HERMAN ROTENBERG ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: So, this is Christa Whitney and today is May 14th, 2012. I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts with Herman Rotenberg and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record this interview?

HERMAN ROTENBERG: Yes, you do.

CW: Thank you. So, as a place to start, can you tell me a little bit about your family background? What do you know about your --

HR: It's an interesting question. Most people can sit down and tell you all about their family. It's very difficult because our family was so dispersed and 1:00so broken up, so it's very difficult. But I'll try my best. My mother and father -- my father was born in 1900, during the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Eventually, that part became Poland. My father grew up in an Orthodox family, but he was never really Orthodox. I know nothing about his childhood. I know nothing about his teenage years. But what I do know is, later on life -- as a profession, he was a black marketeer, which was a way of life in Europe. It's a way of surviving. And my father was a hustler. And from what I understand, he sold chocolates, oranges, whatever would sell. He would be arrested a couple of 2:00times, he'd pay off the authorities. He knew his way around. From what I understand, he wasn't a religious man.

CW: Where did he grow up?

HR: He grew up in Poland. I'm trying to think of the town that he grew up in. Litovitsk? Maybe Litovitsk. I'm not sure. But if you ask my father where he was born, he would say -- and he was not a nationalist. And he would say he was born in a bed. ’Course, he has -- he really doesn't identify with any kind of nationality because he would always cross borders. So, my father met my mother -- I'm not sure what year. Again, when you ask my parents, What year did you do this, what year did you do this, "Well, I don't know. It was a Passover, it was 3:00a holiday." There's no date. It's not like we have cell phones and we know dates and we know birthdays. "Yeah, I think it was around Passover. Maybe it was Rosh Hashanah. I'm not sure, one of those days." "How old are you?" "I think I'm fifty-four." And that's the way you go and that was quite acceptable. I mean, that's the way it was. Apparently, they met at a wedding. My mother was born in Hungary, in the Carpathian Mountains, which is apparently very beautiful. She also grew up in a very Orthodox family. I don't know what my family on her side looks like. I really don't know what age she was when she got married. These details were very insignificant.

CW: Right.

HR: She was Hungarian and she worked as a cook, at a wealthy Jewish family's 4:00home in Budapest. What's interesting is she grew up in a very Orthodox family with about four brothers. Maybe more. I don't mean to sound ignorant, but I don't know. My sister knows more. But after you had spoken to me, I called my sister up. I said, "You know what, Miriam?" Her name's Miriam, of course. I said, "How about we sit down Wednesday with a tape recorder. Maybe it's time to figure out what we're all about." You made me think -- so, I'll get to that at one point. So, they married.

CW: Do you know anything about your grandparents' generation, what they did?

HR: No. My father's grandparents I know nothing about. I met my father's -- one of my father's sisters in Israel when I was there in ’66, before the ’67 war. 5:00Looked just like my father. My mother had a niece who lived in Israel. I met her and she had a sister who got stuck at -- when the Russians took over, she had to end up in Belarus. And later on, I found out she was an exact replica of my mother, apparently. And I never met her, but she died of diabetes at a later point. So, my mother's father was a tailor and he did something very unusual. Usually, these families would stick together, and they'd want the daughters to marry off, and they'd want to marry 'em off to someone they knew. The old "Fiddler on the Roof" kind of routine. But apparently, my grandfather, who my 6:00sister knew -- see, that I should find out from my sister. But he was a very observant man. Apparently, he went through some pogrom and he lost an eye. And I know that much about him. But he influenced my mother to leave this little shtetl [small Eastern European town with a Jewish community], this little place where she lived, which was very -- he was a very modern-thinking man. He says, "There's no life for you here," which is unusual for an Orthodox man to say to his daughter. And he said, "You should go to Budapest and make a life for yourself." Budapest was where people -- universities and it was an urban center, so that's what she did. And apparently, she got this position as a cook in this home. So, that's basically what I know about my grandparents. I have pictures of my father's family but I don't have photographs of my mother's family.

CW: Yeah. This one, right?

HR: This one right here, right.

CW: Yeah. Can you just hold it up and describe it to me?

HR: Okay, let's see, I've got to position right. Well, this is my father, all right? I'm not sure how old he was. This was my grandfather and -- hold on, my grandmother. Very Orthodox. Now, these sheytls [traditional women’s head coverings], you got to understand, these sheytls were knit. It's almost like the Satmar sect of Judaism, that I work with. Very Orthodox. She looks like this little woman, right? I mean -- and very religious man, pious man. But if you look at the rest of the family, nobody's pious, which I find very unusual. So, I don't know anything about his brother. Let's see, how many brothers were there? 8:00Know nothing about -- I don't even know his name. Probably his sister does. We had a whole load of pictures and my niece has 'em somewhere. She can't find them. And two or three of the sisters came to the States before the war. And that's all I know. And I met them when I was a child. But that's basically all I know about the family.

CW: And what do you know about your parents and your sister in the war? Here, I can put this down.

HR: Well, those are two distinct questions.

CW: Yeah.

HR: Let me start backwards for a second. A couple years ago -- every so often, my sister would come and visit me. And I said, You know what? I always wanted to 9:00ask her one particular question. I said, "What was it like being an eleven-year-old during this whole period?" So, I figured she'd tell me she saw dead bodies and terrible, horrible things. And the thing she told me was very interesting. Maybe -- I'm guessing eleven. And she said the worst experience she encountered was being extremely embarrassed begging on the street for food. Not upset, not angry, but embarrassed. But you can understand, a child -- begging for food, begging for bread. That was one of her memories. To her, that was a horrible, horrible memory. What was the first part of your question? I'm sorry.

CW: Well, what was your parents' experience during the war? Where were they?

HR: A very difficult question to answer. Remember, Hungary was attacked, was 10:00taken over by the Nazis towards the end of the war. So, my parents lucked out to some degree. But, you see, my father was still trying to make a living and he was a traveling salesman, but a traveling black marketeer. Hate that name, but that's the way it is. But they were always separated. By the way, when they were dating, if you want to call it dating, he would always illegally cross over into Hungary to see her and the authorities always got him back to Poland. But he always found his way back. During the war, they were separated many, many times. And what I can never understand is how someone -- if you think of yourself in 11:00Amherst, Massachusetts and you know your husband and wife and child are in Kent, Connecticut, now how do you know this? And how do you find them? It's beyond me how they found -- so, it's word of mouth. My father told me one story, this is when they were -- during the war, which was quite sad. When it came to the Nazis, there were the Nazi soldiers, of course, and then there was the SS. They were the worst of the lot. So, my father heard through the grapevine -- how he heard through the grapevine, I have no idea. And I don't mean to sound like I don't know anything, but it's very difficult.

CW: It’s okay.

HR: He told me a story once that he heard that this particular town that my mother was supposed to be in, mother and sister were supposed to be in, were totally destroyed by the SS. So, my father went to this town and he saw bodies. And I don't know if he's exaggerating, but he said he finished off a half a bottle of vodka and went through the bodies. And luckily, they weren't there. So, somehow they ended up somewhere else. So, that's the kind of -- I mean, can you imagine going through bodies, looking for your husband or wife and child? I can't imagine it.

CW: No.

HR: If I could tell you some other interesting stories --

CW: Yeah, please.

HR: Again, my parents were always separated. My mother was a very strong woman, very strong-willed woman. I mean, what the Nazis did basically were, they were 13:00very smart. They had a campaign where they scared people to the point -- and not just scared them, but would shoot people in front of them, kill children in front of them -- frightened. And this is a way of causing them not to resist. So, my mother told me one story that she was gathered up and went to -- taken to a train station. And my mother says, "I know what's going on." So, she told me, "I knew what was gonna happen." So, they were waiting on line, these long line-- I don't know if you ever saw -- Spielberg film, but that's the way it was. And they had the Star of David on their arms and my mother turns to my sister, I'm not sure how old my sister was at this point, and says, she said, "Take off your 14:00mogn-dovid [Star of David], take it off." And she says, "We're going to turn around and we're gonna walk out of here," she said, "because I'd rather die leaving than dying this way." Now, my mother, I said she was a strong woman. I don't know if it frightened her or not, but she didn't allow herself to be intimidated. It takes a certain kind of personality. And they turned around, they walked away, and nobody stopped them.

CW: Wow.

HR: Another incident. My mother and sister were -- I guess they were captured at some point, in the forest, and they were put on a truck. And there was a colonel, a Nazi colonel, and a private. Private was driving a truck. And maybe there were a handful of Jews on the truck. And the colonel knew what was going 15:00on. These guys, what could they do? They disobey orders, they get killed. So, he stops the truck and he turns around, he says, "Look, I'm gonna turn around for twenty minutes. You choose to do whatever you want. You want to stay, stay. You want to go, go. That's up to you. But after twenty minutes, we're gonna continue." I'm not sure how many people got up. Maybe there were a dozen people on the truck. I know my mother and sister said, Let's get out of here. So, that's the kind of woman she was. Very strong-willed and she was a very loving, loving person, my mother. And a great cook.

CW: Yeah. So, when would she tell you? I mean, did your parents talk about their experience a lot? When would this come up?

HR: Oh, very freely. There are some people who refuse to talk about their experience. Whenever we have an occasion like a holiday, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, whenever there -- was always a family -- we were a loud family. My family, we're very loud. So, it's funny, my son got married a couple of years ago and his wife comes from a very -- not proper, but you know your place. In our household, there was no place. Whoever got it in first, whoever had the first thing to say said it. I mean, that's the way -- so, I remember when he brought his wife over, he says, "See? I told you, this is a very different household than you lived in." But I'm sorry, your question was --

CW: I mean, no, I was just -- I wanted to talk to you about your family. What was --

HR: Oh, yeah, yeah, so --

CW: -- yeah.

HR: But basically, they were very open about talking. And I guess it was a 17:00catharsis for them to talk about it. It was a way of getting it out. But they talked about it with pride. And also, there was a lot of loss. But they were never uptight about talking about their experiences. I just wish I remembered all the other experiences. And I think I mentioned to you that -- I had a tape-recorder at all the events. My father was a cute guy. He liked electronics. He would love an iPhone now. And he wanted me to get a tape recorder. And he loved music, too. And I recorded everything on reel-to-reel. I have no idea where they are. That would be the -- and by the way, everything was said in Yiddish. Even my two nieces spoke Yiddish when they were very young, or understood Yiddish when they were very young.

CW: Yeah, so can you tell me about your home that you grew up in?

HR: Okay, well, let's see. I grew up on the Lower East Side, on Rivington Street, the old famous Rivington Street. We lived in a tenement, a railroad apartment. There was a kitchen, a bathtub, an icebox. I still remember the icebox. The building was still fed by coal. I used to see the coal guy every -- once or two weeks, whenever he made deliveries. We lived on the third story. We had a fire escape. There was a little room to the right. Probably a little bedroom. And to the left was a living room. And my parents slept on the sofa bed and I slept, I guess -- I still remember my crib. I slept in the small room. And 19:00every morning at six o'clock in the morning, my father would blast the Yiddish radio, WEVD. And all these guys are not alive anymore. Ironically, my niece got into Yiddish theater, by the way. But I remember very -- oh, yeah, so my father also had a shoe -- well, originally, he would peddle shoes all over New York City. I used to go with him -- was real fun, I mean --

CW: Where would you go? What was it like?

HR: Oh, near Macy's. And back then, they had big Checker cabs and he paid a guy off. He said, "Look, I have a lot of boxes. Here's an extra" -- well, how expensive was it? "Here's another two dollars." He got ticketed all over the place. But eventually, we found this apartment and there was an empty store downstairs that -- he opened up a store. So, we lived right above -- it's the 20:00old immigrant story, right? The Chinese live above the Chinese restaurants, we lived about the shoe store. And I think his rent was nine dollars a month. No, actually, the store must have been twelve. The apartment was nine. But it's all relative. But I didn't know any better. All I knew was what -- my neighborhood. And I met friends who lived the same way and --

CW: So, he kind of made it. He went from a handl [small business] to a store.

HR: Yeah, oh, my father was a real character. (laughs) And he ran a store. He worked seven days a week and he was -- well, I was very young but he would have schnapps in the morning, like a Canadian Club. He would have a schnapps in the afternoon and a schnapps in the evening and maybe a little slivovitz, which is the worst-smelling stuff you could ever imagine. It's very Hungarian, slivovitz. 21:00Terrible. But as I got older, I would have a beer with my father, I would have a shot with my father. It was a normal European thing. So, as I got older, drinking age, it was not a big -- I mean, I wasn't interested. I had no idea what drinks to order. (laughter) So, growing up, my parents -- eventually, the store moved to Clinton Street, which was -- back then, the area was very old Jewish immigrants. And big Puerto Rican population and a very mixed population. Everyone got along pretty well. I still remember the chicken market under the Williamsburg Bridge. We used to buy our chickens there. We used to go there. You picked the chicken you wanted.

CW: Walking around, right?

HR: Everything was done in Yiddish by the way, you know?

CW: Yeah.

HR: You say, "That's the chicken I wanted" and they would slaughter the chicken 22:00and take off the feathers. And then, across the street from our apartment was a fish store with a tank of fish. I mean, it's not like going to Whole Foods. And then, there was a grocery store. And there were no calculators. And everything was done in Yiddish, again. So, you'd have a bag of groceries, and let's say there were thirty items. And the guy would go like this and go, (licks his finger and points as if adding up the receipt) "Ayn [One] (mutters), fir [four] (mutters)," like this, and he'd add this whole thing up. (laughs) And it's amazing. And then, there was the candy store next door. He ran a numbers game. And then, there was another candy store down the block. Yeah, Frank Sinatra would come by every -- once a year or twice a year. And there was a mob scene down there, too. When I say mob, I mean the mob.

CW: Yeah, when'd you -- how did you encounter that?

HR: Well, my father had to pay them off so they don't break the window. So, you met all kinds of people. As a kid growing up, I started -- when I was very young, I started in elementary school. And when I first experienced Santa Claus, it scared the living daylights out of me. Am I allowed to curse? No.

CW: Yeah, you can --

HR: Oh, yeah?

CW: -- if you want.

HR: It scared the shit out of me.

CW: You can also go into Yiddish if you ever feel inspired.

HR: Well, that -- (laughter) yeah, I don't know how to do that in Yiddish.

CW: So, why did it scare you? What was scary about it?

HR: This big guy comes down in a red suit with a beard? I mean, who the hell is this? I mean, I started crying. So, I couldn't handle it. It was just beyond my comprehension. I had no idea of Christmas and all these holidays. So, they 24:00decided to put me in the yeshiva, which is a religious day school. And I mean, when I say religious -- they call them religious day schools now. Back then, it was yeshivas. And it was run more like an old European-style yeshiva with -- it smelled.

CW: What'd it smell like?

HR: Like old furniture, you know? Just old. It was RJJ. Matter of fact, one of -- the head of the state senate or the assembly in New York was two years ahead of me. But when they quoted him, he said he went to the RJJ School. So, it makes it sound a little like a private -- like the Ethical Culture Society. Wasn't the RJJ School. It was Rabbi Jacob Joseph. And I remember --

CW: Alts af yidish [All in Yiddish], right?

HR: What?

CW: Alts af yidish.

HR: All taught in Yiddish, yeah. A rikhtike yidish [A correct Yiddish], yeah. 25:00But I didn't speak to the kids in Yiddish. I spoke to kids in English.

CW: Right.

HR: But I must have had this deep accent. But I remember all the parents used to come with the kids and bring homemade food. I mean, where do you see this? They would make -- I guess these were all Holocaust survivors. And there's a definition. Some people consider Holocaust survivors someone who went to a concentration camp, or a Holocaust survivor, someone just survived. So, I don't know which one we were. But eating was very important because there was so little food in Europe. You want to make sure that your child ate correctly and well. And I wasn't a lightweight. My mother made sure I ate.

CW: So, what would she make?

HR: Oh, well, I don't remember what she made when I was a kid. But as I got older, she'd make what they call blintzes now, or in Hungarian it's “pala

inky. She'd make kelkáposzta, which is this stew with greens, would cook for days and days and days. And she made her own stuffed derma or kasha and she'd actually stuff it herself. It would be hanging over the bathtub. So, we all took baths in the kitchen and my mother was not -- we didn't have air conditioning. At some point, we got a fan, I think. But my mother walked around half naked. It was no big deal. Ma, what's the big deal? A body's a body. And we had, of course, the coaches with the plastic on it. So, every time my father came home and slept, you'd hear him move all the time. So, 27:00as I got older, I finished eighth grade and yeshiva. I hated it. I didn't like it. I mean, in retrospect, I had ADD. But nobody knew about ADD back then. I had a hard time learning and I had a tutor, Mrs. Templer, I remember. She looked like she must have been ninety years old. Maybe she was sixty, I don't know. But she smelled old. I still remember -- see, smells, I still remember smells. But I had a hard time with reading and grammar and I failed every course. I mean, I was a terrible student, only because I had trouble. I had problems taking this in. So, the yeshiva was broken up into two sections. You had a morning section for Jewish studies and an afternoon section for secular studies. So, from about 28:00nine to twelve, twelve-thirty, you learn Gemara and Mishna and Talmud and khumesh [Pentateuch] and it was all done in Yiddish. And you translate everything in Yiddish. And teacher had a ruler and they were not the nicest. The teachers were not well -- they didn't know how to teach. They really didn't know how to teach. So, I remember incidents where a teacher ran after students with his ruler, running after -- over desks and smacking you and all this kind of stuff. And it was hilarious. But I didn't like it. I just didn't like it, I didn't like the atmosphere. And even the secular studies, eh, it was all right. The teachers were not well-trained. It was mediocre, pretty mediocre, so --

CW: What did this building look like? What were the classrooms like?

HR: I don't know what the building was before, but must have been an old factory building. I'm not sure what it was. But you knew it had these -- you ever see these heavy fire doors between rooms? It was a way of preventing fire from going from one room -- there would be these big metal doors that you slid like -- maybe it was some kind of a place where they made meat, I don't know. But for punishment, what they'd do is they'd put you between the door and the end and kind of push the door against you. They were not the nicest people, you know? But they didn't speak Yiddish to you, but you learned in Yiddish, so -- which was interesting. So, that's all I knew. So, I went through and as I got older, of course -- there were no girls; it was all boys. There was a girls' version of 30:00it on the other side of town called Bais Yaakov. The original principal was Rabbi Weiss. Nice man. Very nice gentleman. Very considerate, from what I remember, very sweet. The guy who took over I did not like at all. I mean, he was a nasty -- he was a dictator. And I remember him -- he knew my father was open on Saturdays, on Shabbos, right? So, he went over and he spoke to my father and he says, "Not appropriate to keep your store open on Shabbos. Your child goes to yeshiva and you should think about it." So, my father closed for one week, two weeks. He says, "I can't do this." Basically, he told him -- "Ah, screw this guy. I don't need this garbage. I'll do whatever I want to do." But 31:00we weren't really religious. We went to shul, we ate Glatt kosher food. We watched TV on Sha-- oh, yeah, we had a TV set, the old wooden ones, the twenty-inch ones, whatever they were. Black and white. We didn't have a telephone. And it's interesting, I was discussing this with my friend a couple years ago and he said, "Why should you have had a telephone? I mean, nobody else had a telephone. There was no one to talk to." Oh, that makes sense, right? Why would you have a telephone? But eventually, they tore the buildings down, they moved us over to another place. We ended up with a telephone. And so, my yeshiva studies, I was encouraged to continue. And what that means is you continue to high school, which was called “mesivta.” And they always tried to encourage you to become religious and this was not my scene. I couldn't do it. I knew all 32:00along as a child this was not my place. I just didn't belong. It's weird. It's a weird feeling. And when it was time to finish my eighth grade, I asked my father, I said, "Would you mind, ken ikh gayn in ergets andersh [can I go somewhere else]?" I mean, I said, "Ikh glaykh es nisht, I just don't like it. I just don't like it." He says -- I didn't know what kind of opinion he would have. He says, "Do whatever you feel is comfortable." So, I ended up in a public school, Seward Park High School on the Lower East Side. And it was an academic program. And it was so wonderful and it was so great. I met some great teachers and learned a great deal and --

CW: That must have been a big change. (laughs)

HR: It was a big change, but I took to it like water, like a duck to water. But 33:00it was still the Lower East Side and still the -- I remember the pushcarts on the Lower East Side. I still remember those days. I feel like an old guy.

CW: Well, tell me about it. What --

HR: Well, I forgot -- was it Second Avenue? I forgot where the pushcarts were but there were like, pushcarts -- imagine, some person was selling fruit, another person was selling clothing, another person was selling, I don't know, shoes. And it was like old Europe. It was like going to a souk, it's like going to a market, an Arab market or going to Europe. It was a European thing to do. And I don't know if you've ever been to Italy or these place-- they have these pushcarts where you buy things. That's what it's all about. But that kind of disappeared after a while. So, for enjoyment, we would go to the Yiddish theater. Second Avenue Theater, I think on a weekly basis or biweekly basis. It was a lot of fun. We saw movies at -- it was broken down -- I forget which way 34:00it went. But you saw a Yiddish film. I mean, a real old-time Yiddish film. And then, there was a break. And then, there were these vendors who sold ice cream and all -- I don't know what they sold. Whatever they sold, it was all in Yiddish. "Ayzkrem, ayzkrem, ver vilt der ayzkrem? Vifl kost es? A toler! [Ice cream, ice cream, who wants ice cream? How much does it cost? A dollar!]" -- you know?

CW: This is in the theater?

HR: In the theater, because everyone spoke Yiddish and the kids spoke Yiddish. It was like just you sitting here. It was like, just commonplace. This is the way it was. And --

CW: That's (UNCLEAR).

HR: I'll tell you, it was a lot of fun. These people were a lot of fun. And every so often, we wandered off to Rockefeller Center. That was a big deal, to go to see the Rockettes. Ended up in a Christmas show. I don't know how we ended up in a Christmas show but it was entertainment. I remember "The Ten 35:00Commandments," we traveled to this theater in the Bronx to see "The Ten Commandments." It was a big, big deal. So, there were two movie theaters in my neighborhood. One was called the Palestine (laughs) and another movie -- was just a typical movie and I loved -- I guess I needed to escape. Actually, there were three movie theaters. And I remember an incident where I was twelve years old. And back then, they had double features. And I used to sit through the double features -- I used to sit there for five hours. And I remember one day, I hear this voice in the -- my mother never knew where I was, but she figured I went to the movies. And I hear, "Hershl, Hershl!" And it was so embarrassing, my mother calling me in the theater. But let me talk about my name for a second, which is interesting. My real name is Hershl. My given name is Hershl Rotenberg, 36:00right? Rotenberg, that's the way you say it. Rotenberg. But I was born in Germany, so the Germans Germanized, made everything German-sounding. So, instead of Hershl, it's Herman. But that's not my true name. But it's another cute story, if I could jump a couple of years.

CW: Of course, yeah.

HR: So, it was time for my bar mitzvah, right? And, by the way, my parents spent five, six days cooking. Didn't have any kind of reception hall. I had the bar mitzvah in a typical synagogue. And then, the service, and afterwards, we came back to my house and my -- food galore. My parents were really into food. I mean, food is very important. And I remember the invitation was all -- half was Yiddish, half was English. And in the English part, it said Harry Rotenberg. So, 37:00I said to my father, "Dad, I mean, dos iz nisht mayn numen, mayn numen iz hershl [this isn’t my name, my name is Hershl]." So, my father says, "Harry, Hershl, vos makht es? Vos iz the dil? A nomen iz a nomen. [Harry, Hershl, what’s the difference? What’s the big deal? A name is a name.]" I mean, it was like, What's the difference? It's your name. I mean, who cares? He's right! People make big production -- see, they kind of minimized things. Like, things -- this is not important. But I was the vunderkind [miracle child]. I was born right after the war. My mother had an abortion during the war. But I was the child that was postwar, so I was very special. And not that they had favorites, but my sister got married at age nineteen. There's a picture of me at her wedding, me sitting 38:00right there. And she got married when she was very young, which she regrets at this age. She still talks about it. She shouldn't have done this, she shouldn't have done that. But she married another Holocaust survivor. That's what people did. They felt more comfortable. He ended up in Springfield, ironically. But came to New York and they all worked in some kind of garment manufacturing or sewing. My sister was a good -- she sewed well and she knitted. But she regrets to this point not having a formal education. I think she had a couple of grades of school and that was it. So, I always felt awkward. Well, I knew I was different than my sister. We're a generation apart. So, I always felt awkward 39:00going to college, getting my graduate degree, going into different businesses. She was always in financial straits. You know, I did okay financially. Not a wealthy guy. But I felt awkward talking to her about it. So, it's a strange kind of situation. But my sister used to tell me she used to hit me all the time. She used to -- 'cause I wasn't the nicest kid. So, maybe she took it out on me because she was jealous. But I remember being a kid and my mother was very upset when my father played cards. I know I'm jumping a little bit.

CW: That's okay.

HR: And I don't know what's so terrible about playing cards. And I used to go to the place where you played cards. People used to play rummy and what did they bet, a dollar or two dollars? And they'd go farshmir [besmear]. I love that term, “farshmir.” (laughter) You know, “farshmir,” I mean, it's a great, great 40:00term, “farshmir.”

CW: Is there any way to -- how would you translate that one?

HR: Well, how many translations do you want?

CW: I know, right? (laughs)

HR: Well, to “shmir” means literally to paint or to put something on a canvas or to smear something. So, you're farshmir, meaning you're drunk or you're out of it. You know the difference between shlimazl and shlemiel, right? Was the great story about -- to tell the difference.

CW: Yeah.

HR: Imagine you're in an Italian restaurant, right, and you have a waiter who has a tray and he drops the tray on you. So, he's the shlemiel because he did this thing and you're the shlimazl. You're the recipient of his antics. But I 41:00love terminology. I can't think of any in the moment. But Yiddish can have three, four meanings. Depends how you say it and who you say it to.

CW: Right. But it was your first language.

HR: It was my first language. So, as a child, when he first opened up his shoe store, his English was very, very poor, if nonexistent. He was bright. I mean, he picked up very quickly. But here I was, this eight-year-old translating what's going on. And he was a kind of a chauvinist. Not kind of, he was a chauvinist. And he didn't like the fact that my mother was learning English, so he kind of stopped her, which was not the nicest thing to do. And they had their arguments and all the arguments were in Yiddish. And I used to hear their 42:00arguments in Yiddish about all kinds of things. And my father had issues that I may talk about. I mean, I think he was a manic depressive. He was bipolar. But who knew about bipolar back then, 'cause he used to disappear at times and he used to go into temper tantrums. And he'd have these swings. And in Europe, he would disappear months at a time. And towards the end of the interview, I want to bring it up to date because some interesting stuff happened. So, speaking Yiddish as a kid was a way of life, so --

CW: What, oh, sorry, yeah.

HR: Go ahead, you were gonna say?

CW: Oh, so what -- you said you went to the theater. What kind of Jewish cultural things were around? Did you have any books in the house --

HR: My parents weren't cultural, see? They weren't cultural. They weren't into the arts. We didn't go to Jewish -- museum -- basically, their culture was the 43:00Lower East Side. I mean, I got to tell you about the fish lady.

CW: Yeah, tell me.

HR: She was this crazy -- she was called the fish lady. And they had stoops going down to basements back then. And she would sell fish. On the coldest, freezing day, she'd be all bundled up. She looked like a typical painting, a Chagall painting. And she'd yell, "Fish! Gitn fish! Rayne fish! [Fish! Good fish! Clean fish!]" And she was called a crazy lady, but people bought fish from her. And then, there was the pickle stand. He sold pickles in Yiddish. But eventually, I started speaking more English because that's the way you communicate, right? But I always was upset about my accent. My English always had this either Lower East Side or Yiddish kind of accent. And I was aware of it 44:00and I consciously tried -- it comes out every so often. My wife will say, "What did you just say?" But I try to correct it. Not that I was ashamed of it. But that's not the way I wanted to be. So, I always fought against my background. I'm proud of my background but I always -- that's not the way to get ahead. That's not the way to move on. But that's answering your question.

CW: Yeah. Can you tell me about the shtibl [small Hasidic house of prayer] that you went to with your father? You said you went sometimes.

HR: Oh, yeah, yeah -- on Rivington Street, there was a little synagogue. And it wasn't your typical air-conditioned -- with seating, beautiful seats and a nice 45:00bimah and beautiful surroundings with microphones. It was a hole-in-the-wall. I don't know what it was before, but it was this long place with benches. They probably got it from a church somewhere. Who knows where they got it from. And everyone looked old to me. But when you're a kid, everyone looks old, right? And it just smelled. The people smelled of sweat and oldness. The wood smelled old. It had this -- not that it was horrible, but I was aware of it. But everything smelled just like the nineteenth century. And nobody listened to the rabbi. Everyone would talk and the rabbi would have to bang his gavel to quiet everyone 46:00down. Now, back then when you got an aliyah, if you're familiar with -- you know, to go up and read the Torah or -- at least introduce the person who's going to read the Torah to say the prayer, back then, you -- there was a bidding process. And in Yiddish, basically they would say, okay, in Yiddish would say, "Ayn dola, ayn dola, ayn dola -- ot in bak -- tsvay dola [One dollar, one dollar, one dollar -- there in the back -- two dollars]." You bid. Three -- "dray dola, dray dola [three dollars, three dollars]." You put your hand up. So, it's the way the synagogue would make money. But it was a funny Yiddish auction. "Tsvay dola, tsvay dola, ver git tsvay? Tsvay dola ot in bak. Shayn dank, tsvay dola. Dray dola, dray dola -- [Two dollars, two dollars, who’s giving two? Two dollars in the back. Thanks, two dollars. Three dollars, three dollars --]" And every component of the service had a different price. But does sound like a lot these days -- but when I tell this to people, they say, You did what? There's an auction? But that's the way it was done. It was an old European way of 47:00supporting the shul. But also, the rabbi, when he gave his lecture, which I never understood because he was an old guy and he whispered and -- but he did it in Yiddish. And my father would always say, "Eh, don't listen to this guy. He doesn't know what he's talking about." In Yiddish, "Er vayst gornisht, zorg zikh nisht, vayst gornisht [He doesn’t know anything, don’t worry about it, he doesn’t know anything]," yeah. But I remember going on holidays and some Saturdays. But we didn't go too often. But it was nice because where I lived, the East River Drive was just a couple blocks away. And on the Jewish holidays, all the Jews in the community would take walks on the river and it was kind of nice, meeting everybody, meeting teachers from school and always looking for a 48:00girl, you know, you could meet. I was very shy. I was a very shy kid. I was very uptight. How that changed, I'll never know. But all these kids, you spoke -- but there were some kids that I spoke Yiddish to who I had a relationship with. There was one kid in my class -- again, the yeshiva was broken up into three categories: the academic students, level one, the medium students, whoever they were, number two, and number three, me and these other kids because we couldn't do anything. I mean, everything they did, we'd just falter all over the place. And there was one kid -- in retrospect, he probably had Asperger's. Extremely brilliant. Very, very brilliant but couldn't communicate. I mean, he was very 49:00religious. He just -- hang out like this and these words of wisdom would come out of his mouth and he was brilliant. I thought he was extremely brilliant, but he was a little -- not your typical kid. And then, there was another kid in yeshiva. He weighed three hundred pounds. His name was Kugler. What a name, Kugler, right? (laughs) And whenever we played basketball, he would hold onto the -- no one could take the ball away from him. And we played stoop ball, of course, that period. And ironically, right around the corner of the school, there was a play area with swings and monkey bars and then there was an empty wall where we played handball. And that wall was a side wall of the Garden Cafe. I think I said it right, the Garden Cafe. And I didn't know -- oh, if I only knew who hung out in the Garden Cafe. I mean, all the leftists, all the Jewish leftists, all the writers -- Isaac Bashevis Singer used to hang out there. 50:00There's an old joke: at the Garden Cafe, the waiter would come over, he says, "What would you like? Vos vilste?" And one guy would say, "Ikh vil a gleyzl tay [I want a cup of tea]." Tea. Depends what part of Europe you come from, right? And he said, "Vos vilste esn? Ikh vil nisht esn, epes trinkn. Ikh vil a gleyzl tay -- but a rayne gloz [What do you want to eat? I don’t want to eat, just something to drink. I want a glass of tea -- but in a clean glass]," a clean glass. Waiter comes back twenty minutes later, he says, "Okay, who wanted the one with the clean glass?" But I used to eat there sometimes. But I didn't know anything about the writers or literary people. And actually, my godfather worked at "The Jewish Daily Forward" and he was a leftist. I mean, politics was a big 51:00deal, especially with the intelligentsia. A very big deal.

CW: So, did you get into politics through him?

HR: Not really, no. As I grew older, things started happening. You had the Kennedy assassination in high school. And my father was a die-hard Democrat and basically kind of taught us, without telling us, you got to be careful who you trust. And this is something I told my kids when they were very young. I said, "Never believe what you read and always question authority." Boy, I shouldn't have said that to them.

CW: You regretted that one? (laughs)

HR: I have one Libertarian and I have one pragmatic intellectual son. And 52:00politics wasn't my game, really. I didn't know too much about politics. But one thing about going to public high school, you were required to read a paper every day: either "New York Times," "Herald Tribune," and the -- there were other papers around. And if you couldn't afford it, they'd pay for it, which was great. So, I got to read newspapers and -- which was wonderful. I loved music. It's a long story behind that, why I ended up with music. But I ended up loving music. My father loved music and he --

CW: Cantorial stuff?

HR: Huh?

CW: Cantorial stuff, your father, or --

HR: Well, my father was very much into cantorial music. He would tell me about all the great cantors he heard in Europe. Like, we were in shul together, he says, "Eh, er hot a shtime vi a khazer [Eh, he has a voice like a pig]." Or, "Yeah, his voice is nonsense." But he says, "Ikh hob gehert gite khazns, oy, hob ikh gehert [I’ve heard good cantors, oh, have I heard]." And they had big synagogues in Europe and I ended up buying cantorial music. I still have it. 53:00Actually, I put it on Pandora.

CW: Yeah.

HR: So, Yossele Rosenblatt was one of my favorites and there are some other ones. But whenever I go to synagogue, I -- whenever I hear a good cantor, tears come to my eyes. Maybe I inherited that from my father. But I love good singing. But I got some interesting stories. So, my father loved the fact -- he loved electronics and I was one of the first ones to get a transistor radio. Now, back then, a transistor radio must have cost forty dollars. In today's dollars, that's a lot of money. And he loved when I bought records. And then, I took a course in high school called “The Bible as Literature,” the New Testament as literature. Well, so, I brought home the Bible, the New Testament. And my father 54:00would say, "Vos iz dos epes? Vos lernt ir? Vos leyenste? [What is this thing? What are you studying? What are you reading?]" I'll tell you, I forget words but every time I come up with a word, I say, Oh, my God, I haven't said that word in such a long time, 'cause I don't speak to anybody anymore! I said, "Well, I'm taking a course in English and we learned the Sermon the Mount as a piece of literature." He says, "Bistu shoyn a goy?" Meaning, "What, you're not Jewish anymore?" I said, "No, no, dad, you don't understand. I'm learning it as literature." And eventually, he accepted it. But he didn't like it. And then, I fell in love with Joan Baez and she did a Christmas album. And she did -- it was 55:00called Noël. And I thought it was gorgeous. Her voice was unbelievable. And she did a lot of Christmas songs. But this one particular song just threw me against the wall. And then, I would play it and my father says, "Vos iz dos epes?"

CW: What song was it?

HR: "Christmas music? What are you, listening to goyishe music? This is how I brought you up?" I said, "But it's beautiful!" He says, "But it's Christmas." I said, "But it's still beautiful!" So, to this day, I have a very large selection of requiems, masses. I love choral music, especially Bach -- the Mozart "Requiem" I love. And going back to Monteverdi and all this business and even earlier. And I might as well tell you the reason why I got into music. When I 56:00was in high school, in New York, other than anywhere else -- well, in New York, they had what's called an ARISTA system where -- now it's called advanced placement. But all these smart kids -- and they were really smart kids. As a matter of fact, one of the kids I graduated with is the editor of the "Herald Tribune," the "International Herald Tribune." He worked for the "Post." I knew a lot of interesting people. But really bright. Really bright kids. So, what they did is they experimented and they said, Let's mix these kids up. So, I ended up in an ARISTA or advanced placement geometry course, advanced placement music course, advanced placement English course. And what I realized: the work wasn't any different. The teaching was different. And because of that, I did much 57:00better in my courses, especially -- and I learned music and I picked up -- I never took a music course. And I can't read -- I still can't read musical notation. But I know classical music, I know jazz. But if it wasn't for that, I would never have gotten turned on to this stuff. But it wasn't fair. Why should these guys get good teachers where, at the regular academic program, kids really need good teachers? And they taught very well. Wasn't more difficult. Just taught very well. And they also had Regents Exams in New York, which were difficult.

CW: Right.

HR: And I passed them all. But I had a great experience in high school in this secular environment. But all the kids in the academic program were Jewish. Jewish or Chinese. And our school was the first one to teach Russian, Chinese, 58:00and Hebrew.

CW: Wow.

HR: But school didn't have a great reputation. But the academic program was a good program. But I discovered a brand new world. Yiddish was still my world, but suddenly this whole world opened up to me. You mean there's more to the world than the Lower East Side? There's more to the world -- I mean, I had this English teacher who was fantastic. I had this history teacher who was fantastic. And I said, My God -- and then I started hanging out in the Village. But back then, there were folk singers in the Village and art festivals and I used to go there all the time. I loved it. And that's when I was there and then when I finished college, I was still living at home. And I think I mentioned that I wanted to go out of state. I was supposed to go to Kent State or Buffalo. And I 59:00was talked out of it by my sister. They said, Your parents are older, they need your help. Boy, do I regret that. So, here's my son going to Indiana University, right? (laughs) So, I discovered -- by age twenty-one, I got my first job. I was a caseworker with the Department of Social Services in New York. And I discovered people that were unbelievable. I mean, social services, they ended up hiring a lot of dropouts from society: guys who got their PhDs in chemistry and just couldn't make it and future screenwriters and scientists and alcoholics and drug addicts. I met everybody. But I never met people like this before and it was cool. It was very cool.

CW: Tell me about the Village. What was it like?

HR: Well, the Village, at that point, it was different than it is now. Folk 60:00music was very much in vogue and you'd hear wherever -- and Newbold Morris was the park commissioner at that point and he wanted to forbid folk singing in the park. So, there was this big demonstration on Sunday and I saw my English teacher there playing guitar. (sings) "Newbold Morris is a grizzly bear." That was one of the songs. (laughs) But eventually, they allowed the folk music. But I would go down there on -- I'd escape my father's store, go down on Sunday, and just explore -- and watch these interesting people. And I felt like I was -- well, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit. But I felt like I was on another planet. So --

CW: How did your parents react?

HR: To them, I just went somewhere. They had no reaction. Look, I basically grew up by myself. I couldn't really express my feelings to my parents because they 61:00really didn't understand. They felt very bad for me because I wasn't doing well in school. But they weren't critical of me. They tried to get me help. They felt sorry for me. They felt bad for me. But they have no -- they couldn't help me. But they were so glad that they were alive and -- I guess -- and I was alive and we lived in America. But in retrospect, I could see where my father really -- and my mother really -- they loved America for what it had. But they were really Europeans. So, if Europe was different, they would have lived in Europe, 'cause this was where they grew up. This is what they knew. America, for me, was -- I didn't have any -- I didn't relate to Europe except for Yiddish. But America was 62:00-- but it's interesting. I shouldn't say that. To this day, I don't really consider myself an American. And it's not like -- it has nothing to do with patriotism. It has to do with culture. I still feel like part of me doesn't belong here. It's a strange feeling. I just -- part of me just doesn't belong here. I'm really European. I wasn't born here. So, I have my birth certificate, which is in German. It's interesting. But that's just the way I felt, so --

CW: When do you feel that way? Are there any times when it --

HR: Oh, I don't know. It just comes up, you know --

CW: Yeah.

HR: -- when I'm in the situation -- I mean, in this area, it's different. It's the country and I'm in Pittsfield and I feel fine. But when I meet other people, 63:00other professionals -- like, my wife, I mean, once we went to Cape Cod, we rented a house. And I remember them saying, Oh, they remember this furniture. And they had the furniture when they were kids. My wife would say, "Oh, they" -- because my wife lived on Long Island, near the beach. And she remembers this kind of atmosphere. I said, "I have no connection to this." I mean, I relate to the stoops and the tenements and couches with plastic on it. I don't relate to this stuff. So, people would say to my wife all the time, Your husband is like my grandmother. I mean, he grew up like my grandmother, my grandfather. I mean, I remember we used to go to the Catskills, these bungalow colonies for the summer. I would go, my sister would go. My father would work during the week. 64:00He'd come up on weekends sometimes. And I remember when my mother would come up -- and I remember there would always be a circle of people around her. And she would tell stories. I don't remember listening in on her stories, but I would walk in towards the end of it. And she always had this audience around her because she had these great, great stories to tell. But it was sad. She just had a tough, tough life. Very tough life. My mother and father, they were married quite a few years. It was an old-fashioned relationship. She cut his meat for him. He set his place, she did all the cooking, everything else. But he worked hard every day. He was a workaholic. Worked seven days a week. But they had a tough life. And they would argue a lot, in Yiddish. And because of my father's 65:00illness, I think he was paranoid. And she had a hard time with that. And he'd accuse her -- I really don't want to get into the specifics.

CW: Yeah.

HR: But he would accuse her of all kinds of crazy things. And I got involved in one of those things. But it was just messy. Very messy. But I have to admit, my mother was a very loving, loving woman. I mean, I learned that after twenty-one years of psychoanalysis, so -- (laughs) I had to go into therapy to learn to figure out, Who the hell am I? I had no idea who I was. I don't know how to live, I don't know -- it sounds strange, but I just didn't know my place anymore. And I start off with a therapist and I guess over twenty years, I was 66:00in some type of therapy, psychoanalysis. And that's what influenced me to go into psychoanalytic training.

CW: Right.

HR: The future.

CW: Well --

HR: Oh, by the way.

CW: -- oh, yeah.

HR: When I would go to therapy, my mother would say something very interesting in Yiddish. "Oh, you're going to that woman? You're going to that woman?" (laughs) She didn't know what to call that woman. But they were very -- they paid and they wanted me to be happy. I was very depressed when I was a kid. I had no hope for the future. I guess because of the ADD. Your self-esteem is on the floor and I just was in bad shape. I used to have conversations with God. 67:00And I said, "Why are you doing this to me? I'll never marry, I'll never have children. I'll live a life of unhappiness." But it all worked out, apparently.

CW: So, what do you think you learned from your parents?

HR: Oh. Well, a number of things. The main thing I learned from my parents is gentility. My mother was a very gentle woman. And because they argued so much, I became more aware of -- when I would date, I'd be a much more gentle person with a woman. More loving, more passionate. So, that's one thing I learned. I learned 68:00to be careful 'cause you never know what's gonna happen. I mean, to this day, I always carry extra money with me because you never know where you have to go. Or I would never follow lines. I hate lines. We go places, my wife, my kids -- I always find another way in that was legal, but I said -- I mean, 'cause to me, a line -- I guess, unconsciously, a line is a line to the concentration camp. And why should I follow these people? So, I would always find another way to get into places. What I learned from my father -- my father said something very interesting to me. He, because of, I think, his illness, he wasn't the most -- 69:00my mother was a very compassionate woman. My father was warm, but he never really -- maybe it was a competition with me but he was a showoff about, "Look how much money I made," blah-blah-blah-blah. And I remember years -- he was in his eighties and I was in the jewelry business. And I remember my mother -- my mother, that's a Freudian slip -- my wife couldn't make it in that day and my father-in-law couldn't make it in there. They were sick. So, I needed someone just to keep their eyes open. Not to sell. Just make sure -- because it's a -- people steal. So, I said to my father -- he was eighty-three and I said, "Just sit here and just -- you know what to do." So, at the end of the day -- and he never said this to me before. He says, "I was watching you." He says, "You know what? I could never do what you do." (laughs) It was this great compliment. He 70:00never complimented me. So, that was the end of the story. So, he would take the subway home to Queens. I said, "You know, dad" -- I lived in New Jersey, but I don't mind going out of the way. I mean, it’s not a big deal. I'll say, "I'll drive you home." So, we drove, and I used to live in Queens, but that was years ago. I used to know my way around. But I lost that. And Queens is very complicated. A lot of little streets going all over the place. And we took the bridge and I was looking for this one particular street but I was lost. So, I stopped the car and I asked somebody else how to get to a certain place. And my father said -- he was really critical, he says, "You can't even drive, can you?" or something like that. "Vayst nisht vu d’gayst, huh?" It's like saying, "You 71:00never knew where you were going." Oh, but eighty-three years old. So, I figured -- I think I'm a little smarter now. Now, remember now, I'm the only person in my family that drove. Nobody drove. But I remember my mother kind of influenced me at eighteen, says, "You should drive. Should learn to drive." It was the best thing she ever did for me. So, I took the key out of the ignition. I said to my father, "Okay, why don't you drive?" Boy, that shut him down. (laughs) He says, "All right, gay, gay, gay [go, go, go]." But I got him home finally. But he suffered a lot. He had cancer, he had this problem, that problem. But I do remember he was eighty-seven years old and one night, about midnight, he calls 72:00me up and he says, "Vayst, ikh [You know, I]" -- I forgot how to say I don't feel well. How do you say I don't feel well? "Epes tit mir vay, ikh veys nisht, ikh ken nisht shlofn [I’m in pain, I don’t know, I can’t sleep]." I said, "You know what, dad? It's late, how 'bout I give you a call tomorrow, maybe I'll stop by?" It was a weekend. Of course, the three o'clock phone call comes in, the inimitable three o'clock phone call. People die. He had a severe heart attack. So, he had angina. So, that's probably what was going on, the beginning of the heart attack. But what's interesting is, going to his funeral -- he was a funny guy. He had no hair, a little bit of hair. But he'd always brag about the quarter haircut he got. He wasn't cheap. But, I mean, he would take me to Barney's. This is before -- this -- Barney and he would buy me forty dollar 73:00pants. Now, forty dollar pants, back then, is like paying three hundred dollars, four hundred dollars, for a pair of pants. I remember Barney himself coming out and sizing me up. And he was such a character. He'd even negotiate there. And I remember we're going to Macy's and buying me shoes. He would negotiate in Macy's. I said, "Dad, you can't do this." He says, "Eh, zorg zikh nisht, ikh ken, ikh ken [Eh, don’t worry, I can do it, I can do it]," but he never got away with it. He couldn't do that. But he was a good negotiator. And there was another interesting story. I was in a shoe store and this Latina woman walked in. And my father cursed a lot, in Yiddish. “In der erd arayn [Go to hell],” un dos, un dos, un dos [and this, and that, and that]. And he started cursing this woman out in Yiddish. And what he didn't know is she was married to this Jewish guy who spoke -- and she knew Yiddish. And she gave it to him. Oh, did she give 74:00it to him. I don't think he ever did that anymore. He never did it again. Never did it again. So, after college --

CW: So, how'd you get into --

HR: Yeah, yeah.

CW: -- the jewelry business?

HR: Well, that's --

CW: That's the --

HR: -- what I'm going to get into.

CW: Yeah. Your father-in-law, right?

HR: Yeah, after college, I became a social worker and I married -- I had a relationship with this woman who lived in the Village on Bleecker Street. Are you kidding me? I got turned on to Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and all this and started dressing differently. So, I didn't come home for four days. I discovered sex, first time in my life. And it's like, Wow, woo, whoa, this is great. She wasn't Jewish, of course. But she ended up converting in a Reform 75:00temple, which my parents didn't recognize anyway. And so, they ended up moving to Israel as a protest, I guess. (laughs) I guess. But he also retired. But they came back after ’73 'cause my mother couldn't deal with the sirens and all -- and everything going on. But so, I got introduced to this world that was -- oh, my God, the Fillmore East and -- I wasn't into drugs, per se. I mean, I did what everyone else did but I'm not an addictive personality. So, I kind of stay away from certain substances. But my hair got long, my beard got long. But so, I worked with the Department of Social Services and eventually, I decided to get my MSW. And what's nice about New York City is they gave you a leave of absence 76:00during the winter or during the semester and during the summer you came back and you could work for them again. And I ended up getting my MSW and I left. So, I worked for a couple of organizations and then I decided to -- I enjoyed dealing with individual -- with kids and families. So, I ended up getting a fellowship to an institute in New York. And fellowship means you don't get paid. (laughs) That's what a fellowship means. And then, I had a small practice and I lived in Brooklyn Heights at that point. And had a small practice, I come home late at night. And on Saturdays, the jewelry store, it was unique, it was open on Saturday. Now it's not open on Saturdays anymore but -- because all the Orthodox Jews complained. And that reminds me of another story. So, I worked there on 77:00Saturdays to make a couple dollars and he would say things like, "Boy, you have a lot of patience." I would say, "Well, that's part of what I do." He said, "Well, I like the way you talk to people." And he was an interesting guy. I mean, he watched you. He really got a sense of you. And so, one day, he gave me -- he offered me a proposition. He says, "Listen, how would you like to come into business? I'll teach you the business and you come in." I said, "Whoa, that's quite a decision." So, it took me about six, seven months to figure it out. And I did mostly for financial reasons, because things were changing with insurance companies and compliance and all this business. So, I went into -- that's how I got into jewelry business. But what was good about it -- 'cause a lot of people spoke Yiddish and I said, Oh, my God, I would stand -- I'd be in 78:00the elevator like a fly on the wall and listen to all these Hasidim. See, in the jewelry business, and especially there, the Hasidim -- people think, Oh, the -- they did most of the cutting. They were more upstairs. They were the intermediaries. But I loved listening to their conversations. So, when a couple would come over and they spoke Yiddish and they would say things like, "Eh, ikh’l im geybn -- er vil tsvey hindert? Ikh’l im geybn hundert fiftsik [Eh, I’ll give him -- he wants two hundred? I’ll give him 150.]" And I would say, "Hindert fiftsik iz nisht genig [One hundred and fifty is not enough]." He goes, "Redst yidish [You speak Yiddish]?" So, I said, "Yeah, yeah. Ikh red yidish [I speak Yiddish]." Oh. He was shocked, you know? But people started discovering I spoke Yiddish and they said, You speak such a nice Yiddish. Where'd you learn it? I said, "I didn't learn it. I just -- this is the way I grew up." But I didn't 79:00tell everyone I spoke Yiddish, 'cause I didn’t want anyone to know. But I loved the conversations. And the Yiddish was so bad. Some of the Hasid-- they grow up in Borough Park, so it's like Spanglish. It's Yiddish English. And I would just listen. And every so often, I would say, "S’iz kalt in drosn [It’s cold outside], you know?" He would look at me and he would say, "Yes, s’iz a bisl kalt [it’s a little chilly]." I said, "Zayer kalt? Oder a bisl kalt? [Very cold? Or a little cold?]" But I would practice. So, one of my mentors, there was one guy who I’d be -- he was an older man. Older. Older than me.

CW: Yeah.

HR: And he was a diamond cutter and he also sold diamonds, he and his partner, Mr. Stern and Hershl. Those are the two partners. And Hershl was born in Detroit. (laughs) But he was born in Hungary. He went through the Holocaust, 80:00too. But I said, "Mr. Stern, we got to make a deal. You want me to buy something? We got to speak Yiddish. We can only speak Yiddish." And I started picking the Yiddish again. And it was a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. And negotiations in Yiddish is a lot of fun. It's like, I'll just make up a price. "Tsvay tozent [Two thousand].” “Tsvay tozent? Bist in ganstn meshige? [Two thousand? Are you completely mad?]” I mean, it's not like even cursing someone. It's like saying, "What are you, crazy?"

CW: (laughs) Yeah.

HR: Yeah, I said, "Vos bistu, a nar [What are you, a fool]?" I mean, "S’iz tsifil gelt [That’s too much money]." "All right, yeah," blah-blah and "akhtsn fiftsik [one thousand eight hundred fifty]." "Akhtsn fiftsik! Akhtsn fiftsik? Ikh ken dos ge-- ikh hob shoyn gehert dos far zektsn hindert [Eighteen fifty! Eighteen fifty? I could ge-- I’ve heard this being sold for seventeen hundred]?" “Vi hosti gehert fun zektsn hindert [Where did you hear it for seventeen hundred]?” Yeah, I make up these stories and we come to some kind of comp-- it's 81:00fun. It's just a lot of, lot of fun. And there was this one guy, this one Orthodox diamond dealer, used to come over and he would go, "So, Herman, you buying a diamond? You buying a diamond? You don't buy a diamond from me anymore!" So, one day, I went over and I said, "I want to ask you a question." I'd always frame it by, "I want to ask you a question." (UNCLEAR) -- "So ask the question already." But that's not the way I speak. That's the way I speak. I said, "You know, when you come over to me" -- he would do this in Yiddish -- I said, "You don't just come over and say, 'You don't buy from me anymore?'" I said, "I mean, that's crude. I mean, come over to me and say, 'Good morning, good afternoon, is there something I could do for you? Is there something you'd like?'" Because a lot of these people are very crude. That's the way they grew up. And they didn't realize they were being crude. But I felt a little more sophisticated than them. Maybe the word is not sophistication but that's just 82:00not --

CW: Veltlekh [Cultured, lit. “worldly”]. (laughs)

HR: -- the way you do it. S’iz nisht [It’s not] -- and it's without derekh-erets [decorum], you know? So, after a while, he'd come over to me, say, "Oh, hi, Herman, how are you? Is there something I could do for you? (laughs) Is there something you need?" I said, "That's the way you do it. Okay, come on, I need something from you." I said, "If you continue acting like a real schmuck, I'm not giving you anything." So, I mean, that was kind of cute. But it takes time to get comfortable in that business. First of all, I knew nothing when I came in. But I learned. And little by little, I learned -- I still make mistakes, but you don't feel intimidated anymore. You're part of the scene. Like, I see people 83:00on the street. "Oh, Hershl, how are you?" "Es ken zayn beser [Could be better]," yeah. With Jews, it's never, "I'm okay." It's that, I could always be better.

CW: So, you became Hershl again?

HR: I became -- to some people, Hershl, yeah. I said -- yeah.

CW: Yeah. So, can you describe the -- if someone's never been to the Diamond District before, can you describe it?

HR: Well, first of all, if no one's been there, the first thing you notice -- well, it's intimidating. For instance, you want to go buy an engagement ring, all right? Who do you go to? See, everyone has a cousin and an uncle in the diamond business, the fur business. That's the best way to do it, but you're basically buying a blind item. You don't know what you're getting. And generally, people are honest. There are bad apples everywhere. So, a person comes in, it's -- and they have these guys outside of the store, Oh, come on in, 84:00come on in, I got deals for you. I got deals for you. They're called puller-inners, these guys that pull you in. So, that's a little intimidating. And then, they go in and they start asking you what you want, what you want to spend. They do it in such a way that it's like, push, push, push. And if you're from out of town, it's -- especially from this area, you're not used to that. In Pittsfield, where I am now, it's like you have to be very gentle. Very, very gentle. And one thing about my training, it's allowed me to pick up on personalities: obsessive-compulsives, people who are anxious, people who have money, people who don't have money, you treat them all a little differently. But it's intimidating, Forty-Seventh Street. Now, with the internet, it's a little 85:00more -- people think they know more, but they really don't know more because they get caught up in all this terminology. I had one customer -- and I'm talking about my business now -- he comes in and he said, "Look, I took all this off the internet and this is what I know." I said, "Let me ask you a question." I could have said it in Yiddish but this guy didn't speak any -- lomir fregn a shayle [let me ask you a question] but -- that's the way I should have said it. But I said, "Do you understand this?" He would say, "No, I don't." "Okay." I ripped it up, I threw it away. I said, "Let's start from scratch, 'cause that's bullshit. It's all bullshit." But there are different levels, also. There are the lower-class jewelers, middle-of-the-road jewelers, and then the very expensive, higher-end jewelers. And I would consider ourselves middle-of-the-road. But we did sell some bigger goods and -- but getting -- see, 86:00when I have to get the diamonds, I don't own everything. So, I would speak to these people, I would say -- I said, “I'm looking for such-and-such. Ikh darf es morgn [I need it tomorrow].” They bring me the diamonds, I said, "Dos iz nisht vi ikh hob gevolt. Ikh hob gevolt epes andersh. [This is not what I wanted. I wanted something else.]" "Well, dos hob ikh [Well, this is what I have]." I said, "Vos meynstu, ‘Dos hob ikh’ [What do you mean, ‘This is what I have’]?" I mean, dos hosti, ikh vil dos nisht. Vos meynst? [This is what you have, I don’t want it. What do you think?] -- I mean, vos [what] -- he'd go through this whole thing about this is what he has. I said, "But that’s not what I want." It's like talking to probably the cow farmer in some shtetl. He'll give you what he has, not what you want. But it's an old way of doing business. It's really an old, old -- and even the Indians or the Chinese, they do business the same way. And when you finally make a deal with somebody, you say, "Mazl un a brokhe." “Mazl” 87:00is luck and “brokhe” is a prayer. You do a handshake, that's kind of like -- that's the sale. And it's still done that way. It's kind of nice.

CW: So, how did it end up being Orthodox?

HR: Well, it's interesting. I think I know a little bit about it, all right? I'm not an expert. But I think traditionally, in Europe, Jews in general weren't allowed to own land, but they were allowed to lend money, right? So, they became bankers or usurers, whatever you want to call them. Not Chase Manhattan, but just in -- so, they became bankers. And what other product can you carry in your pocket from shtetl to shtetl, from country to country? Little things. I've heard 88:00stories where people came out of the Holocaust, they hid a diamond in their tooth. And it's like my father-in-law said. Where else can you put a handful of things in your pocket that has value? Now, there are certain cultures like in the Far East and in Europe where gold had meaning more than just a ring. It was a way of survival. That's why the Indians and the Chinese have 24-karat gold. Of course, during famine and during terrible situations, they could take the gold and trade it in for food. So, in the United States, we're fortunate. That's not what we do. So, that's kind of the history of -- why did Orthodox Jews become part of it? I don't know why Orthodox Jews became part of it. Well, because most 89:00of the Jews in Europe were Orthodox. So, they carried the custom over. But what's interesting is, in the Hasidic community -- now, there's a Hasidic community, there's a Satmar community, there's a Lubavitch community. I guess you could wrap 'em up into Hasidim. But Hasidim come from one part of Poland.

CW: Right.

HR: The Satmar come from another part. They're two different, distinct characters. And Lubavitch have a whole different way of -- outlook on life. It's interesting. And I was about to say something. I guess that was the only way they can make a living -- so, they brought that skill with them. So, the Rothschilds became the Rothschilds and the jewelers became the jewelers. And 90:00they went to Chinatown or they opened up little shops. And if you look at these big shops, they all started as little nothing -- that's why I love obituaries, because you learn a lot about people, especially Jews who died. You learn where they came from. They started from nothing and they built it into a dynasty. Or some kid goes to City College because he can't go to Yale or Harvard. Of course, there are quota systems. And he wins the Nobel Prize of Physics. I mean, it's wonderful stuff.

CW: Yeah.

HR: And one thing I like about Yiddish is it's the one language that's universal. So, I could travel to France, I could travel -- not to the Middle East. But I could travel to anyplace in Europe and find someone who speaks 91:00Yiddish. Now, I remember when I went to Europe in ’66 on the way to Israel, I visited some people my father saved during the war. So, it was interesting, we were on a train to Brussels. And we're going through Switzerland and we went from Italy to Brussels. And I don't know German. I mean, I could understand a little bit of German. I try to fake it. So, I remember one guy, I forgot what I was telling him. I was asking him a question and he said, "You know what? Your Yiddish is very good." It was hilarious; it's very funny. But even in China, there are Jews who live in China and they all spoke Yiddish. Unless you go to the Far -- Middle East, where it's more Arab. It's more of Arabic rather than 92:00Yiddish 'cause the Jews that came from the Inquisition, what it is, they went to Turkey or Italy or other parts of the country.

CW: So, have you traveled a lot?

HR: No. Eastern Europe. I would like to -- well, actually, I was -- I have a very good friend who had a publishing company. And just before 9/11, he was supposed to go to Munich and do some business. And I said, Here's my opportunity, 'cause where I was born -- I was born in -- by Bad Reichenhall, which is near Munich, between Munich and Salzburg. And I figured, You know what? He has business to do in the morning. I'll take the train. I'll visit where I was born, just to get an idea of what it was all about, and 9/11 happened. So, I was gonna go anyway and I said to my wife, "This is the safest time to travel." She says, "I'm afraid. You can't go. You can't go. I don't want you to go." I 93:00didn't go. See, I gave in again. Oh, what a big mistake. I should have gone. He went!

CW: Do you think you'll go?

HR: I think at some point I'll go. My wife is not too keen. We went to Spain for the -- this is an interesting story. Went to Spain for the -- I always wanted to go to Spain. So, we haven't been on a vacation in quite a few years. Went to Spain in January 'cause it's very quiet in this area during the winter. And we went to a lot of the areas like Seville and a lot of places where Jews lived. And I had this overwhelming feeling -- again, it could be -- I could have imagined it but somehow, I felt I belonged in Europe. It's weird! I said to Gail -- my wife's name is Gail -- I said, "I know this place." Not that -- I can't 94:00know this place, but I felt comfortable in Europe. It's weird, very weird. My mother, I traced her back to Turkey. She had a very dark complexion. She was eighty-three, eighty-four when she died. She had black hair with a couple of grey areas in it. Women would come over and speak Spanish to her. She had no idea what they were talking about. But her family came from Spain originally. My father's side, ironically, is also Sephardic. You know, there's Ashkenazic or Seph-- although we prayed in the Ashkenazic way, my father still traces his family back to Spain. If you were gonna ask me today to trace him back, I have no idea how to do it. Everyone's dead. I mean, how do you do it? People who are alive -- I mean, my ex-wife, she could trace her family back to the Mayflower. I 95:00mean, I can't trace 'em back to Europe. But I would love to go back and -- I would like to visit the camps. That would be a real emotional experience for me. But I would like to visit the place I was born. Even my sister said -- oh, see, she asked me if -- to get some information about the hospital. This was a Catholic hospital I was born in. But even while we were in the displaced persons camp, my father still had to make a living. They didn't just give you -- I guess they supplied you with some kind of script, but my father being who my father was, still went out and hustled. And it's only because of that -- we came here, he was forty-nine years old, he -- to start your life over at forty-nine after 96:00this whole disaster is -- it's got to be very traumatic. But he did it.

CW: Yeah.

HR: Had a very strong -- and, as I said, my parents had very strong personalities. You either were very -- not weak. I hate to say weak in a negative way. But you didn't have it in you to survive, you couldn't do it. But some people did it because they were who they are. But Yiddish is great. Sometimes people in Pittsfield walk in and I'll find out where they grew up. And suddenly, you hear some Yiddish words it's like, Whoa, hold on a second. But none of them speak really -- can really understand. They said, You speak? I said, "Yeah, I can speak." So, I'm thinking of -- there has to be a Yiddish club around here somewhere in my area. I'm thinking of getting involved.

CW: Yeah.

HR: You know?

CW: Vos meynt dos, tsu zayn a “handler” [What does it mean, to be a “handler”]?

HR: Vos meynt a “handler” [What does “handler” mean]?

CW: Yo [Yes].

HR: Well, a handler. Well, it can be a lot of things. I mean, a handler -- “handl” means you're dealing with -- but to “handl” means also to negotiate. So, you can handl -- Jews have this bad -- I don't know why Jews have this reputation of being negotiators and -- I think the Chinese invented negotiation. They're the best. But when there are anti-Semitic periods, Jews are accused of -- Oh, yeah, sure, they're cheap. I don't know if you saw "Mad Men" last night. There's one scene where they started hiring Jews in this ad agency. The one guy's named Zimmerman; he's a real character. And they got this new account called Manischewitz. So, I guess they're dealing with -- Kennedy was shot, 98:00Vietnam. So, they're dealing with the late ’60s, early ’70s. And Manischewitz wants to sell wine to the general public. They don’t want to just be -- make it a Jewish traditional wine. So, of course, they have this kid work on it and his ex-girlfriend, wife was Jewish. So, he negotiates, he handls with her, he offers her -- got to know she was also his lover -- and he offers her a new apartment if she'll just go out to dinner with these people, just to show that he has a Jewish wife. But he makes one comment that was very interesting. He says, "Yeah, Manischewitz, they want to do it on the cheap." And that makes sense. But that was the attitude. And it's still the attitude, especially with the Bernie Madoff affair. I'm sorry to get into this, but my friend who plays -- I don't play golf. He plays golf and he would hear from people saying, See? These Jews did it 99:00to themselves. See? The Jews, you can't trust them. It's like, What are you talking about? I mean, Jews have their own problems. Jews do not want to take over the world. They don't want to rule the world. It's too much of a headache. (laughter) Percentage-wise, Jews, in terms of Nobel Prizes, of intellectual curiosity, are up there. But they're there for certain reasons, I mean, because you're always taught to learn. And learning was very important and City College was free, and where else would you go? And that's the bottom of it. So, handler. I mean, a handler is a guy who negotiates. A handl gets a good deal. What's wrong with getting a good deal?

CW: Yeah.

HR: If you do it the right way.

CW: Yeah, and you used to go around with your father.

HR: Oh, I used to go with my father. I don't remember -- remember, things were 100:00much less money back then. But my father, I don't remember him handling and -- my father was a good handler, but in English. My father could sell you the chair you're sitting on for twice the price to you. He was that good. But his Yiddish was very poor, yeah. He was second generation. He was born accidentally in Pittsfield. But it's interesting, when my wife's parents would get together with my parents for the holidays, they loved -- my father loves Jewish cooking. He calls it Jew-- it's really European cooking, but they have this Jewish cooking. They loved coming over and having blintzes and all kinds of -- my mother cooked everything from scratch. For Passover, we'd have duck. I mean, who makes duck for Passover? But the services were really boring because they went through the 101:00prayers and nobody translated anything. These days, everything is -- everyone says something, and you talk about what it means to you. That didn't exist back then. Back then, it was a prayer. You finished a prayer, you eat, and you schmooze and you pray again. And you don't talk while you're praying. But, of course, I want to talk. Hard not to talk.

CW: As a kid, did you have a favorite yontev [holiday]?

HR: Did I have a favorite yontev? That's an interesting question. I never thought about that. My favorite yontev. I guess Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, only because I got to meet a lot of people on East River Drive when we got to -- I met a lot of friends and I enjoy that holiday. And I loved a good cantor. And 102:00then, to this day, I still enjoy part of it. I go to a Conservative synagogue. I couldn't go to an Orthodox. It's very interesting. I go to an Orthodox synagogue now. I've changed. I don't know if I'm a believer anymore, whether I'm an agnostic or an atheist. But I've changed a lot. And I don't share this with my family, I don't want to insult them, but that's how I've changed. I'm a Yiddish-speaking agnostic. (laughs) Oh, by the way, all these Yiddish speakers, these Yiddish writers, they weren't believers. They were all atheists. They spoke Yiddish only because that's what they spoke. They wrote about things that were fantastic but -- they wrote about religious things, but they weren't 103:00religious. The guy who wrote the -- "Asher Lev," Chaim Potok, and when -- he used to sneak out of his father's house to go to the library, 'cause you weren't allowed to read secular books.

CW: Right.

HR: But I remember a number of years ago, I was visiting the Lower East Side -- it's a hip place now, Lower East Side, right? East Village. I couldn't care less. To me, I can't wait to get out of there, 'cause it brings back too many memories. But I remember meeting this guy. His father was a very well-known rabbi in the community, a very well-respected rabbi. I forgot his name. And all his kids had peyes [sidelocks] and they all smell from -- all these kids smell from bananas. I don't know why they smell from bananas. I think their mothers always stuffed them with bananas. It's Chaim and Yosl and Sure -- and I remember 104:00I met him, he didn't have any peyes on. And had this apartment near Houston Street and I forgot what street. But he was a writer. So, I guess he discovered himself, too.

CW: Yeah.

HR: He got away from -- but he came from a very Orthodox family. So, he said his father doesn't speak to him, his mother -- which I think is terrible. I think whatever life you choose, your parents should always be there for you, whether you're not religious or not. I mean, who cares? Just let your child -- you can't -- you never owned your child, you can never disown your child.

CW: Yeah.

HR: But I was going to mention an interesting story in the middle of talking about this. I'll refresh my memory.

CW: But you mentioned you're not as religious anymore, but you have gotten into 105:00Jewish cultural stuff now. We were talking about Jewish literature that you like a lot. Philip Roth --

HR: I like Philip Roth.

CW: -- and --

HR: I mean, look, that's part of me. That's part of who I am. You can't take that away from a person. I mean, if you grow up in a Catholic family, there are a lot of Catholic comedians who will talk about their Catholic -- but they talk about it because they have good memories of it or bad memories of it. But you can never take that part away from me. I mean, that's my history. It's a funny story. In my exchange, everything's kind of family-owned. I would say ninety-eight percent is family-owned. And the son is there or the daughter's there. So, there's one couple who had their daughter working there and we get 106:00into discussion. She tried to convert me. Not convert me, but bring me back to the fold. So, didn't bother me. I'd have fun with her. But she was very bright. See, that's what I -- one thing I respect. I respect people who are -- and I don't mean to insult anybody, but I respect people who are intelligent. When I watch Charlie Rose and he has these guys on there and these women and these writers, I go to sleep and I say, Wow, oh, man, these people are unbelievable. I wish I knew these people. I would love to sit down in a room with these people and just have a discussion. But I would talk to her and we'd -- one day, she was talking about the soul. She asked me, Do I believe in the soul?

CW: Neshome [soul].

HR: Neshome. I said, "You mean like James Brown?" (laughs) I was goofing and she 107:00goes, "Who's James Brown?" I said, "See? We can't talk about the soul without James Brown." So, I told her who James -- 'cause they don't watch TV and they're not into rock and roll or what's happening.

CW: So, what was it like for you to be sort of visiting that world, that --

HR: It was fun. I had a lot of fun with it. I knew what these people -- I knew what they were up to. "Come, come, come!" I said, "No, no, no, no!" (laughter) But it was fun. Some of the people, some of these very Orthodox people were very nice and very bright, very together. One thing about the jewelry district, you'll find a number of people there who have other professions. They were chemists or this, something else, and they end up in the family business whether 108:00they liked it or not. But what's interesting about the Diamond District is that Hasidim -- women are not supposed to really mingle with men. And what's happened because the women have come into the business with their mates -- and sometimes they're smarter than their mates -- the way they do business. And they're getting exposed to the secular world. And I remember my wife was telling me a funny story. There were these -- a whole bunch of Amish -- no, no, no. One guy with dreadlocks was asking this Hasidic guy directions to a certain place. And the guy with dreadlocks left, and here's a Hasidic guy, it's the middle of the summer, he's got a wool coat on, a wool sweatshirt on, a white shirt tied up up 109:00to here, and he says to his friend, he says, "That guy looked so weird." But it's all perspective. 'Cause I remember one day, there was a whole bunch of Amish people visiting New York. They were across the street. All they have to do is walk down the street and they could feel comfortable. But it's interesting, I always had arguments with Jews for Jesus. One day, they came to the block and I said to them, "I got to ask you a question. I mean, and don't BS me. Are you kidding? You must be kidding me. What do you expect -- do you really expect some kind -- are you out of your mind? I mean, I can understand going to Madison Avenue, go to Fifth Avenue, go to -- you're coming into Forty-Sev-- do you know what's here? These people are not interested in you." "Well, this is our 110:00obligation." I said, "But you're not listening to me, are you?" So, I have these conversations with these people, but I try not to have too many conversations. I get very annoyed. So, I remember one day, there was a customer. My wife -- I was out to lunch or something or doing an errand. And there was one woman who was a believer in Jews for Jesus. She was part of the organization. She says, "Oh, you may not want to be here when my husband comes back." (laughs) So, it's funny stuff. And then, I remember once we had the guy who owns the Washington -- the Korean minister, what's his name? Had a big following in New York. Anyway, they had this mass wedding in New York. And suddenly, at five o'clock in the afternoon, thirty people walk in, they're getting married the next day. And it 111:00was kind of fun.

CW: Wow.

HR: Kind of fun. I've sold to priests, I've sold to nuns, 'cause nuns have -- you're married to God, so you buy a white ring. I've sold Hebrew rings to gay couples, I've sold Hebrew rings -- I mean, someone came in with a passage from the Old Testament and we had to find it and we had to abbreviate it and put it together for them. They said, Would you mind? I said, "Why should I mind? I mean, I have no objection. Be my guest."

CW: Yeah.

HR: But those are the kind of people you would meet there. An interesting crowd. Interesting crowd.

CW: So, when you had your own family and your own kids, how -- I mean, it was different than the world that you grew up in. Did you try to show that world to your kids or --

HR: Of course, of course. Well, they were very young. So, I had to wait till they got older. Especially my older one, I’d take him to visit my parents. But they were very nice -- oh, I should have brought a picture of my wedding picture, my niece's wedding picture. There's a picture of me and my parents. I mean, here's me and here are they. I've got that picture. But as they got older, I said, "How 'bout I teach you a Yiddish word a day?" But after a month, it kind of died away. We tried. But my son, my older one, we used to visit my parents, but he can never understand them. They have this very deep accent and you kind of knew what they were saying but not really. My younger one really didn't -- they died when he was about one year old or two years old. So, here's my father, 113:00we're at the plot. It's a double plot. So, they place my father in and -- look, he was eighty-seven years old. It was very sad, but it wasn't a tragedy. And my mother, this is my mother's humor. She looks down, she goes, "S’iz azoy klayn. Vi gay ikh lign? [It’s so small. Where will I fit?]" I said, "Mom, it's like the Lower East Side. Everyone's close together like sardines." I mean, we laughed. We had so much fun. But that's -- my father led a full life. And it was sad, but we laughed in the car coming back. "Oh, if he only knew what this funeral cost, he would go crazy." I mean, we had a ball. We had a real ball. My father was a 114:00-- in his older age, he became a little more Orthodox. He used to go to shul. I remember, as a child, he always wore a jacket to dinner and a tie. I guess it was the European formal way of doing things, yeah. But they pretty much let me do my own thing. They wanted me to be happy. And going to teachers' conferences were interesting 'cause they really didn't understand what the teachers were saying to them. They had no idea. So, they'd ask me, So, what did they say? (laughter) I had to explain to him what they said.

CW: Would you tell them what they really said, or would you make something up?

HR: No, no, I told them what they said. "Well, Herman" -- I always got "character." "Oh," (UNCLEAR) well, it was two things. The yeshiva and high school were two different things.

CW: Right.

HR: But in high school, basically I was a good kid and I blossomed in my junior 115:00year, really. I did much better. But they didn't know anything about report cards. They didn't know what A meant or what F meant, what C meant. They were just happy that I was happy. But also, growing up Jewish, I also wore a yarmulke. And after a while, I stopped wearing a yarmulke. I got beaten up a couple of times just because of that. And I got beaten, I got my nose broken with a brass knuckle. And I was never a fighter. That's not the way I grew up, to fight. And when I tell my oldest son -- my younger son the story, he goes -- he's so embarrassed. He says, "You didn't fight" -- my older son knows karate. He knows the martial arts. Says, "What did you do? You just stood there?" I said, "Yeah, I just stood there." He says, "Why?" I said, "I didn't know what to do." I didn't know how to fight. Nobody taught me how to fight. We didn't fight, 116:00we didn't -- my father never taught me to hit back or do anything like that. And my son was like, "That's terrible. I mean, that's -- I never want to go through that, dad," and he said -- but it was terrible being picked on because you're Jewish, for no reason at all. And I'm not a racist, I never was a racist. We got along with everybody. And that's one of the other things, if I may say, I --

CW: Sure.

HR: -- instilled in my children. Very interesting story: my younger one has very dark skin in the sun. And there was a kid from Trinidad in his class. The school was interesting. It had a lot of Indian students and it was a mixture -- a lot of -- mixture of kids. And he comes home one day, he says, "I found a new 117:00friend. He's as dark as me." (laughs) He didn't know what that meant. But I always gave them lectures. I said, "If I ever hear any talk in this house about black people and Puerto Rican people and nasty remarks about people like this, I'm gonna be extremely upset because that's not the way I operate." So, I guess I instilled something very positive in them. And they're great kids. Really great kids, so --

CW: Are there aspects of Jewishness that you see your kids identifying with that are different than the way you --

HR: Different.

CW: Or the same. What do they connect to?

HR: I think they connect to my kind of Jewishness. I mean, my younger one is not 118:00a believer whatsoever. He's an atheist and a libertarian. (laughs) I have these arguments with him, oh, my God. But he'll still use Yiddish words. He'll pick up these Yiddish words. He's living with someone who's not Jewish, has two little kids, and he loves it. And he's very gentle. And he uses terminology like shlep and schmuck and I don't know, cute little terms. So, they picked up some things from me. If anything else, they've picked up a way of life. Not so much speaking Yiddish, but a way of life. You can't teach kids Yiddish, I mean, unless you speak Yiddish or you live in a very insulated area where they speak Yiddish. But 119:00they definitely identify with their Jewishness no matter what they say. They are who they are. But it was very interesting, my great-niece got married, and very Orthodox, in Crown Heights, in a very Orthodox ceremony. Extremely Orthodox. And you have all these single girls there who are just looking to get married. And they're all gorgeous, these eighteen, nineteen-year-old girls. They're beautiful, nineteen. Here's my son. He comes to this wedding wearing an old tuxedo and an open shirt. And he hadn't shaved. He grows his beard very quick. Hadn't shaven for a week. He had not shaven for a week. Did I say that right? (laughs) And he fit in. He had a yarmulke and he looked like all these Hasidic kids. And before you knew it, all these girls surrounded him. Just surrounded him. "Who's your rabbi? Which rabbinical thought do you have? How religious are 120:00you?" He says, "I'm an atheist." They said, Oh, come on, you're putting us on. You're kidding me, right? Says, "No, I have no belief system in -- at least I don't have a belief in religion." But he could have married -- he could have been a father in the year with any of these girls. He said, "These girls were gorgeous!" I said, "Dustin, you had your pick!" He says, "It was not for me." It was hilarious. And he looked the role. He really looked the role. Was very funny.

CW: And when you -- do you have a favorite yontev now as a father and --

HR: Well, being a father of adults; I call them adult children and my son corrected me about that. He says, "We're not adult children. We're adult young men." I said, "Asher" -- my older son name's Asher by the way. I said, "You're 121:00right." Now, they lecture me. So, I don't know. We don't relate that way. Thanksgiving, we get together and Passover we get together. So, we celebrate Passover together, except for my younger one. He's not into this at all.

CW: Yeah. And now that you've moved up to the Berkshires, when do you get to use Yiddish?

HR: Oh, not often enough. (laughs) I mean, there are a lot of people up here who are New Yorkers. But the Yiddish is pretty bad. I mean, they know a couple of words here and there. Maybe their parents spoke a little bit of Yiddish or their grandparents spoke Yiddish. So, there's nobody really up here who speaks Yiddish except a Lubavitcher guy from Crown Heights.

CW: And now that you're -- what has that change been like for you, moving to 122:00Pittsfield from living in the Diamond District -- working in the Diamond District, rather?

HR: Working in New York.

CW: Working in New York.

HR: New York, look, New York has a -- New York bagels are New York bagels, right? People don't agree with me. I mean, I can't believe people up here, they buy pre-sliced bagels. I said, "Are you kidding?" "Well, it's easy to toast." I said, "Toast? You warm it up and you rip it apart! That's how you eat a bagel." They said, Nah, that's not the way you eat a bagel. That's not the way I ate a bagel. I said, "Well, that's the way I ate a bagel." We lived in the suburbs, the New Jersey suburbs, for twenty-five years and then we got an apartment closer to New York. We lived there for about six, seven years. We just felt like 123:00it was time to make the move. There were financial reasons. It was getting very expensive. We were coming in for weekends all the time. We weren't really living there anymore. We left at four o'clock on Friday and we just felt depressed on Sunday going home. And I would come home Friday, bitching to my son about certain things about the business. He goes, "All you do is bitch, dad. Maybe it's time for you to move up here." And it took us a couple years. We made a big decision. It's a very stressful thing to do. And I'm glad I made the decision. Do I miss New York and what it has to offer? I miss the culture. Well, I shouldn't say that. I miss some of the museums. I miss doing the -- I miss the music. I used to have subscriptions to Carnegie Hall and I used to go with 124:00friends. I have a couple of good friends I don't get to see very often. I miss that. But coming up here, I really don't feel like -- I feel it's another stage of my life and I'm enjoying it. The air is good, people are nice. We weren't gonna join a synagogue but we decided, because -- for some reason, being around other Jews, it just was more comfortable for my wife and it was different. It was just very different. And I'm not into synagogue politics. I never join committees. I would never join a committee. You got to shoot yourself to join a committee. But I'm -- people are so nice here. First of all, it's very informal. Nobody dresses up in suits except on the High Holiday. People wear their Birkenstocks, people wear Merrells, and people are so nice. And they're so glad 125:00to have you there, especially -- now, younger meaning -- there are some people there in their eighties. So, I'm in my sixties, so that's younger. And there are families there. And the rabbi's a nice guy and I feel good. I feel good about moving up here. Do I miss a lot of things? I don't miss a lot of things, no. I don't miss the smell of garbage in Manhattan on a hot day, no. When we go back, we meet our friends and we walk the city. But I'm content.

CW: Yeah. Well, I have a couple other questions but --

HR: Sure.

CW: -- is there -- I mean, it's so rich that I've not been asking a lot of questions, just sort of letting you go.

HR: I'm sorry, I'm sorry if I'm going on --

CW: No, no, no, I think it's great, but I just want to see, were there any stories or things that we haven't talked about yet?

HR: (pauses) I mean, I have cute childhood stories. There was this family -- my 126:00sister lives in Williamsburg. Now, Williamsburg is the hot place, but I still remember the trolley car -- I don't know if you're familiar with -- (looks down at mic cord]

CW: That's okay.

HR: I don't know if you're familiar with Williamsburg, but you had to take the Williamsburg Bridge over, the bus, and then catch another bus to go to her house. But I remember the last remnants, the last -- I feel like this old guy. I remember the last remnants of the trolley car. It was cool. It was very cool. I still have dreams about that. It's very interesting. But I remember waiting for the bus, there was this great pizza parlor. Of course, this pizza wasn't kosher. I mean, there were kosher pizza places on the Lower East Side, ironically, but it didn't taste the same. Just didn't taste the same. So, I love the pizza, my 127:00father loved the pizza. And one day, I was waiting for the bus and who passes by but the principal of my yeshiva. So, I figured, Oh, man, this is no good. But nothing happened. But I do have an interesting story. When I was thirteen, fourteen, I joined this organization called Bnei Akiva. It was part of Agudath Israel. It was a Zionist organization and they ran these camps that I went to. And there was one girl there I liked very much. And her father actually was a colonel in the US Army. He was religious. She came out of Washington, DC, but she was going to school in New York. And I remember, I was in high school, so if my high school was here, her school was like four, five blocks away. And I used 128:00to meet her for coffee or, I don't know, Coke, whatever we did. We just liked each other and we took walks and I liked her. What was her name? Forgot her name. So, one day, she tells me that the rabbi of her school wants to talk to me. I said, Here it comes. I said, "What's the problem?" "No problem, he just wants to have a discussion with you." I said -- so, I called the rabbi up or he called me, I don't know. I forgot which is which. And he says, "Could we have a chat over a glass of tea?" I felt like saying, "Yeah, a gleyzl tea?" See, when you speak Yiddish, the whole accent changes. Well, it depends on what part of Europe you're from. Like when you say “sholem-aleykhem [greetings, lit. “peace be upon you”],” I grew up saying “shulem-aleykhem.” It's a different --

CW: Right.

HR: -- it's just the way of saying it. So, one morning, I meet him in this 129:00little coffee shop next to my school. I go a half hour earlier and we sit down and he says, "I understand that you're --" not dating, but I don't know, I forgot what term he used. "You're seeing one of my students." I said, "Yes." He says, "So, you like this young girl?" I said, "Yeah, I like this young girl." Says, "I noticed you don't wear a yarmulke." I said, "I don't." He says, "Can I ask you why?" I said, "I go to this public school. I get beaten up. (laughs) I mean, I'm not gonna wear" -- he says, "Would you be interested in wearing a yarmulke?" So, in other words, basically what he was telling me is, he doesn't mind my speaking and spending time with this young lady, but he would like for me to be a little more observant. I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that. And 130:00that was the end of that. But that was interesting. That was an interesting discussion. I knew what was coming.

CW: Yeah.

HR: But --

CW: So, when you were sort of -- when you started going to public school and you were -- but you had been in this yeshiva world, even if you didn't connect to it, how did that change the way you related to the Jewish community in the Lower East Side?

HR: You mean when I was going to yeshiva? Well, I did connect to it because I was part of it.

CW: No, I mean when you went to -- when you sort of left that.

HR: Oh, when I left it.

CW: Yeah.

HR: Well, I was still part of the Jewish community 'cause --

CW: Yeah.

HR: -- the high school was still in the same neighborhood, my friends were the same friends that went to yeshiva with me. And I would still befriend some of the kids there and he'd invite me over to learn some Gemara sometimes. And I 131:00would sit there, say, Well, let me give it a shot. But what I started feeling was -- one of the things I was very afraid of was becoming -- to me, a yeshiva student -- and I could be -- I'm completely off base on this but -- means being -- you're learning all day and being this shlubby kid. I don't know how you say -- being this kid that doesn't have any -- I'm not attached to anything. I'm not really who I am. To me, that's a failure, yeah. For me to become religious would be -- and to learn would be a failure and I'd be nothing, whatever that means.

CW: Yeah.

HR: And that's -- so, going to high school, I felt -- as I said before, I felt I 132:00belong. I didn't belong in this world anymore. But I did belong in that world because I grew up in that world and I still spoke Yiddish with my parents. But now, as an adult, I don't feel a part of that particular world anymore. I can go to the Lower East Side now or any Orthodox community and I can fall in. I could fake it. I could put on a yarmulke and go to a Hasidic service and I could sing zmires [Shabbos hymns sung at the table] like anybody else. I could do it. But I don't want to because this is not important to me anymore. And I'm not judging these people. They're fine people, but that's not me. It's just not me. So, 133:00marrying this woman, her name is Gail -- parents were not religious -- who knew a couple words of Yiddish. They lived in the suburbs. I don't know about the suburb-- who knew about the suburbs? And ironically, I ended up living in the suburbs for twenty-five years in New Jersey. But I really don't relate anymore. I could. I mean, I could change it like that. And getting older, it's interesting, maybe getting older I'm relating to it a little bit more. I don't know if age has something to do with this. So, we talked on the phone about "Call It Sleep." When I read that book -- and I reread it when we were married, 134:00I said -- she couldn't read it because it was very difficult. The Yiddish was all over the place. And I said, "That's my life." I mean, not the violent part of it, but that's my life. It took place in the ’20s, I think, right? But bring that up thirty years, that's my life, this lost kid. I forgot already the ending, complete story, but this lost kid who's looking for something. So, I read his other novels, too. He continued writing until he died. I read his -- whole bunch of 'em. But he changed, he changed his way of writing. But that was -- when I read that book, I said, Wow, that is me. That's my autobiography.

CW: Just Yiddish and the sort of --

HR: The Yiddish --

CW: Yeah.

HR: -- the Lower East Side, the screaming, the yelling. I could always remember my mother's -- when you're a kid, when your mother calls you, you know who your mother is. So, back then, everyone yelled out of windows, right? It's like, 135:00"Hershl!" I said, "Oh, I got to go home, yeah."

CW: There's that scene in "Call It Sleep," too, with the windows, yeah.

HR: Well, it's -- oh, it's just a great scene.

CW: Yeah, yeah.

HR: I mean, everything's out of windows. Everyone lived like -- there was a show on TV, many -- when I was a kid. "Molly" -- no. About a Jewish woman who lived in -- but she would always be hanging out the window, you know, talking to her friends. But that's the way -- what's kind of nice is -- that life was kind of nice because people -- there was more community back then. I mean, people now drive their kids to different kinds of functions and nobody hangs out anymore.

CW: Yeah.

HR: Nobody goes, takes a walk to a park anymore or hangs out at night and plays any kind of game. Everything's organized now. So, I'm kind of fortunate that I had that life. It was kind of nice. So, there was a very pleasant -- and I don't 136:00mean to make it sound like it was a terrible life. I mean, even kids that are abused, this is the life they know, right? So, I'm not comparing myself to this child but when you live in this -- look, we had cockroaches, there were rats. But what else -- this is what I knew. This is the life I knew and I enjoyed the life.

CW: Yeah. So, how does Yiddish language and your memories of the Lower East Side fit in to other things that are important to you, Jewishly?

HR: You're asking very difficult questions here, my gosh. Oh, gee. Ask the question -- how does that fit into --

CW: Of your broader --

HR: -- my life --

CW: -- Jewish identity, if you --

HR: -- my identity, right.

CW: Yeah.

HR: Interesting. Well, whether you're religious or not, when you speak Yiddish, you have a Yiddish -- Jewish identity. There's no choice in the matter. That's 137:00just the way it is. So, I always identify myself -- even though religiously, I'm not -– (coughs) excuse me, even religiously, I'm not a religious person, an observant person. As a Jew -- what does my wife call us? She calls herself a cultural Jew. I'm not trying to divert too much. She grew up in a household -- this is very interesting -- where if they went to a seder, to her, a seder was a place to have a meal. She knew nothing about the symbolism of the seder. Like, if she went to somebody's house -- she was telling me a story once, she went to someone's house for a seder and they had these books, which were, you know, prayer books for the seder, and she says, "What are these? What are these books?" To her, she never experienced this -- the kind of Judaism I experienced, 138:00even though I didn't enjoy it too much. I mean, we come from two sides of the track. And if you speak Yiddish and you grow up with Yiddish, your Jewish identity is constantly there. It's constantly, constantly there. It's always there, if that answers your question.

CW: Yeah.

HR: And Yiddish is -- I love Yiddish. I love the humor in Yiddish, I love -- I had this book at home called "Yiddish Proverbs." And they go over to all -- in English. It's transliterated on one side and English on the other side. And every so often, I read through it, “M’ken nisht tantsn af tsvey khasenes [You can’t dance at two weddings at once].” You can't do two things at once.

CW: Right.

HR: Or the best one I love is something about if your child is bad or something like that, love him even more. I mean, that's such a wonderful thing. Instead of hurting your child or putting your kid down or screaming at him, just say, "I love you. I know there are things going on, but I love you so much." And we've always done that with our kids. We've had issues with my younger one and I get these phone calls while I was driving from the principal's office, oh, God. But we'd always say to him, I don't know why you're doing these things but I love you so much. No matter what you do, you'll never hurt me. But we got to talk 140:00about what you're doing. But I got to tell you, to this day, this one, this younger one, I'll get a kiss. To this day, I'll get a kiss, right? Excuse me. My older one is more distant. Well, the older one was born with a whimper and he's -- that's nature versus nurture. That's the way he grew up. He's into, "You're in my space." And I said to him once, "What does that mean, I'm in your space? I have no -- I have no idea what you're talking about. I mean, am I -- is this like a 'Seinfeld' thing? I'm too close to you? I mean, I'm not a close talker." So, I have to back off. It's strange to me. Who is this kid? I mean, the younger one is like -- we'll have breakfast, we'll go out to -- we'll meet and he'll give you a big kiss on the head. And that shows you -- it's interesting. But I 141:00think they also relate to their Jewishness, always. And my younger one, even though he considers himself an atheist, he still relates to his Jewishness, yeah.

CW: So, what do you think about Yiddish today? People ask about the future of Yiddish. What do you think?

HR: Well, it can't last forever. There was a reason why Yiddish existed. Yiddish existed -- it was created -- I think mostly in Poland, if I recall correctly. There was Polish Yiddish, there was Russian Yiddish. It was created because people had this identity. It was their secret language. But people like yourself 142:00who study Yiddish, literary Yiddish, that's different. But you don't go down the street and just -- derken es vos redt [recognize who speaks], "Kim aher, vifl kost dos [Come here, how much does this cost]?" Or you respect in terms of literature and poetry, but in terms of conversational Yiddish, it's coming back again with klezmer and all this business. But I don't -- sadly, I don't see it lasting as a spoken language very much longer. Maybe another generation, perhaps. Sadly.

CW: Yeah. Well, I have one more question but --

HR: Only one more question?

CW: Only one more -- (laughs)

HR: Oh, my God.

CW: -- for today, you know?

HR: I could keep you here all day!

CW: (laughs) Well, I'd like to close by asking what advice -- an eytse [piece of advice] for the future generations.

HR: An eytse. An eytse, eytse. For the -- what? Say that --

CW: For the coming generations.

HR: For coming Jewish generations, always remember where you came from. Never forget. (cries) I sorely miss my parents. Never forget where you came from and never forget the kind of lessons you learned from your Jewish upbringing because they're ethical lessons. They're moral lessons. In terms of Judaism itself, 144:00that's up to the individual in terms of how religious he wants to be or she wants to be. But it wouldn't be a bad idea to know some Yiddish terminology. (laughs) My father was a real heavy-duty curser in Yiddish. I mean, he went for it. So, I'm not gonna go over the curses but -- I mean, some of them are not the nicest things. One curse I love is “Zolsti lign vi a tsibl, mit di kop in der erd un di fis in der er [May you grow like an onion, with your head in the ground and your feet in the air].” I mean, it's not that insulting, but to some 145:00people, if you get angry at them, you can say “Zolsti lig--” It's the way you say it, say (with emphasis and a sour facial expression) “Zolsti lign vi a tsibl,” you know? “Mit a groyse kop in der erd arayn [With your big head in the ground].” But I love the term “der erd [the ground]” -- gey in der erd [go to hell, lit. “to into the ground”]. It means a lot of things. It means go to hell, which I don't think Judaism really believes in, but -- or it means go under the earth, right? Literally. But it's how you say it. Eh, gey in der -- gey in der erd arayn. It's the way you put it. But Yiddish curses are great, they're fun. They're really fun. My mother -- like “penis,” for instance. When I was a kid, it was called a “kutsl.” Now, I'm not sure, that's -- it doesn't sound Yiddish, right?

CW: Little bit.

HR: Sounds Polish or Hungarian and I don't know how that came up with my mother. 146:00I guess I asked my -- oh, I asked my mother what it was once, she said it was a kutsl. Well, that's a -- it doesn't sound like anything, right? Oh, there's another very nice thing: my mother used to read me -- not read me, but tell me fairy tales in Yiddish.

CW: (UNCLEAR)

HR: That was -- I don't remember exactly which ones, but can you imagine -- I mean, you see kids who speak Spanish with their parents and Portuguese with their parents. But when you see a kid speak Spanish with his parents, there's something very special about it. It's a very special kind of relationship. So, my advice is just never forget where you came from. Just never forget it. And I don't think you can, 'cause Jews will always remind you where you came from. (laughs)

CW: Well, a sheynem dank [thank you very much].

HR: You're welcome. (laughter)

[END OF INTERVIEW]