddish to really make it work. But the songs, the camp songs continued to be in Yiddish. And so, that 48:00was still an important part of Boiberik, and I hope you don't ask me to sing any Yiddish songs from Boiberik. I won't do it. (laughter) I wouldn't be able to do it without the song sheets anyway at this point. But I wouldn't do it. It'll end up on the internet forever and I won't be able to live with that, but that was probably my Yiddish education. I have recollection of sitting on my other grandfather's lap and having him teaching me the alphabet, teaching me the Hebrew alphabet. Maybe some recollection of doing that a little bit with zeyde Simon as well. So, it wasn't completely -- only in the context of the Sholem Aleichem Folkshul. For Passover, we learned how to read the Four Questions in 49:00Yiddish and in Hebrew. So, I guess we memorized them as much as reading them, yeah, and recited them. I'm not sure I remember actually seeing it written in Yiddish and reading it as a kid, but -- I should say, also, that from a Jewish education point of view, one of my big regrets is turning down my zeyde's offer to do a bar mitzvah. I think the offer was -- I might have even already been thirteen. I'm not sure. But it was probably within -- last year of his life. And 50:00I really had no idea what to do with this, because the idea of praying was just so alien to me, and it was so alien to how I grew up and my Jewish family life that -- why would I want to learn how to pray? Just seemed completely bizarre. But obviously, in retrospect, it was a tremendous lost opportunity to connect with him in a way that would have really been memorable and valuable to me. I think that the reason that he wanted to or offered to tutor me was because he realized how little we had gotten out of the Sholem Aleichem shules [secular Yiddish schools] and how much actual learning -- or how little actual learning 51:00we had accomplished there. And I think that he felt he could augment that in a way that would be genuine. It would be Jewish education without necessarily being God-related; he wasn't trying to convert me to being a believer. There's a discussion in the family about whether he became a believer or not, and I'm highly skeptical of anybody who thinks that he did, or of that idea. But I'm reasonably certain that his sole motivation in offering to tutor me, to do a bar mitzvah, was to give me something that he could contribute just from a knowledge and an education point of view without it being a religious statement. And that 52:00actually translated in a way to what I did with my kids, because when my kids became summer camp eligible, I looked around to see, where would I send them? Because I definitely wanted to send them to a Jewish camp. There was no such thing as a Yiddish camp anymore. There was Workmen's Circle, but Workmen's Circle -- they ran some kind of a program, but I don't think it really was a Yiddish program in any meaningful way. So, we did the tours of the camp open houses and ended up sending them to Yavneh, which is a pretty religious place for a secular Jew. And Yavneh basically has two tracks. They have a Conservative 53:00track and they have an Orthodox track. [BREAK IN RECORDING]. My goal was to send them someplace where they could actually learn something substantive about Judaism and Jewish religion. And the religion is a big part of the culture. And the goal wasn't for them to become believers. Same thing that I think my zeyde was after when he offered to tutor me for the bar mitzvah -- maybe on a grander scale, but certainly my kids learned more than I did and probably more than I would have, even from the tutor -- just tutoring to get a bar mitzvah.

CW:When you were growing up, how would you describe your relationship to Judaism, to Jewish religion?

DF:I mean, I knew I was Jewish. So, it was interesting. I grew up in Great Neck, 54:00which was a predominantly Jewish town. I think probably, as a kid, almost all of the kids that I knew were Jewish. It's probably not completely true, but that's my impression of it. And it was probably my impression of it at the time. I certainly didn't feel like a minority. So, I felt Jewish. It was something that I was proud of, something that we knew was kind of central to who we were as a family and where we had come from. The two sides of my family were a little different. So, my father's side of the family -- although they, too, were involved with Boiberik and they also sent their kids to Yiddish shule, belonged 55:00to a temple, went to temple. I don't know how frequently, exactly, but I think I went once with my grandmother and -- maybe I went with both of them, I don't remember. But not a lot. But they belonged. My father got a bar mitzvah. None of the kids on the Simon side were ever bar or bat mitzvahed. So, it was a little different on both sides. But the identity as a Jew was really more on the Yiddish side than -- and we really didn't take anything from the Forman side, which was -- my grandparents belonging to a temple. That really didn't make it into the picture. I mean, it was quite clear to me as a kid growing up that -- I wouldn't say, We are atheists. I would say what I was told was that, God is 56:00something that some people believe in, but we don't. And so, as a kid, even among other Jewish kids, this actually made you into something of an outcast. I wouldn't say outcast in terms of people won't talk to you, but I can remember sitting at -- I think a lunch table -- and this was in K through three. And somehow, the subject of God came up and I just said, "Well, we don't believe in God." And there's outrage and exclamation of, What do you mean? So, it didn't occur to me at the time that there was anything odd about being Jewish and also not believing in God. It didn't seem to me, as a kid, that these things had anything to do with each other whatsoever. But I didn't think of myself as being 57:00less Jewish because of not believing in God. I just didn't understand. And again, I was young -- but didn't understand that some people think that believing in God is sort of a central, core part of what's required to be Jewish. Obviously, I still don't understand that, either.

CW:I guess similarly, what were your associations with Yiddish?

DF:Well, grandparents, and to some extent, my parents when they spoke to each other -- like I said, if they didn't want us to understand. There was camp. I mean, it was a positive feeling. I'll spill the beans on my wife. When she hears Yiddish, she doesn't find it to be a pleasant sound. She doesn't view it as 58:00being attractive. She associates it with an older generation that she didn't necessarily have as warm feelings towards as I did with my grandparents. So, I have very warm associations with Yiddish. I mean, it's sort of a dying language. You have to admit that it's not being taught to Jewish kids anymore, outside of, oh, the Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox community. But I view it as being something -- as a nice thing, rather than something sort of old and maybe yucky or uncomfortable. And I guess I put my money where my mouth is, because with my granddaughter, I decided that she was going to call me zeyde, not grandpa or grandfather or whatever, gramps. So, I'm zeyde, and I'm quite happy with that. 59:00My wife, if I ever were to have called her bobe, she would put a spike through my head, but I don't feel that way.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW:Well, I wanted to ask just a little more about this debate in the family about zeyde's relationship to religion.

DF:Sure.

CW:So, what's your take on it and what's the debate?

DF:Well, so the debate is whether, at the end of his life, whether he became a believer, which I think is the way my uncle David puts it in the Wikipedia page that he created. And so, I guess the first thing -- I think the context is that throughout his life as a Jewish educator, he wanted very much to create a system 60:00that could create continuity in Judaism through Jewish culture rather than through temple prayer services, which was really the way -- the Orthodox community and the Hasidic community maintain continuity in a different way. But within the temple community, which is the mainstream US Jewish community, the thing you did to be a Jew was you went to temple on Shabbos, on the holidays, and you prayed. And I think that his hope had been to educate Jews and Jewish children, create a system where they could be educated in a different way with a different set of content that would still maintain continuity. And it was clear, I think, by the '60s, that that had failed. And --

CW:Meaning the Sholem Aleichem --

DF:The Sholem Aleichem was his community. There were others that had tried to do similar things, but let's say Sholem Aleichem Shule was his effort at that, and the effort of his cohort. So, that had largely failed and I think he was disappointed in his kids for not having passed it down. And --

CW:Meaning him to them or them to their kids?

DF:No, them to their kids. So, my uncle David, my aunt Judy, my mother, didn't effectively pass down Yiddish to us by speaking it in the house, for example, by making it a more important part of our family life. We just became sort of 62:00generic Jews in Great Neck or in Huntington or wherever. They did more than somebody who did nothing. I mean, they sent us to Jewish camp, they sent us to Sholem Aleichem Folkshul, but from his perspective, and I think he was right, those were so watered down as to become essentially ineffective. That it's difficult, with that amount of time on task, to actually transmit the language, transmit literary competency, transmit a substantial amount of culture. And so, that had all kind of fallen -- it wasn't working. And so, I think he was revisiting the idea that maybe the traditions that went with rabbinic Judaism 63:00and with temple Judaism, which he had rejected as being old-fashioned and sort of wooden and meaningless, and that he didn't himself carry forward when he came to America, had value for a continuity purpose. And like I say, educating me to the point where I could do a bar mitzvah would be an example of that. It wasn't that reading from the Torah was necessarily the only way of being a Jew, but because I hadn't managed to gather enough competency in other ways, he was looking at that as something that was an alternative to what he really would have wanted most. So, I think that he was wrestling with this idea of how much 64:00of old traditions that were liturgy-tied to bring back and to try to adopt for continuity purposes. That's different from saying he wants to bring them back and adopt them for belief purposes. And so, I don't think there's any debate that he was wrestling with what -- maybe we made a mistake by jettisoning all this old stuff. But I don't think that leads to any kind of a conclusion that because the old stuff was associated with God worship, that he was buying back into God worship. So, that's the first thing. The second thing is, even if he was wrestling with the idea of bringing back some of the old, traditional ways of observance, I never saw him do it. I have his tallis we talked about before. 65:00I never saw him wear the tallis. I don't think I ever saw him wear a yarmulke. I never saw them set up a sukkah in the back -- you know, they had admittedly, a very small space to do it in, and somebody might have had to go back there someday with a chainsaw to get rid of the weeds that had grown to be ten or twelve feet tall. But I don't remember him ever setting up a sukkah to observe Sukkos. So, even if he was starting to come to the conclusion that these old rituals and observances were valuable, it wasn't clear that they were valuable to him. And he didn't need them in order to maintain his Jewish identity. He was 66:00educated and he was Jewish through and through. But I think he was thinking of those things as ways of bringing a younger generation back into some kind of substantive Jewish content, not because they were somehow God- and prayer-related. Because if he had, in fact, gone back to becoming a believer, then perhaps he would have actually started himself adopting some of these old God-related rituals. Why not wear a yarmulke? I mean, go for it, right? Why not go and pray? I never saw him pray, other than, I guess, on Passover. The Haggadah has prayers over the wine and the matzah, and you say the prayers over part of the Passover seder. I never, at a meal with him -- never saw him say a 67:00prayer. I think bobe would have yelled at him, probably, if he had, for sure. Maybe he was afraid to, I don't know. (laughs) But I don't really think so. I don't think he was afraid of anything, really. I never saw him pray. So, I'm highly skeptical that any of his sort of reevaluation and his questioning of conclusions that he had come to and directions that he had taken were a symptom of having become a believer. So, my uncle also has this expression -- there's a Yiddish expression that he talked about that he also uses to bolster his argument. I don't know what the expression is. It's similar to Einstein's saying 68:00that God doesn't play with dice. So, I think that the rough translation of it -- and I don't know the Yiddish -- is that the world is not chaos or something like that, but what does that really mean? I mean, that can mean a lot of different things. It doesn't mean that there's a guy up there who is self-aware and who has a hand in things and directs how stuff proceeds. It doesn't even mean that there's a guy up there who no longer directs how things proceed but once did direct how things proceed. It doesn't necessarily mean any of those things. So, I'm really very, very highly skeptical about this notion that he became a believer. I think it's just basically not true. It's not consistent with anything that I saw of him when I was a kid or any of the facts that I'm aware 69:00of in terms of how he conducted himself and conducted his life at the end.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW:I wanted to ask, when you say -- you mentioned sort of what your zeyde would have wanted you to have or what he would have wanted your association or identification to be. Can you imagine what his ideal would have been for you and your relationship to Jewishness?

DF:So, it wasn't about the relationship to Judaism. It was more about competence. I think that his embarrassment was that we didn't know anything, that we were ignorant. It wasn't that we didn't feel Jewish, because I think he knew that we did feel Jewish. It wasn't about identity. It was about competence 70:00and knowledge. And I think what was important to him was that the younger generation, first of all, be able to perpetuate the language -- which we couldn't do, we lost it -- and that we have knowledge of Judaism without necessarily being believers. But those are two separate things. And you can have an understanding of how Judaism started or is believed to have started, how it evolved over the centuries, what its values are, how those values are expressed in culture, both literature -- which was probably mostly an eighteenth, nineteenth century creation, so relatively recent. And so, that would be a way 71:00in which you would have substantive knowledge that would be meaningful in forming Jewish identity. And I think that's really what he wanted and what the idea was of the Sholem Aleichem Folkshul -- was to have people who were educated in their heritage, and to understand what it means to be a Jew from a heritage point of view and from a values point of view and from a culture point of view, and to have that knowledge and that understanding. And I think that includes having an understanding of the God worship part and the services, to some extent, and to know what that is. Again, it doesn't mean you necessarily have to 72:00do it or that you have to even have any warm feelings about it. You can still reject it, but you should at least know what it is. And I think that that was what he felt. But the Yiddish language was a huge part of it, and I think he was right. I think that there wasn't really a reason that my parents' generation couldn't have perpetuated the language by speaking it in the house. And I'm sort of sorry that they didn't. I had campmates, a couple of campmates who, I think, grew up in households where the parents spoke Yiddish, and they could speak Yiddish. And I was jealous. And I think that would have made a huge difference to 73:00zeyde in terms of how he felt about us. It wouldn't have made a big difference in terms of how he felt about the outcome of the Sholem Aleichem Folk movement and what he felt might have been needed in terms of Jewish education going forward. But it would have made a difference -- it would have made a huge difference to him, personally, I think.

CW:What was it like to grow up sort of in the Sholem Aleichem Shule and at Boiberik, Camp Boiberik as Simon's grandson?

DF:So, I wouldn't say that I was a celebrity, exactly. In the shule, my first teacher was -- his last name was Younin, who was somehow a cohort of zeyde's and 74:00I believe that I saw him in zeyde's living room once. Interesting question, whether I saw him before he was my teacher or after he was my teacher. But periodically, people would come by zeyde's house. His intellectual peers would come by to visit and talk and whatever. And so, he was one. And in camp, there were the camp elders who knew my grandfather. And when zeyde read his stories to the camp in the auditorium, I was very proud of that. But I wasn't royalty in any sense of -- even though it was his world and he was a big deal in that 75:00world, and he still, even in his sixties, was on the guest side at Boiberik, giving lectures periodically. It was something that felt good. There were people who knew -- all the adults in the camp knew who he was and who I was. But it really didn't change my experience at the camp that much, or in the shule that much.

CW:What about for you personally? What has it meant to have this writer figure as one of your zeydes?

DF:I'm not sure I think of it quite that way. I think of it more in terms of him 76:00making available a way of being Jewish that I found and continue to find in some ways more palatable than the alternative, which is you belong to a -- column A, column B, column C kind of synagogue and you go for services. And that's how you're Jewish. I belong to a Reconstructionist chavurah [Jewish group], and we did that because going back before that, we wanted our kids to get a Jewish education. And we belonged initially to a Reform synagogue, which seemed kind of 77:00pointless. Didn't relate to the services in any way and the kids weren't learning anything. So, we ditched that and found this chavurah where the parents basically did their own education. They hired tutors. We hired a teacher for Naomi's age group, there was a teacher for Rachel's age group. There were five or six kids in each group. And they learned a lot more, I think, than they would have learned in Reform -- in the Reform temple. To this day, I continue to belong to the chavurah because it is a way still of maintaining a connection to a Jewish community. And I don't know what else (laughs) is available to me in 78:00order to do that. But I struggle terribly with the services. And I can read Hebrew, I can read the prayers, and I just have tremendous difficulty making the connection. It wasn't part of my childhood, so there isn't the nostalgia part of it. I can't understand the Hebrew that I'm reading, but I can skim the English as I'm reading the Hebrew. That doesn't help. It doesn't make it better, sometimes it only makes it worse. So, getting back to your question, the way I think of it in terms of what it meant to have him as my grandfather was that had 79:00I not had that available growing up, I would have had only the temple thing available, and probably not even that because my parents really didn't want to belong to a temple, because they didn't believe in God. And I don't know whether they would have belonged to a temple just solely for the purpose of getting their kids through Hebrew school. And I think I would have been alienated from that anyway, just because it just doesn't resonate in any way. So, I think that he did succeed in making a space that is different from the traditional space that is a positive environment or a positive way of thinking of your Jewish identity, and that continues to be of value to me. We use the same Haggadahs 80:00that he used, for Passover. And I don't know, I mean, from time to time, when my kids were little, we had a Theodore Bikel tape of Yiddish songs that I grew up with as a kid. And, I mean, my zeyde was completely amusical. I mean, bobe and zeyde were both totally amusical. Forget about a musical instrument. Probably not singing in any way. Probably not even interested, terribly, in music. So, I don't know exactly where this came from. Maybe more my parents. But I would pop the cassette into the player on the way to the ski slopes with my kids. So, we would just spend the twenty-five minutes' ride from our cabin in Vermont to the 81:00ski slopes listening to Yiddish folk music from Theodore Bikel. And I think once I found a version of "Goldilocks" -- the three bears in Yiddish that was actually side-by-side Yiddish and English, but that's easy enough reading that -- and you know the story, so I don't even really need the English. But my kids got a tremendous kick out of "Di dray ber [The three bears]." So, that was a lot of fun. So, there have been times when I've been able to bring it into -- in miniscule ways, right? But at least it's something that I'm motivated to do because this is sort of a positive space for expressing Judaism, as opposed to the other, which I really struggle with.

CW:Have your zeyde's books had any presence in your kids' lives?

DF:Oh, sure. Both of my kids -- I think more my older daughter -- probably got into them and --

CW:So, this would be the Chelm stories?

DF:Well, not only that but also "My Jewish Roots" and "In the Thicket" and "The Wandering Beggar." And I'm reasonably certain that Naomi read all of those. I probably read the Chelm stories to the kids when they were little. I don't remember really how much Rachel has read the books herself. But they know the stories. And they have positive association with it.

CW:Can you describe those two books, the memoir books and what you remember from them?

DF:Boy, that's tough. I should have -- I didn't know I had a reading assignment --

CW:You don't have to, you don't have to. (laughter) I'm just curious. (laughs)

DF:-- in preparation.

CW:If you can just say, very broad, what they are.

DF:So, I think "My Jewish Roots" is really -- so, obviously, it's about his earlier childhood, starting from being sort of -- sickly kid who couldn't go to school through, what, thirteen-ish or something. Probably -- I'm sort of winging it a little bit here.

CW:You don't have to do it [UNCLEAR].

DF:And describing his home life, to some extent, describing himself and what he 84:00remembers as a child and what it was like to be him, sort of describing himself as a special child from an intellectual point of view, which I think is a difficult thing to do in a way that comes off normal. And "In the Thicket" -- boy, I don't really remember very well at all.

CW:It's okay.

DF:I think my daughter, actually -- I think Naomi lent it to somebody and I think my copy is gone. Not sure I have a copy anymore, so --

CW:That's fine. I did want to ask you a little bit about Passover with -- at your bobe and zeyde --

DF:Yep.

CW:-- Simon's. So, can you just describe what Passover -- the seder was like?

DF:It was long. (laughs) As a small child, it was really long. So, we used the -- Mordecai Kaplan's Reconstructionist Haggadah. And I believe, probably, they read every single word. I don't think there was anything skipped. I don't know whether they necessarily read all the English translations of everything. But then, I think, in order not to be finished too soon, there were times when zeyde read Aramaic versions of some -- or I don't know what. Even non-Yiddish versions or both Yiddish and Hebrew or something. So, probably not Aramaic. I would imagine that for some of the Bible -- some of the stuff that came out of the Torah, he might have had Aramaic versions. But basically, there was a lot of 86:00both Yiddish and Hebrew versions of the same thing going on. So, it lasted even longer, it seemed to me, than it might have if you'd just sort of done it thoroughly. Food was good. It was a good time. I don't know how late we would stay there. Probably past my bedtime, as a kid, as a little kid. We would probably not leave until ten or something, but it was a nice thing. I mean, it was something that we looked forward to and was important from a family point of view. It wasn't anything that we were ever dragged to. Think a certain amount of 87:00anxiety at various ages about reading the Questions. I'm sure every Jewish kid has that as they're going through the process of learning, I think, whatever language. I think we probably learned it -- I learned it in both languages, and I think the assignments went out to the kids depending upon which language they had managed to master it in. So, the older kids would probably do it -- the oldest kids would probably do it in Yiddish, middle kids might do it in Hebrew, and the youngest kid might do it in English or something.

CW:And it would be in that dining room area of the --

DF:Yeah.

CW:Yeah, that was --

DF:And it was full.

CW:Would anyone else be there other than the family?

DF:So, that's a tough question, because there were probably relatives that I only saw on Passover and as a little kid, couldn't ever really keep their names 88:00straight and who was who and whose uncle or aunt or whatever this person was. And so, I just sort of probably just accepted that they were there. So, there were people there who were not people who I would normally interact with. But I'm not sure whether they were friends. I suspect that there might have been, on occasion. But the family was pretty big if you included bobe's sisters. And I'm not sure whether any of zeyde's family ever came, and who was even around by the time I was a kid and would have been aware of what was going on. I don't know. 89:00So, I know, on my other side, I think it was just family. But again, there were distant relatives who I was probably always confused about exactly who they were.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW:I'm curious just what he -- looking back, what was he like as a grandfather?

DF:So, he was loving. He enjoyed children, and he enjoyed us very much. I think he was disappointed that we didn't have more contact when -- towards the very end of his life when we could have come down. And there were letters where -- or at least one letter at the very end of his life where he's expressing 90:00frustrations with my parents for not sending us all down to Miami or sending one of us down to Miami. And he would have liked nothing better -- to have sort of captured us for a weekend or week and be with us. So, he was warm with us. He really enjoyed being a grandfather. And he enjoyed us as people. He saw us as individuals and related to us as individuals.

CW:Are there any other sort of associations or memories of him that you want to include? Sort of -- I'm thinking about some of your cousins talking about certain smells they associate with him.

DF:Well, I mean, so cigars and scotch are the dominant smells, for sure. And the 91:00cigars were not expensive cigars, and I don't like cigars anyway. I think that they were White Owls or something. I think if you lit up a White Owl today, if they still exist, I could probably tell you if that was the kind that he smoked. One of the things I associate with him and I think that probably everybody associates with him is an argumentative style. He was opinionated and he enjoyed sort of intellectual jousting.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

DF:I think that he saw that as a valuable activity in and of itself. It was, for 92:00him, like breathing and eating, was one of the things that you did as a human being -- was test your ideas against other people and see whether you could prevail. And it was like walking. It was just how he was. It was something that he did. And I have a letter from him that he wrote me, and I believe it was after the Kent State shootings. And he's basically applauding my sort of standing my ground against him and probably my father and I don't know who else in an argument that we'd had. And I honestly don't really remember exactly the details of the argument, but what he says to me is that he's proud of me for 93:00essentially arguing and sort of sticking to my guns and making my case. And I think that that's expressive of something that he just valued in himself and that that was part of -- I don't know if it came out of the Talmudic tradition and he still had that piece stuck in him as kind of core identity from growing up, or if it's just the way he was. It could be that he just is that person. And so, it was an important thing to him. And I think -- I know from personal experience people can find that annoying. And I'm sure he didn't know always 94:00when people were finding it annoying. I know that also from personal experience. So, I think that that's also something that would quickly come to people's minds when thinking about him. But I think, also, he was an educator in the sense that if he was going to argue with you about something, he would actually contribute subject matter and he would -- one of his favorite phrases was, "Where is it written?" So, that's to say, "Well, what do you have to support your argument? Or are you just sort of saying it has to be true and therefore it's true?" But I 95:00think that there are times, as well, that he would add content and say, Well, that's not really -- in the Jewish tradition, this is what's said or what so-and-so said. So, it wasn't just sort of a battle-axe kind of shout -- it was never going to be a battle-axe shouting match without content and substance in terms of being argumentative. It was really more -- I don't know, I guess I don't know how else to describe it, really.

CW:Yeah. I'm -- can't help but want to ask if you see any connection to that and litigation in your own -- is there any connection that you find to that? Do you connect to that tradition or legacy at all?

DF:Well, so you can always ask whether it's just sort of who you are. Litigators are probably not taught. They're probably born. And so, I don't know if growing up in that environment -- probably contributed in my life to who I am and how I am that way and what I think is valuable. And my willingness to go head-to-head on an argument might in some way come -- but my environment growing up wasn't just zeyde. It was also my parents. And so, I'm not sure I would say just that it came from them. It may have been handed down through my mother, (laughs) and 97:00my father, as well, so --

CW:Well, to ask a similar question without leading you --

DF:Sure.

CW:-- to a specific answer, are there things that you see in yourself or that you -- in your life now that -- the way that that legacy has played out in your own life? And if so, how?

DF:Well, when you say that legacy, what do you mean?

CW:Meaning the connection -- meaning your grandfather, specifically.

DF:That's a very broad question. (laughter) I mean, you're sort of the collection of a lot of things, right? So, he was a real presence. He was a presence because he was loud at times. He was a presence because he loved his 98:00grandchildren and he connected with us. He was a presence because of the Yiddish side of things, which really came from him more than any other one person. You don't know how much of your personality comes from who. It's hard to measure. But I certainly see aspects of him in me in terms of just intellectual proclivity and -- not so much the scholarly thing and reading, 'cause in many ways, he and I are opposites in that way. I always hated school. I hated school learning. I don't think I was particularly good at it and wasn't particularly 99:00motivated by it, which is really very different, I think, from him. But in terms of having a logical mind, I think that he was very much that way. And so, I see that in myself. But again, that probably comes from a lot of different places, too.

CW:Great. Well, I'd love to bring those -- the things that you brought out over and kind of go through them and have you read some of the letters.

DF:Sure.

CW:But are there any other sort of stories that I didn't prompt that you wanted to get in here?

DF:I guess one thing to mention, and I don't know whether you've got it from any 100:00of my other relatives -- was that a year after he died, there was a memorial service for him that was held in some senior citizens facility in Brooklyn somewhere. And I think a lot of the family went to that. In fact, the place that my wife really met the family-to-be, because this was -- oh, no, it wasn't the year after he died. I'm sorry. (laughs) It was ten years after he died. And so, it was 1980. And I don't really remember very much substantively about what happened at the memorial other than people, I think, reading his material and 101:00talking a little bit about what he meant to them as a teacher. And that was moving, to hear people talk about him as an important person in their lives and in their intellectual lives, so.

CW:Would you mind talking about when he died?

DF:No, it's fine. So, I think my parents had actually split up already, but for some reason, my father was actually in the house in Great Neck, and my mom got a call basically telling her that he had died, and I remember her crying and Dad comforting her. I hope I'm not mashing all of that up in some way (laughs) with 102:00other memories, but that's what I think happened. That was a really tough year for me, because my parents had split up and my other grandfather had died, also, in 1970, at the beginning of the year. So, things were really kind of crappy. (laughs) And it was a downer. I mean, I was pretty sad about the whole thing. It was a real loss for me. Both of my grandparent-- grandfathers, actually. It was a real loss at the time. It was tough.

CW:Do you remember what happened? I mean, were you -- you would have been -- you were home when this happened. Do you remember what happened after that?

DF:Well, I guess I have a vague recollection of the funeral and driving out to 103:00some godforsaken place in New Jersey where they bury Jewish people from Brooklyn. I don't know why, exactly. (laughs) And I don't know exactly where it was in New Jersey. I think that he had actually specified -- he had written up in some kind of a document what he wanted his funeral to be like. And I don't have that. I don't have a copy of that. And so, that would really be the best thing to go by in terms of his funeral. But I would guess that there probably -- 104:00there might not have been a rabbi there, but I'm not sure about it. I would guess that Kaddish was said. I would guess that there may have been some other things that he wrote that he wanted -- not things that he authored, but things that he specified that he wanted said at his grave. But I don't remember exactly. So, the other part of this is that my brothers were a good deal younger. So, Bill was probably -- so, this is in November of 1970. So, Bill was eleven, David was ten. I think they both also had a pretty tough time with it. And particularly, I have a vague recollection of them having a tough time at the funeral.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

DF:Well, so this is a picture of my zeyde which I've had forever, I guess. There are little sticky things on the back that once held this up probably on a corkboard or something. I think I had it in my room. I think it actually, at some point, was in a real frame, which may have kept it in a little bit better shape than it's in now. But I think that this was of him, probably in his forties -- would be my guess. Maybe fiftyish. Not sure. But it's just something that I've had -- this was the picture of him that I had as a kid. It was mine and that I sort of carried around.

CW:Did he look like that when you knew him? I mean --

DF:Little older. (laughter)

CW:You know, sure, is --

DF:But his hairline was pretty much the same. It wasn't significantly different. You can't really see that well in this picture, but I think he was probably heavier. If you look at just sort of the neck and the jowls kind of thing, he had, as we all do, developed more jowls and neck stuff. So, that's why I'm guessing that this is not a picture of him in his sixties. It's a picture of him a good deal younger than that.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

DF:So, this is something I found, actually, last night, making a last-ditch effort to look for things: my graduation certificate from the Sholem Aleichem Folkshul, and -- dated 1969. What does that say? Yeah, June of 1969. So, I was not yet thirteen. The teachers were Mister -- well, is this? Actually, I was 107:00going to say Marcus, but it doesn't say Marcus.

CW:I -- similar -- or something --

DF:Yeah, it says David Hamfling, who I don't really remember at all. The principal, Jacob Julius, I remember. So, Mr. Julius, actually -- I don't remember whether he had any involvement with Boiberik or not. I believe that he may have, but I think he also actually ended up teaching in Great Neck South High School. So, I used to see him -- couple of years later, in high school.

CW:And on the Yiddish side, it's Miriam Hoffman.

DF:Oh! Uh huh.

CW:Don't know if you have any memories of her. She's a known entity. (laughter)

DF:Yeah. So, there were Hoffmans at Boiberik and I want to say that one of the kids was Avi, Avi Hoffman. Now we're really scraping (laughter) -- scraping the bottom here, right? So, this is going on fifty years ago.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

DF:Right, as I mentioned before, my zeyde Forman died in January of 1970. I think it was January 8th, and this letter is dated January 10th of 1970, which zeyde -- my zeyde Simon wrote to me after he got back to -- or when he was in Miami, after my other grandfather died. And this was actually written not just to me, but to me and my brothers about my other zeyde. And I should mention that 109:00they knew each other well. And I don't exactly understand what the social circles were, because they were very different people. They lived in different places. And my zeyde Forman, although he sent at least -- I think that my father ended up being maybe some kind of a counselor at Boiberik. I think that he may have gone to other Jewish camps as a camper that were more Hebrew-oriented. My aunt Roslyn went to Boiberik, and I don't know what she did otherwise as far as Jewish education is concerned. And I know that my dad had a bar mitzvah. So, I'm not quite sure, exactly, how they were connected, but they were connected before 110:00my parents were a couple. And my parents knew each other by virtue of the families being connected and the families knowing each other. So, by the time 1970 rolls around, my zeyde Simon had probably known my zeyde Forman for thirty years or something, probably, in one form or another. But this was a moving letter. [BREAK IN RECORDING]. So, it begins, "Danny, Billy, and David, Friday you were at the funeral and burial of zeyde Forman. Of course, he could have lived at least another ten years or more, but that grandchildren live to see the funeral of their grandfathers is natural. That is the way of the world." I have to say, it's hard for me to read the letter. "But I want to tell you a little about zeyde Forman, what a remarkable man he was. For you, it was worthwhile to 111:00remember, because none of you is old enough to have understood him fully. There are people who write poems, all kinds of artists, from writers, painters, and architects, engineers, road builders or bridge builders to designers of cloth who create. They immerse their personality and life in their creativity. They are admired, written about, and are considered as those who give meaning and sense to life. But zeyde Forman was entirely a different artist. His life, his way of living, was a beautiful, remarkable" -- we'll have to see if I can get through this -- "and unique creation. He loved life. He tried and did create around him a beautiful and an individual approach to life which was not apparent to the average observer. He clamored into life and said to himself, not exactly 112:00with words, 'I'll make you my own and mold you to my wish.' No, he was not selfish. He considered himself the head of the clan. His devotion to his children, relatives, was as much as any man's devotion to himself. He loved beauty. That does not mean he went to museums, galleries, or art exhibitions and the like. He made his own surroundings beautiful and charming. You were often in his house in Jamaica Estate. Did you notice how refined it was, from the built-in bookcases to the uprights of the doors, everything was beautiful, proper, and solid. Did you ever see him dressed sloppily?" And here we get back to postcards that I guess you'll show me about pants and jackets. "The money that he had, he earned it the hard way. Till he was well into his thirties, he could not afford any vacation. But he was liberal with it. From what I know, what he did for his kin and never expected anything in return, he did often more 113:00than he could afford. He was a sick man for the last eighteen or twenty years, but he refused to acknowledge it till the last minute of his life. I remember about fifteen years ago or more, he was lying in bed with a heart attack and planned the carpentry of the house. He overcame his sickness, and for fifteen years lived a full and beautiful life, saw his children marry, and lived long enough to see a grandson almost fourteen years old. His smile, his soft voice, even when he was angry and wroth reflected the man's character, his consideration, and understanding of people. No, he did not like many things which are human, even what his immediate family did. But still, he never even thought to deny his relationship to any one of his kin. He lived fully. He did what he thought is expected of him as a father and as a head of the clan, even 114:00endangering his health. Perhaps if he were more careful and cautious about himself, he would have lived longer. True, but still he lived fully seventy years, which a generation ago was considered a long life. His life was modeled, maybe without being fully aware of it, on the Jewish idea that the primary thing is not what you know, not what you say, and not even what you think but what you do with your life. How constructive is it? How much do you help your family, your people, and your country? No, no, not with big things that can surprise many people, but -- no, but with your daily activities, with your what we call profane life." Parenthesis, "In English, profane does not exactly express the meaning of the Yiddish vokhedik, daily, every day of the week, or the Hebrew chayim shel chol, the life of every week or of ordinary days. He lived a beautiful, serene life, almost without disappointments. The sayings of the 115:00elders state," quote, "'No man dies and half of his desires are fulfilled,'" end quote. "He had almost all his desires fulfilled. He surely cheated death. He surely lived much longer than any other man in his condition of health. He surely was richer in material things than the average immigrant. The Talmud states -- of course, it is all in allegorical form, parable-like -- when a man faces his maker, the first question He asked is," quote, "'Did you have a nice and good family life?'" End quote. "The second question, 'Did you earn your living honestly?'" End quote. "The third question," quote, "'Did you live a full life?'" End quote. "'Did you live up to your full capacities?' So, all these questions, zeyde Forman can say without hesitation, 'Yes, I lived a nice, good family life. I earned my living honestly. I lived a full life, at my full 116:00capacity. I never shirked my duty.' The world can go on only when there are a lot of men like zeyde Forman was. In truth, is that our society can exist and does exist not because of the renowned and notorious people about whom it is written in books and their picture is a household -- pictures is a household -- no, it is people like zeyde Forman who are the backbone of society and its molders. For various reasons, health and other reasons, neither I nor bobe could be at the funeral. But we were in his house in Miami Beach five or ten minutes after he died. We were there when he was taken away by the police or the attendants of the funeral parlor. It surely was a shock and a grief. But I looked at his motionless body and thought, Excuse me, here is a man who achieved in a sense more than one of his generation ever dreamed to achieve. His life was useful and beautiful. Many and many may envy him. Zeyde Simon. Bobe sends her 117:00regards." [BREAK IN RECORDING]. Couple of things to know, just from background, is that my zeyde Forman started having heart attacks sometime when he was in his forties. So, this would have been going on for twenty-five years, and I don't know, he collected twelve of them or something before he died. So, that was some of what he was talking about in terms of the health things. In terms of the clan and the sort of taking care of people, when -- I don't know all of it, but my understanding is that -- so, first of all, my zeyde Forman was the oldest son among his siblings. Came here probably when he was about twenty years old or 118:00something like that. And his par-- they were basically orphans. His parents had both died, in -- one in pogroms in 1918, probably, or 1919. The other, under unclear circumstances that I -- at one point had also been told that the father had been murdered, but now -- maybe not clear whether he had been murdered or what. But in any event, came over here, made a life for himself, ended up bringing his -- again, according to this side of the family, less successful brother into the business and they made a successful business. But at some point in -- and I think this was 1936 -- he had enough money that he could go to Europe, and went to Poland to try to get my bobe's family out. And so, they got 119:00to Poland. My bobe's brother had been arrested for some bogus reason like stealing firewood on the ground from some nobleman's estate or something and he was in jail. And basically, nobody would come. They were able to bring one person out, and then that was it. The war started. So, that was more background in terms of what zeyde Simon is describing. In terms of what the letter says about zeyde Simon himself, I think, is sort of interesting a little bit, because he contrasts the poet and people who are of renown and about whom books are written as not being the important people in society who make society what it is. But, of course, being that kind of person was central to zeyde Simon's 120:00identity. So, I don't know if this is a little bit of false modesty, in part, in order to make a point about my zeyde Forman, but -- or maybe there's some -- something genuine there, a genuine thought that he always thought of himself as a contributor, and as being important in his circle for his art and for his books, but maybe recognizing that that's not the most important thing, necessarily, and there are other things, too. So, I thought that was kind of interesting about the letter. [BREAK IN RECORDING] The money thing's sort of interesting, as well. Zeyde Simon lived a comfortable life. He was a professional, he was a dentist, and I'm sure he didn't maximize his earnings as 121:00a dentist, but they were comfortable, they had a house, they had cars. Well, a car, and didn't need more than one car, since he wouldn't drive it. And I read this and I see maybe a hint of a little bit of jealousy about the money with zeyde Forman. So, I think that that's interesting. Sort of the description of what's important in life, the primary thing is not what you know, not what you say, and not even what you think, but what you do with your life. Well, for my zeyde Simon, what you know and what you say and what you think was really tremendously important to him and important to, I think, his identity and to his 122:00concept of himself. I mean, I think that it was important to him that he was a scholar, that he was accomplished in knowledge. And so, this is an interesting statement and hard to know exactly how to take it. His life was constructive, as well, in what he calls the profane ways. There's nothing wrong with being a dentist. It can sometimes be a punchline, I guess, but people need to have their teeth fixed. Your tooth hurts and you're grateful that there's somebody that does this. And I think, also, his work in Jewish education was something that he did as an effort to better his community. I'm sure he enjoyed being a makher 123:00[big shot] and he enjoyed being a big shot in a circle. But I think it was also something that he did because of a commitment to a community and something that he felt was important to give in order to build something, and not purely for personal aggrandizement. So, there's the contrast, I think, in some ways here between what he's talking about in terms of knowledge and not being important and -- that's the profane part of your life that's important. So, that, I think, is interesting, too. Interesting without an answer in terms of what he was really thinking and if you had a discussion with him about it, what he would say about it in terms of his own life. He lived a beautiful and serene life. Well, 124:00I'm not sure that my zeyde Forman's life was serene. My bobe Forman had a bad reputation (laughs) as being a tough woman, and I loved her dearly and she loved me, and I always got along great with her. But I could see that being married to her would have required work. So, there's some amount of idealizing here, I think. But, yeah, no man dies and half his desires are fulfilled -- what were zeyde Simon's desires, and how was he feeling about himself at the end of his life? Were half of his desires or more than half of his desires fulfilled? I don't know. As we talked about before, I think he had some real disappointments in terms of what he was able to achieve about Jewish education and about secular 125:00Judaism --

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

DF:He says that no man dies and half his desires are fulfilled. But what was he thinking at the time about his life? By this time had already had at least one heart attack --

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

DF:And had the disappointments of how his movement had worked out and perhaps how his kids were going to hand down their Jewish identity. And so, I don't know how -- when he wrote this, what he had in mind with respect to himself. And then, the Talmudic saying here, "Did you have a nice and good family life? Did you earn your living honestly? And did you live a full life?" Well, certainly, his family life, again, I think was pretty good. I think he loved my grandmother. They probably duked it out a fair amount, but all couples do. And I 126:00think, from what I've read, maybe at times he felt that he could've been closer to his kids than he ended up being, that somehow there was a distance or something. But I'm not sure that that's at the level of a real disappointment or a disas-- certainly not disaster. I mean, you just have to look at some other parts of the family, my grandmother's sisters, to see what the sort of failure side of "did you have a nice and good family life" looks like. So, that wasn't him. So, I think he could check that box. "Did you live your -- earn your living honestly?" Certainly, yes. And, "did you live a full life?" And unquestionably, the answer to that was yes. So, I think it was just interesting to think about 127:00what might have been going on in his head at the time that he wrote this. But the letter was a -- truly a generous gesture to us, I think, and a gift. [BREAK IN RECORDING] So, this is a letter written in June of 1970. And I believe it's shortly after Kent State. And the letter now looks -- it looks familiar to me as I'm looking at it. I can't actually place myself in the context of it, which is that there -- apparently, then, an argument -- one of these intellectual joustings that he participated in. I think I was on my own. I'm guessing that he and my father -- and it says three antagonists. So, I don't know who else would 128:00have been involved. But he's sort of responding after the fact to me about it. So, it says, "Dear Danny" -- this is June 15th, 1970. "Dear Danny, one, you did very well," which is underscored, "against three antagonists. I liked it. Two, a world without Plato, Bible, Aristotle, Maimonides, the whole Judeo-Greek heritage" -- notice he doesn't say Judeo-Christian heritage -- "our life would be barren and sad. Three, that today without a yesterday and hope for a tomorrow is nothing. The present is heir to the yesterday and the root" -- I think the root as in the root of a tree -- "for the tomorrow. Four, money, as I said, when the one has not enough for his want is bad like a swollen finger. But when one has no swollen finger, has a lot of money, it does not solve anything. Five, 129:00progress is always slow. When a revolution occurs, it just clears the air but in reality, does not change much. The progress -- very slowly." I think it's -- grammar-wise, there's something missing there, but that's what it says.

CW:Okay.

DF:"Six, in a democracy, the protester has a right to protest and the," quote, "'establishment,'" end quote, "has a right not to listen. The majority has a right to defend itself. If the protesters riot, the majority has a right to shoot. Then a civil war breaks out. Till now, the democracy worked in USA If one begin-- to excuse force, then there is no democracy. Eight, a president who says he will better go to a baseball game than to listen to protesters is a fool. 130:00Nixon is not the first stupid president. We had Coolidge before him, Harding, so what? The country survived them. Zeyde Simon. PS, you think, therefore I am proud of you. Zeyde." So, I think, as I said, the context of this, I believe, was the Kent State shooting. I think when he talks about the majority has a right to defend itself if the protesters riot -- I'm guessing that -- I think there was initially a narrative at Kent State that the protesters had somehow done something to provoke the shooting, which I think historically turned out not to be the case, but may have been sort of the understanding at the moment that this argument took place. I can't actually recall at all what the 131:00discussion of money was. And I think that the talk about Plato, Bible, Aristotle, Maimonides -- I think feeds into or is consistent with the notion that he did think it was important to understand heritage, and perhaps not just Jewish heritage, but to be educated in the past, as well. Doesn't mean that you accept what Plato, Aristotle believed or accept anything in particular in the Bible, but that it's important to be educated about it. And his sentiments about Richard Nixon are nothing compared to what my bobe thought, so --

CW:Now, this brings up what some of your relatives have talked about in terms of his relationship to the US and his patriotism, as well.

DF:Yeah, it does. And, I guess, shows a lot of faith in the country and in the system. I think at the time, I probably would have questioned whether Richard Nixon was in the same ballpark with Harding. And who else does he say?

CW:Coolidge.

DF:Coolidge and Harding, they were arguably inept and may be slightly tainted. But Richard Nixon tried to subvert the electoral process, so they're in a different category along with someone else we can think of, so --

CW:Yeah.

DF:-- in reading the letter, it's interesting to think about whether he would have maintained his optimism about the country under the current set of facts or whether he would have conceded that people -- sort of losing their optimism and losing faith in the institutions would have been justified. But it's true that he certainly was a patriot, and there were people in the Yiddish movement who were sympathetic to the communists, and -- sort of the lore, the family lore is that he and bobe met in an anarchist meeting. I don't think that he ever had any illusions about the communists and communism and that somehow there was some 134:00system better than the American system. I don't think that he ever bought into that. And it's not from the point of view of somebody whose primary goal in life was to make as much money as possible, either, which -- he wasn't ever going to devote the time and energy required to do that, because it wasn't important enough to him. But he still was not gonna buy into any of the -- sort of the extreme socialist and communist line. [BREAK IN RECORDING]. So, these are postcards -- they took a trip in October of 1970, basically about a month before he died. And here's a picture of the boat. (laughs) Not exactly up to modern 135:00standards for cruise ships, but I think it was good enough for them. I don't actually remember the cruise. But he wrote some postcards to me and my brothers, and --

CW:Can you read the one to you, at least?

DF:Sure. October 12th, 1970. "Danny, if you were here, you would surely enjoy it more than we. You could eat more, swim in the pool, dance, and whatnot. But we are old people. We look and eat sparingly." I don't know grammatically whether that means he looks sparingly and eats sparingly, (laughs) or just looks and eats sparingly. [BREAK IN RECORDING]. So, October 17th. So, almost a week later. "Boys, the letter is only for the stamp, but allow me, yingelekh [boys], to 136:00express my longing for you, who is coming to us during the Christmas vacation." Oh, I'm sorry. I was confused. The year -- it was before this, in January of 1970, when he was complaining that my parents didn't send at least one of us down to visit. And I think what had probably happened, possibly, was my zeyde Forman wasn't feeling well and had sort of vetoed a visit. Unfortunately, he vetoed it on behalf of all grandparents instead of just the -- on behalf of himself. So, the last of these that I think are -- is interesting is October 15th, "The Forman bunch. We are leaving Aruba, two a.m. Oh God, but there are people everywhere. How do they get at all these islands? Again, here" -- I think it says -- "there the three universal things. One, Jews and their God in 137:00churches and synagogues. Two, boy, girl holding hands. Three, Coca-Cola. Danny, the boys here wear pants, and nice pants." What does that say? "Truly, I did not meet a single boy or girl that dressed -- that looked sloppy. Well-dressed. Not richly, but they are -- they all look as if they're just out of a shower and their clothes out of the laundry. Yes, the picture -- the future belongs to the blacks. They are more numerous than the white." No idea what that's a reference to at all.

CW:But what about the clothes? Can you explain that?

DF:Well, I think that -- my guess on that is that this was at a time when I had one pair of pants that didn't get washed very often, and probably were shredded. 138:00And I think that he was probably appalled. I think I was also growing my hair at this point. So, I think my appearance was something that didn't please him, but he was being pretty gentle about it, and I think that it never really would've occurred to him to be harsher with me about that, even if it really bothered him.

CW:Well, this is great. Before we get up and look at these other things, I just want to thank you for taking the time and --

DF:You're welcome.

CW:-- sharing these memories with us.

[END OF INTERVIEW]