JACOB SCHLITT ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY:This is Christa Whitney, and today (laughs) is December 12th, 2010. I am here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, with Jacob Schlitt, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Jacob, do I have your permission to record this interview?

JACOB SCHLITT:Certainly do.

CW:Thank you. Well, I thought we could start with you briefly telling me about your family's background.

JS:Um-hm. Love to. (laughs) My family would normally be defined as my mother and father. My mother, Celia Goldstein Schlitt, was born in Vaslui, Romania, on 1:00November 3rd, 1888. It's a date that stays with me. Fact is, I don't know when my father was born. He was born in Kishinëv, which is now Moldova. Then it was Bessarabia, and it was under the Russians, and then it became under the Romanians, and then it came back to the Russians, and then became an independent country, Moldova. Yes, so my mother came here to the United States at the age of sixteen. I suspect that my father came when he was in his late teens also. My mother originally came from Romania by way of steerage with the help of what is known as the Alliance Israélite. It was a French philanthropic organization which helped Jews from Eastern Europe make the trip from the shtetl [small 2:00Eastern European village with a Jewish community] to the great (laughs) country of America, the goldene land [golden land]. It turned out that she was on a boat that went to Canada. Didn't go to the United States. And she ended up in Toronto. My mother came here apparently with three or four addresses of family or landslayt [plural of landsman (fellow countrymen)] in both Canada -- in Toronto -- and in New York and in Pittsburgh, it turned out to be. I've told this story a thousand times, because it's very -- for me -- very, very poignant and very significant, and it's my mother's story, so I will spend a couple minutes on that.

CW:Please do.

JS:When she came to Canada in 1904, she was sixteen years old. She had been apprenticed to a tailor when she was six years old in the little town of Vaslui where her family was. She never went to school, never learned to read or write. 3:00Nothing. Not Yiddish, not Hebrew, not Romanian. Girls were not given the opportunity to go to school; boys did. Boys would most likely go to kheyder [traditional religious school] and learn to read and write Hebrew -- and apparently, to speak Hebrew as well, for those who perhaps went a little further. My mother had a sister and a brother. I don't know what opportunities they had, but my mother very clearly, over years, reiterated and told me her story: that she was apprenticed at the age of six to a tailor, that she worked from morning to night, that she became a skilled tailor -- she apparently knew how to sew both on a machine and hand-sew -- and when she came to Toronto at the age of sixteen, she found a job immediately. She moved in with some cousins. I 4:00think it was her brother-in-law -- in other words, her sister's husband's sister who had come to Toronto. And my mother lived with them and found a job at Eaton's, which is a big department store in Toronto. And it is a store which had, among other things, an alteration department, and my mother went to work as a tailor in the alteration department of Eaton's, in 1904. Sixteen years old. Very good, very good tailor. Highly regarded. Earned a fairly good living. This is her story. After working there for several months, the foreman came to her and said, "Shvester [Sister] Goldstein, du mist arbetn morgn [you must work tomorrow]." "Sister Goldstein --" -- I don't think he called her shvester Goldstein. "Shvester Goldstein" became the term in her union activities, but 5:00maybe -- whatever -- "Miss Goldstein." "Tsirl, gotta work tomorrow." She said, "Ikh arbet nisht oyf shabes." "I don't work on Saturday." And he came back -- this is all in Yiddish, you know. I mean, all of the workers in this department, in the alteration department, the foreman, everybody was Jewish. They all spoke Yiddish. My mother didn't know any English at this time. So, he says, "Du muz arbetn morgn [You have to work tomorrow]." "You gotta." And she says, "Git mir mayn gelt, ikh geyt avek." "Just pay me off; I'm outta here." And he saw that she meant it, and he says to her, "Neyn, neyn neyn, shtey [No, no, no, stay]! Darft nisht arbetn, darft nisht arbetn!" "You don't have to." And she says, "Ikh gey." "I'm outta here. Once you were asking me to work on Saturday when you know 6:00I don't work on Saturday, you're gonna ask me again. I'm outta here." I mean, this is crazy. A sixteen-year-old woman who doesn't know the language, just that insistent on her rights and her concept of herself, took off. Which meant she left Toronto. She said goodbye to her cousin, found a way to get to Pittsburgh -- I don't know how she got to Pittsburgh, why she went to -- she had an address. So (laughs) she was in Pittsburgh for six months and then decided the place to go was New York. And so, from Pittsburgh she went to New York. So, this is now, like, 1905. And she had another address, the Nirensteins. These were landslayt. These were people from Vaslui whom she knew who had preceded her. They lived on Allen Street in the Lower East Side. She found a room with them, found a job in a sweatshop, and found a job as a finisher by cloaks in the 7:00Garment Center, (laughs) which was the Lower East Side, in homes and in large basements and whatever. So, she worked as a cloak finisher in New York. By 1909, 1910, she had become involved with the union. Nineteen nine was the big waistmakers' strike. The women, you know, the business with Clara Lumlin [sic], you know, the -- whatever. Okay. So, that was the big strike. Nineteen ten was the cloakmakers' strike, which my mother took part in. So, she was a leader in her shop in 1910 in the strike and then after the strike and was a shop chairlady. And became very involved with the union. She was an articulate woman. 8:00She was a bright, intelligent woman. She spoke out frequently at union meetings and whatever. She tells me the story of how, on one union meeting, she had taken the floor on a particular issue. At the end of the meeting, a guy goes over to her and says to her again, oyf yidish [in Yiddish], "Shvester Goldstein?" Now it's "shvester Goldstein." The foreman I don't -- okay. "D'host gezogt --" You know, you said so-and-so, you know? And that's very much like the writings of a particular political philosopher, whatever. And he asked her, "Had you read his writings?" And my mother said no; she had never happened to have read his writings. The next day, she found a melamed [Jewish teacher in a traditional school], a teacher, who taught her to read and write Yiddish. That was her story. (coughs) So, now it's 1911; she's active in the union; she's now able to 9:00read Yiddish. She never learned to write well. For many years, from many different people, I was told that, Your mother is a remarkable Yiddish speaker. Her fluency and her ability to speak and take the floor was very impressive. So, she became active in the union. And this is from 1911 up to 1916, when she married my father. Okay. Louis Schlitt, my father, must have come here sometime, as I say, in his late teens, early twenties. He found work as a buyer and seller of odd lots of men's clothing. This is a strange business, I don't understand it, but I've seen the receipts with his name, Louis Schlitt, and then the 10:00purchase of ten dozen of men's coats, you know, sizes blah-blah-blah. What he would do is buy from the manufacturers at the end of the season and then sell it to retailers at a reduced rate, and whatever the difference between what he paid for it and what he sold it is what his profit was, and that's the way he lived. And he felt he did a nice job as a breadwinner. Which means that he also told my mother, "You don't work. You're my wife. A man doesn't have his wife work here in America. In Europe, it's another story. But here --" He was a very proud man. And so, from 1916, when they married, my mother stayed home. And I think she felt a little disappointed, because she enjoyed work; she enjoyed her 11:00involvement with the union. But now she's a different woman. She's a housekeeper, a homemaker, a wife, you know? They had a nice little apartment. They found an apartment on Beck Street in the Bronx. They moved up from Manhattan. Everyone starts out on the Lower East Side, and from there they move to Harlem. Harlem was the place where the Jewish community was congregating -- those who did better and could escape from the Lower East Side. So, around the late teens, early '20s, and into the Roaring '20s, they were living there. Then, they moved from there to the Bronx. There are others who moved to Brooklyn. That's just another world entirely, you know? But my mother and my father moved to Beck Street in the Bronx, and 1927 I was born. My father, as I said, must have felt like a person of some stature. He had a business. He had printed 12:00(laughs) receipts and statements. This I know because I found them among my mother's papers. Nineteen twenty-nine, the Depression. And my father was unable to make a living. But he apparently never told my mother his economic status. He tried to make it appear as everything was fine. And he must go out every day and handl [do business] and do whatever he did. Meanwhile, by the mid-'20s, my mother started going to night school, learning English. So, my mother had command of Yiddish as a reader, and now she's learning to read English. And 1927, I was born. And again, it was an interesting business. I kept wondering -- 13:00most people have children within a few years after they're married. This was eleven years after my mother and father were married. Did they know how to go about doing (laughs) what's normally done? I suspect so, but okay. In any event, my mother never told me about miscarriages or anything else, but it was eleven years -- she was thirty-nine years old when I was born. Nineteen twenty-nine, Depression. Nineteen thirty-one my father had a heart attack, and he died, leaving my mother alone with a three-and-a-half-year-old child. And life was now very, very difficult. She would have liked to have gone back to the shop, but unfortunately it was the Depression. When she went back to the union, Local 9 of the ILGWU, the Cloak Finishers, they told her, You have a withdrawal from the 14:00union. You haven't been part of the union for fifteen years. You can't come back to the union and say you want us to find you a job when members who have been active and paying their dues all these years aren't working either. So, I'm sorry, Mrs. Schlitt -- formally Miss Goldstein -- we don't have any work for you. We can't do anything for you; we're sorry. I don't care what you did twenty years ago, that you were such an active member. Today is another story. Okay. So, she's now without work, three-and-a-half-year-old child, an apartment for which she was paying more rent than she could afford. We moved from Beck Street to Fox Street, which was one block away, but to a smaller apartment. She managed to negotiate with the landlord to reduce the rent for what was a two-room apartment renting for thirty dollars a month down to twenty-five dollars a 15:00month. So, okay. So, in terms of my mother and father, my father, Louis Schlitt, died in 1931, the age, I think, of forty-six. My mother is now a woman in her forties with a small child in the depths of the Depression, and life is looking pretty grim. That's the beginning.

CW:What do you remember about the home you grew up in?

JS:It's taken on a rosy glow, you know? It's nice to be poor when everyone else is poor, you know? So, that's my advice. If you are gonna be poor, do it when everyone else is poor. You don't feel that different. We lived in a nice apartment house on Fox Street in the Bronx. Irving Howe, who I look upon as a hero -- not only because of "World of Our Fathers," but his own autobiography 16:00called "Margin of Hope." He has a little line in there where his father lost his business -- I think he was a storekeeper -- and they had to move from the West Bronx to the East Bronx. And he actually lived only about eight blocks away from where I lived. And in his little autobiography, his father is quoted as saying to the family, "We're now here on Howe Avenue," I believe it was. He says, "Thank God it's not Fox Street. That's the depths." My street -- I happen to think it was a wonderful street. I loved Fox Street. I loved my neighborhood, I loved my friends, I loved my school, I loved my Hebrew school. It was my world, and I remember it, as I say, in a kind of -- I've perhaps over-romanticized it. But it is my community. I used to joke about one -- why do people say Jews are a minority? All around me are Jews! My friends who are not Jewish were the 17:00minority. I had a friend who was Finnish, Albert Hockanin. How did he farblondzhen [lose his way] into our neighborhood? Danny Laola, who lived across the street from me, was Italian. Danny, what are you doing here? (laughs) We also had a fairly large Puerto Rican population, and my state assemblyman, Felipe Torres, a Puerto Rican representing a largely Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx, representing us in Albany. And his son was a friend of mine. But my friends were all Jewish. I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood. There were six shuls within walking distance, almost all of them Orthodox. There happened to be one Reform temple about a mile and a half away. But my shul was Hungarian, which is sort of cute. I mean, there's talk about European shuls, which were 18:00identified by the craft. So, this is the butchers' shul and the carpenters' shul and the bakers' shul. In our case, it's the Russian shul, the Hungarian shul, the Polish shul. So, when I was about -- well, first of all, I loved my elementary school. P.S. 62. We'd walk to the 62. I loved the teachers, who most often were Irish. There were two Jewish teachers that I remember from my elementary school: Faye Katz Young, Mrs. Young, who was our fifth-grade and sixth-grade teacher, and she had a coat who had a fur collar, and when I could I sneaked over and, you know -- and Mrs. Sotskin, who was my third-grade teacher. But all the rest were McDonald and O'Neill and, you know. Wonderful New York '30s, the Irish teachers. Good, serious. And we learned. And, you know, I look 19:00back and say I was blessed to have an education in the New York City school system, 62, and then junior high school, 52, and then I went on to Stuyvesant and so on. But my childhood: playing stickball, playing boxball, collecting baseball cards -- and going to Hebrew school. But before I went to Hebrew school, since my mother was a Yiddishist, and I'm now eight years old, she sent me to an Arbeter Ring shule [secular Yiddish school], a Workmen's Circle shule, which was around the corner, back on Beck Street where we started. And there was this wonderful little shule with Mr. Bernshteyn, and that's when I first learned the alef-beys [alphabet]. And somehow, supposedly strengthening my Yiddish. Now, you'll have heard this from a thousand people. Those of us who were born of 20:00immigrant parents, our first language was Yiddish. I don't know who quoted it, but Sholem Aleichem is supposed to have said, "M'efnt d'moyl un aroys kimt yidish." "You open your mouth, and out comes Yiddish." I mean, that's it! (laughs) And that was the case in my world. I was a Yiddish speaker from the time I was a baby until I was about five or six years old, at which time I must have said to my mother, "Ikh vil nit redn mer yidish!" "I'm not talking Yiddish anymore. I don't want to talk Yiddish." Actually, we called it Jewish. And that's an important -- you know, it's something we've managed to reinstitute only within the past thirty or forty years. Because if I grew up saying "Do you speak Jewish" -- and I said to myself, You know, that's the only way to say it. You don't say to an Italian person, "Do you speak Italiano?" Or do you say to a 21:00Spanish person, "Do you speak Español?" You say "(UNCLEAR) you speak Italian?" "Do you speak Spanish?" So, therefore you say, "Do you speak Jewish?" But we've managed to say, No, we're gonna refer to the language as Yiddish. And the Book Center's gonna be the Yiddish Book Center. Okay. So, I was a Yiddish speaker until I was five or six years old. And all my friends were in the same boat. But when we played on the street, (laughs) we didn't talk Yiddish to one another. Not like the Hasidim or, you know. "Varf d'ball, Fayvl, varf d'ball [Throw the ball, Fayvl, throw the ball]." We didn't do that, you know? The punch line is a dirty joke. Okay. The point I'm making is that all of us were Jewish; all of us had the same background, whether our parents came from Romania, Russia, Poland, Hungary, whatever. Lithuania, which is, okay, my wife's family. But I first went to a shule, which is where my mother sent me, at the age of eight. And I was a 22:00good boy, and I went to -- I think classes were three times a week. And I liked it. I'll go along with whatever. So, we went to shule with Mr. Bernshteyn, who was a wonderful teacher. And I read, and I enjoyed, and I learned.

CW:What was the content of what you learned?

JS:Well, we're talking seventy-five years ago. Uh, (laughs) the -- my suspicion is that we had a nice little kinder-bukh [children's book], a book to learn the alef-beys, read the little stories about Motele and Berele and Tsirele and Perele un ikh veys vos [and who knows what else]. And we would read. And then, he would have us speak. And here is something -- I still remember, he asked me 23:00to talk about someone I know. So, I remember getting up and very proudly saying, "Ikh veys a fayer-lesher [I know of a firefighter]!" And he shakes his head. "Ikh ken a fayer-lesher [I am acquainted with a firefighter]." "I know." So, when you know somebody, it's "Ikh ken." "Veys" is to know a fact. "Ikh veys vi tsu leyenen [I know how to read]," you know, "Ikh veys vi tsu redn [I know how to speak]." "Ikh ken a fayer-lesher." So, he corrected me. So, that's the sort of thing. And then, we would do the holidays, and, you know. And he was a wonderful teacher. I just have a nice warm feeling because I came back five years later. And now again, my mother was a -- not necessarily a controlling woman, but a woman who had a good sense of what she wanted in terms of my education and where I went. So, I was in the shule for a year until she said, "I 24:00think I want my son to have a bar mitzvah. I want him to have a Jewish education that would be more than what you would get in the shule." Now, we're talking about a woman who is not a religious woman, but certainly who felt that a Hebrew school education would be more substantive. And this is an interesting question, 'cause the same question still exists today. Where should he go? Go Jewish day school, do you go to afterschool, go to shule, go to this -- okay. So, I went to this Hebrew school in the Hungarian shul, which was just a block away from where I lived, and most of the (laughs) people who were members of that shul were Hungarian Jews who spoke very funny. They didn't know how to speak Yiddish. I mean, Hungarians, interestingly enough, are among -- the Hungarian Jews are people who really were assimilated, integrated, into their communities. And so, 25:00where Jews and so many other shtetlekh [small towns] spoke Yiddish, the Hungarian Jews spoke Hungarian. And Yiddish was not really their key language. And it was very funny, because the rabbi, who I liked -- a man named Shonfeld -- when he would speak, he knew he had to give his sermons in Yiddish. His Yiddish was very, very inadequate, and it was rather sad. So, I went to Hebrew school from the age of nine, now, to thirteen, when I had my bar mitzvah. And then, after I finished having my bar mitzah, my mother pulled me out of the Hebrew school and sent me back to the shule. So, I had another year of shule. Okay. Now, I don't know if I'm responding to your question.

CW:Yeah. You are. I would love to talk a little bit more about what it was like in the home with your mother. What did -- did you have special family rituals, 26:00or -- yeah.

JS:Yeah. Yeah, again, this is something I feel very strongly about, and I'd like to share, because it was unique in so many ways because it was just my mother and me. (clears throat) People talk about family. Family consists of a father, a mother, possibly a grandmother, a grandfather, an uncle, an aunt, sisters, brothers. It didn't exist in my world. It was my mother and me. And, you know, looking back at it I feel a little sadness, and -- but that's the world I knew, and I didn't know any other world. So, for me, my mother, who was a remarkable woman, who, over the years, after -- we're on relief, we're managing to just struggle and get -- (sighs) you know, occasionally -- I don't know how she 27:00managed to make sure that all of the bills were paid and the food was on the table and all our needs were met. But she managed to do it. In the years that I was small and she wasn't working, I remember Friday nights -- and this continued throughout our lives until I was in my late teens -- Friday night was Friday night. I'd come home, she'd light candles, would most likely have made chicken, chicken soup, and have a challah. And that was Friday night. Holidays were also -- you know, we were very conscious of it. My mother was always very conscious of every holiday. Always felt that it's yontev [holiday], we have to do 28:00something different, have to have something new. Even if it's a pair of socks. So, she would make sure that I would have something -- Pesach, Purim, Hanukkah, Rosh Hashanah, whatever it is. We observed that. And when I was now eight, nine, ten years old, okay, I'm going to Hebrew school; I'm also having to go to shul. So, Saturday morning I had to go to shul. I had no interest in going to shul, but she wanted -- you go to shul. Okay. Yontev, of course, you go to shul." So, just walking down the street. And here, again, for me it was poignant. I mean, come on. Other guys, my friends, they go to shul with their father. Okay. I went into shul by myself. And there was a sadness. But again, I didn't -- since I didn't have it, I didn't miss it. I didn't know. So, okay, that's what I do. The 29:00thing that always was for me the most uncomfortable was yizkor. (laughs) When in shul, you're gonna say yizkor, all the kids my age made a beeline out of the shul. Somehow, it seemed like it would be bad luck to be in shul if you have no one to say yizkor for. (laughs) So, if you're a twelve-year-old, or a fourteen-year-old, and your folks are alive, and you're in shul on Yom Kippur or whatever other holiday we're saying yizkor, the kids cut out. And I stayed there, with the old people, go say a prayer for my father. But I enjoyed Hebrew school just as I enjoyed shule. One of my favorite stories is that in Hebrew school I had a wonderful teacher. Again, Mr. Zinder was a very competent 30:00teacher. And this is the Depression; I think he was obviously qualified to do a lot more than teach ten-, twelve-year-old kids or prepare kids for bar mitzvah. He seemed like an intellectual. He also seemed like an agnostic. I don't think he had any great belief. "Oh, God." Anyway, one of the things we did as kids in Hebrew school was to get the pushkes [alms box] and collect for the Jewish National Fund. And that was the challenge. Eight, nine, ten, eleven years old, and we're given the pushkes each spring with the little blue flowers, sometimes a little button, and if anyone gives you a lot of money, like a nickel, then they can get a flower. But if they only give you pennies, you don't give 'em nothin', you know? So, for all those years, when I was eight years old, nine 31:00years old, ten years old -- I think now I'm eleven years old; here, I've been collecting for the Jewish National Fund every year when the pushkes are distributed. I think Woody Allen has done a little bit about that, how you take the box and you take a knife and you turn it upside down and you jiggle it, and the coins can slide along the blade of the knife, you know? So, you're always looking to see if you got silver, if you got something more than pennies. Nickels, dimes -- if you got a quarter, that's just the end of the world. Nobody gives you a quarter. Not in 1938, '39. Anyway, this was the year I wanted to be the one to win the prize. Because we got a prize! Mr. Zinder gave out three prizes to the kids who collected the most money for the Jewish National Fund, for Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael. I guess I'm around eleven years old. And I remember asking my mother, "Can I go into the subway to collect?" Because you go into the 32:00subway, you can go around to everybody, and you get a lot more audience. And my mother said, "No, you can't go into the subway. You can stand by the subway entrance as they come in and go out, but don't --" Okay. So anyway, you work your whole neighborhood; you go door to door. "Please help the Jewish National Fund." And this year -- as I say, I was either eleven or twelve -- I said, "I really did it. I'm sure I'm gonna be the winner." Everybody felt each other's boxes. "Oh, that's pretty good!" "How much silver you got?" "Hey, great." Okay. And then comes the big moment when the boxes are all turned in. And I would say my Hebrew school, maybe fifty, sixty kids. Maybe not that many. But, you know, like five or six classes, from the seven-year-olds to the bar mitzvah classes. Anyway. So, they cut open the boxes, and then the money is counted, and then 33:00it's how much was collected by each student. And (sighs) the first prize over the three or four years that I was aware of it was an Ingersoll Buck watch, a pocket watch. And it's called an Ingersoll Buck 'cause it only cost a dollar. But it was a watch. I never had a watch. The idea that I can have a watch? (makes smacking noise) Anyway, I collected the most money this particular year. And I was hysterical. And now it was announced that Jacob Schlitt is the winner of the first prize for the collecting of the money for the Jewish National Fund, and -- and so I'm waiting for Mr. Zinder to give me my watch, and he had a pen for someone else, and -- you know, a little dip pen and some other narishkayt 34:00[foolishness] for the third prize. But the first prize, I got the first prize; I'm supposed to get the watch. I say, "Mr. Zinder," you know? And he says, "Jacob, I'm sorry, I wasn't able to buy you the watch, but the watch is a dollar. Here is a dollar as your first prize." I was heartbroken. What do you mean? I want the watch! I don't want a dollar. If I take the dollar home, my mother'll spend it. It'll go for food or something! I can't go to my mother and tell her I got the first prize and he gave me a dollar. She'll say, "Thank you," and it'll go into the kitty. I took that dollar after the class was over, and I went to a watch store on Longwood Avenue, on Prospect Avenue, Westchester. I know that store, and I know that in the window they had Ingersoll Buck watches. I went in; I bought myself the watch; I came home; I told my mother I won the 35:00watch. I came first prize for -- you know, I'm guilty. I feel guilty, seventy-five years later, that I did this deception. But that was important. That was part of the growing-up process. So yes, we observed. We had a -- we were so poor -- you know, this is like almost this joke of -- that for Hanukkah, we didn't have a menorah. We didn't have a menorah. And you could buy a menorah for, like, twenty-nine cents. They were little, made out of tin that was just bent into the shape of a little back and the eight little circles and the shames [extra candle used to light the Hanukkah candles]. (sighs) We took a Sanka coffee box, turned it upside down, and we took the candles, all of these orange 36:00candles, and we would put them around the outer edge of the box over the eight days of Hanukkah. That's the way we'd observe Hanukkah. Okay.

CW:And you went to a summer camp?

JS:(sighs) I went to three or four summer camps. They never were particularly meaningful. I never liked it. When I was eight or nine years old -- again, I don't know how my mother could do this. I mean, how resourceful can one person be? She found the University Settlement Camp, which I guess was a settlement house in the Lower East Side that had camps for nice, poor Jewish children, and I went there for two weeks, and I hated it, and I didn't want to go back. So, that was, again, eight or nine. (sighs) When I was twelve and a half, my cousin 37:00discovered a nature camp, which was a non-Jewish camp, and it was called Camp Northrop, and it was somewhere in Copiague, New York. And it was a nonprofit camp which rich people must have subsidized, because I think they charged twenty-five dollars for a month, and you slept in tents. And now this was, like -- I was twelve and a half years old -- I think it was my first contact with non-Jewish kids in a larger situation.

CW:What was that like?

JS:All I know is I didn't care for it. My cousin was a biology teacher, and we had to take a test to go to Northrop, a nature test. It was given at the Museum of Natural History in New York. And my cousin spent several weeks with me, 38:00several weekends, where I'd go walking with him, and he would teach me nature. I learned about all the trees. He would teach me how to identify trees by their bark and their leaf. So, I knew oaks and maples and the evergreens and the elms and the birches and, eh, gantse velt [the whole world]. And then, other nature things -- stars. He taught me about stars. So, this was a test for those kids who -- and I said to myself, Why are they doing this? They're giving a test to young people, twelve-year-old people, to see that they know anything about nature. And you go to a nature camp. They should give nature camp to kids who don't know anything about nature. Let them learn! Why you give it to the kids who already know? Anyway, so, as always, I crammed; I passed; I got accepted. It 39:00was, I think, twenty-five dollars for the month, for four weeks of this nature camp. And that was my nature camp. But I guess most people think in terms of camps, they think in terms of Jewish camps. When I was a teenager I became a camper waiter at a private camp, which was, again, mostly Jewish kids attending. And then, when I was in college I went off as a counselor to Camp Cejwin, which was the Jewish camp, the Central Jewish Institute, Schoolman, who was the head of this place. So that was, I think, a legendary camp. But I went there for one year; I had no great permanent ties to it. I was a counselor; I was happy. In 1951, I'm now involved with my hoping-to-be, who became my wife, my first wife. She had taken the job that summer as a counselor at Wel-Met, which was a nonprofit camp, Wel-Met, Metropolitan Welfare, whatever, for poor kids. Nice 40:00camp. And so, Sylvia went off there as a counselor. I had been pursuing her for the previous spring. And I went up to visit her, and it turned out that they needed a counselor. I left the job that I had that summer, in '51, to join her for the month of August as a counselor at Wel-Met, and that's my camp experience.

CW:(laughs) And you wanted to tell me a story, I think, about the fir kashes [the Four Questions at the Passover seder]? Do you remember doing them --

JS:No, I don't know if I want to tell you the story or just say that for my entire adult life, having learned from Mr. Zinder -- the same Mr. Zinder who gave me a dollar instead of giving me the watch -- he knew that his students were children of Yiddish-speaking parents. And so, what he did was, in addition 41:00to us learning how to read the Haggadah and the order and the fir kashes, he taught us it in Yiddish. Again, I found that so -- in retrospect -- so poignant, that we learned to say -- and me, I had a special difference from everyone else. Everyone else started off "Tate, ikh vil dir fregn di fir kashes [Father, I want to ask you the Four Questions]," and I had to say, "Mame, ikh vil dir fregn di fir kashes [Mother, I want to ask you the Four Questions]. Di ershte kashe iz [The first question is], 'Mah nishtanah ha'laila hazeh, mi kol ha'leilot [Hebrew: What makes this night different from all other nights]?' Far vos iz di nakht fun peysekh andersh vi ale nakht in a gants yor [Yiddish: Why is this Passover night different from all other nights in the whole year]?" I've been doing this for seventy-five years. I don't let a Passover seder go by, whether I'm a guest or whether I am conducting the seder, to have the fir kashes said 42:00without it being said in Yiddish. That's a must. If I'm gonna be there, the fir kashes are gonna be said in Yiddish. Okay. I'm not gonna do it all now.

CW:(laughs) What was the political atmosphere in your home and community growing up?

JS:I'm glad you asked me that. It's fascinating in that I'm growing up in the Depression with a mother who had been active in her union, who absorbed, I suspect partly from the union and partly from her life experience, a political point of view which was that of a socialist. And, you know, we used to make the point that we were socialists with a small s. She wasn't a member of the Socialist Party. The ILGWU, which in 1936, having now pretty much established 43:00itself, thanks to Roosevelt and the Wagner Act and so on, 1936 the ILGWU, together with two or three other unions -- called the Jewish unions, you know: the Hat, Cap and Millinery Workers Union; to a lesser extent, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers -- formed the American Labor Party. And we used to say that the American Labor Party was formed in '36 to let the Jewish socialist workers vote for Roosevelt on a non-capitalist political party line. So, they didn't have to vote Democrat, which is -- you know, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are capitalist parties. The Socialist Party was running Norman Thomas, but 44:00we recognized -- "we." I'm nine years old; I'm not even involved. But my mother knew that the American Labor Party is a wonderful new institution, that we are going to have a Labor Party that's starting in New York and it'll then spread to the entire country, and we will become a socialist country at some point. And then, these people will speak Yiddish. But the American Labor Party was the party that had Roosevelt on as a second line, and my mother was very much an active part of the American Labor Party at that time. And she, in her own way, thought through her own political economics, you know, and what society should be, and what's right, and what's wrong, and that capitalism is a destructive force, and it's not the blessing that it is purported to be. So, I absorbed a 45:00lot of that. Okay.

CW:So -- sorry. How did you hear the news? I think you mentioned that you listened to the radio --

JS:Oh, yes.

CW:-- and read the paper --

JS:Sure. Sure. Okay. Two, three things. One, growing up in the Bronx in the '30s, the thing I was always aware of is that my mother was a -- (laughs) a reader of the "Tog," the Jewish "Day," which was very important to her. So, I guess it started a long time before, but no matter how poor we were, she always had a few cents to go buy a newspaper. So, she would read the "The Day" every 46:00day. However, I did not read a newspaper. The news was -- in 1936 -- '36 apparently was a very significant year. I mean, it was not only Roosevelt's second term, but because it was Roosevelt running for his second term, and because he knew how to use the radio, and his campaign addresses were broadcast, and then later on everybody -- the fireside chats and so on -- my mother decided we have to have a radio. We didn't have a radio until 1936. So, she bought a radio, and that became an extremely important (laughs) piece of furniture in our house, and it did a lot of things. So, one, in answer to your question, the news came to us through the radio. Gabriel Heatter, at nine o'clock, you know -- and that became also a crazy area of tension in my house between my mother and me. A 47:00lot of my programs were half-hour programs, you know, whether it was "The Lone Ranger" or "The Green Hornet" or "The Shadow" or -- I don't know what was playing, what was on at nine o'clock on WJZ or WEEF or W-- whatever. But WOR at nine o'clock had Gabriel Heatter. And my mother was obsessed. She had to hear Gabriel Heatter with the, "There's good news tonight," and so on. So, in those years, from the late '30s into the '40s, Gabriel Heatter was a source of news with regard to what was going on in the world. "The Day," which my mother read, and then the other news programs. And later on, Edward R. Murrow and so on. Thirteen thirty on your radio dial was extremely important. WEVD. That became a must, Sunday morning, eleven o'clock, the "Forward Hour." My mother had no high 48:00regard for the "Forward." She really saw it as a paper that was demeaning. She wanted a more sophisticated newspaper. "The Day" was that -- for her. She also made me read the English column of "The Day," written by Dr. Samuel Margoshes. So, you know, I mean, it became -- "Read Dr. Margoshes." "I don't want to read Dr. Margoshes." "Read Dr. Margoshes." "Okay." "Tell me what he says." "Okay." And so, that became part of the routine. I had to read Dr. Samuel Margoshes and his English column, which was the left-hand column in the newspaper. And also, you know, I said, "Why don't you buy the 'Forward' sometime? Because on Sunday they have (UNCLEAR) reviewers, and they have English captions on the pictures, and the great pictures." She just -- "No, don't bother me with the 'Forward.' That's not my newspaper." At the time, there were the four important newspapers: the "Forward," of course, was the largest-selling newspaper -- Yiddish newspaper 49:00-- in the world. I mean, not just in New York, America, but the "Forward" was an amazing -- you know, Abe Cahan did a phenomenal job. Okay. Then following that was the "Morning Journal," the "Morgen-zhurnal" -- which, as my mother looked upon it, it was one geared to the observant, the Orthodox, and to the conservative -- politically conservative. There were such people among Jews. Okay. Third was the "Freiheit," you know. Okay. I mean, that's a communist paper, and my mother would have nothing to do with it. And it was interesting also that -- and the last was "The Day," which she saw as the most honest and, from her point of view, a paper which represented her thinking, and -- so, she liked "The Day," and that became -- I, of course, as I started growing up, I 50:00started reading the "Times." That was the classic thing to do. In 1940, a newspaper called "PM" began to be published. Ralph Ingersoll publishing a newspaper which was no longer -- had no advertising. It was for five cents; it cost two more cents than the regular newspaper. But yeah, I guess, you know, you'd spend it. So "PM" became very important. Max Lerner wrote for "PM," I.F. Stone, da-da-da-da. By the time I'm in junior high school, high school, I'm now reading a newspaper. But we had to listen to the "Forward Hour." And we had to listen to -- (sighs) wherever I was in the house -- and had two rooms -- my mother had the radio in the kitchen, living room, whatever. I'm somewhere else, reading. She pulls me out. "Gotta hear Zvee Scooler, the Gram-meister [master of rhymes]. Zvee Hirsh Yosef ben Reb Yakov Mendel Ha-Levi d'forvertsn gram-mayster 51:00[Zvee Hirsh Yosef, son of Mr. Yakov Mendel Ha-Levi, the Forverts's master of rhymes]!" That thing was embedded in my head, that I had to hear Zvee Scooler. Now, she was amazed -- I happened to also secretly sit in awe of this man who gave us the news of the week in rhyme. And the fact that I had to hear it every week, that I learned to say, "Zvee Hirsh Yosef ben Reb --" [drops his hands forward] Ugh, I can't do it. So, it became part of me. And after that at twelve o'clock was the news with Nahum Stutchkoff or whatever. And yes, that was the source of news for Sunday. Like, in our world today, we have the Sunday morning talk shows. We had the "Forward Hour," and the news at 12:00. In Yiddish.

CW:And skipping ahead a little bit, how did you end up in the line of work that 52:00you came --

JS:Yeah.

CW:-- into?

JS:You know, it's interesting. I went on to Stuyvesant High School because that was a good high school. Townsend Harris had been closed -- this was 1942, and Mayor LaGuardia, who was also one of our heroes, nevertheless felt that he had to save money and -- in this city that's just coming out of a depression. So, they closed the wonderful academic school, which was called Townsend Harris. They didn't touch the girls' school -- the Townsend Harris was the boys' school. Hunter High School stayed. Okay. But we had Stuyvesant, we had Bronx Science, we had Brooklyn Tech. So, you had these three academic science-y schools. That was also intere-- 'cause I wasn't interested in science. So, by the time I'm in high school, my -- again, with the subtle influence on my mother's part to become a teacher. A teacher. What's more important than being a teacher? Yeah, okay, I'll 53:00tell you what's more important to my mother than being a teach-- being a writer. Okay. To be a teacher is important and wonderful, and she would like me to do that. And that you could make a good living and a secure living, and you'll get a pension and all of that. To be a writer is to be immortal. That's my mother's view. To be a writer is to be immortal. Books, you live forever. So, thank God for the Yiddish Book Center and for libraries and whatever. (sighs) I'm in high school; I'm saying, What am I gonna do? I'm gonna become a social studies teacher. In high school. That's a nice thing to do. Okay. So that was my thought. From Stuyvesant I go into City College -- this is 1945 -- and I think that I'm gonna become a social studies teacher, in New York City schools. By my sophomore/junior year, my horizon has expanded slightly. Unions. Unions are 54:00important. If there's one institution that might better the lot of workers, it's unions! And to work for a union is an extremely important thing to do. And my mother, who had the experience of her leadership in the Garment Workers' Union, and who continued -- now, the Depression is over; she's back in the shop; she's working for (UNCLEAR) Sternheim at 1301 Beach Avenue in the Bronx. And I go visit her in the shops when I'm twelve, fourteen years old, and I get a sense of garment workers and a sense of the union and think about working for a union. In college, I'm taking labor economics courses with Mr. Ziksby, and then I say, You 55:00know, this is an interesting area. And I think it has more relevance than teaching high school kids in New York. So, I said, Yeah, I'm gonna try for that. So, in '49, when I graduated from City College, I started making the rounds of unions, saying, I'm applying for a job. And several unions told me, There's no openings here; we're not hiring. The UAW was the nicest, because they said to me -- Marty Gerber, I think it was -- I'd gotten the name, I saw this guy, he says -- I said, "I'd like to come and work for the UAW." He said, "We don't hire like that. Come to work in an auto plant, or in a plant which the UAW has organized. Become active in the union, take a leadership role, and then we'll pick you up 56:00as an activist, and then we'll give you a job in the union." I said, "You know, you're right. That's the right way to do it." But I said, "Education departments, research departments, they have certain skills which might be applicable immediately to --" Anyway, nobody was buying. 1950, the ILGWU, my mother's union, the union I knew intimately, started a training program. First union to ever do anything like this. They publicized that there is going to be a yearlong training program to train union leaders. Hey! Six months of classroom work, six months of fieldwork, at the end of which time you will be given an assignment as a staff person in the Garment Workers' Union. I applied for it and 57:00thought I had a good shot. My mother's a garment worker. I have a good background. And the classes were supposed to start in May of 1950. June of '49, I had graduated from City College. The following September, I started taking classes toward a master's in education at City College. And so, in December or January I made my application, I had my interview, and I'm waiting to hear from them. So, sometime in March, I guess, I got a letter saying that I was chosen as an alternate. The publicity said they were gonna take forty students and ten alternates. I learned that they had thirteen hundred applications. To be one of fifty was very impressive. But it wasn't -- no cigar. So, I was disappointed, 58:00but I said, Well, you know, I'm gonna go on to teach, and it's okay. I was writing a paper on the Garment Workers' Union's education program, and I went over to the union headquarters at 1710 Broadway in order to collect some data, at which point I bumped into the people who were in that training program and saw somebody who was also from City College. I look at him, say, "Marty, what are you doing here?" He says, "I'm in the training program." I said, "I didn't even know you were interested in unions!" I mean, I knew him from City. He said, "Yeah, yeah." I say, "How do you like it?" He says, "I like it. This is good." I say, "How many people in the class?" He says, "Thirty-three, thirty-four." Says, "They were supposed to have forty." He shrugs his shoulders. I go in to (laughs) Arthur Elder, who was the director, and I demanded -- I said, "I'm an alternate. You don't have forty people. Why wasn't I notified?" "Oh!" He's taken aback, you 59:00know, and he says, "Just a second, just a second." And he turns to Al Kehrer, who was his assistant, and he says, "Get me this guy's file." He gets this file, looks at the file, "Yeah, you're right. Hm, hm, hm. I have to speak to a few people -- the chairman of the education committee --" And he says, "I'll call you in the afternoon." He calls me in the afternoon, says, "Come in the next day." Just like that. Okay. My whole life was changed, you know? And that's it, really. Redirected me into -- so I became part of the ILG Training Institute, and it was a very, very wonderful program, with a lot of wonderful people. They had hired the best people to teach these classes. And the fieldwork was working directly with organizers in the field. My first three-month tour was in Pennsylvania, and the second three-month tour was in Ohio. And it was then, when 60:00I was organizing in Ohio, that my mother died. And that was pretty hard. So, this is now March of 1951. My mother dies. I come back to handle the funeral and all of that and then go back to Ohio. But I became part of the ILG Training Institute and part of the ILGWU. So, I became a union organizer, and from '52 to '54, and when I went into the army in '54, into the army, came back to work for the ILG for a six-month period in a local that turned out to be a disaster. I was just very disappointed. And in '56 I decided to look for some more work, different work. But I thought, This is the time to find work. I now have a history of union organizing, and I can find a job with another union. So, I 61:00started looking around among other unions. And somebody said, "Go see Manny Muravchik at the Jewish Labor Committee. He knows all the union leaders." So, I go to see Manny Muravchik, who was very nice. I sit down with Manny. And we talk, and we hit it off beautifully. I just liked him, he liked me. It was just a delightful couple hours. We spent a lot of time. I said, "Manny, whatever leads you can give me I appreciate." He says, "How would you like to work here?" I said, "What?" He says, "We have an opening here at the Jewish Labor Committee. Someone's leaving on a maternity leave." I say, "I know the Jewish Labor Committee. I think it's an interesting idea. But I really wanted to go back to work for a union." He said, "We work with unions, and we do a whole broad cross-section of work with --" I said, "Okay. I think that's an interesting 62:00idea." At which point he says, "Okay, I will have -- I'll check you out and check your references," and so on and so on. Speaking of references, I gotta just tell this one story. Several weeks after I was accepted by the Garment Workers' Union Training Institute, I went to Elder and said, "Dr. Elder, why wasn't I selected in the first group of selectees?" He said, "Well, you know, you gave a reference of Louis Hyman, manager of Local 9, the Cloak Finishers' Union. And we called him, and he says he didn't know you." I said, "That's very interesting." I spoke with Louis Hyman over several years -- I would go down to the union to pay my mother's dues while I was -- the end of high school and 63:00college. I go to the union headquarters, and I paid my mother's dues, and then I'd see a door, said "Union Manager." And I knocked on the door, and I said, "Mr. Hyman?" He says, "Yes." Says, "My name is Jacob Schlitt; my mother is a member. I'm thinking about possibly working for a union. I was wondering if you can fill me in on what's involved." And he was so warm, and he was so ingratiating. "Sit down, young man." He starts telling me about what it means to be a union official and the responsibilities, and you've gotta be a psychiatrist, and you've gotta be a this, and you've gotta be a that, and a negotiator, and you -- and then he -- and then the problems with Local 9, and the industry, and the da-da -- and every couple months I'd knock on his door -- "Oh, hello, young man! How are you? Nice to see you!" And then -- I don't know, 64:00at the age of twenty-three, that if you give someone's name as a reference, you should call that person to tell them you gave his name as a reference. And so, the guy responds, "Never heard of him." Okay. So, there we are. So, now I'm working for the Jewish Labor Committee, and whoever I gave as a reference to Manny I made sure that I told them I gave them as a reference. The wonderful thing about the Jewish Labor Committee, which, again, is unique, is that it was an organization created in 1934 by the very unions that we were talking about: the ILGWU, the Hat, Cap, Millinery Workers, and also the Forward Association and the Workmen's Circle. They created the Jewish Labor Committee. And it was created really to use the labor movement as an ally to the Jewish community to 65:00deal with what was going on with Hitler and the growing threat of Nazism. The leaders of the Jewish Labor Committee were all Yiddish-speaking. The meetings were held in Yiddish. When I came to work for them in 1956, the office committee -- which is like the executive committee of the Jewish Labor Committee -- the meetings were at the Forward building, in Yiddish. The chairman was Nathan Chanin, the head of the Workmen's Circle. The discussions were in Yiddish. I found myself standing next to Willy Stern, who was the English-speaking director of the Workmen's Circle, and saying, "Vos zogt er, voz zogt er [What is he saying, what is he saying]," you know? Half of it I missed. I realized that the Yiddish I knew from my childhood was kitchen Yiddish, was kinderlekher [childish] Yiddish. I didn't know the fancy words and the abstract concepts that 66:00these guys were talking about. But I loved working for the Jewish Labor Committee, and I was very lucky -- we were also the most important institution working with labor on civil rights issues. And it was great.

CW:Can you tell me a little bit about your Yiddish journey? I know you've come in and out of it, so --

JS:Yeah. You know, clearly, when I was a kid and I wanted no longer to have anything to do with Yiddish -- I mean, that's it. Pushed it aside, and it never was part of my world. I knew that when occasionally I would go to visit cousins with my mother and she would be talking to them in Yiddish and I'd be sitting there like a lump, you know, I would listen, and I would half-listen, and I would half-understand. When I came to work for the ILGWU, I worked for an 67:00interesting local union. My first job for two and a half years was with Local 38, which was the Custom Tailors and Alteration Workers, which somehow we've come full circle. My mother was an alteration worker in 1904. She could be a custom tailor, could be a custom dressmaker, but she wasn't; she was a cloak finisher. But here was the elite. I mean, this group, these are the people who were extraordinary skilled tailors. And they had a nice little local. And they spoke Yiddish and Italian. But the meetings were all in English. But there were those old-timers who still -- Prahinsky, Torchinsky -- I mean, these are two names that stay with me from 1952, 1953. Casota, Jimmy Casota, the Italian. He had his little group of people. Sorkin was the manager, which is really crazy -- 68:00you wanna hear a coincidence? Okay. Sorkin was the manager of Local 9 when my mother had applied to Local 9. And he was the one that rejected her, saying, "Mrs. Schlitt, there are no jobs for the members; we can't give you a job." Now, Sorkin turns up -- that was mid-'30s? This is now the mid-'50s, twenty years later -- as the manager of the local union I go to work for. But again, no Yiddish is spoken. Okay. It wasn't until I came to the Jewish Labor Committee and having to struggle with the little Yiddish that I knew that I saw this amazing (laughs) lack of knowledge on my part. I thought I knew how to speak Yiddish. Baloney. Gornisht [Nothing]. When I first met the director of the 69:00Jewish Labor Committee, a man named Jacob Pat -- who was a legendary figure. He was a Polish Bundist, escaped from Poland. They made him the director sometime, I guess, in the late '40s. I come there in '56. I meet him in the hall. I had been hired, Manny hired me, I had my job. And I'm walking in the hall, and I see this man who looks at me and says, "Vu bist du?" (laughs) "Who the hell are you?" I say, "Ikh arbet baym Muravchik, in der anti-diskriminatsye division [I work with Muravchik, in the anti-discrimination division]." "Oh, zeyer sheyn [Oh, very nice]. Vos iz ayer nomen?" "What's your name?" I say, "Yankel Schlitt." He says, "Schlitt?" I say, "Yo [Yes]." "A sheynem nomen." (laughs) He's saying to me, "That's a very nice name." I say, "Far vos zogsti az s'iz a sheynem nomen [Why do you say that it's a nice name]?" Says, "Veyst nit vos es meynt?" "Don't you know what it means?" "Yo, yo, a Schlitt, a shlitl, as a 70:00sled." (laughs) He said, "Neyn, shalit, a leader. A leader. Dos meyn Schlitt af hebreyish [That is what Schlitt means in Hebrew]!" "Oh!" I said. Changed my whole personality. So, I says, "Ikh bin a Schlitt [I am a Schlitt]," you know? (laughs) But the Yiddish was there. For those six years, I had to exchange little pleasantries with Pat, with Tabachinsky, who was his assistant, with Epstein and Lichtenstein, the other staff. Estrin. I mean, a wonderful group of people -- legendary people. I'm serious. Their knowledge, their involvement. Kissman, who turned out to be Romanian, who was the editor of their magazine called "Faktn un meynungn" -- it's not quite the "Pakn treger" but it was a nice little publication. I handled one publication. That was a nice thing about it. 71:00But okay. So, the Yiddish was peripheral. It wasn't really ever out of my system, because I was always -- well, when it came to the Jewish Labor Committee, Manny made it clear, You should join the Workmen's Circle. So, I joined the Workmen's Circle. So, the Workmen's Circle was a place where Yiddish was very central. I moved from New York to Washington; I joined the Workmen's Circle in Washington. Moved from Washington to Boston; I joined the Workmen's Circle in Boston. And that's where we started to try to -- Yiddish classes and so on. And so, that's become part of my world. We have a yidish-vinkl [Yiddish group] going, you know, so once a month, m'redt a bisl yidish [we speak a little Yiddish] and -- it's wonderful. But I realize that at this stage in my life, I'm not gonna learn. I cannot enlarge my vocabulary. My son David, whose Yiddish is 72:00much, much better than mine, corrects me constantly in terms of my grammar. I didn't have grammar. Azoy [So].

CW:And as a parent, what values did you -- we're okay on time -- what values did you try to impart?

JS:To my children?

CW:Yeah.

JS:I'm a political person. And I perhaps was more outspoken than my mother in terms of what I believe. Not only just in terms of the trade union movement and social justice and civil rights. It's interesting; we've talked about what I did, and I've skipped over twenty-some years of my life as a staff person with the US Civil Rights Commission. So, this was always very important. I mean, I 73:00used to joke about the fact -- and it's not such a nice joke -- that when my three children were small, and we were living in Crown Heights in Brooklyn -- this is from 1957 to 1964 -- my children were born '55, '58, and '62. So, in those last years my daughter Carol, who was -- when we moved to Brooklyn in '57, she's two years old; three years later, she's starting to go to elementary school. She was the only white kid in her class in P.S. 138 in Brooklyn. She had red hair. The kids were always kind of touching her hair and looking at it in disbelief. When my son Lewis was in his first year in elementary school, he was 74:00also perhaps the only white kid in his class. We moved to Washington, DC; we lived in an integrated neighborhood. But my daughter Carol, at ten years old, comes home and says, "Now I know what an integrated neighborhood is!" To be the only white kid in your class is not an integrated neighborhood. To be thirty, forty, fifty percent in your school -- hey, that's integrated. Okay. So, the values of civil rights became innate. And also a sense of social justice. And I'm very proud of my kids. I mean, politically, they're involved and they're sensitive, and they -- (sighs) they follow the line of the Workmen's Circle, "A shenere un besere velt [A more beautiful and better world]," you know? This is what hopefully each in their own way will make.

CW:Do you see a connection between the Jewish part of your life and your activist identity?

JS:You know, that's always the thing that liberal Jews are looking for, you know. Is there something in our Jewish upbringing that causes this? Going back to my days at the Jewish Labor Committee and our involvement in the defense agencies -- American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, ADL, you know -- those are the people we worked with. Perhaps the best of them was the Reform movement and David Saperstein. But the fact is that trying to find in your religious upbringing a sense of social justice, I think is a stretch. I think by 76:00and large, if you're a good person, whether you're Jewish or not Jewish, you're gonna have a concern for the weaker and the oppressed and the people whose lives are harder. It's nice -- but you can find anything in the Tanakh, you know? You can go search around, and you'll find terrible things, (laughs) and the stonings and the what-have-you. And the killings, the wiping out of towns. But then you find little -- leaving the grain in the corners, what-have-you, and, you know, Oh, that's nice. The line I wanted to quote early on when I talked about my days 77:00with the Jewish Labor Committee -- there are two lines. "Jews live like Presbyterians or Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans." We always talk about voting your self-interests. So, if the self-interests of Jews who are now successful would be if they voted that way, we'd be old Republicans. But thank God the Jews are -- eighty percent voted for Obama, and I suspect that there'll still be a fairly substantial majority of American Jews voting liberal. "Juif, donc liberal," which is another French expression: "Jew, therefore liberal." Hey, that's cool. I'm for that.

CW:How have the major historic events that you have been around for affected 78:00your life?

JS:You know, we go way back to when I was a little kid collecting silver paper for the Spanish Loyalists. So, nine, ten years old. For some reason, we figured that the cigarette wrapper had silver paper around the -- it was foil -- around the piece of paper that held the twenty cigarettes. So, I collected for the Spanish Civil War. And I was aware -- I mean, really, at the age of nine, ten, eleven years old -- that this is a terrible thing. I remember -- I really do remember -- I remember the strafing of Ethiopians by the Italians, and the pre-World War II. I remember very vividly the concerns that my mother was reading about in the Yiddish press, which, strangely enough -- I mean, this is 79:00to the detriment of the "New York Times" -- that did not feature what was happening. I mean, this is perhaps the worst stigma that the newspaper did not recognize the seriousness of what was going on in Europe and the condition of the Jews and Kristallnacht and everything else. Yeah, so I was aware of that, and I remember receiving through the period of World War II, lots of material from the Polish (laughs) government in exile. And then, to come to work for the Jewish Labor Committee and meet Vladka Meed and people who survived the Warsaw Ghetto and (sighs) -- and to know that in my own family, my mother's sister in Paris had lost two children. But fortunately my mother's sister and her husband 80:00survived, and four of the children also survived. Now, how they managed to do that is a miracle. But Hitler and six million and -- you know. These are things that are with me constantly. And so, you know, you extend that to -- they're celebrating now in Washington the fortieth anniversary of our demonstrations in front of the Soviet embassy protesting the treatment of Soviet Jews. And I was part of that! So, I'm working at the Civil Rights Commission; it's an easy four-block walk from my office to the IUE building, where we stood in front, facing the Soviet embassy, saying that, You are doing a terrible, terrible thing 81:00in the way you're treating Soviet Jews and denying them the right to leave, and so on and so on. So, over the years, I'm trying to think back, from the '30s through World War II through -- I mean, my activism continued with anti-Vietnam, and certainly civil rights. I used to brag about the fact that in 1963, in the spring of '63, I went down to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which was the headquarters for the March on Washington. And we were stuffing envelopes, and we were doing whatever Bayard Rustin told us to do. And so, for those months I was then working as the education director of the Amalgamated Laundry Workers Joint Board. So, when the march took place, I was able to get five buses of 82:00laundry workers to go from New York to Washington to participate in the march, and that was a very exciting thing. In '68 -- this is '63 -- '68 I'm in Washington, and I'm working with friends when the Poor People's Campaign came after Dr. King's assassination, working his way up -- Abernathy and then Young. So, the tent city in Washington. And the Southern Christian Leadership Conference is leading the Poor People's Campaign. And so, I'd headed up a group, which I was very proud of, that raised money -- a government employees fast day committee. So, I was the chairman of this committee that raised over ten thousand dollars from government employees on the pitch that, "Give up your lunch and contribute it to the government employees fast day. We're gonna fast 83:00one day for the -- help the poor in America," blah-blah-blah. And we did it. We turned out hundreds of people to come to a demonstration on that day and raised over ten thousand dollars and -- so I say, Hey, man, I did it. Hey. So, throughout the years, from anti-Vietnam to fighting -- and then I married Franny, who's active in the campaign to get universal healthcare and single-payer health and whatever. Okay. Helped form in Boston the Greater Boston Civil Rights Coalition. And now we have the GBIO, Greater Boston Interfaith Organization. So, you know, I'm still involved. Involved with Workmen's Circle, involved with the Jewish Labor Committee still. And now with the Yiddish Book Center. (laughs)

CW:Looking back, how have you seen your Jewish identity change, if at all, over time?

JS:This always is the most complex business. I mean, am I a Jew religiously, culturally, ethnically? You know, whatever. I used to joke about -- when I was two years old -- this is literally true -- my mother had me recite a little couplet. Two years old. "I'm an American Jew, and I'm proud of it too." She wrote it. Original with her. For me. "I'm an American Jew, and I'm proud of it too." And then, I said to myself, I'm an American Jew. I'm not a Jewish American. What's the noun; what's the adjective? "Jew" is the noun. That's central. I'm a Jew. I'm an American Jew. If I was in France, I would be a French Jew. That's significant, you know? So, my identity as a Jew has been with me all 85:00my life, from the time I first recited that poem. And going to Hebrew school. I never was ashamed of my Jewishness. I never hid my Jewishness. I was always proud of my Jewishness, maybe 'cause my mother told me that I'm an American Jew and I'm proud of it, too. So, I'm proud. So, I stand up, and I'm proud. I'm proud of everything that the Jewish people have done -- whether it was giving one God to the world or giving certain concepts, in terms of justice. Okay, so if that's something we should take credit, I'll take credit. But more than that -- you know, I visited my cousins in France this spring. (sighs) It was a 86:00miracle that we found them. Okay. And we visited them, in the south of France. Albert Grumberg, married to Michelle. Michelle is not Jewish. This is my mother's sister's grandson, Albert Grumberg. Then we visited Gilbert Goldstein, another grandson, married to Suzanne, not Jewish. (sighs) Both cousins who I've discovered only within the past several years have no Jewish identity at all. Nothing. They don't speak Yiddish, they have nothing to do with Israel, they have nothing to do with the Jewish community -- and there're seven, eight hundred thousand Jews in France, you know? I don't know if they're counted among 87:00them. But as far as I'm concerned, they're not part of the Jewish world. They have absolutely no interest. And I'm asking them questions about how they identify Jewishly, and they look at me blankly. And it's a heartbreaker, you know. (sighs) There was a play on Broadway fifty, sixty years ago, about Rothschild, I think, Baron Rothschild. And it ended with the mother saying to the son, "Don't ever forget that you're Jewish." And he responds, "Don't worry; they won't let me." I feel that's -- we've come to a time when they will let you. The anti-Semites are gonna maybe come out of the woodwork and start identifying. I mean, poor German Jews. (laughs) They didn't want to have 88:00anything to do with anything Jewish. The most pathetic figure, I guess, is Moses Mendelssohn. His grandchildren -- forget it. But anyway, I'm saying that being Jewish -- and I'm trying very hard. I'm now struggling. Now I got a real problem. I've got three grandchildren, and I want them to identify Jewishly. And someone else had said, "The definition of a Jew is someone whose grandchildren is Jewish." Hey, that's profound. Okay. So, my daughter Martha in California has Henry at six and Miles at ten, and I want them to have some kind of a Jewish education. I don't say what kind of Jewish education, as long as it's some kind of Jewish education. I think I've departed from the question.

CW:No, I'd love to hear how you're trying to pass that on.

JS:Yeah. One of the things that I now will go back and which I felt is very 89:00central to whatever I want to share with you is my mother's preceding what you're doing now. Nineteen forty-nine, okay, fifty, sixty -- sixty-two years, okay? Sixty-two years ago, she decided that she wanted to record her story. (sighs) And this is 1949. And by this time -- "Listen, Ma, leave me alone. I mean, I'm going to school, I got friends, I want to date -- leave me alone." And she said, "I'll leave you alone. I'll leave you alone. Buy me a recording machine. I cannot write." She wanted to dictate her story to me. I should sit there and write down as she tells me her story. (sighs) And I didn't have the 90:00patience for that. I did it for a couple of times and wrote six pages, maybe. She said, "I know that there's such a thing as a recording machine." This is 1949. So, I say, "Okay, I'll look around." So, I look around. I go to department stores; I say, "You got recording machines?" They says, Yes, we -- they just came on the market. '48, '49. They just came on the market. Home recording machines. So, I go to Masters, whatever. It was a discount department store on Forty-Eighth Street in New York. "You got one?" "Yeah. We got two kinds. We have this thing; it's a tape machine. This is a wire machine." "Oh. Tape recording? Wire recording? I guess wire would be more permanent. I'm gonna buy the wire recorder." I really knew. (laughs) I didn't check "Consumer Reports" or anything. So, I bought $149 -- a hell of a lot of money. My mother's money. Not much. Bought her a Webcor wire recorder. Okay? I read the book, showed her how 91:00to do it. You press this; you put the wire here; you spool it through here. And here's the microphone. And so, my mother recorded her story. What's interesting, of course, is that when she started to record her story -- very tentative -- she spoke in English. And she said, "My son bought this for me. I'm gonna call it Malka, which is my mother's name. I'm gonna be speaking to my mother. I'll tell her what is going on with me and how hard my life is and what is going on." And so, she recorded one spool in English. And then, the second time she put the spool on, she realized, Ikh ken redn yidish [I can speak Yiddish]. It's easier 92:00for me. I'll record it in Yiddish. (laughs) So, "Malke, Malke, mamale, mayn lebn iz azoy shver [Malka, Malka, dear mother, my life is so hard]." And so, for the next year, on and off, she would record her thoughts. And so, she acquired all of these spools of wire. It's obvious why wire was replaced by tape totally, because it tangled; it was a pain. I used to use it to record jazz or music that I liked, and my mother found it very, very annoying. That she didn't want me to touch it; it's her machine. You want to record something, you get your own machine. But I record-- in fact, I gave -- what I did after my mother died -- my mother died in '51, I'm left with these wires, and then I converted it into 93:00tape, and then I converted again, so the quality is -- but it's now here at the Yiddish Book Center. I think the quality's gonna be fairly poor, which I'm sorry about. And again, I think I've departed from the question that you asked.

CW:(laughs) That's okay. Well, we just have a few more minutes. So, is there anything else you'd like to tell me? Anything in particular?

JS:No, I don't think that there's -- I mean, I've been telling my story now; I've been sitting at the computer and all the stories. One of the stories I want to tell, of course, is about the fact that I have a very unique group of friends. I grew up in the Bronx, and there were a bunch of us who came together in junior high school, high school. We're talking about -- it eventually became seven guys and our wives, and we've started calling this group Reading Out Loud. 94:00And it was very important to me. This became my family. So, that we would meet a couple times a year. Then we started to spread out. One friend moved to Phoenix, Arizona; other friends moved to New Jersey and Pennsylvania. And then, over the past several years, three of them are gone. Two of pancreatic cancer and the third of some kind of complications that was initially thought of as Parkinson's, but it's worse. So, you know, this is painful. But I used to think we're all clones. This is the thing. Listen. We're within six months of each other in terms of age. We had the same junior high school. Same high school, except for one. All went on to City College. Went in different ways. Two -- 95:00three of them, actually -- into the sciences, one a chem engineer, one a research chemist, a third an electrical engineer, and two of them teachers, one a lawyer. I went the way I went. But we all were very much family. And so, that group -- and I suspect that there's things like that among other people in other parts of the world. But you grow up in the Bronx, and you become a family. And for me, it's very important.

CW:Do you have any words of advice for future generations?

JS:(laughs) Yeah. That's always the hard question, you know? There are lots of 96:00different areas. It could be like Mel Brooks, you know, "Eat a banana" or "Get a good night's sleep." But the advice we're talking about is one, we're here at the Yiddish Book Center, and the important thing is to keep -- just like Jesse Jackson, "Keep faith alive" -- keep Yiddish alive. You know, Aaron has done an unbelievable job. We didn't tell the story that twenty-some years ago, we invited Aaron Lansky to come to the Solomon Schechter Day School, where David, my son, was a student. And early on, we're trying to get Yiddish into the curriculum of Jewish day schools. So, that's one thing, the importance of maintaining Yiddish. I mean, it's a thousand years; we can't let it die. So, for that, that's important. So, we keep the little vinklekh [little groups] going, 97:00and to sit around with twelve, fourteen other people speaking tsebrokhene [broken] Yiddish, you know -- well, it's better than nothing. There's a story of the Baal Shem Tov and (UNCLEAR) go into the woods, and he knows to say the prayer and they'll know where to dig. So, you know, so we're stepping down. And eventually, we'll start stepping back up. Because Yiddish is being taught in the colleges and, as I say, the next generation will have a little bit better grammar than those of us who don't speak grammatically correct Yiddish. So, that's important.

[END OF INTERVIEW]