SHEILA HORVITZ ORAL HISTORY

MARK GERSTEIN:This is Mark Gerstein and today is November 10th, 2011. I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts with Sheila Horvitz and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Sheila, do I have your permission to record this interview?

SHEILA HORVITZ: Yes, you do.

MG:Thank you. Okay, let's start out with: Can you tell us about your family background?

SH:Okay. Well, I was born at Beth David Hospital in Manhattan, July 11th, 1944. My parents had married July 19th, 1943. They were proud. I was a war baby. My 1:00husband and I always joke that we're still war babies. We're on the cusp of the sexual revolution. We got married in 1965, just when the free speech and the sexual revolution was brewing but we're really war babies, the two of us. My dad was a graduate of City College in New York, in the '30s. He was a chemist but because of anti-Semitism, he couldn't get a job after college. He went into the post office and that's where he worked until he enlisted in 1941. He was a master sergeant in the army, in the Quartermaster Corps, and he was at D-Day. And interestingly enough, I was conceived in Petersburg, Virginia because after my folks got married, a few months afterwards and around November, I'm assuming, 1943, they were in Petersburg, where my dad was stationed at Fort Lee, near Richmond, in Petersburg before he was shipped off to Europe. So, I didn't see my 2:00dad in person until 1945. I was about a year-and-a-half old. And the family story, as it goes, was that every night, my mom would sing me to sleep, (singing) "You are always in my heart even though we're far apart." That was a very popular song at that time and as she sang, she would point to the photograph on the bureau: that was my dad. And she'd say, "That's your dad." And the story goes that when he finally came home in 1945 and I was a year-and-a-half old, my mom said to me, "Here's your daddy!" And I said, "No, no, that's my daddy!" And I pointed to the picture. Whether it's true or not, it's a nice story. But I always, in my life growing up and even as an adult now and as an aging person, I know how awful World War II was and my dad, I know, came back with probably post-traumatic stress. They didn't put a name on it then. But somehow, in my mind, I romanticized it. My parents were both products 3:00of New York, although my mother was born in Russia and I'll tell you about that. But they met at Pennsylvania Station. My dad was on his way probably, I think, to Fort Dix in New Jersey doing -- he was in the army. My mother, who worked at Goldsmith Brothers in the area around City Hall, in the Battery area of the city, in Manhattan -- and she was on her way to Philadelphia to visit with a boyfriend and they met on the train. And the story goes that he asked her for her number but she wouldn't give him her telephone number. She said, "I'm Evelyn at Goldsmith Brothers. You can contact me there." And he did and they were married shortly thereafter. So, I always look at that as a very romantic story, yeah.

MG:Can you comment about your mother's immigration?

SH:Yes.

MG:Yeah.

SH:And it has a lot to do with the Yiddishkayt because I'm of the generation 4:00where many of my contemporaries are not as interested in Yiddish as I would hope or I would like to be because they did not have the Yiddish at home, even though they're products of grandparents who came from Eastern Europe. I was so impressed with Aaron Lansky's speech at the opening of the Yiddish Book Center. I'm very proud to say I was a founding member and my name is on the plaque in the front of the building as you walk in. And my mother and I were looking forward to that opening so much because she -- my mother considered herself a Yiddishist, and I'll explain how that came about, too. Unfortunately, my mother couldn't make the opening. She was living in New York City at the time. I lived in Connecticut. We were very excited about it, especially the connection, because my husband is from New Bedford and the Horvitzes knew the Lansky family from that area. But my mother had a very dear cousin who was dying of lung 5:00cancer in Florida and she went down to take care of her in her last few weeks of life. So, it was very sad and heartbreaking and I had to come to the opening on my own. But Aaron gave a speech and I'll never forget the symbolism of his speech because it exemplified my mother, contrary to what he was saying. He talked about a relative of his awaiting on dock as the ship came into Ellis Island and a relative was coming from the Old Country. And they brought their baggages with them and the luggage and the -- whatever they had from the Old Country. And when they got to him and they greeted each other and she said, "Help me carry my bags," he said, "No, you don't need that baggage anymore." Have you read that speech? That's the speech that he gave. It's printed; it's wonderful. "You don't need that baggage anymore. This is America. You don't need all that." In other words -- Yiddish stuff, that Jewish stuff. "You don't need 6:00it. You're in America now." And he threw it into the East River. And then, Aaron goes on to talk about how now the Yiddish Book Center and his work is dredging back all of that stuff. My mother never threw it in the East River. My mother kept it alive and kept it alive in me, which was wonderful, okay? She was seven years old when she came here. She was on one of the last ships, the ship "Byron." And for all the people who are involved with the Yiddish Book Center and Jewish genealogy, the Ellis Island is a wonderful resource for research about the various ships and the passages to America in the late 1800s, early 1900s. She came in 1923. That was almost the end of the Ellis Island experience. They were living in a small shtetl [small town in Eastern Europe with a Jewish population] called Stavyshche in the Ukraine, probably not too far from Kiev, 7:00near Berdychiv. I've been hunting around for it and hope to go there someday. But interestingly enough, my mother and my bobe [grandmother], her mother who came with her, never had any desire to talk about Russia or to go back there. It was not a place that they ever had thought that they wanted to do that. And when I talked about the fact that I'm a history teacher and interested in that, "No, you don't want to go there." And probably because the Soviet Union destroyed all of the villages, changed the names. It's not easy. But I'm certain someday I will go and I will discover Stavyshche. That's where she came from. And it was during the Russian civil war in 1921, when they escaped. And my mother tells a story -- and, again, it's her story -- that they escaped from Ukraine over the border into Romania in 1921. And because my mother was probably four, five years old at the time, they sewed into her little jacket, they sewed an opening. So, 8:00they put a bag, and in the bag, they had -- any money, any jewelry, any coins, anything of value was sewn into her -- they thought that she would not be investigated the way the adults would be. And so, that's how they escaped and that's what she recalls. And they had to live in Romania for two years until they could get passage. They were sponsored by my mother's uncle, her father's brother. Now, I never enjoyed having a grandfather on my mother's side. I'm named after him. My name is actually Sheyndl. My maiden name is Epstein, so I was Sheyndl or Sheyndele Epshteyn and my grandfather, he didn't have an Americanized name. He was Shimon, I guess. So, I'm Sheyndl bat Shimon. He died when my mother was only two weeks old, so she never knew him either. And my grandmother was a very resourceful woman and she and my mother and another 9:00sister of my grandmother's came together. And my mother's maiden name was really Zventisky. That was the family name. But the uncle who sponsored her in America had moved to California and he had changed his name to Hoffman. So, that was my mother's maiden name. And her father had three brothers and they all had different names. One, in California, was Hoffman and then two brothers went to Cleveland and lived there. And one was Willie Zventisky. He was the older one and he decided he was going to keep the original name, the original identity. And the next brother changed his name, Americanized it to Venit, V-E-N-I-T. He was Sam Venit, so it was a Zventisky, a Venit, and a Hoffman. So, you know when you're doing the passwords and all of your online credit cards and other things 10:00you need to show, what's your mother's maiden name, that's the -- Hoffman. I don't know where it came from but that's my mother's maiden name. And I do have to show you, if you're interested, some of the original documents from my mother and my grandmother's passage here. And this is, for example, the American Consulate Service. You can see this is July 3rd, 1923. And here she is -- Sure. My grandmother was Sarah, Sure. Now, this says, like, Zewiska. That Zventisky was transposed a million different ways at every stage of the process. It was always spelled differently. And I always knew her as "Bubbie Kaplan" because although she had been widowed at a very, very young age, at some point when my mother was a teenager, she married a Mr. Kaplan from Jeffersonville, New York, up in the Catskills. And she went to live with Mr. Kaplan and with his family 11:00and my mother stayed behind with my grandmother's -- one of her sisters and their two children. And because everybody was Sarah -- my father's mother was also Sarah, I couldn't call them "Bubbie Sarah." So, I had a Bubbie Epstein and a Bubbie Kaplan, was the last name. And the interesting thing about my life is my mother-in-law is also Sara, so everybody's Sara. And when my oldest daughter was born, had to name her after my bubbie, Sarah, but I couldn't name her Sara because my mother-in-law was still alive. So, she became Sharon. Her Hebrew name is Khaye-Sore but anyway, so that's 1923. Here's a photo at Bucharest, in Romania, from getting passage. And that's my mother and my grandmother. Interestingly enough, on the ship "Byron," on the manifest, they had her down as 12:00a little boy because I guess the Buster Brown haircut and so forth.

MG:Is that an official document you're showing?

SH:Yes, it is.

MG:Is that in Yiddish or Hebrew?

SH:That is in Yiddish. That is in Yiddish. And here, I don't know, there's Zawisha. This is the record. This is what you get when you go on the Ellis Island website. See, they have the name as Zuvinitzka. I said Zventisky, Zuvinitzka. Chavi, seven years old, gender, male. That was wrong. Now, the interesting thing -- and it says the ship that she came on and the point of departure in Romania. That was in 1923, on the ship "Byron." And I have, at home, a photo, framed, of the ship, as well as the ship manifest, which I don't have here. And the other interesting story about my mother's passage to America was that they didn't celebrate birthdays in Russia. We celebrate yortsayts 13:00[anniversaries of death]. And I don't know if there's any record in any town hall or anything left in Russia. I haven't explored that far. But we don't know how old my mother really was or what her birthday was. We never knew how old my bubbie was, really. But again, there's another apocryphal story about -- at Ellis Island. My bubbie used to tell it, that they asked -- the officials asked my grandmother, How old is this little girl? And she says, "Oh, about seven." I don't know if she -- "about seven." And what's her birthday? And my bubbie said, "Pesach." (laughs) So, according to my mother -- and, again, I don't know if this is true but this is the way we learned it, they put down April 1st. Now, my mother says that at age seven, they moved -- I think they first lived in Harlem, then Brooklyn and the Bronx. When she went to school, they put her, I guess, in the second grade and it was hard to acclimate, obviously. They called her a Greenhorn, she recalls that. And then, when April 1st came along, they called her April Fools. So, now she says thereafter she changed her birthday to April 14:0015th. I have no idea whether that's true or not but that's the date we always celebrated and that was on her birth certificate. And she was always an April -- and the other interesting thing is she died April 10th, 2006, right on the eve of Passover. So, she came into this world, Pesach, that I'm sure of. My grandmother was right there. It was Pesach and she died Pesach. And her Hebrew name was Yocheved, and that's Moses's mother. So, there's all that little symbolism involved in that.

MG:Did your grandmother ever discuss what life was like in Russia at all or why they left or --

SH:No, it was in the air. You knew, I mean, you knew they left because of pogroms. You knew they left -- they were in the middle of the revolution. You kind of knew that. That was all in the air and there were always people coming over and there were always relatives who you knew were here for thirty years and 15:00others for less. So, I always had the sense that Jews were being persecuted and had to leave. So, we didn't have to discuss it openly. My grandmother was a very interesting person. It was because of her, I believe, that I went to the Workmen's Circle schools. And that's another interesting part of my life. It made me different than my brother and, I think, better in many ways in keeping Jewish culture alive. I grew up in an Orthodox home. We kept kosher. There was some Chinese food in the picture, too. (laughs) On Sundays, we'd go to the Chinese restaurant but we'd have vegetable lo mein and not pork lo mein. But that's a common thread in a lot of Jewish homes in that era. This was in the '50s. We'd walk to Southern Boulevard, to Charlie's. That was our favorite place. And my mother did everything to honor the past and to honor her mother 16:00and her family. And in the home, it was sacrosanct. I mean, we were kosher and it was very, very important. And we belonged to an Orthodox synagogue, the Beekman Avenue shul in the Bronx, near St. Mary's Park. And I recall going to the shul, which is now a -- Abyssinian church. I was there -- before my mother died, we had the good fortune to travel there and to look at the shul and go up into the balcony where the women sat, by the way, and kind of relive some of those experiences. And then, fortunately, it was before my mother's Alzheimer's got so bad that she couldn't appreciate it and we had a wonderful time. And the people who had taken over that church, it was kind of in disrepair. That was sad. But it was still there and the balcony was still there and all the memories 17:00were still there. And I used to recall sitting up in the balcony with my grandmother and my mother and my father and my brother and my uncles would sit downstairs. And in the Orthodox religion, the eyes of the men and women weren't supposed to meet. That was a no-no. And all I can remember is looking down and trying to get my father to meet my gaze, to look up at me, and he would. My dad would. But you really weren't supposed to. And I also recall that in the High Holidays, I had an uncle who was very Orthodox and he was like a grandfather to me. He was my grandmother's sister's husband. They had never had any children. He treated my mother like his daughter and I was closer to him as a grandfather than to my father's father who lived in Williamsburg. And my father lived in storied Williamsburg, yeah, grew up in Williamsburg. And my -- we used to call him "Unky." He was very Orthodox and the balcony situation was not good enough 18:00for him. They had a separate service for the most Orthodox in the basement where they had a true lace mekhitse [partition] where the men and women were separated. So, what we did was considered Reform and modern, (laughs) in the balcony, and my unky had a mekhitse. And I'm bringing that up because when it came time for me to learn about the Jewish religion, Hebrew, and all of that, girls couldn't be -- there was no such thing as a bat mitzvah and my brother was, of course, going to Talmud Torah and he was going to be bar mitzvahed. And my grandmother, who used to daven -- she was a real interesting mixture. She used to daven at the window every night, on her own, but she was a socialist and she was a member of the Workmen's Circle. She happens to be buried in the Workmen's Circle --

MG:This is your father's mother or your mother's?

SH:My mother's --

MG:-- mother.

SH:-- mother, my bubbie that lived with -- she lived with -- I also mentioned my 19:00bubbie after -- I told you she married Mr. Kaplan at some point. Even before I was born, he died and she moved back to New York and she lived with my parents until she died. And so, she was a big part of my life. And she's buried in the Workmen's Circle cemetery in Long Island, in New York. And so, my parents decided that they're not sending me to any Talmud Torah. They're sending me to the Workmen's Circle I.L. Peretz Yiddish schools, because I'm going to learn Yiddish, I'm going to learn Jewish culture. And so, as a young kid, maybe -- I don't know what age I was when I started. I went for four years, several times a week. In the neighborhood, we had the shul. And my unky, who, again, was like my grandfather to me as well as my father's father, who was also quite Orthodox, in Brooklyn -- objected strenuously to the Workmen's Circle because it was very -- quite secular and many of the teachers were atheists and they didn't want me 20:00attending. But my mother was very stern about it and she said I'm going to this wonderful -- and my grandmother, of course, supported that, too. After the first four years, I graduated what they called, I guess, elementary school. And when I was maybe in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, for three years I went to the mitlshul, the high school, at Washington Irving High School on Fourteenth Street in Manhattan every Saturday and Sunday. Well, my grandfather and my unky were outraged I had to take the subway. You couldn't travel on Shabbos. It was an outrage. They were angry with my parents. But, again, my parents insisted and my bubbie supported it because she was a fierce member of the Workmen's Circle and believed in everything they stood for. And I had a wonderful experience. And my brother, he had his bar mitzvah and he 21:00learned how to daven but I learned Yiddish. We read the "Forward," the newspaper. Sad to say, I haven't kept up -- I get the "Forwards," the English language paper now but --

MG:You said the Workmen's Circle had a socialist orientation.

SH:Yeah.

MG:Did that -- in the 1950s when you were going to the I.L. Peretz schools and what have you, the country itself was very conservative. How did that work out in terms of your -- the ideology of the country during McCarthyism and all that --

SH:Well, I remember that.

MG:-- with your own -- world?

SH:I'll never forget when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were assassinated. We had a very dear friend who was a lawyer, one of my parents' best friends, and it really impressed me and I remember talking to him about it. I also remember how McCarthyism seeped into even the little public schools in the Bronx. My mother was the president of the PTA for years in my school. And so, of course, I was 22:00very proud of that. But even in the PTA, they wanted to have kind of a witch hunt against people -- mothers in the PTA who were socialists, communists. I mean, it was a hard time. And now, I'm a little kid. I don't really understand at all, but I remember dinners at my home or big seders or big New Year's dinners, Rosh Hashanah dinners, where the family would break up into fights and you'd hear, "Go back to Russia if that's the way you feel." So, even our family, I could see there was a wonderful woman in our family who's -- they were trying to get out of the PTA and my mother was in a very conflicted position. She was close with this person, she was a wonderful human being, but she may have been a socialist or communist. And again, I was too young to grasp it all, but I got bits and pieces and I heard that. So, the fact that it even seeped into a little element-- PS 65 in the Bronx, New York, is quite something. But I didn't feel 23:00that at the Workmen's Circle. We were immersed in Yiddish and we were immersed in learning Hebrew as a language. We learned about the different forms of the Jewish religion. We went to visit a Reform synagogue and a -- Orthodox and so forth. And the Workmen's Circle had one of my favorite memories. They had a third seder every year -- have you heard of that? They published a Haggadah in Yiddish. I use that every year at my seder. And they had the third seder at the Waldorf Astoria, in the main ballroom. Thousands of people from all over the city and I was in the choir. And we sang the partizan [partisan] song, (singing) "Zog nisht keyn mol az du geyst dem letstn veg [Never say that this is your final road]." We sang the partisan song, we sang songs about Egypt and the Pharaoh and it was a wonderful, wonderful thing that they had every year. And 24:00that, come full circle, I have a seven-year-old granddaughter who lives in Boston and she just started the Workmen's Circle Sunday School. And she's going to follow in learning about that.

MG:Was Yiddish spoken in your home?

SH:Yes, absolutely. Yes. Yes.

MG:By what members?

SH:My grandma. Well, my grandmother, my mother. I understood it. I didn't speak it. I probably could, Ikh ken redn a bisl yidish [I can speak a little bit of Yiddish]. I can understand it. It's sad to me now, there's nobody left to talk to that much. But it was a big, big part of growing up, absolutely. Now, my grandmother was a lot of fun. She had a really good sense of humor. And you remember the book, "The Education of Hyman Kaplan"? Well, I lived it because my bubbie, her sister, Nekhume or Naomi, my unky, Julius Wolensky, he was the unky, 25:00the Orthodox uncle who was like my grandfather, his wife Chava, Ida. They went to night school at -- I think in PS 65 and I used to help them with their homework. Two "pons pitches," my uncle (laughs) used to write. They had to learn about fruit one time and it was a riot. It was really funny and it was just right out of "The Education of Hyman Kaplan." But they were determined that my mother -- see, my mother was the oldest child of her generation and she was the leader. And she was also, as I always described it, the eyes, the ears, the front person for Americanizing the family. She took the lead. She was a very strong person. She had no dad. My grandmother, turned out, was quite sick a lot of her life. And my mother and father took care of her devotedly. My mother was 26:00extremely strong and then she lost -- my father died when he was only fifty-seven and my mother was widowed. And she was very strong and she kept family together, she kept Yiddishkayt alive. Very determined, very devoted, dedicated person. So, Yiddish was a big part. And then, my mother, in -- her last big job was as executive director of the Temple Gates of Zion synagogue in Valley Stream, New York. Fairly large synagogue. The rabbi, Simon Resnikoff, was very well known in the community. And I think my mother put that profession of executive director of a synagogue on the map. She made it into a professional undertaking. She had worked in Great Neck previously. But she was an organizer and she was very active. And she created what was -- something that was followed 27:00all over New York and probably elsewhere: the idea of the thing called the "yidish-vinkl," Yiddish corner. And I don't know whether she had it once a week, once a month, but in the synagogue, they -- when you came to the vinkl, you could only talk Yiddish. That's how you kept it going, that's how you learned. And every year, she put on what she called -- they called -- a herring and potato supper, a dairy supper for hundreds of people in the ballroom at the Temple Gates of Zion. And they would have -- I don't know if they might even -- had Molly Picon. They would have big, big Jewish stars: Theodore Bikel, Herschel Bernardi. Different people from that era would come and entertain and my mother was in charge of that. And I know -- I'm a graduate of Queens College. But when I went in the '60s, there was no Yiddish studies program. But in the '70s, I think Queens was one of the first colleges to have a Yiddish studies program. They invited my mother to the opening of their program because they knew she was 28:00a force in the community, keeping Yiddish alive. So, she considered herself a Yiddishist and we were very much Zionists in our family. However, the first time my mother went to Israel, she was disappointed because Israel tried very hard to take Jewish out of the equation and made Hebrew the language. And I know initially in Israel, you couldn't even have Yiddish theater, right? It wasn't really until '67 or so when Yiddish began to be more accepted. And that was when my mother first made her trip there. In the late '60s, she came back, not very happy because, "They don't want Yiddish! That's our language, that's our tongue, that's our touch. We need that." And it bothered her. And so, the rest of her life, she had this kind of love-hate relationship with Israel. She went another time after that. My brother lived there for a few years, worked there. But she 29:00was a Yiddishist first and foremost.

MG:Can we talk about your life in New York City? You said you grew up in the Bronx? What was the neighborhood like? What was the whole experience like?

SH:Yeah, we were in a neighborhood that -- I once met a social scientist from Columbia University on a plane trip somewhere. And when I told her about my life growing up in the South Bronx, the southeast -- my building is now rubble, okay, which amazes me because I think in 1938, that area of the Bronx, the South Bronx was really almost like -- suburb, was new. The buildings were built in the late '30s. By the '50s, people were leaving in droves. The neighborhood became more difficult and more dangerous. But I was there from 1944 till 1959. We moved to Little Neck in Queens in 1959. And I resented it because the Bronx was exciting. 30:00It was multicultural. We had Irish Catholics, Italian Catholics. We had Jews, we had Puerto Ricans, we had bla-- we had everybody and I liked it. I liked that rhythm and that excitement. When we moved to Little Neck -- and my parents were involved. They were very much -- my mother was the executive director of the Third Avenue Merchants' Association in the Bronx. They were trying to beautify the neighborhood, make it safer. The merchants were working on community causes and my parents were socially active. They were active in the Democratic Party. And when we moved to Little Neck, we moved to a Jewish veterans' place called Deepdale Garden Apartments that you bought into. And that was the last home my mother ever had. She left there to live with me before she died. But I didn't like it. I was fifteen years old. I had to go to Bayside High School, which is mostly white and mostly Jewish. (laughs) And I wasn't used to that. It was 31:00nothing exciting and I used to say to my mother, "You don't have anything to do here. Everybody else is doing all the work and all the charity work. It's like you're not even needed." But she got involved in other things. But I liked my childhood in the Bronx. It was exciting.

MG:What made it exciting beyond the mixture of people?

SH:Well, I loved when you were eight, nine, ten years old in the '50s, you could go to the subway yourself and go to Manhattan. And I had a girlfriend who used to come down with me or meet me after my shul, when I used to go every Saturday and Sunday. We'd go to the Academy of Music on Fourteenth Street, that big theater. We thought we invented or we thought we discovered Elvis Presley because we saw "Love Me Tender" there the first time it opened. We went to the automat. We went to see "My Fair Lady" for five dollars or two-fifty or 32:00something. We'd go to Broadway. On a couple of occasions, the kids in the mitlshul went on the Jewish radio station in the afternoon and we did some songs. And we sang -- I still remember the ditty: "Enge-benge-stupe-stenge-artse-bartse-gole-shvartse-eyngele-beyngele-tsigele-vigele-hek [Eenie-meenie-miney-moe]!" And don't ask me how I remember that but we did some kind of stuff, Jewish songs, little things on the -- so, yeah, it was on the radio. And, of course, my little girlfriend and I, who -- we're still friends to this day, we used to go to Manhattan and we would fantasize that someday we would live on Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue and that trip from Southern Boulevard and 143rd Street to Manhattan was only ten, fifteen minutes. It wasn't a long trip. And it was fun.

MG:Can you describe your actual house in New York?

SH:Well, when my parents first got married, believe it or not, they lived in two rooms. But the old apartment buildings, the rooms were huge. So a five-room apartment now, my -- but two rooms and my grandmother lived with us. So, my dad came back from the war in 1945. My grandmother and I slept in the living room and my parents had the bedroom. Then my brother was born in 1948. An interesting thing about my brother, he was also born at Beth David Hospital and his name is Paul, Efroyim-Gershon. And my mother tells the story that he was born just around the time Israel became a state, May of 1948. He was born May 7th, 1948. And she said, "He's the only boy born in the hospital that week who was not named Israel." She says, "I don't like the nickname Izzy. I want to name him 34:00Paul." So, she named him Paul. That the story about him. But we continued to live in that two rooms. And I don't know for how long. But you know, the interesting thing is when the relatives came from California or Cleveland or wherever, they stayed with us in the two rooms, not the aunt and uncle who had four rooms or five rooms but with us. And at some point, we moved upstairs to the fourth floor to have a four-room apartment, which was humongous, and I slept in the same room with my bubbie and my brothers stayed in the bedroom with my parents. And then, we had the big living room and a big -- well, not so big kitchen. And, of course, just one bathroom. I was just joking with my friends today how life was much more intimate then because you were in close quarters. One bathroom. You knew what everybody was doing at every time, right? It was a different world. Now, we live in these McMansions. We have three bathrooms. Our 35:00children are upstairs, we never see them, that type of thing. Different world.

MG:You mentioned going to the Workmen's Circle schools. You also went to a summer camp connected to the Workmen's Circle?

SH:No.

MG:No.

SH:I didn't. No, I didn't do that. The Kinder Ring, I didn't do that. I was a counselor one summer, with my husband, at Golden Ring, which is a Workmen's Circle camp in the Boston area. But I didn't go to the Workmen's Circle (UNCLEAR).

MG:And what was that experience like, when you were a counselor at that camp?

SH:Well, the year before, I was a counselor at another camp, which is also a Jewish camp, not connected with the Workmen's Circle, in Cape Cod and that's where my husband and I met. So, we were more interested in having a good social life, you see? And then you have to understand that about counselors and college, but (laughs) it's more about the fun of the counselors than it is the -- but both camps that we went to had that Jewish flavor and services and things 36:00like that.

MG:Yeah, looking back on your childhood, what values or practices do you think your parents were trying to pass on to you?

SH:Well, probably education, of course, first and foremost. There was a small part of me being a girl back in the '50s, just the whole idea that I wasn't going to go to Talmud Torah and I couldn't be bar mitzvahed -- I knew there was something different about the girls. I enjoyed my experiences but I knew -- I always had a sense that the boys were valued a little bit more. Just a slight sense. And the feminist angle, it always bothered me, and I didn't know where the sensibility came from, that on big holidays, all the boys and the men went into the TV and watched the football and I had to clean the table and do the 37:00dishes with the women. And that bothered me from when I was five years old. And I don't know, I just had that kind of sensibility. But my father clearly believed in education. My mother had a lot of, I think, resentment because she never went to college. After high school, she had to get a job. Again, it was just she and my grandmother and my grandmother was often very ill and couldn't work. And my mother was a very, very hard worker, very organized, a very bright lady. She took classes and things but she never got her degree. And she had a certain -- part of it was resentment, part of it was regret. The other part of it was --- "I know plenty of people who have college degrees who are not mensches," that type of thing. You don't need to have -- so, my mother always felt, yes, you need your education but you need to be a mensch, too. You need to 38:00develop relationships and other things in life, as well. Education was very important. And I don't think for one moment -- I didn't know, from the time I was in first grade, that I wasn't going to college. I mean, it was just a given, right? So, I think that was very important. And family. I mean, I think learning how important family is, the family circle and whether there were arguments or not, that's where -- you came home to your family, all the time. And it was, as I said, because of the small apartments and the close quarters, I think there was a kind of an intimacy in family life that we don't have any more today. And also, families lived close together. My grandmother's sister lived in the next building. My unky and his wife, my aunt Chava lived across the street. Another aunt lived down the way. By the time you get to the late '50s and early '60s, that's all disappearing. Aunt so-and-so is moving to New Hyde Park or this one's 39:00going to New Jersey and this one's going to California. And the family is dispersing and you don't have that same kind of connection. So, the cousins that I may have been very close with when I was little -- now it's a struggle to get to see them when we're all scattered. It's a different world. There was that family closeness. The synagogue brought you close, other activities brought you close. You felt a certain kind of sheltering, a certain kind of safety in that. The New York cities were safer than they were. You could go out on the streets all the time. You were encouraged. My mother, when I wanted to stay in the house and play the piano or do work with my girlfriend -- we liked to be indoors a lot. My mother would -- "Go out! You need to go outside!" And there was no fear of being outside. And then, my mother had the expression of "BAC" and "AAC": 40:00before air conditioning and after air conditioning. I mean, life in the South Bronx in our little community -- everyone knew everyone else. The windows were always open. The mothers and the grandmothers -- was hanging out those windows, calling down to the kids to come up for dinner or do this. My little Irish girlfriend's dad was always in the bar (laughs) and the mom would call, "Go around the corner and bang and get your dad." And I always wondered what was going on in the bar around the corner. And the bridge tables were on the street in the summer. The ladies were playing canasta or mahjong or poker. Everybody was outside and everybody knew -- and you knew everybody's business. You knew who was getting along and who wasn't. You heard arguments, right? And then, as my mother explained it, AAC, after air-conditioning, you don't know your neighbors, you don't know what's going on, you don't have the block parties, the outdoor activities. So, something changed.

MG:You came of age in a very exciting period in American history: the 1960s. Were there any particular events or individuals who had a -- impact on your life during that period?

SH:Well, I get married in 1965 and I started teaching history at a junior high school in Brockton, Massachusetts. I was a New Yorker through-and-through. I still think I am. I haven't lived there since 1965 but you cannot take New York out of a person. There's no question about it. And I was never comfortable in Boston. And for the first time in my life, I felt serious anti-Semitism, from co-teachers, from educators. I mean, I thought the average Joe on the street, the uneducated people, I can understand they would be anti-Semitic. But educators? And they were also racist. This was the period of the Civil Rights 42:00Movement, 1965, '66, '67. Martin Luther King era and here I am teaching history. I'm showing filmstrips of Martin Luther King. I'm reading poems by Langston Hughes to my students. I'm doing a project with the "Boston Globe" to teach them how to read a newspaper. And left and right, I'm getting -- the principal is calling me and the parents don't like Langston Hughes. Too liberal. The "Boston Globe" is too left-wing a paper. I was barely twenty-one years old when I started teaching. They considered me this little communist, left-wing, socialist radical from New York. And I was Jewish.

MG:These were the parents and your colleagues?

SH:There was that flavor.

MG:Oh.

SH:Not the colleagues so much. But clearly, there was an air of anti-Sem-- certainly racism. I couldn't get that from educated people. And when Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, I was teaching that April. And the head of 43:00my department said to me, "Well, Sheila, your boyfriend got it today." Your boyfriend. That's what he called it -- so, it was rough and my eyes were really opened. And my husband and I chose to live in Dorchester, which was the heart of the city because he was an optometric student in downtown Boston. He took the T, the subway, to his school and I took the car down Route 24 to Brockton. So, we lived in between and our eyes were really opened by what was going on. There were riots, of course, in the cities. There were murder-- shootings on our street, in our building. We were living in Dorchester and it was quite an eye-opener for me. It was very depressing. And people that I knew in New York think of Boston as a very liberal place because, of course, on the weekends, we'd go to Cambridge and it's a different world. The world of the educators and 44:00the college students in Boston is not the world of the average Joe, the average citizen. So, that was quite eye-opening. And after we moved to Connecticut -- I always wanted to be a history professor. But you asked about the times we lived in: now the Vietnam War is raging. It's tearing families apart. And I apply to get my PhD in history at the University of Connecticut, where we were living. And I had a girlfriend who was a social worker and we were good friends and we were very active -- I'm very active in local politics. And national, too. She said, "Why are you going to be in the ivory tower? This is the time for women to get out there and become active and go to law school and medical school and all" -- so, I also studied for the law boards, took them, got into the law school, as well, and went to law school in 1973. And so the times did have an effect on me 45:00as to what I was going to do. And I often think, well, I should have gone to the ivory tower versus -- but I made that decision.

MG:We've been talking mostly about your early life. Can you give us more of a snapshot of your life today now?

SH:Well, I was a lawyer in Connecticut. I am a lawyer but I retired from active practice. You're always a lawyer. And I worked in Norwich, Connecticut for over thirty-five years. I was a matrimonial lawyer. I was elected to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. Active in my community. I'm a very active member of Hadassah. Very involved with that. I feel very much Zionist and very much involved with Israel. This is the hundredth anniversary of Hadassah, so I'm very 46:00active with that. I have always been interested in -- I started in politics in Connecticut. I moved there in 1970 and we had a big wrangle in the Democratic Party in the Senate race that allowed Lowell Weicker, if you remember him, to become the senator because the Democrats were divided. Christopher Dodd's father had been censured and decided to run as an independent. And the Democratic candidate Father Joe Duffy, who we all loved back in 1970, lost because Chris Dodd's dad, Tom Dodd, decided to run as an independent after he couldn't get the nomination. And I got thrown right into the maelstrom of all of that and it was very exciting. And I do a talk show now with good friends of mine at the public access station in Norwich, Connecticut. We're on the air every Thursday and we interview our congressman, our senator, the politicians or teachers, newspaper 47:00people. I enjoy it and we do that show, and I'm also active in domestic violence. In 2004, I had a client who was murdered by her husband. And I started a foundation in her memory and I gave money to the Women's Center of Southeastern Connecticut. And through them, we put on programs and projects every year, conferences. And I also started an Evelyn Epstein Memorial Foundation in memory of my mother, who died of Alzheimer's. And I gave the money to my cousin's hospital in Indiana, Pennsylvania. He's a neuropsychiatrist. He helped to diagnose my mother and help manage her care and he and his people have been great. So, I gave the money to that hospital and every year -- let me show you this. I go out there to -- we have a conference on Alzheimer's and 48:00caregiving, and this was the conference this year. It's called the Evelyn Epstein Caregiver Awareness Program. We've been doing it for five years now and I participate in that and it's very exciting. So, I'm very active in those things. Plus, I have five grandchildren and that takes up a lot of time and that's wonderful and I'm glad that I have the time to share with them, as well.

MG:You had another story, I believe, to share in terms of Yiddish with your mom and --

SH:Oh, yes.

MG:-- and some singing and --

SH:Yes.

MG:-- and other things.

SH:Oh, I wanted to show this to you. It's sad but it's very interesting. My mom, as I said, died of Alzheimer's and we had hospice in our home the last few weeks of her life. And they're just wonderful and they helped us along in the death process, which is very important and it was wonderful to have it in my home. But 49:00it's fascinating. Human mind is so fascinating and impossible to fathom. My mother was having a hard time expressing herself, especially toward the end, composing sentences and getting her thoughts out. But the Yiddish came off her tongue so easily. It was amazing that I found -- and the day before she died, she said to me something that I wrote down because I don't get a chance to write Yiddish enough and any chance I get, I want to do it so I can still know how to do it. And she said to me, "Morgn, ikh vel mer nisht lebn, tomorrow I will no longer be alive." And she did die the next day. And, of course, again, that was April. And she was eighty-nine, ninety. She could have hit ninety. Again, as I told you, we don't know. She died April 10th and we don't know if she was born April 1st, April 15th, but it's Pesach and I guess that's good enough for me. It was Pesach. So, anyway, so that's important. And then, because she loved Yiddish 50:00so much and she loved Yiddish music, I studied piano when I was a kid and my parents bought me a Baldwin Acrosonic spinet piano when I was about eight years old. And I took lessons my whole childhood. And when I moved to Connecticut, I got my first house, my parents sent the piano up. But, of course, my dream was to have a Steinway Grand, which I do have, I bought, and it's a treasure and it's in my living room. But I kept the old piano and it's in an alcove in the room in my house that used to be the guest room until my mother came and it was her room during the four or five years that she lived with us before she died. And so, we had a ritual where every evening, I would go into her room to say goodnight and I would sit at the piano and I got all the Yiddish music that I 51:00could get my hands on and we would sing Yiddish songs and help sing her to sleep. That was the kind of thing we did. So, if you like, I'd love to --

MG:Absolutely.

SH:-- put it on record so I remember and get a chance to sing it, cause I don't always get a chance. Two of her favorite songs were "Ikh hob dikh tsifil lib," "I Love You Much Too Much," and the other favorite song of hers was "Sheyn vi di levone," right? "Lovely as the Moonlight," right? So, this is -- I'm not going to sing the whole thing, just the main chorus. (singing) "Ikh hob dir tsifil lib, ikh hob af dir kayn has. Ikh hob af dir tsifil lib, tsu zayn af dir in kas. Ikh hob dir tsifil lib, tsu zayn af dir gor beys. A nar, ikh veys, ikh heys. Ikh hob dir tsifil lib. Ikh hob mayn lebn avekgegebn, mayn harts un mayn neshume. 52:00Ikh bin krank, nor mayn gedank trakht nit fun nekume. Ikh hob dir tsifil lib, tsu zayn af dir gor beys. A nar, ikh heys, ikh veys. Ikh hob dikh lib." that's "Ikh hob dikh lib."

MG:Can you share the translation with us?

SH:Sure.

MG:Yeah.

SH:"I love you much too much." Let's see, "to ever be mad at you. I love you much too much to ever 'gor beyz [very angry]'" -- "gor beyz" and "has [hate]" is the same idea. "'A nar, ikh heys, a fool,' I know I'm a fool. I know but I love you much too much. 'Kh'hob dir mayn leybn,' I gave my lebn away, I gave my life away to you, 'mayn harts and mayn neshume,' my heart and my soul I gave to you. 'Ikh bin krank,' I'm sick with love. 'Nor mayn gedank trakht nit fun nekume,' don't think about me. 'Ikh hob dir tsifil lib,' I love you much too much," 53:00again, same idea. So, isn't that nice? Yeah, and "Sheyn vi di levone," of course, "Lovely is the moonlight." How does that one go? Hold on a second, I used to know these by heart. All right, so this is "lovely is the moonlight, brighter than the starlight, a present from heaven, I know you were sent to me. My luck came to fruition when you came just like a vision, bright as a thousand suns. You made my dreams come true. I love your smile so bright, sweet and pearly white, and those dark eyes that glisten, the clothes you wear so well, and more than I can tell, I just have to listen. Lovely as the moonlight, brighter than the starlight, a present from heaven, I know you were sent to me." So, that's "Sheyn vi di levone." And I like it 'cause that's my name, Sheyndele - it's a nice -- I like the name. "Sheyn vi di levone, likhtik vi di shtern, fun 54:00himl a matone, bistu tsu mir geshikt. Mayn glik hob ikh gevinen, ven ikh hob dikh gefinen, sheyns vi toysant zinen, hostu mayn harts baglikt. Dayne tseyndelekh, vayse perelekh, mit dayne sheyne oygn, dayne kleydelekh, dayne herelekh, host mikh tsugetsoygn. Sheyn vi di levone, likhtik vi di shtern, fun himl a matone, bist tsu mir geshikt, bist tsu mir geshikt." There, didn't quite get it, but -- (laughs)

MG:There's a question I was going to ask but maybe it's redundant now: what is 55:00your favorite Yiddish word, phrase, or -- of course, song we now know. At least the songs --

SH:Yeah.

MG:-- we now know.

SH:Songs, yeah.

MG:Yeah, but --

SH:Well, of course, my mother loved "My yidishe mame [My Jewish mother]." The most wonderful tape is Neil Sedaka has a fab-- do you know his tape? Best -- she loved that one, she could play that one all day long.

MG:Do you have a particular phrase from Yiddish or word that somehow --

SH:Oh, I like everything, they're all -- but I can tell you a thing my bobe used to do to me and my husband, which I always thought was kind of fun. My grandmother, she had a hard life and she was very sickly. But she had a wonderful sense of humor. She had that twinkle in her eye and she liked my husband very much. And when we were dating, he'd come down from -- he was in Amherst and when he came down from Amherst to New York, to my apartment on weekends, we had a small -- at that point, we were in a five-room cooperative apartment in Little Neck but I was at Queens College. He would sleep in the den, or the -- actually, the couch in the living room, 'cause my brother's bedroom 56:00was the den. And we were young and in love at twenty years old and whatever and my grandmother would come up to us when we were kind of necking and when no one else was in the house -- but she was always in the house and she would say, "A kish un a glet," you know, a kiss and you can pet, "a glet, ober" -- but -- "vayter, tor men nisht" -- any further you can't go. She used to say that to us all the time. And she would smile and leave the room. So, I remember that about her.

MG:That's great. (laughter) We're nearing the end of our time. So, are there any other topics that you might want to touch on that you haven't yet?

SH:I have so many things in my mind that I would love to talk about. I'm sure 57:00I'm going to remember them. If you ask me some questions --

MG:Well, let me ask you another one, then. What do you consider the most important thing to transmit in terms of Jewish identity to younger generations?

SH:Oh, okay, 'cause I think, yeah, this is important because I have, and I think my husband too, I think we feel culturally very Jewish. And maybe that's why we like the Workmen's Circle because it is embracing your Jewish culture and the Yiddish language and the music and the literature, which is all wonderful, and keeping that alive, but not necessarily with the davening. I can daven. I did have a bat mitzvah when I was about forty-some-odd years old with a group of women. We had a very nice rabbi who did classes with us and we had a joint bat mitzvah. So, I had Haftorah and we had a wonderful time. But I struggle with the 58:00value of davening and prayer. But I love it in the sense of the ritual of it. And I think that's what my mother taught me: honor the past. Go out and have your chow mein but honor your heritage. And in your home, treat -- that's what my mother did. My grandmother would never go with us, so -- when we went to the Chinese. That was not her thing. But I think, know where you came from -- to me, history is so important. That's my favorite thing. And I have children. Both of my children married outside of the Jewish faith. Yet my granddaughter is going to the Workmen's Circle schools. I want them to know that they're Jewish culturally, that they have a fabulous tradition. I sense Yiddish, even though we have this wonderful center and we have people like Aaron who are keeping it 59:00alive and people like you, I don't get an opportunity every day -- I didn't sing that song as well as I sang it two years ago because I haven't done it as much. I don't sit at the piano and do my Yiddish songs now that my mother is gone. I don't have anybody to talk to unless I try to find a vinkl somewhere or set it up. I'm losing it. I can't read the "Forward" anymore, which I could read when I was going to the mitlshul. So, we're losing that. And I'm more educated than the next person in Yiddish and I'm losing it. What's going to happen? My children may not know it. I don't know how to keep that alive. History, knowing your heritage, learning about it, nourishing it. But no one's going to have the same feeling and flavor that I had, just like no one's going to have -- I can't put myself exactly in my mother's shoes. My children can't, no matter how much I try to transmit to them and how many Pesachs we have and how many Rosh Hashanah dinners and how many Hanukkah presents we give, you still can't transmit the 60:00feeling from your generation, from where you lived, you know what I mean? They don't feel that way. And my children always tell me that we taught them Jewish values of being open, non-racist, embracing everyone. And so, they went out into the world and did that, so we can't complain. We followed the Jewish values that we were brought up with. So that, to me, is a big challenge. I don't know what's going to happen to that Yiddishkayt as -- my mother's generation's almost gone. And my generation is not doing a good job at all and I, at my mother's funeral, I gave a eulogy. I sang those two songs, a lot better than I did today, and I made a promise to my mother, through the eulogy, that I would try to keep it up. But I'm failing because life is hectic and busy and there's a lot to do. And I'm 61:00not spending as much time -- but I don't have a partner to do it with.

MG:What advice do you have for future generations?

SH:Well, as I said, know your heritage and be proud of it and study it. Our values, our standards have gone down as far as studying, as far as knowing our history. Our politicians don't know our American history; how can we expect the people under them to know it? To me, the lowering of standards and the values -- and I'm not conservative. I'm very liberal in my political thinking. But I guess I am conservative in feeling that we -- where everybody's a specialist and nobody really has a fullness of life and knows -- gets the breadth of an appreciation of everything in life. Everybody's in their little niche. And I 62:00just want my children and my grandchildren to remember who I was, who my parents were, my grand -- I want them to know the history and I want them to save a few of these artifacts. I know they're gonna throw -- a lot is going to be thrown away, so I've got to pick and choose as to what the important things are to show them and have them keep and have them treasure. And I guess, as I said before, I cannot expect them to have the same tam, the same flavor, the same feel that I had in life or that my mother had from her life.

MG:Okay. Anything else you would like to perhaps -- comes to mind at this point?

SH:Can we turn the mic off and give me a second?

MG:Ah, well?, (laughter) I don't know, we're at the end here, so we can just wrap things up if -- I think it's been great what you've shared with us.

SH:I know, but I'm sure I have more but, yeah, I --

MG:It's wonderful stuff.

SH:-- see, I didn't want to bring notes --

MG:I know.

SH:-- 'cause I didn't want to --

MG:Let me throw a question --

SH:Oh, I want to tell --

MG:Go ahead.

SH:Yes, I want to tell you this. Okay, let me just say this, 'cause this is important, and my mother would appreciate this: this is the biography and memoirs of Evelyn Zvenitsky-Hoffman-Epstein. This is to show how important the Yiddish Book Center was in my mother's life: even though she couldn't make the opening, we came every Mother's Day. We stayed for the exhibits in the morning, then we went to lunch at the Atkins Farm and then we came back for the -- usually a klezmer or some other concert. Then, we started to go into the -- when you had the orchards set up, we went into the chairs with a tape recorder. I have that, the tape recorder with me, actually. And we asked her questions, my two daughters, my brother, and I, and interviewed her for an hour or so until the concert started and then we transcribed it. So, it took about four or five years of sitting here in the orchards at the Yiddish Center to get her to give 64:00us her life story. And there it is.

MG:And it's all in there and --

SH:It's all in here and transcribed, right. This is her -- right, right, exactly.

MG:It's wonderful.

SH:Yeah. So, she loved the idea of the Yiddish Book Center and was thrilled every time she could come here.

MG:Oh, that -- probably a good place to end then.

SH:Okay.

MG:Okay.

SH:Right, yeah.

MG:Thank you so much.

SH:All right, thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]