HOWARD NENNER ORAL HISTORY

SANDI RUBIN:This is Howard Nenner, and today is July 16th, and I am here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., with Howard Nemmer.

HOWARD NENNER:Nenn--

SR:Nemm-- Nenner --

HN:Right.

SR:-- I'm sorry -- and we're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. I'm Sandi Rubin. Do I have your permission to record --HN:Yes, you do.

SR:-- the interview? Thank you. All right, I'd like to start -- if you would tell me about your family background?

HN:Okay, well, let's see. My -- on my father's side, the family came from what 1:00is now the western Ukraine, really very close to the Polish border. At the time, it was part of the Austrian Empire. And there's a wonderful story about that, which is that as I was growing up, I had some interest in the family background -- unfortunately, a very limited one, so I didn't ask too many questions. But somehow, I wanted to know how the family identified itself in terms of nationality. And so, my father told me, he said, "Well, we're Austrian." And I said, "Okay, that's fine." And that's what I grew up thinking of ourselves as being. It was only when I became, I think, probably a late adolescent or an adult that I realized that, in fact, we weren't Austrian except in the most technical of terms, because where we were from or the family was from was the 2:00old Austro-Hungarian Empire.

SR:Right.

HN:And -- but there was always a feeling I had that there was a certain amount of cachet to be thought of as Austrian. It sounded better than Polish to me, it sounded better than Russian. So, I thought that was a pretty good thing to be. Anyway, that's where my father's family came from. They emigrated from a shtetl [small town in Eastern Europe with a Jewish community], which, for years, I heard them refer to from time to time. It sounded something like "Strilbitsh," and that's all I knew. And it was only when I got interested in our family background that I started to look into it and attempt to find where this 3:00mythical ""Strilbitsh was. At that point, I knew it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, at the time, the turn of the twentieth century. But that's all I knew, and I never could quite find it. And it actually wasn't until I was working, as I've done from time to time, in London, at the British Library, that I went up to the map room and asked to see if I could get a map of the area at about that time, which might have a "Strilbitsh" in it or if I could further identify it. And the librarian was very good about it, and she quizzed me a little further and she said, "I'll do what I can to help you, but can you give me some more information about what exactly you're looking for and possibly why you're looking for it." And so, I explained the circumstances. She said, "I 4:00have a better idea," because she couldn't come up with anything that actually fit "Strilbitsh." And there was a volume that she had there, and I don't remember exactly the name of it, but it was something to the effect -- "Communities -- Jewish Communities Having Disappeared During the Holocaust." And since I knew roughly what the general area was, I honed in and I found something, which turned out to be the right place. And I'm sure I'm mispronouncing it, but I'll do the best I can -- Strzelbice. And it was such a wonderful feeling to somehow be able to identify it. And then, having done further research, I was able to confirm that that was the place. Okay, so 5:00getting back to the story of my father's family, they emigrated in -- not exactly waves, but incrementally over a few years in the early part of the twentieth century. My father, who was an infant at the time -- he was under a year old -- came with his mother and three of his siblings, and arrived in August of 1906. And I can go back and speak a little bit more about the family. Well, maybe I'll do that now.

SR:Okay.

HN:My paternal grandparents, who were obviously, or maybe not so obviously -- but were Yiddish speakers. In fact, I didn't know my grandfather long enough, 6:00because he died when I was about eight. But I did know my paternal grandmother until she died when I was fifteen -- spoke very limited English and wasn't very comfortable speaking it. But what I was able to learn, mostly from my father, is that they were -- and I'm trying -- I'm groping for the right word. They certainly weren't peasants, and they certainly weren't middle class. But they were one step up, clearly, from being anything that I would identify as impoverished. My grandfather worked in a mill, which I think was a flour mill, but I'm not entirely certain. He worked in a mill in Strzelbice. It was owned by a member of his family. Some stories have it that it was owned by a cousin of 7:00his. Other stories have it that it was owned by a brother-in-law of his. But the one thing that emerged clearly from the family history was that he was not a very nice man, and he took advantage of my grandfather. Now, that may have been a rationalization for the fact that, again, by the admission of my grandmother, my -- and my father telling me the story -- no way to put it nicely -- she stole from the owner. Not much, but she was able to put away a little bit over a long period of time. How she had access to it is unclear. And it's what she always referred to as her "knipl," her little bit of savings. And I remember my mother telling me that when she married into the family as a young woman, the first 8:00piece of advice she got from her mother-in-law was, "You should always have a knipl." You should always have a little money set aside. You never know when you'll need it. Well, in my grandmother's case, again, as the story went, that knipl was augmented, over many years, until she had enough money, somehow, to get the family to America. And they came. My father was the youngest of a large family of seven children, and youngest by far. As I say, he was an infant. And his father, my paternal grandfather, zeyde, was sixty-one years old when he came to America. So, when I would reflect on that, that he became a father for the 9:00last time when he was sixty, it was really quite amazing. Anyway, they made their way to America, and -- so, that's how my father's family came. My mother's family came from Romania. My grandmother, as far as I know -- again, you know, it's my maternal grandmother I'm referring to, and I knew her very well. She was living very close to us in an apartment building just across the hall for many years, and I spent a lot of time just sort of hanging out with her. I mean, she was, in many ways, an iconic figure for her grandchildren. She came from, as we were told, from Bucharest. Her husband, my maternal grandfather, who also died quite young, or at least when I was quite young, came from Iași, which is, I 10:00understand -- I mean, it still is one of the largest cities in Romania. It's probably the second largest at the time. And they came via a different route. Grandpa, who we always referred to as "poppa "-- poppa came via Paris and then made his way from there to New York. My grandmother -- "mommma," as we referred to her -- she came via London. And one of the things that I am very interested in seeing if I can find more about -- so far, I haven't been able to find too much -- I know that on the way, the family stopped in London and spent enough time there for my grandmother to be put into school for a while before they 11:00continued that migration and wound up in New York. And I used to have these wonderful conversations with my grandmother, and I would ask her about London, especially as I got older and I became interested. I thought, when I got out of college, maybe I would be able to travel in Europe. Ultimately, I did, but it took longer than graduating from college. And I would say that that's what I really wanted to do. And, of course, she was totally bemused by that. She couldn't understand why I would want to do that. I mean, her favorite line was, "It was terrible there. Why do you want to go? Why do you think we came here?"

SR:Yeah.

HN:And when she would talk about London, her memories, which I'm sure were quite accurate -- she talked about it always having been dark. Now, those were the years before they even thought of being able to do anything about the noxious 12:00London fog, where things were always very dark. And, of course, she probably remembered, too, what the English winter was like: not necessarily all that cold, but being so far north, it would get dark very early in the afternoon. So, she talked about that. She talked about how she hated being in school. And the reason she hated it was that they put her in a class, which was consistent with what she might possibly have been able to do. She spoke no English. And, in fact, she went through the rest of her life -- although she could speak, again, heavily accented -- but she was illiterate for her entire life. I mean, she couldn't read Yiddish, she couldn't read English, and she hated school because they must have put her, I would imagine, in the equivalent of kindergarten, first grade, and --

SR:Right.

HN:-- but that -- by that time, she was something like eleven years old, and she 13:00was always tall for her age. And so, she felt humiliated by the experience. So, my grandmother and grandfather on my mother's side made their way to New York, independently. They didn't know each other until they got to New York and then, very soon, did meet and marry. And so, my mother was actually born in America. My father, born in 1905, arriving in America in 1906 -- my mother, having been born in America in 1909. So, that's roughly the family background. And now it --

SR:Interesting.

HN:-- gets to New York and ultimately how my parents meet, marry, and here I am.

SR:And here you are. So, can you describe the home that you grew up in?

HN:Sure.

SR:Your family life?

HN:I can. It is very clearly imprinted on my memory, largely because I spent so 14:00much time growing up in one place. My family moved from one apartment -- their first apartment was in -- somewhere in the East Bronx. And then, when I was, I think, about ten months old -- obviously, I don't remember it -- they moved to the apartment further east in the Bronx, where I grew up and spent, really, from that time, when I was ten months old, up until the time I left to get married. And that was when I was twenty-three, so I remember that quite well. So, what was it like? The building was, in many ways, a typical tenement in the -- in New York at the time. Not run-down. It was probably a fairly decent building when it 15:00was built, and I don't know exactly when it was built, but it was certainly -- I would say sometime in the twenties. It was a walk-up. My understanding is, in those years, according to the New York City ordinance that regulated it, if you had a building above five stories, you had to have an elevator. So, they all had five stories and no more, and we were on the fourth. And I marvel to this day how my mother actually managed that, when I think -- there were only two of us children in the family: myself and my younger brother. He's seven years younger than I am. But the shlepping of groceries, of baby carriages, of everything, up and down those stairs, day after day after day. The apartment was a one-bedroom 16:00apartment. And the way it was laid out was that you entered into a hallway, and you continued along that hallways. And first, on your left, there was a kitchen. And then, as you continued straight on that hall -- and I'm making it sound very long. It hardly was. As you continued along that hallway, you came into the living room. And then, if you walked through the living room and continued on in a straight line, you came to a -- another hallway, a much smaller one, off which, to the left, there was a bathroom. And then, at the end was the bedroom. Now, the placement of those rooms was very important in my life growing up. Because of the fact that you had to walk through the living room to get to the 17:00bedroom and to the bathroom, it meant that as I was growing up -- both my brother and myself, as we were growing up -- we seemed to be shuttled back and forth between the living room and the bedroom. When we were quite young, we had the bedroom, and that was really for my parents' convenience. If we -- since we would be put to sleep earlier, they could hardly put us to sleep in the living room, so we got the bedroom. And then, later on, we moved into the living room. And from time to time, that seemed to switch, and I never quite understood what the reason was. But obviously, that's what we did. The apartment -- and again, I say I remember it very well -- the apartment seemed comfortable. And one of the joys that I share with so many people of my generation and culture is that, 18:00given that everybody I knew lived exactly the same way, there was never any sense of deprivation. This is how you lived, and it seemed fine. And whatever the financial constraints on the family were, and they were significant, we always had enough to eat, we always had a place to sleep, we always had clothing to wear. Again, never felt deprived. The kitchen was the -- in many ways, the hub of the household, as in many Jewish families. Obviously, it's where we ate. It is where my mother did the laundry. She had -- again, that was common -- a combination sink and washtub. And so, she had one of those corrugated washing boards, and she would wash the laundry there. And when we were young, I remember 19:00being bathed in that tub, as well, as was my brother. And then the real problem came, after the clothing was washed: how do you dry it? Well, the way you dry it, at least in our family, if you could, was to hang it on a clothesline that went from our bedroom window, across an alley, and connected to a wall. And my mother would hang out the clothes. But she had to do that with a great deal of care, because given that the building was steam heated by coal, there would be -- every time the furnace was on, there would be soot that would arise up through that alley. So, if the furnace was on, you knew, my mother knew, not to 20:00hang out the clothes out the window because -- the obvious reason. And so, that meant she would hang them out to dry in the kitchen. And we had a drying rack that actually was suspended from the ceiling, and she would lower that and hang them out there. And then, many years later -- I was already, certainly, a late adolescent by that time -- the landlord put in a washer and dryer, in the cellar, and that was, of course, coin-operated. And that was an enormous joy, to be able to do that.

SR:Wow.

HN:The life that we lead there, as I say, was -- seemed to me to be comfortable. It seemed quite appropriate. My father went through all of those years, until ultimately -- this was after I was out of the house -- ultimately, they were able to move, and I'll get to that in a moment or two. But he went through all 21:00of his time in this apartment, either being much too hot, which was rare, in the summer, when there was really no relief -- but most of the time being cold, always being cold. And so, he would try to find ways -- and I remember, when I think about it now, how poignant and even pathetic it was, how he would go around stuffing the window frames, either with newspaper or rags to keep the drafts from coming in, and would talk all the time how wonderful it would be just to be comfortable, by which he meant warm. And when they did finally move, which would have been, again, as I say, after I left the house, they moved to a 22:00New York City housing project, which was brand new. It had been built as a middle-income project, again, in the Bronx. And they couldn't have been more delighted with it. New building, an elevator, an apartment -- and actually, it was two bedrooms. My brother was still at home, so he was able to get his own room. The tragedy is that it didn't last. And the reason it didn't last was that, very soon, it seemed to me, after the building was settled and residents were moved in, it didn't take too long before it started to be used by the city for welfare clients, and it deteriorated very, very quickly. The stench of urine in the hallways and the elevators, the defacing of walls, it became really 23:00terrible. And one of the sad consequences of that was that my father, particularly, whose politics were very left-leaning, who was very liberal, who was very tolerant, started to find his liberalism eroding. He once told me a story that I love to retell. He and I were driving out very far in Long Island. We were on our way to a relative's funeral who was being buried somewhere far out on the island. And we fell into conversation of the sort we almost never had. And my father, who was uneducated -- is an intelligent man. He never got beyond the eighth grade, and he was talking about the problems of the world and 24:00things that he thought were wrong. And he talked about how societies always seem to be in conflict and how terrible it was. And then he said, "Of course, there is one country where they don't have these problems." And I said, "What's -- which one is that, pop?" I was a hundred percent certain he was going to say Israel. He didn't. He said, "Japan." I said -- what did he know about Japan? I said, "Japan? Why Japan?" He said, "I'll tell you why. They have far fewer Puerto Ricans there." (laughs) I have to say, it was very funny, although an indication of what had happened to those liberal values.

SR:Yeah.

HN:So, that was very largely what that apartment was like -- I started to say -- 25:00in the summer, he would be very uncomfortable because it got so hot in New York. Needless to say, there was no air conditioning. And something to this day I cannot understand is, I have no memory of there ever being a fan in the house. So, what would happen, on summer nights, is that when I got old enough -- and I can't imagine -- well, I can imagine, it must have been when I -- maybe ten or eleven, I was allowed to sleep on the fire escape, to catch whatever breeze there was. My brother was too young. They wouldn't let him sleep out there. And my memory (laughs) at the time is being out on the fire escape, obviously the window open and this -- and fire escape was off the bedroom -- and pop sort of running around with a newspaper, swatting mosquitoes. And that's what summer 26:00nights were like.

SR:Wow. What about your home life made it particularly Jewish?

HN:What made it Jewish was, first of all, that -- (laughs) well, it seems ridiculous. The -- obviously, we were Jewish. We were consciously Jewish, which is not to say religious. My paternal grandparents had been very religious. Again, my paternal grandfather, who I have some memory of but not much really looked like a biblical patriarch. Long, white beard. Spent what seemed to me most of his life in shul -- made a point -- on Yom Kippur, he would go to shul at the beginning of the holiday, for Kol Nidre, and he would stay there all 27:00night, stay awake, because he said, "It's important to fast. And if you're sleeping, you're cheating, so you've got to be awake" --

SR:Wow.

HN:-- "for the twenty-four hours." I mean, that was an enormous commitment. My parents -- or I should say my father was raised with that -- at one point he rejected it, I don't know. And the rejection, I'm sure it was never anything that was meant as a rebellious act. He just slid away from it, so that during the years that I was growing up, what we did was we observed Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Pesach, and that was essentially all. And pop would go to shul on those 28:00days, and he would go, I think, out of some atavistic sense that this is important to do, but I think also to satisfy his parents. My maternal grandparents were as close to pagans as I can possibly imagine. They were, in cultural terms, totally Jewish, but had no sense of religion or caring for it whatever. Again, not in any rebellious way. It just wasn't particularly important. And so, when I would think about both my parents -- again, when I got older, when I became an adult, and really, not even as a young adult. This has only been going on maybe for the last ten years or so -- trying to put into some perspective the kind of Jews that my parents were. Very -- as I say, very 29:00comfortable as Jews, very comfortable as not being religious. They had some sense of maybe there were certain foods you shouldn't eat. But it was a very, very idiosyncratic way of dealing with it. It's what I call creative kashrus. So, never, never would you have a pork chop in the house or any pork in the house. The first pork chop I ever ate was when I was in the army, and I was stunned by two things. One was that I was not struck dead, (laughter) and second was I liked it. (laughter) But other things were, you know, were perfectly okay, and they were fine. Yiddish was spoken. Both my parents were fluent in Yiddish. But, again, as with many families, it was a code language -- is what they spoke 30:00when the children weren't supposed to hear. And I regret that, because I grew up and still have a modest, passive Yiddish vocabulary. But I regret that I don't speak it. Maybe I'll do something about that.

SR:Can you describe your favorite holiday? And what were some of the foods you ate?

HN:Sure.

SR:And how did you celebrate them?

HN:Right. Interestingly, even though Jewish holidays are so much about food, it wasn't until I became an adult that I really began to enjoy the Passover seder. My favorite holiday growing up was Thanksgiving, and the reason for that, 31:00really, at first, had nothing to do with food. Well, not much to do with food. On Thanksgiving, when I was probably six, seven, eight, nine, in those years, my maternal grandmother, mama, and I and her nephew, Izzy, an adult, would make our way into Manhattan, which we always referred to as downtown. We would go downtown and we would go, on Thanksgiving, downtown for the Macy's Parade, which was just wonderful. And after the parade, we would go for lunch. This -- remember, this is Thanksgiving -- we would go for lunch in the automat, (laughter) which I loved. (laughs, coughs) Excuse me. (coughs) And turkey was 32:00the furthest thing from my mind. The joy of the automat, with the little windows --

SR:Oh, yeah.

HN:-- and the money you put into the machines. And what was so special, too, about that holiday was that cousin Izzy, who at that time, I would guess, was in his forties, maybe, was retarded, mentally retarded. And his family had sent him away, not to an institution, but sent him away to work on a farm in upstate New York, where he was blissfully happy. He was a hulking, strong man, and truly a gentle giant. He was as sweet as could be. And Izzy and mama and I would go out and spend the day, and we were, as I think back on it now, we were all on the same intellectual par. Mama, the illiterate, and, truth to tell, not very 33:00bright, even despite that, because of it, Izzy being mentally retarded, so that when we went downtown on the subway, since I was the only one who could read, I was in charge of knowing what stop to get us off on and get us back on. And then after, after we had lunch at the automat, then we went to the movies. And that was to one of the big Broadway movie houses, usually the Roxy or Radio City Music Hall, and those were absolute delights. So, when I think back on holidays of importance in my childhood, Thanksgiving becomes clearly the most memorable. And after those years pass, then I do remember we used to go out onto the island 34:00to visit aunt Sadie and have Thanksgiving dinner with her, when the whole family would get together, and that was nice, too. Christmas, on the other hand, or even Hanukkah, were not events. Christmas for the obvious reason. Hanukkah, for some reason, didn't really seem to loom large in my childhood. And I can remember -- like I'm sure true of lots of kids, again, of my generation and culture -- thinking that we were being somehow -- if not cheated, we weren't getting what the gentile kids were getting at Christmas. And so, I made a point at one time of saying to my mother, "I wish we could celebrate Christmas," which, to me, meant, of course, getting a Christmas present. The idea of multiple presents was nothing that ever entered my mind. And so, that year, 35:00(laughs) I got a bathrobe. I can't tell you how disappointed I was. (laughter) The idea of anticipating a Christmas present and getting a bathrobe.

SR:(laughs) Was there a particular political environment in your house?

HN:Yes, very definitely. As I said, it was left-leaning, it was liberal. Probably even further left than that, although always leavened with a sense -- and this was my father -- leavened with a sense of caution. Always worried about somehow becoming conspicuous for being someone whose politics were not entirely in the mainstream. He belonged to the American Labor Party, which was on the 36:00left of the spectrum. And one of the most poignant and really tragic experiences that I can recall in this context was his getting very upset -- this would have been sometime in the 1950s. I was already in college, and there was a case that made it into the newspapers which I remember very well. There was a young Jewish man, name was Eugene Landy, and he was a student at the Merchant Marine Academy. And when it -- when he finished his four-year course, as I rem-- this part I'm a little vague on, but I think I'm right, he was refused a commission even though 37:00he had finished, I think, second in his class. He was refused a commission because his mother had once belonged to the Communist Party. Now, this was the 1950s. This was the McCarthy --

SR:McCarthy.

HN:-- era.

SR:Right.

HN:And so, all of this fit, and my father became very upset. Now, it wasn't so much that he was upset for Landy. He was terrified for me. Why? Because at some time before that, as he told the story, a little Jewish man comes to the door, rings the bell, and asks to -- if I could sign a petition to get him on the ballot for whatever minor office he was seeking. I imagine it must -- may have been something in the New York City Assembly. Well, it turned out that he was running on the Communist Party ticket. So, pop was terrified about what this was 38:00going to mean for me. Would I suffer the way Eugene Landy did? So, again, those politics were there, but they had to be muted. But still, there was a kind of snobbishness about our politics, which I assimilated in the sense -- in those years, there were seven New York City daily newspapers. And the ones that pop read were the "New York Post," which was not what the "New York Post" has become today, but began -- was a left-leaning newspaper, and then there as "PM," which was definitely a leftist newspaper. And there was a kind of intolerance, too. I remember my father would say, "Eh, 'Daily News', 'The Mirror', that's for the goyim, you know? We read the 'Post' and the 'PM'." So, that, I think, fairly 39:00well described the politics of the family.

SR:Were there -- did your family have a lot of books in the house?

HN:No.

SR:No.

HN:No. My mother read some. My father read newspapers. And truth to tell, I can't imagine he ever would have had time to do any kind of reading. He worked six days a week. He would leave the house, usually before the sun came up. He would come home, it was already dark. And all he wanted to do on his one day off, which was Sunday, was soak in the bathtub. (laughter) That's what he looked forward to. So, there were some books. As I say, not many. And after my father 40:00died, in my -- he was predeceased by my mother -- after my father died, my brother and I had to clean out the apartment. And the only thing I was interested in having, and still do -- they did have two small bookcases in which whatever books they had were kept. And somehow, that became important to me. And so, that's what I now have in terms of a physical legacy from their --

SR:Were they Yiddish books?

HN:No.

SR:No.

HN:No, they were not Yiddish books. My mother read no Hebrew or Yiddish. My father knew a great deal -- I mean, he was fluent in being able to read Hebrew, because -- you know, from davening in shul.

SR:Right.

HN:That's what he knew. But, no, anything they read would have been in English.

SR:And I see that you went to a heder [traditional religious school] from the time you were five 'til thirteen.

HN:No. Time -- eight until thirteen.

SR:Oh, I'm sorry, eight --

HN:Yeah.

SR:-- 'til thirteen.

HN:Yes, I did. Hated every minute.

SR:Hated every minute. That was in order to become a bar mitsvah.

HN:That was -- order to become a heder, yeah.

SR:And you did not continue your Jewish --

HN:I did not continue -- I remember -- obviously, I was bar mitsvahed on a Saturday. Sunday, I dutifully got up and I put on my talis, and I wrapped the tfillin and -- around my head and my forearm, and I said the prayers. And by Monday --

SR:Finished.

HN:-- forget it. (laughter) It was all over, yeah. But the heder experience was, like so many others that I've read about since and people that I knew -- and again, it's one of my enormous regrets, because spending five years, at the end of which I could, obviously, read and write Hebrew without the foggiest idea of 42:00what I was reading or writing -- it was all rote. I went -- had no immersion or even taste of Bible stories or anything. It was just this rote learning and this old, unkempt, smelly rabbi who would sit with his drumstick, and I would come up -- or, as we'd -- at the time, you'd put your hands on the table and you started to read, and every time you made a mistake, whack with the drumstick. That's what -- that's what my Jewish education was like.

SR:So, it's no wonder you didn't want to continue that.

HN:Yeah, yeah.

SR:So, I'd like to move on, but before we do, I just want to ask one last question --

HN:Sure.

SR:-- about your childhood. What values or practices do you think your parents were trying to pass on to you?

HN:Well, the values and practices that were important to them, I think, had to do with education. That was critical. My father would say to me, over and over again, "I don't care what you do. I just don't want you to have to work with your hands and work the kind of work that -- that I've had to do all of my life." Now, he wasn't really telling the truth when he said he didn't really care what I did, because he did care. What he cared about was for me to get a job that would be secure. And what that meant to him was one of two things: I should either become a teacher in the New York City public school system or I should have a civil service job. That was his horizon for me. So, education was 44:00important, security was important. And despite the fact that neither one of my parents ever went beyond elementary school, there was never a question as to what my education would be like. I would go to college, of course. It just never entered into any kind of discussion. I never questioned it. So, the -- that was probably the most important value. And another one that was not made explicit and which saddens me, because I assimilated it from my father -- a sense of fear of the world, of -- a sense that you always have to be on your guard. Now that 45:00was really part of being Jewish, too, that sense that you always have to be careful, because there is danger lurking out there, and it takes the form, one way or another, of some kind of anti-Semitism. So, be aware of that.

SR:So, then you grew up, and you --

HN:I did.

SR:-- went off to college.

HN:I did.

SR:And I see that you changed careers, sort of --

HN:I did.

SR:-- at some point.

HN:No, not sort of --

SR:No, definitely.

HN:-- dramatically.

SR:Oh, dramatic -- okay.

HN:Yeah, I had -- at some point during my time in college, I decided that what I would do -- would go on to law school and become a lawyer. I don't think my father was terribly pleased about that. He didn't resist. But again, there was 46:00no security in becoming a lawyer. But I did. I went on to law school. I became a lawyer. I practiced law for three years, at which time I made a dramatic switch and decided that what I wanted to do was to go to graduate school and to pursue an academic career, and that was the big switch that I made. And that, too -- I mean, my father was not happy about my wanting to become a lawyer. But after I did, then to give that up and to become a student again was just beyond his comprehension. Of course, by the time I got my Ph.D. and I was a professor, I mean, he couldn't have been more proud, but always worried, always concerned about what things would be like. But my parents had, in many ways, very limited 47:00horizons. Not surprising, I suppose, given their background and culture. When I started teaching at Smith, which was in 1968 -- and started to make my way up the academic ladder -- by 1974, I had not yet gotten tenure, although I was getting close to it, we bought our first house. I had never lived in a house, let alone owned one. And I knew that my parents would be very excited. So, after we had made the offer, had it accepted, I rushed to the telephone and I phoned my mother. And I told her that we had bought a house. She was deliriously happy, 48:00because she would talk during all of my growing up about how that, for her, was an unattainable dream. And she had a lot of envy, and I can't help but think a certain amount of resentment, because all -- but she was one of four children, and her other three siblings, also lived in a house, which in those years we referred to as a private house. They all lived in a -- and now, I was going to live in a private house, so she was very excited. So, she started asking -- maybe she didn't. Maybe I started volunteering information about -- and I explained that it had three bedrooms and a living room and a dining room, at which she interjected, "Eh, dining room you don't need. Do you have an eat-in kitchen." I said, "Yeah, ma. We have an eat-in kitchen and, let's see, there -- 49:00one-and-a-half bathrooms." "What is a -- what's a one -- what's a half bathroom? What does that mean?" So, I explained to her what that was. She was fine with it. She was very pleased. And then, just sort of gratuitously, I said, "It's a really nice house. I think you'll like it. It was built in the '30s, and it's really in very good shape." Silence. "Built in the '30s? You mean it's what they call a used house?" (laughter) I said, "Well, yeah, I guess (laughter) they called it that." The whole idea was for something new. Again, remember that excitement when they moved into that housing project and it was new, and the windows shut properly and had an elevator and all of that. Newness became what was critically important. So, it took getting used to on their part. I also 50:00remember, along the same lines, I was doing my graduate work in California and coming east. No, no, this was another -- anyway, my parents were coming west, that's right. They were coming west. They had never been any further west than New Jersey, and they were coming west to visit me. And my mother was always sort of suspicious about California, not even sure that it was a real place. I remember once phoning -- she phoned once and she said, "I phoned you last night, you weren't there. Where were you?" I mean, here I am, an adult, you know? I said, "We were at the movies." "Really? What kind of movies do you get out 51:00there?" (laughter) So, anyway -- so, they come out and I arrange for them, since I couldn't put them up, I arrange for them to stay in a -- in the house that belonged to friends of mine who were going east for vacation, holidays, whatever it was. And so, I picked them up at the airport and I took them to the house. And it was a -- quite a lovely house. And my mother walked around in the house and, again, made her famous remark, "Why waste all this space on a dining room? What do you need a -- what do they need a dining room for?" Okay, we'll let that one pass. The next morning -- and I got them settled -- and the next morning, I went to pick them up. I can't remember what we were going to do, and my mother said to me, "I don't want you to feel bad or be offended, but we're moving to a 52:00motel." "What's wrong with the house?" "It's a lovely house. It's a lovely house, but the way it's set up, we sleep upstairs. How can we know that nobody's going to break in downstairs?" "Ah." They felt vulnerable in this house. It just didn't seem the sort of place they could sleep with a certain amount of security. So, we moved in -- moved them into a motel.

SR:So, along the way, you got married.

HN:Right.

SR:When was that, and did your wife come from a background similar to yours?

HN:Okay. I've been married several times. Three, to be exact. My first marriage, which was the one that was at that time was -- we were -- well, we were both 53:00much too young to do it. It's a long story. Gloria came from a middle class Jewish family. They lived in Queens. That was also a magical territory. And her parents were very disdainful of our relationship. They thought, and I expect they were right, that their precious daughter was marrying down, out of her class. And they made my parents feel quite uncomfortable, for which I have never forgiven them. But, as I said, we were young, we were immature. But, yes, we were married. I was married at the time, and that marriage didn't last very long. In fact, it broke up when I was in graduate school in California, yeah. 54:00The second marriage had a number of its other problems, but it produced my two children and my two gorgeous grandchildren, who will be arriving in a few days, as they do every summer, to spend time with us. And we're just delighted about that. I'll tell you something else that I think, since we're on a -- or want to stay -- to the extent we can on the Jewish theme. When Gloria and I separated, which -- and divorced, which felt, to me, shameful -- Jewish people didn't divorce, certainly not in those years. It was unusual, and I was somewhat 55:00embarrassed by it. But, obviously, I got used to it. And I spoke to my mother at one point and I said to her -- she asked, "Well, what's going to happen now? You're still a young man." And I said, "Mom, I'm as certain as I can be without knowing that I will remarry. But I have to tell you that the odds are that I will marry someone who isn't Jewish." "You will? Why is that?" And I said, "Not because I'm intent upon marrying someone who isn't Jewish, but it's not" -- and it wasn't at that time -- "it's not important to me. And since there are far few-- Jewish girls than there are Christian girls in the world, the chances are" -- and that's exactly what happened in that second marriage, yeah. It was only 56:00-- it's really only, I would say, in the last ten years or so that being Jewish has become increasingly important to me. Hasn't made me any more religious than I ever was, but I feel that strong connection to being Jewish. And one of the things that may be, in fact, on the list of things you want to ask me about was my first trip to Israel --

SR:Right.

HN:-- which happened three years ago. I'd always wanted to go, and time never seemed right or whatever. And friends of ours who go to Israel regularly because their children or at least their son and is family live in Tel Aviv -- so, they would do -- travel over there. They were going over for their granddaughter's 57:00bat mitzvah. And since I've known this family forever, and I was very pleased, and I said, oh, that's wonderful, I wish we could be there for that. And they said, "Well, come." So, Pamela, my wife, and I said, "Okay, we will." And we did. And it was just an amazing trip. I had always been somewhat ambivalent about Israel. I was afraid that I would get there and I wouldn't like it, and I didn't want that to happen. Well, it didn't happen. I got there and even though I have lots of reservations, if not dislike for Israeli politics, I was able to put that aside and just enjoy being there. And this was just circumstantial, it 58:00hadn't been planned this way -- we spent our first week in Jerusalem and then went over the second week to Tel Aviv for the bat mitzvah and other things. And so, we were on our own in Jerusalem, staying in, very conveniently -- near the Old City. And on a -- trying to remember. It must have been Friday evening that year -- that it was coming up to both Shabbos and Yom Kippur. And so, we wandered through the Old City toward the Western Wall, and got there just as the sun was starting to go down, and the sun was playing on the wall in that 59:00magnificent golden light. And it was filled with groups of men, already beginning their prayers, and different groups, some being somber, some being joyous, some dancing, some not. And I stood there and I thought to myself, This is amazing. This is -- here I am at the Western Wall. It is Kol Nidre and it also, just by chance, is my seventy-fifth birthday. I said, "It's fantastic." And I felt such a sense of belonging, such a sense of being part of a tradition 60:00that is thousands of years old that it was just incredibly moving, and that feeling has stayed with me as clearly as it was at the time. So, I guess the point I want to make is that I do feel, as I get older, a lot more Jewish. Again, no more religious, but a lot more Jewish and a lot more sensitive how that part of me, culturally, is so vitally important and so defining of who I am, yeah.

SR:What about your children? Do --

HN:Okay, that's an interesting story. I have two children. The elder, Jessica, who is now forty-three, and the younger, Sarah, who is forty-one, were children of my second marriage to a non-Jewish woman who had been born Catholic, whose 61:00family then became Episcopalian and who -- and she was in no way religious herself, except feeling a certain amount of, again, cultural identity with that background. And so, the question -- the logical question came up with the children: how were we going to raise them? And we decided, well, since neither religion was important to us, that we would just raise them without religion, that they would know they had a Jewish father and a Christian mother, and let them make of that what they will. Biggest mistake of my life. I assumed that 62:00they would -- especially Jessica, the elder -- that she would assimilate my sense of Jewishness, that that would carry over to her. And it never happened. If anything, she identified as a child and as a teenager with the Christian part of her background, and I felt awful about that. I felt that there was something lost and it was my fault. And it was, because I did nothing to inculcate any sense of Jewishness, other than being Jewish myself. Jessica, who has now been married for eight years and who has produced two of the loveliest grandchildren 63:00imaginable has become Jewish. Not religious. She married a Jewish man. They're raising their children as Jews, and she feels more comfortable with that than with anything else. And that, for me, is just --

SR:Interesting.

HN:-- an enormous sense of pleasure, yeah.

SR:And your younger daughter?

HN:The younger daughter is more complicated. Sarah is adopted. She's Korean. She has gravitated to a church in Northampton, not out of any religious feeling, but a sense that they have kind of taken her in and given her a kind of support that she needs and wants. And so, I asked her -- one point not too long ago, I said, 64:00"Sarah, if you had to identify yourself by religion, what would it be?" And she said, "Well, I suppose it would be Christian." Although, again, there's no religious component in that. It's just that feeling of association.

SR:So, was there a time in your life -- maybe it's just now, but it -- was there a time in your life when you felt especially Jewish? And was it in a good way? A bad way?

HN:Well, it's gone through a number of changes. Growing up, unthinkingly, yes, I was Jewish. It just -- there was no question of choice. I mean, that's what I was, and that's the world I grew up in. I mean, the neighborhood that I grew up in must have been easily ninety percent Jewish, so that was easy. As I got 65:00older, and especially in my second marriage and coming to Smith and starting a new life, I felt less Jewish. Again, not in any sense repudiating or rejecting being Jewish, but taking on a persona that was, or at least I thought was basically neutral. I have a colleague, Jewish colleague, also from New York, who used to say to me, "You have two voices: your history department voice and the voice with us, with your friends." And it was true. And so, yes, it wasn't until later on, until the last ten, fifteen, maybe twenty years that, increasingly, 66:00being Jewish has become more and more important to me.

SR:Is your third wife Jewish?

HN:No.

SR:No.

HN:She is an anomaly. She -- (laughs) Pamela was born and raised a Presbyterian, has rejected that, in a very conscious way, and has become a -- how can I describe it? She has become a Yiddish-phile, in that she just loves all things Jewish. And I often tease her about the fact -- have to remind her that she really isn't Jewish and she'll say, "Well, yes I am!" And it's -- that's a nice feeling, too, yeah.

SR:You indicated that you read many books with Jewish themes. What are some of your favorites, and why?

HN:Okay, well, there are a lot that I've been reading. I found -- and this was really after the Israel trip that I've been meeting -- reading lots and lots of books about Israel, attempting to know more about it to understand the complicated politics of the Israelis. And, in addition to that, I've become very interested in the immigrant Jewish experience and the first-generation Jewish experience. I have found that I particularly enjoy reading fiction by Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, by Bernard Malamud, and things like that. And, well, what I 68:00should also say, be it -- this interview would not be complete without my mentioning it is that when I retired, seven years ago, and I started to think about this business, not only of my Jewishness but the disparity in the environment between what I grew up in and what my grandchildren are growing up in in California -- that I wanted them and do want them to have some sense of where they've come from and how different life was. So, I started writing a memoir for them about my childhood. I wasn't sure where I was gonna go with that, but it took on a life of its own after a while, and it is now about to be published.

SR:Oh!

HN:So, it just strikes me as -- will be a great legacy for them. They're too young to understand it now, but as I write in the dedication, "For Hannah and Abby, when they're ready," they'll have that, and I can't think of a nicer legacy --

SR:Right --

HN:-- to leave --

SR:-- nor can I --

HN:-- to grandchildren.

SR:-- no.

HN:So, that's become very important, as well.

SR:Is there a particular work of art or music or literature that has had a particular impact on you?

HN:Interesting question. My musical tastes run through classical music, usually music from the baroque. I don't know that I can single out one more than another. I have, I would like to think, a wide and somewhat eclectic taste in 70:00literature, both in fiction and non-fiction. And from time to time, there have been books that have had a particularly profound effect on me. And one that I'm now thinking about, because it does have an important Jewish theme, is Amos Oz's autobiographical memoir, which he wrote about, I don't know, ten years or so ago. And it's terrible that the name -- the title is escaping me at the moment, but it is a beautiful, beautiful book about his growing up as a child in Jerusalem, and about something I hadn't really thought about before I read this, 71:00which was -- I think it's called "A Time of Love and a Time of Sorrow," something like that. Anyway, he talks about how, when his parents emigrated from Russia toward -- I think it must have been at either the -- right around the turn of the twentieth century, how disappointed they were in Palestine, because they wanted to get away from Russia, but still they were leaving behind a cosmopolitan culture that they didn't find in Palestine. And it was very difficult for them to assimilate. Anyway, it's a lovely book. If you haven't read it, I strongly recommend it.

SR:I've read things by Amos Oz, but I don't think I read his --

HN:Read that one.

SR:Okay. You also read "The Forward."

HN: I do.

SR: What is it about The Forward" --

HN:Well, that's --

SR:-- that appeals to you?

HN:-- I mean, again, that's the -- it's the sense of Yiddishkayt more than anything else. I find -- I can't remember what made me start subscribing, which I did a few years ago. And not everything in it interests me. But there are things -- I mean, I like its political viewpoint, which is very balanced. I like stuff it writes about Israel. I like -- I like that sense of just having a feel for what's going on in the Jewish world. Tell you another story that is really appropriate. I don't remember what year it was. It was a long time ago. It was in the early days of the Yiddish Book Center, and I remember coming for the 73:00first time to the Yiddish Book Center. And it was a particular program. I don't remember what it was that I was interested in. And, as I came up to the front door and saw a sign that talked about its hours -- and what struck me, it said, "Closed on Shabbos." I can't tell you how that made me feel. The sense that I was back in that Yiddish world, in the same way today I refuse to call a yarmulke a kippah. It's not the Hebrew that's important to me, it's the Yiddish. So --

SR:Just the throwback to your --

HN:Throwback to -- yeah.

SR:-- your family.

HN:That's right, very much so.

SR:Your roots. So, do you think there's been a resurgence in the Yiddish language?

HN:No, I don't. I think the work that Aaron Lansky and this organization has done is absolutely remarkable to keep it alive, and I suppose in that sense there's been a resurgence. There -- certainly the resurgence that is associated with the Ultra-Orthodox, both, say, in New York and even in Israel. But I think Yiddish is probably dying. It will be kept alive for a while, but I'm sorry to say it -- I think it'll probably pass within the next -- certainly within the next century, if not before.

SR:Do you have any advice for future generations for keeping the Yiddishkayt alive, the --

HN:Well, I don't know that I have advice. It might be presumptuous to think that I could advise people on that. I can only speak to my own experience and how important that is to me. But remember, that kind of background that's being steeped in Yiddishkayt was a product of a different time and a different place. As we get further and further from that, there will be fewer and fewer people who've had that experience. So, I think it is worthwhile to keep alive. But, again, I'm not overly optimistic about it, yeah.

SR:So, before we wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to talk about? Is there anything we didn't cover that you'd like to consider?

HN:I think we pretty much covered everything that is important about that -- my Yiddish connection and what's so important to me about it. And I hope that people, young people today who come out of a Jewish background and whatever it means to them, however they define it, can find ways to incorporate it in their lives and pass it on. I'd like to see that happen. I didn't do a very good job 77:00myself, but it worked out fine with Jessica, and I'm delighted about that.

SR:That's great. Well, thank you so much --

HN:Thank you.

SR:-- for sharing your stories, your reflections, and thank you on behalf of the Yiddish Book Center.

HN:You're quite welcome.

[END OF INTERVIEW]