HENRY SIMKIN ORAL HISTORY

JESSICA ANTOLINE: Could you describe for us your household growing up? What was it like?

HENRY SIMKIN: Most of my growing up years, my grandmother lived with us, who was originally from a shtetl [small Eastern European village with a Jewish community] outside Vilna. And so, her presence was an important part of growing up. And I had two older brothers who were much older than me, seven and nine years older. So, by the time I really remember things, they were almost already out of the house and it was sort of like growing up an only child, which was both good and bad. Good in that I was the youngest of three and my parents let 1:00me do pretty much anything I wanted and I had a lot of freedom, and bad because I didn't have siblings, really, to play with or anything like that. But all good.

JA:Did you live in the country or a suburb or the --

HS:We -- Pittsfield is a smallish community of fifty thousand or so and we lived right in the city itself, or, relatively speaking, in the neighborhoods. School was mostly walking distance, within a mile of -- growing up through ninth grade. And then, actually, I went away to prep school in tenth grade and came to Williston, right near here in Easthampton. So, I've sort of been a Berkshire and Hampshire resident for most of my life.

JA:And who else lived with you? So, who was --

HS:So, both my parents were living there. My father is a general surgeon for 2:00years and he actually grew up in Pittsfield. He was born in North Adams and grew up in Pittsfield and always wanted to move back there. So, he was sort of a small-town doctor.

JA:So, many generations, multiple generations living in the same area.

HS:Yeah. I know my father had two siblings who lived right in town and other siblings didn't move out of town. But his father died quite young. He was a tailor in Pittsfield, an original immigrant. My father was first generation.

JA:And so, you know that your father was first generation. What else do you know about your parents?

HS:So, I know my dad grew up in Pittsfield after about age five. Born in North 3:00Adams. He never told me all that much about growing up in North Adams. But he had tons of cousins. His mother's family had ten siblings, and so there were about fifty or sixty Shapiros floating around up in North Adams and Pittsfield and all through the county. So, all my second cousins, which was nice. It was like knowing most of the county, a big family like that. And he went to Williams College, so he stayed local, and then he went to Albany Medical College. All very local. And a lot of that was because he wanted to stay close to his mom. His father had died in his fifties suddenly from a heart attack. And I think he just wanted to be around his mom. He was sort of the -- he wasn't the oldest 4:00boy, but maybe he was the one who felt the most responsible. And his mother had grown up in Russia. I don't know many more details or I don't remember more details. In a file somewhere, there are more details. And my mom grew up -- was born in Lynn, Massachusetts and lived most of her life in Dorchester on Jew Hill, on Blue Hill. And her parents were quite Orthodox but her father -- excuse me, her mother was quite Orthodox and my great-grandfather was a sofer, a scribe. So, anyway, she was from a very learned family, my grandmother, and came to the US already knowing Russian and Polish and Yiddish and some Hebrew. And 5:00was always studying and learning, up until she died in her eighties, was always looking at vocabulary lists and learning things and a very interesting lady. But my mom met my dad when she was just twenty or twenty-one and had gone to nursing school. And he was a physician. Let's see, why did they meet each other? Well, my mom went to nursing school with my aunt, my father's sister. And at my aunt's graduation, my father was introduced to this other lovely Jewish nurse from the Boston area. And then, my father went to Europe for three years immediately 6:00after they got married. He was in an army medical corps that was quite -- one of these incredibly traumatic experiences, I think, that -- you were talking about victims of trauma before. I'm really quite convinced my father was a victim of trauma. He did battlefield surgery in MASH units for three years, basically, just behind D-Day, just behind the invasion of North Africa, just behind the invasion of Sicily, two days behind. And they would set up these army hospitals and just operate on young men constantly.

JA:So, he traveled through --

HS:Through --

JA:-- several different areas.

HS:-- several different areas, for three years. And my -- he came back, as my mother said, a really changed man. Not quite so lighthearted, not quite so fun, which is sort of the father that I grew up with: not quite so lighthearted or 7:00fun. But anyway, my mom was a nurse, as I said. My father was a doctor. They were very involved in the synagogue. My father at various times was building fund chairman and vice president of the board and on the board and they always were -- my mom was always volunteering. She did not work as a nurse. She worked as a mom until I went away to high school. And then, she went back and started to do nursing, actually, for a little bit. That only lasted a little bit because my father got quite sick in his mid-fifties. He had basically a stroke, heart attack-stroke kind of weird thing and he never worked after that. So, their life changed quite a bit. But they were surrounded by this Pittsfield Jewish community, which was really an amazing Jewish community. The piece that I will 8:00always remember and sort of crow about today is they had this thing in the synagogue where after your bar mitzvah, the Monday after your bar mitzvah, you would get a postcard in the mail that said, "For next Shabbos, you're reading this -- these two lines from the Torah. If you can't do it, please call the rabbi." And everybody was too afraid to call the rabbi and say that they didn't want to do it. So, basically, if you took it on, starting the first year after your bar mitzvah, every Shabbos, you'd get a postcard that said you were going to be reading Torah. So, for the first year, it's two or three lines, and then it's three to five lines and then -- he knew who did well and who didn't. He kept pushing. So, the next thing you know, it's a whole aliyah and then it's two aliyahs and then -- it's really -- it was an amazing thing to take kids and just say, "Well, this is what's expected of you." So, that's where a lot of my love 9:00of Torah came from, really, was from that time. You just sort of felt like you were part of this bigger community.

JA:So, that pushing you actually helped shape --

HS:It was fabulous. I read Torah now for B'nai Israel. Not as often because they have a pretty regular Israeli Torah reader who's fabulous, Shlomo Barnun. But I get to read a fair share of the stuff that's left, and I do really like that.

JA:So, it had a purpose. (laughs)

HS:It had a purpose. Clearly had a purpose.

JA:So, tell me a bit more about -- kind of your experiences with Judaism as a child. So, you had this experience being kind of pushed to read Torah. What else did you do or -- were involved with?

HS:I went to a three-day-a-week Hebrew school, starting at age two-and-a-half. Probably, that was -- was it more than three days? I don't remember that young. 10:00But really, starting in kindergarten, I went three days a week: Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday. And it was always two hours and it was always with all these kids who were my friends, starting from very little. And starting in about fourth grade, we had a husband and wife team from Israel who came. And I just fell in love with Hebrew. I just -- Sonia Witkowsky, this teacher, was just, to me, an incredible teacher. And all you had to do was express a little bit of interest and she would just keep feeding you more and more and more. So, starting at about age twelve to fifteen, I used to go to their house on Shabbos and talk Hebrew with them. I forget most of it, unfortunately. But really enjoyed Hebrew 11:00and Hebrew school. And synagogue was really expected. I have to say that I was there more with my brothers than with my parents. My father worked most Shabboses, or at least part of most Shabboses. And my mom somehow -- I used to tease her about it -- but somehow would drop me off and go shopping. (laughs) I guess that was the -- sort of the push and pull of assimilation in 1960s Western Massachusetts. That's what a lot of mothers did. They dropped their kids off at services and went shopping. So, as I got older and perhaps more brazen with her, there was a line in the Al Chet [Jewish prayer of confession] from Yom Kippur where it says, "Forgive me for the sin of dropping my children off at services." And I used to show it to her every year. The house was kosher. It was sort of a 12:00big deal that the house was kosher and you would never bring anything unkosher into the house. And we had an array of utensils that were always buried in different flower pots because they were treyf [not kosher] for one reason or another. Use the wrong spoon and she'd -- it would be grabbed out of your hand and plunged into a flowerpot. And somehow, once it was there for several months, it could be taken out again. I have no idea where that minchag [Hebrew: Jewish custom] came from. Chagim [Hebrew: holidays] were a big deal. We always had Friday night dinner. Always benched -- did Birkat [grace] after Friday night dinner, a tradition that I really enjoyed and passed on to my kids. Suppose if you did Birkat after every meal, that would be more of a tradition to pass out. But once a week, anyway, a sung Birkat that I really loved. And always was in 13:00services on Shabbos and on chagim. There wasn't a choice about it or at least I didn't sense a choice about it. But I was into it. I think even around bar mitzvah age, I was just -- I was into it.

JA:And why do you think you were into it? What kind of -- what drew you in? What made you comfortable and --

HS:Yeah. I found it intellectually really satisfying. It was -- it pushed me. I guess I thought I was pretty smart. Maybe I'm pretty smart. It pushed me to learn something that I didn't know and that was at least a little bit more effort than the work in public school at the time, which, I guess, wasn't a 14:00whole lot of effort. So, this was nice. This was just another part of my life. And like I said, I got very drawn in by this other teacher, Sonia Witkowsky and her husband, Chaim. And Chaim taught a little bit of Yiddish and did a little Bible study and did -- said, "Let me show you how -- let me show you some trop [system of musical accents used in chanting the Torah]. This is how you read Torah," and it was just -- I sort of grabbed it and ran with it. So, when I had bar mitzvah tutoring, it was with this gentleman, Ken Goldblum, who taught three or four generations of bar mitzvah kids in Pittsfield. He died last year at ninety-five. And our bar mitzvah sessions were -- talked about philosophy and 15:00Israel and everything else. And we'd take ten or fifteen minutes to go over the stuff that he was teaching me. And I was so into it, it just was easy. So, we would spend all this time just talking about other stuff. Very fun.

JA:And did you continue this as you got older? So, this is --

HS:So, then I'm fifteen and I was sent away to boarding school, I think, for two reasons: one, because my father knew that it wasn't challenging enough for me intellectually. And two, because he was fifty and he was tired of having kids at home. (laughs) And he was really hoping that having kids at home wasn't gonna be his entire life, I think. He also had his mother-in-law in the house for a long time. But by that time, she was getting older and had moved to the Jewish 16:00nursing home. About the same time I went away, she was going to this nursing home. So, I go away to high school and a whole new world is opened up to me, a whole new non-Jewish world is opened up to me. And within months, I came home an apostate, just like, why do this stuff? It's just -- forget it. And for almost the next ten years, I think, I did very little Jewishly. An occasional Yom Kippur, an occasional -- well, I think since I was at Williams College, also, and at Williston, I think I came home for the chagim but it was mostly pro forma, mostly just doing what I thought my parents wanted me to do. And I was reading other stuff when I was in services. I would bring other books and I would just read and I would show up and thought that that should be good enough 17:00and just somehow kept searching and kept looking. And by the end of high school, I'd gotten into Eastern religions, and in college started doing Zen meditation and studying more Zen Buddhism and Tibetan religion and various Indian religions and thought, Well, this is where enlightenment comes from. So, stayed fairly philosophically oriented, maybe, or religiously oriented, spiritually oriented. But Judaism just didn't talk to me. And then, after college, I think a large part of it was meeting my -- at that time wife, not Maxine. And the fact that 18:00she wasn't Jewish made me realize that that was important to me and that if I was going to get married and raise a family, I was quite sure I was going to do it Jewishly. And she converted and took it on more than anybody could've hoped or expected. She fell in love with Judaism. And for me to go back to my roots was just very comfortable and very easy. The kids were in the Jewish preschool and in Hebrew school but we, in large measure 'cause of my ex-wife, lived a very Jewish life. And at the end of my medical training, where -- during those years in Chapel Hill, North Carolina for my residency, my wife was taking conversion classes with a rabbi there. And so, we were going to services pretty regularly. 19:00And once again, Torah readers don't grow on trees, so once they found that I could read Torah, I started reading more Torah when I was there, so -- though interestingly, when I got to college and I was in this very apostate phase, the biology professor was head of the Jewish Association at Williams got wind of me from friends in Pittsfield, twenty miles away, and called me into his office and said, "I understand you read Torah. Would you like to read Torah for us?" And like a little snot, I said, "No, thank you." And he said, "We really could use some Torah readers." I said, "I'm sorry, I'm just not interested." And I said, "Tell me, when did you get interested in Judaism?" He said, "Oh, when I got 20:00married and my kids were born." I said, "Call me then," and I left. But that really is what turned my religious switch on -- was having kids. I thought, I really do have a lot of information, a lot of knowledge to pass on to them. I've been studying this stuff my whole life except for the last eight years and I loved it, and why shouldn't I teach my kids to love it? And it became very easy to be Jewish and to feel Jewish. And at the end of my residency a -- I said to myself, I wonder if I'd be a mohel [ritual circumciser] someday? Because you had to learn how to do circumcision as part of this and nobody liked it. I sort of liked it. I won't say I liked it, because the babies cried. But I thought, I'm 21:00Jewish and I knew my father had circumcised me and I had sort of a thing like, Well, I'm going to circumcise my sons. And then, I started taking everybody's circumcisions on. People would say, Oh, Henry, would you do mine? I'd say, "Yes." So, by the time three years went by, I'd done about 150, 175 circumcisions and felt pretty comfortable with it. And then, a teacher -- one of my faculty said to me that he'd like me to be the mohel at his son's bris. His wife was pregnant. I said, "That's so nice." He said, "Well, I've seen you do many of them and you're very good at it. So, you'll come and do it." I said, "That's great. I'm looking forward to it." So, his wife has a baby and the bris is whenever it is. And that morning, I think to myself, Gee, I wonder who the rabbi's going to be. And so, I call them up and I say, "So, David, who's the rabbi? I suppose I should call him." He said, "What do you mean who's the rabbi? 22:00Aren't you doing the ceremony, too?" And I said, "Oh, sure, that would be just fine." And my stomach got twisted up in knots and I ran to "The Jewish Catalog," the first "Jewish Catalog," which has the whole brit milah [Jewish circumcision ceremony] ceremony, and I Xeroxed it and with shaking hands and a tremor in my heart I sort of read my way through my first brit milah, and the circumcision was the easiest part of the whole thing. And I guess I did okay, and that was sort of the start of this career as a mohel. And to fast forward, I'll say I've done over a thousand circumcisions. So, it was sort of an inauspicious beginning. But then, I moved to Northampton shortly thereafter. And this very dear friend of mine from Pittsfield has a baby and says, "Would you be the mohel 23:00because my husband isn't Jewish and this guy gave us a real hard time about it. He said, 'Oh, your husband isn't Jewish. Oh, one of those. Oh, well, do you have a minyan? No? Well, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do it.'" And so, I did her son's bris and what was interesting there is this -- I felt a little more comfortable with the ceremony, but actually the circumcision didn't go all that great. And she helped -- she, the mother, my doctor friend, a family doctor that I practiced with for twenty years, she helped me do a couple of things during the circumcision part of thing to make sure everything came out okay. I would keep asking her, "You're sure everything's okay?" And then, a friend from medical school called me and he's living in Providence and would I come and do his son's bris? So, I started just doing friends, and a few people would ask me, 24:00and then the rabbi in Northampton, Phil Graubart at the time, said, "The seminary, the Jewish Theological Seminary is doing a course for physicians who want to become mohels and I'd like to recommend that you do this." So, this was in '91. And I thought, This is a good idea. I'll get more comfortable with the laws and all of this. But I would say that that course changed my life in many ways. I took -- the rabbi who I remember taught the course, Bill Lebow, was the most kindhearted, gentle soul. And I just wanted to do anything I could to make it come out right and please him and just take it on with the kind of -- same 25:00kind of sincerity that he just espoused and just -- he dripped sincerity. It was really just wonderful. So, the two things that I remember distinctly from the class is he said, "I'd like you to take on a mitzvah [good deed], something. Daily prayer or, for some of you, kashrut or--" everybody was at very different places in their life. When I filled out the application, there were all kinds of things about, "Are you shomer Shabbos [Shabbos observant], are you glatt [strictly] kosher, are you this, are you that?" And I called a rabbi friend of mine and said, "This is getting a little uncomfortable. I'm not that person. I'm not that completely shomer Shabbos person. Do they want me or not? I mean, is this -- only the Lamed-Vavniks [thirty-six righteous people, according to mystical Jewish legend] can show up here? I mean, I'm not sure what this is all about." But my friend said, "Look, you don't have to apologize for being more 26:00religious than ninety-eight percent of American Jews. Okay, there are two percent of American Jews who are more religious than you are. But don't feel like you have to apologize to anything. Just be sincere, be yourself." So, I went with a good attitude about that. But then, I ended up taking on a more complete kashrut than I had been doing. Actually, growing up in Pittsfield, the minhag hamakom [Hebrew: local custom] was keep kosher at home, eat whatever you want outside the home. It never, in my family, went as far as pork products or seafood, but it did go as far as cheeseburgers and chicken parmigiana and stuff like that and nobody thought twice about it. It's really interesting. And I distinctly remember the first time I had shrimp was with these Jewish friends of mine and -- at a place my parent-- I was staying with these dear, dear friends 27:00of my parents who were in Israel at the time. And my friends took me out to eat and my friend -- this couple my parents' age took me out to eat. I must have been thirteen or twelve -- or thirteen or something. And he said, "Don't you want to get shrimp?" I said, "I've never tried it." And Howie says, "You'll love it." And his wife looks at him and says, "They're going to kill us." And I said, "No one has to know." So, anyway, let me fast forward back to taking kashrut back on -- so, I had always done that minchag, which was to eat non-kosher. And I just decided at that time, Okay, I'm just going to keep kosher. And I don't have a glatt kosher life but it's pretty amazing. Since '91, I've been basically completely kosher. And it wasn't hard. It's just thoughtful. It's just something 28:00good in my life that makes sense to me. Doesn't have to make sense to anybody else. Nobody else has to eat kosher around me. Doesn't -- I don't take it to any kind of purity degree. It just makes me feel better, so I do it. And then, anyway, the brit milot have just been adding up over the years. And almost every one I do is its own separate miracle. Maybe I have Rabbi Lebow's sincerity to thank for that. But I really have a sense of ushering a Jewish or soon-to-be Jewish soul into a covenant in a way that feels really right to me. And I think I help people because unlike my friends, I don't hassle people who aren't 29:00Jewish. I just tell them what the rules are and if they're comfortable with the rules, then they use me, and if they're not comfortable with the rules, they find somebody else. And I try not to put anything on people, you have to do this or that. There are very few have-tos. You have to do it on the eighth day if the baby's healthy. And if the mother's not Jewish, you have to be willing to do a mikveh [pool for ritual immersion] afterwards. But other than that, people are pretty open to whatever happens. So, is it okay if I told a few brit milah stories? Or --

JA:That would be great.

HS:So, I would say half of the milot that I do are with intermarried families. Of that half, half are non-Jewish moms and half are non-Jewish dads. It almost doesn't matter who's Jewish as to how the whole process works. People need to be 30:00willing to process a lot of information about this. And so, the first phone call to me often is about forty-five minutes or so of just feeling people out and trying to understand what they want out of this. And you hear pretty quickly whether somebody's doing it just because their parents want them to do it. And the only commitment I ask people to make is, "Are you bringing the baby up Jewishly?" "Well, we're going to have him baptized next week and we thought that we would do a little Catholicism and a little bit of Judaism." And I say, "I'm sorry, I can't be a part of that. You'll have to find somebody else to do that. I don't believe you can consecrate your child to two different religions. If you're going to really consecrate your child, then that comes with 31:00expectations." So, a non-Jewish dad once said to me, really, probably the most meaningful question I've ever been asked. He said, "What does the ceremony obligate me to?" It was really just perfect. I said, "You really get it, don't you?" It's about some sort of obligation, some sort of commitment to say, "I'll raise my child Jewishly." I said, "Beyond that, it's your choice as to what that means. But it does mean that you're going to raise your child Jewishly and be committed to that." So, in the twenty-first century, that means a pretty wide range of things. But I'm okay with that, as long as people are clear about that path. So, one interesting problem is that when the mom's Jewish, the baby is 32:00automatically Jewish and all of the laws regarding a routine brit milah are in effect. But what I get conflicted about is when the mother is Jewish in name only, and she's doing this because the baby's grandparents are Jewish and insist on this or are willing to pay for it or whatever reason, let's say. So, I go to do this bris for a family who have adopted a baby boy. And he's five or six months old and that's a slightly more complicated thing, but not really. And I go to their house and do a bris. And the house feels non-Jewish to me. I can't quite explain it, but there are no Jewish objects anywhere. And it's okay, but 33:00it's just not the most Jewish of houses. So, I do a ceremony that I feel is sincere and four days later they call me, because they're a little worried about how the circumcision looks. And this is in December, and I come back four days later and there's this great big Christmas tree in the living room. And the mother is clearly embarrassed about the whole thing. But it just throws into debate for me what all of this means. The mother's Jewish and so that's good enough for the rabbis. Part of me feels like this is an important debate and part of me feels like look, at least the baby is born of a Jewish mother and at least he had a kosher circumcision and you've given them a certificate and enough is enough. You can't make people live their lives any differently. But 34:00you end up realizing as a mohel, you have this sort of very unique function in people's lives. One of the interesting sidelights is that I usually meet people for about an hour, but I stay in their mind and in their lives for the rest of their lives. I don't remember most of the people I do this with, because -- I remember the circumstances but faces and stuff -- you probably meet thirty people at a bris. It's just so hard to keep track. How are we doing for time? So, then there are all these fun stories that have come from britot [Hebrew: circumcision ceremonies]. That's sort of the more complex philosophical angst that I can come in contact with, seeing a Christmas tree four days later. But then, there are just interesting things that are so different. So, I got a call from this family in Vermont, and where did they live? An hour north of Putney, 35:00which is about an hour from here. And you drive down this side road and this side road and at the end of a four-mile-long dirt road, there's a sign that says to something-something summit. And there's a trail there and you park your car there and you walk a hundred yards into the woods and then you'll see a tiny little trail that goes into the woods for another hundred yards. And we're in the cabin at the end of that trail. So, because I often do brit milot around my schedule as best as possible, I didn't want to cancel a whole half a day of patients. So, I said to them, "Can I get there at seven-thirty in the morning so I can leave by eight-thirty and I can be home" -- I at least won't cancel a whole half a day of patients. They said, Sure. So, it's sunrise, basically, in 36:00the woods of Vermont and I'm hiking with my little tie and my little leather bag with my equipment. And I hike up, there's no running water or electricity. They have two kerosene lamps and it's the mom and the dad and the baby and two other hippy-dippy friends. And we do this very meaningful ceremony. I think it was a meaningful ceremony. And I get back in my car and I drive back. He calls me two hours later. The dad calls me and says, "I forgot to ask you for the milah, for the orlah, for the foreskin. I said, "I still have it. I usually bury it myself." He said, "No, we wanted to bury it." I said, "Oh, I'm so sorry, what should we do?" He said, "Nothing, I'll be right there." And he drove two hours 37:00to pick up the foreskin, to go back -- so, here are these people living these lives completely isolated not just from Jewish community, but from community. But even the specifics of burying a foreskin were important to them. So, you come and it's -- you open the door for a brit milah, you can almost be guaranteed that it's meaningful in some way to these people. So, somehow, my name has also gotten out to the very biblically observant Christian community. And there are some Born-Again Christians, especially, who believe that if it's good enough for Abraham, it's good enough for them to have their child circumcised on the eighth day. So, I've taken the attitude that if I talk to them and I feel like there is great sincerity and they know that I'm not going 38:00to be doing brachot [Hebrew: blessings] with them, that I want to help these people, that they're doing it with such religious sense and purpose that it's okay. I know that according to JTS, I probably shouldn't be. But anyway, I do circumcisions for patients, too, who aren't Jewish. And I figure this is roughly equivalent. So, I get a call from somebody who says, "My husband's Jewish. I'm a Jews for Jesus. My husband is really a Jews for Jesus, but he was brought up Jewish and we have a whole congregation up in Brattleboro and we'd like you to do a brit milah for us." And we talked and I hemmed and hawed and I said, "Look, I can't do a religiously kosher brit milah for you. But I will come on the 39:00eighth day and I will circumcise your son. And when I leave, if your rabbi wants to say brachot, that would be fine for me." And I've really never met any Jews for Jesus people at this point. But I drive up to this nondescript, middle-income house in a neighborhood in Brattleboro. And there is an entire community decked out for brit milah. The dad has a coat and tie on and a tallis and their friends have kippot and I end up deciding that I'll at least talk a little bit about it. I don't have to say the brachot, but I'll talk about brit milah as if I was at a bris and that -- people are really appreciative of it. And as I'm leaving, their rabbi comes. He looks as Jewish as anybody from the 40:00Lower East Side. He's just (laughs) this Jewish looking rabbi with a kippah. Jews for Jesus, God bless us all. Anyway, so I say to him, "Maybe in the world to come, we can all do this together and I don't have to leave and it can be part of a big simcha." And he says to me, "merts hashem [God willing]." And we shake hands and I walk out and they do their ceremony. I'm sure he does the same Hebrew. I'm sure he does everything. But this is sort of like treading through these very interesting obstacles between sort of truth, whatever that means, and sincerity and observance. And it's these very funny blocks that you don't quite learn about in a week of mohel school at JTS, all of the stuff. So, then, there's the story -- I just -- a funny story of a biker bris. I'm called to do a 41:00bris in Spofford, New Hampshire. Southern New Hampshire. And the dad's Jewish and the mom isn't. And I don't get much of a sense of who these folks are over the phone. But, yes, they'll do a mikveh and they're committed to raising their kid Jewishly and this is his second marriage and her first and she's younger than he is. And so, I get -- drive up about a mile down a dirt road but it's still not way off in the woods. And I drive up to this house and there are fifteen huge motorcycles with -- the big hogs, the big choppers in this yard. And I walk in and there's this six-foot-four father with grey hair down to his shoulders and about a twenty-four-year-old mom, just everybody beaming, everybody happy. "Nice to meet you." This great big hand, twice the size of my hand. And I walk into the bathroom to wash my hands and there are piles of 42:00"Biker Magazine" and all of this stuff. And we go up to the kitchen and it's all this family's biker friends. It's his mom and his brother, but all these biker friends, all these old hippies with biker jackets and stuff, hanging out. And I'm trying to get us all to focus on all of this. And I usually change stuff to fit the crowd. So, somehow we're all pretty connected with all of this, I think. And at the end of the bris -- and everybody saying, "Mazel tov" and eat something or whatever, this six-five guy comes up to me and pats me on the back and says, "That was really cool, man. But you know what? That wasn't at all like 'Seinfeld.'" (laughs) And I said, "No, I'm glad it wasn't at all like 'Seinfeld,'" and we just had a good laugh about it. I said, "Was it okay?" He said, "Yeah, it was really good!" All of these things happen. It's sort of just 43:00this very powerful moment in people's lives. And sometimes, it brings me to such grateful feelings of being a part of it, just being asked to be in people's lives at this very intense moment and how somehow you can capture all of this. So, I was asked to do a bris in Ashfield at this really lovely family -- she was not Jewish, he's Jewish. They have two older girls; this is the first boy in the family. Yes, they're raising their kids Jewishly. "But if it's okay with you, Henry, we're part of the Bu-Jews, the Buddhist Jewish community. We're really doing more Buddhist stuff, but we still celebrate Passover." And I said, "Sounds good." So, I get up to -- oh, and he says to me, "Are you willing to barter? I'm 44:00an artist." And I said, "Gee, that sounds lovely." He said, "Well, when you come, we'll show you some stuff." So, I come to this absolutely beautiful handmade home in Ashfield. He's a carpenter, he's built a lot of his home. He has all these absolutely beautiful pictures around. He said, "Pick any one. I have lithographs if you like whatever." I picked one that was over his bed in his bedroom, just -- it's a beautiful thing. Anyway, there are about twenty of us there and I -- he tells me that a lot of them have never been to a bris before. So, I'm just about to start and he says, "Henry, is it okay with you if I do a sage ceremony?" I said, "Sure, Bob, anything you want." And he takes some sage and he lights it on fire and he has this smudge pot. And he passes his 45:00smudge pot around to everybody and he says, "What I would like you all to do is breathe in the smoke from the sage and imagine that you are about to have the most profound religious experience of your life. Imagine that the possibilities are limitless and you are here at the edge of the world with God and me and Henry and all the people that you love." And the smoke goes around and lifts us all up to this completely other place. I don't even remember what I said. But everybody was just floating. It was -- I left there feeling like, My goodness, here's this new tradition I should start. I did not. It's a little too non-Jewish. But if we're all seeking, it seems like a really wonderful way to 46:00seek, too. Just going to people's homes and say, "Open me up, too, to the possibilities. Open yourself up." That's what he said. "Open yourself up to the possibility that this could be a profound experience." And I heard another friend of mine say that he heard another mohel say, "If you watch carefully, you may catch a glimpse of me doing a circumcision. But if you close your eyes and are thoughtful, you may see and be a witness to the act of covenant between God and this family." So, sometimes I'll say something like that. It's very -- what does that do? It makes it so nobody watches the mohel and you feel more comfortable. So, on that note, I did a bris for a colleague of mine, a medical colleague of mine. He had two significantly older daughters, fifteen and 47:00eighteen, thirteen and fifteen, maybe. And this little boy is born and he comes from a family of four and his wife comes from a family of five. And all the brothers and sisters and their kids were there. There must have been twenty kids under the age of thirteen. And they all surrounded the table where I was doing the bris, looking like the most rapt, intense witnesses you could possibly imagine. And I did this bris with twenty little eyes about that far -- about six inches from what I was doing, just -- we just -- and I talked to the kids. So, during the ceremony, I said, "How many of you have ever been to a bris?" And, "The baby's going to cry a little bit and I hope that that's okay. But it'll be over really fast." And just talked to them, trying to explain to kids about it. So, that was very fun. You've got the idea. It's a meaningful part of our -- 48:00(laughter) part of my life. Yeah.

JA:So, I'm curious, because you come into all these people's lives at such an important point in their lives. Something that can potentially shape them for the rest of their lives. What do you pass onto your children that's Jewish? How do you express that for your children? Because you say you were raised --

HS:Right.

JA:-- in this and you're comfortable in it. So, what do you pass on?

HS:So, I don't know exactly where my kids found Orthodoxy. But the tale that goes on from me is these two -- my daughter, Sophie is twenty-three and my son, Adam, is twenty-one. And starting at birth, they were in synagogue if not every Shabbat and chag, then about ninety-five, ninety-eight percent of them. They 49:00grew up in the synagogue. It was their second home. Their mom did a lot of volunteer work there. They were always there. And somehow, growing up in Northampton, my daughter decided that Orthodoxy was where she was headed. So, starting at about age fifteen or sixteen, she was shomer Shabbos and we lived a pretty shomer Shabbos life from her perspective. She was shomer Shabbos from then, and my son pretty much took it on 'cause he looked up to his sister a lot. They both now live in Jerusalem. They're both now at yeshivot, Orthodox yeshivot. My son, after a year of study -- so, he did a little Hebrew at Smith and then two years at UPenn and went to Israel and now is a fluent speaker. And was asked to come back to the yeshiva to be a madrich, a tutor to the incoming 50:00non-Israeli kids who also attend the yeshiva. My daughter is at a more English-speaking yeshiva, but is also studying mostly in Hebrew these days. Their Judaism shapes their lives in ways that I have only touched and not really lived. I've gone through periods when I've davened every day. But it's only periods. And this is their lives for the last five years, is three sets of prayers a day and a very shomer Shabbos life. So, it was actually a rabbi friend of mine, Efraim Eisen, who said, "You taught your kids amazingly well. Look at what you passed on to them." I'd love to take the credit. Their mother deserves 51:00at least half the credit and I think God deserves the other half. And I don't know where -- I don't know what you learned from your parents or what they would say. And I think they're the only ones who could say, This is why it was meaningful. I mean, what they saw when they grew up is that when -- is that I read Torah a lot and we were in services a lot. So, I guess it was important. And Friday night dinners were often Torah discussions. When the kids were teens, we would say Birkat on Friday nights. So, what did I pass on that I got? Birkat on Friday nights and some Torah discussion. My kids are passing on stuff to me now. I'm going back to reading more Torah. I'm -- joined the board of the synagogue. I decided that if they're gonna live in Israel, which I think they 52:00are both planning on doing at this point, then the more Jewish-oriented stuff I do, the more I am staying in touch with them. So, that's what's motivated me to get a little bit more involved at the synagogue recently.

JA:And I have one more question regarding that. This is what you've passed on to your children. So, how do you see your daily Jewish life today?

HS:My Jewish life is mainly organized around Shabbat. And if I'm reading Torah, then I'm looking at the Torah reading X number of hours before Shabbat to learn it. The piece that I find my Jewish spirituality works on is in my job as a 53:00physician. I do that pretty sincerely, too. And so, I use my Judaism a lot in my day-to-day work. When I'm counseling someone who is bereaved, I will often pass on Jewish mourning ritual because it's so meaningful to me when people talk about, without using the word, their parents' yahrzeit [anniversary of death] and I tell them about yahrzeit beliefs and why it's good to just set aside time to do this. When I talk about -- when I talk to my patients, I use religious language and I don't shy away from it. I feel like it's good that patients know their doctor is religious. Sometimes I'll say to somebody, "I really don't know 54:00what else to do but I sure will pray for you." And they'll say, "Well, I really appreciate that." And they mean it and I really mean it, too. I have a long list of people to pray for on Shabbos. (laughs) So, I think my Judaism informs my medicine in that way. There was a period where I was helping to make a morning minyan twice a week and reading Torah on Monday and Thursday mornings at CBI. That went on for about three years, right around the time my mom died, which was almost ten years ago -- nine years ago, now. So, it's -- that's not quite as much. But, like I said, I'm answering calls from the synagogue in a variety of ways more often. The ritual committee, the board. I'm a gabbai [synagogue 55:00official] in a couple of weeks, to help out, so --

JA:So, is there anything else you'd like to share with us?

HS:Oh, you're so sweet. I have talked your ear off for an hour.

JA:No, it's --

HS:It's plenty.

JA:This is what we want to hear.

HS:It's been fun. It helped me to put into some framework some of the things that I've been thinking about and talking about for years. And I appreciate being asked.

JA:Well, thank you.

HS:Hope it was fun for you.

JA:Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]