DAVID BERG ORAL HISTORY

MARK GERSTEIN:So, are you ready?

DAVID BERG: Yeah, sure.

MG: Okay. This is Mark Gerstein, and today is August 20th, 2013. I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts with David Berg, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. David, do I have your permission to record this interview?

DB:Yes, you do.

MG:Thank you. Okay, I know you grew up in a Jewish community in South Philadelphia. Can you -- can you tell us about that?

DB:Yeah. People have a misconception about South Philadelphia. What people think of South Philadelphia is either cheesesteaks, Chubby Checker, rock and roll, or Rocky on the -- running down 9th Street in the Italian Market. South 1:00Philadelphia is much more than that. It's a rich ethnic mix. It's a -- really, a land of tolerance and a -- the home of all of the possible freedoms that you could have as an immigrant growing up. I grew up in a section of South Philadelphia that was a rich -- when I say rich ethnic mix, we were diverse before that was popular in America. My block was a melting block of United Nations. Mostly European folks, some Asian folks, and the neighborhood was integrated, as well. I went to all integrated schools. This is in the 1950s and '60s, and it was really a wonderful place and a wonderful experience growing up. And when I -- I like to use the word tolerance. It may not have been -- though we're in the City of Brotherly Love, it may not have been love thy neighbor, but it was tolerance and respect for all of the different ethnic groups that were 2:00down there. Very important, growing up. Let me talk about -- a little more about South Philadelphia. People, as I say, think of it as maybe rock and roll or cheesesteaks, but it was the place that gave birth to Mario Lanza, Marian Anderson, Man Ray, the famous photographer. My uncle went to school with Joey Gottlieb, who was Joey Bishop. Jack Klugman lived around the corner. Eddie Fisher, the singer. Outside South Philadelphia High School last May, of -- when I say last May, this year, they put up a big memorial honorary plaque on the street to Israel Goldstein, who was a graduate of South Philadelphia High School in 1911. He went on to found Brandeis University. Albert Barnes of the Barnes Foundation grew up in South Philadelphia. And for me, perhaps the most famous 3:00and distinguished graduate of the school was Larry Fine of the Three Stooges. And that's -- there's quite a list of other important people who graduated, including me, as a graduate of the school. The issue about immigration is what I'd like to mention now. Since we were a rich, ethnic mix -- lots of people think that everyone who came to America came in through Ellis Island. I'm gonna tell you a secret that I'm gonna swear the audience to -- Shh, don't tell this to my cousin Rhonda. My grandparents and the whole family came in through the immigration station on Delaware Avenue -- that's Columbus Boulevard now -- and Washington Avenue. It was the immigration station into Philadelphia. It was like 4:00an Ellis Island. The reason I tell you not to tell my cousin Rhonda is she paid for a memorial brick to the family at Ellis Island. And so, we don't tell her this part. And so, when people got off the boats, especially the Europeans, they were filtering in through South Philadelphia. This is the heart of South Philadelphia, and everybody dispersed there, and it became almost striations. Lots of the Irish immigrants through the 1800s, through the famine, populated along Second Street, Front Street, Waterfront, and to an area called Fishtown. The Jews and the Poles and the other Europeans, Eastern Europeans, populated Third, Fourth, Fifth -- streets are numbered that way in Philadelphia. And the Italian families were up a little bit further -- Ninth Street is the Italian 5:00Market and the heart of Italian South Philadelphia. All these other areas were real mixes of people. Growing up, the Jewish shopping districts were in these numbers along Fourth Street, which was called the "ferter." And it was shopping -- I guess it looked like a Hester Street, with stands and shopping venues, all the way up to South Street and also Seventh Street in South Philadelphia, the "zibeter." And there were signs -- and, again, it looked like Hester Street. Pushcarts. Butter and egg store, and kosher signs and all of those things there. My father's family -- my father's cousin, some cousin, had a men's clothing store on -- in this area, and he was always kind enough to call us about a week 6:00in advance of his fire sale so that we could go in and buy a suit or something from this man. And then he had his yearly fire sale, and he restocked and it was a wonderful experience with him. My -- I will tell you, also, that in South Philadelphia, there were over a hundred thousand Jews between 1890 and 1940. That is significant. And there were a hundred shtetl [small town in Eastern Europe with a Jewish population] synagogues or shuls built into the teeny rowhouses, and all of these shuls were populated by the people who would come from same villages throughout Europe. A little later on, I'm gonna talk about the Little Shul that I was part of and my grandfather was part of, and I'll hold 7:00off on that for a little bit. But I will tell you now that there -- there's a lot written on the South Philadelphia Jewish community. There is an author, Allen Meyers, who's written a series of books about the Jews of Philadelphia and the Jews in the different locations. And this is the Jewish community of South Philadelphia. It's a wonderful book for anyone who likes ethnic history. It's full of pictures of families, it's full of pictures of the schools, the parades, the shuls and even -- this comes as a great surprise to people -- there were even Jewish mummers' troupes in South Philadelphia, with -- our mummers parade is the highlight of the New Year, and it's worthwhile for anyone who would want to learn more about the -- South Philadelphia and all of its ethnic history. And 8:00again, I will ask you, don't tell cousin Rhonda. It'll break her heart. My father's family came in, and I call them more nomadic in Philadelphia. They lived in various sections that were -- Jewish section of Philadelphia. A little bit in South Philly, North Philadelphia, an area of West Philadelphia, a famous area in Philadelphia called Strawberry Mansion, and they seemed to move around a lot. I can only surmise that they were one step ahead of the landlord in there, and that my father's father, who is Mutis, whom I never met -- I think he was a failure at pushcarts. And so, the family moved all around. My mother's family moved right into South Philadelphia off of the boat into South Philadelphia. 9:00They were the Steins. And I never met these grandparents. These would be, I guess, great-grandparents of mine. Nachum Stein, a tall, thin man, walked around with a cane and a farbisene, sour, dour look. And if you got in his way, he clubbed you with the cane. His wife, Yeta Kela, gave birth to five children. Now, for people watching, don't confuse the word -- the name Yetta with the Yiddish word "yenta," although for her I understand they were synonymous. They gave birth to five children. One was my grandmother, Esther. And I believe my grandmother was an infant coming to America -- steerage. And I think that there's a floating story, like many families have, of myths and superstitions. 10:00But in this kind of story, I think they smuggled her in in a suitcase, in steerage, that -- in a basket, and she came in that way. This grandmother and my father's mother, my other grandmother, were prairie women. And I'm sure other families have these same stories. They cooked, they sewed, they built, they chopped, they clopped, they worked in factories. They raised multitudes of children along the way. I think that there's a Yiddish word called "balebosta [woman of the house]," which, in this case, is a compliment to them as people who could do and work and be bossy. I think when you look at the word written down, it doesn't look so complimentary. My grandmother was also the president of the Jewish War Veterans Association in South Philadelphia. My Uncle Sid had served in World War II, and I think my grandmother was very important in 11:00bringing Bingo to the Jewish war veterans -- as fundraiser. In addition -- and this is a story my mother would always tell me about my grandmother, Esther Stein -- that Esther also loved movies. She had a great passion for movies. And South Philadelphia had a movie theater practically every other block. I said there were over a hundred shuls. There must have been over a hundred movie theaters, as well, in South Philadelphia. And my mother and grandmother would go to dish night every Tuesday. For those who don't know dish night, it was a way for the theaters to pull in patrons on a weeknight. You paid your admission, which must have been ten cents, and you got a dish. If you'd go for four consecutive weeks, you'd get dinner plates. The next four weeks were saucers. 12:00The next four weeks were cups, and so on and so forth. And if you went to my grandmother's, you would see this mishmash of dish collections from dish night. My mother always finished telling the story that at the end of the movie, as the lights came up, you would hear the clatter and breaking of dishes on the floor as women would get up, forgetting that they had the dishes on their lap. And then, my mother would hoot and laugh at all of this. These Jewish women, my grandmothers, they were of legend that many people tell you about. The carp was in the bathtub. They would have grandpop club the carp and they'd make the gefilte fish. Grandpop would make the horseradish. And in my grandfather's case, who I'll talk about, Louis Martin -- he also used the tub to make bathtub gin. 13:00So, because the carp had been in it for so long, the gin was flavored in very odd ways. And he actually said things like that. They made their own matzo balls, and my grandmother's matzo balls were legendary for becoming intestinal obstructions. They would sit there, in you, for at least a week, through the holidays. They were terrible, horrible, weighty things. Had Moses had my grandmother, he could have put them on catapults and ended the ten plagues early. These women were tough, and it's a testament to them how they raised their families in Philadelphia, of all places. I'll mention my grandfather now. I sat with my grandfather when he was about eighty years old. He was a widower 14:00at this time in a little rowhouse in South Philadelphia. He sat by the window. He had trouble with his legs, he had trouble ambulating. He still went out to shop, he still went to synagogue, the Little Shul that I'll talk about. But he always had a classic pose. He sat in his armchair, by the window, looking out, smoking a cigar. There was never a time I didn't see grandpop with a cigar. He always had cantorial music playing in the background. He had a collection of 78s, which he continued to listen to in nineteen -- he lived into the 1990s, until '97, and he never changed his records. And he listened to them, and I think he had secret wishes that he could've been a cantor, because he always sang at family events for us. Anyway, he's smoking his cigar. Next to him is 15:00either a glozl [little glass] of te [tea] or a little schnapps. And schnapps figured big into my grandfather's life. Anytime I would come for a visit or to go into celebration at the shul, it was a requirement -- more a requirement for my grandfather that I bring a bottle of Canadian Club -- more so than whether I carried a talis with me in a talis bag. In fact, I think I carried this Canadian Club for the shul in my talis bag. And that was the donation that they expected. I said to my grandfather, "How did you get your name?" And so, I'm doing this family interview with him, and he tells me that he came over in 1910, on a ship. He called it the "kesl garden." I think that's what he called it, the "Castle 16:00Garden," "kesl garden." And he had come in with his brother, Avrom. Abraham, essentially. And he was sent for by his three brothers who had come to America earlier. He had come from a little town of [Filesht?], in Romania. Now, he said, "Sometimes it was" -- in his Yiddish, Eastern European -- "Sometimes it was Romania, then sometimes it was Russia, and sometimes it's Romania." But every time he says Romania, it's like he starts singing, "Romania, Romania, Romania, Romania!" And he did that to the delight and annoyance of everyone for all of his life. And he would sing it and sing it and sing it. At the top of the gangplank, his name was Leib Kalinsky, and his brother was Avrom Kalinsky. So, 17:00here's Leib Kalinsky. He's about fifteen years old. It's 1910. He's just made that journey in steerage. He speaks only Yiddish. A little Russian, maybe, or Romanian, whatever was in the language. And he comes down the gangplank. He comes through customs and his name is now Louis Martin. And that's why I asked -- I said, "Grandpop, how did you get the name Louis Martin from Leib Kalinsky?" Well, here's the story. His brothers who had come here earlier, somewhere in the late 1800s, early 1900s -- one sent for the next, sent for the next. He said that his brother, Henry, had gone out to Utah when he came to America. I -- I said, "What do you mean he went to Utah?" And my grandfather said, "Yeah, he went to Utah to become a farmer, and while he was in Utah, he changed his name 18:00to Henry Martin. He was Harry Kalinsky and he went with his wife, Rebecca, and they become farmers in Utah." Well, I thought that -- and I'm serious, I thought my grandfather had had a little too much schnapps that day. And so, he said his brothers didn't do well as farmers and that they came back to Philadelphia, settled in, and they send for the -- my grandfather and his brother, Avrom. Well, I said, "What happened to Avrom?" Well, Avrom stayed in Philadelphia for a year only. He hated Philadelphia, and he got on a boat and he went back to the town of [Filesht]. I s-- "Why would you go back to the town of File--" -- my grandfather said he had a great job that he couldn't do in Ameri-- what job 19:00would make you go back to the Old Country? My grandfather said something -- "He was a tatshemetshisht" -- words I could not understand. I said, "Well, what does that mean?" He was a chimneysweep in [Filesht] and he made a good living in [Filesht], if you can believe that's what you make a good living at. So, my grandfather tells me about his brothers, and my grandfather went to work as a butcher's boy, delivering on a bicycle through the Jewish section, kosher butcher. But let me tell you, I learned only this year, in Philadelphia, at a special celebration of this little synagogue that my grandfather attended, that, in fact, in 1910, the governor of Utah solicited families around the United States to go to Utah to set up farming colonies. One of the solicitations was to 20:00-- Philadelphia group, and they became the Clarion -- C-A-L-- C-L-A-R-I-O-N, Clarion Colony. They went, they trained in a -- an agriculture -- Jewish agricultural school south of Doylestown. Doylestown is about an hour, I guess, north of Philadelphia. Small, lovely town. And south of there was a Jewish agricultural school. It is now called Delaware Valley College, and it became a college, and they trained to be farmers. They go out to Utah, from 1910 to 1920, and the colony failed. They did not really know how to farm. They did their best, and they all came back. And I learned that, in fact, my grandfather's brothers had gone to Utah. The Clarion Colony failed and the governor of Utah 21:00then went to the West Coast and brought in Japanese families, who stayed in Utah. So, there was real truth in this story. My grandfather loved Philadelphia. He had no skills. He could not read or write English. He could -- he spoke, as I say, in the broken accent. I enjoyed, somewhere along the way, in my youth, reading a book called "The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N," which was by Leonard Q. Ross, and that was a pseudonym for Leo Rosten -- as speaking the broken English and the -- all the idioms and such. And that's what my grandfather did. He loved America. In the 1930s, he got a job at the quartermaster, the government quartermaster, as a pants presser, for thirty 22:00years, pressing pants. And he did that, and he considered himself very fortunate. He retired in the late 1950s. And he worked, he supported his family, he raised a family, and he talked about it, this time: the freedoms that he had when he came to America. He had -- first, he mentioned his freedom to worship, because it was always fearful in the little town -- of a pogrom, something like that. He was proud that he and my grandmother, Esther, had become citizens, because they could never become citizens in their little town. He was proud that he could raise his own family in the way he wanted, and he raised them to be good citizens, and he raised them to speak English. So, there was very little 23:00Yiddish spoken -- I'll come back to this in a little bit. And then, he said -- and I did not understand this -- so, I'm talking to my grandfather, somewhere in 1980 or so. He said he had freedom from fear. He said, in his own way. And I asked him what that meant. He said you could go to work, you weren't going to be attacked on the streets. You could be Jewish and people would smile at you. Tolerance is what I meant. He lived in a neighborhood that was Irish and Catholic and Protestant and all other nationalities, from countries where Jews were not held in particularly high esteem. All the neighbors worked together. And he said -- the other funny thing is he said you had freedom from fear that when there was a knock on the door, it was your neighbor. It was your neighbor, 24:00asking if you were ill, could they help? It was your neighbor knocking on the door, asking you if they -- when he was elderly, could they buy him something at the store? And as I grew up in South Philadelphia, it was a knock from my neighbors, asking you, at Christmas, did you want to come in and see the tree? And you would go in to see the tree. They'd give you some nice food, halupkis, golumpki. My mother's neighbors were Polish and Irish. And you really had a sense that there was nothing to fear. So, this is in late 1950s, when I'm talking about. And so, you've come out from Holocaust times, the Rosenberg times, and so on and so forth. So, it's like living in a bubble of nice memories. My grandfather actually felt that he had achieved the American dream. 25:00And I'll tell you, in the last parts of his life, whether we would have a seder -- and I have video of this at home -- whether you went to an unveiling -- he would do people's unveilings. He would say the prayers and such. A bar mitzvah. My grandfather would spontaneously burst out at the end of these things with "God bless America," and he would lead everyone -- we have video of a seder, where the seder is done, and all of a sudden, my grandfather's singing, "God Bless America." At my uncle's unveiling, everybody's boo-hooing and crying and my grandfather's singing "God Bless America." He felt he had truly achieved the American dream. And I suppose he had achieved it with all of that stuff, and freedoms that he felt in -- along the way. And that was the family. Now, in 26:00terms of what else happens in families -- I'm a psychologist, and I talk about child development, adult development, and how do we become who we are? How do we get our identities? And in this case, we're talking about how did I get my ethnic identity? What gets transmitted in the culture? Well, I guess for a Jewish boy, somewhere around the seventh or eighth day, the culture puts its imprint on you with a little snip, a little prayer, and you're Jewish. And this is called social construction, that what you're gonna experience in your home is a way of looking at the world. Hearing a language, hearing, in this case, my grandfather's accent. And so, every ritual that happens, every holiday that happens begins to imprint that this is who you are. These are the values of your 27:00culture. Go to school, give to charity, be kind to the elderly, and so on and so forth. And my grandparents -- and this is why I focus on them -- they were the hub of the family, so that, of course, every time that there is a holiday -- or it's better to call it holy day, whether we're near Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, all the other holidays, my grandmother would be the hub. And she would have -- I told you, she had -- was one of five siblings, so she would have her siblings, their children, their children's children, and the place was jammed. And I'm talking about a tiny room in South Philadelphia where you are sitting on top of each other. All the little kids were consigned to the kitchen near where my 28:00grandmother was cooking. The kitchen is already up to eight hundred degrees, and she's pounding the fish and making everything. And you -- you get your ethnic identity by the songs, the prayers, hearing the accents in all the people, and eating the foods. I knew that my neighbors who had things called halupkis, golumpkis, Irish stew, were not having gefilte fish, chopped liver, schmaltz, gribenes [fried goose/chicken skin], all those things that would kill the men at the table at an early age. And my grandfather, I remember him at Passover -- of course, he was always leaning on a pillow, and he always, while everyone's drinking the wine, he had a little bottle of -- he called it Slivovitz, and it was Romanian plum brandy that was at least two hundred proof, and you could warm 29:00your body around grandpop. He came into the kitchen and he would always sing "Romania" to the children. And so, here's all this inculcation of identity. My grandfather also taught us -- he didn't know it, the difference -- the sacred versus the profane. He would lean over all of the kids to make us laugh. He was a nice man. He smelled from his Slivovitz and his cigars that were terrible, and he would tell us that -- and here -- here's how we learn -- that that day, at the quartermaster, with the other pants pressers, he -- my grandmother packed him a lunch. It was Passover. Matzo, piece of gefilte fish, chopped liver, a boiled egg, the horseradish, and he traded it with his coworker, Giuseppe. 30:00Giuseppe got all the Jewish food and my grandfather got a gabagool hoagie. Gabagool is a kind of a ham with cheese, and he's making the kids laugh, and he's saying, "Shh, don't tell grandmom, don't tell grand--" so, I learned the different -- sacred from profane. Same thing in my father's family. They were kosher. In their houses, they had the multiple sets of dishes. If you use the wrong knife, it was buried in the backyard. And they were kosher and the food was kosher, and they didn't mix meat with milk. However, there was kryptonite in their lives: on Sunday, they'd go to Chinatown and they would eat shrimp. Never pork, but shrimp was kryptonite. Soon as it came out, they lost all of their ethnic identity. But what does that teach children? It teaches you that you can 31:00stretch, you can be flexible, you can do all of those kinds of things. They did provide Jewish education in South Philadelphia. There were lots of kheyders [traditional religious school]. I didn't go to any of those. I went to an afternoon school called the Ben Rosen Jewish Center, and it was from -- about four o'clock to six o'clock, where you would learn Hebrew writing, Hebrew school, songs, read the siddur. You'd learn the prayers and you would study for your bar mitzvah. And I will tell you, I will confess, I'm a Hebrew school dropout. Soon as that bar mitzvah comes around, you were out of there by that time. But this was important for families, and so you had your Jewish education down there, as well. The other thing in the family that you could really enjoy 32:00is that -- and I think Billy Crystal did a play about Sunday nights. "The Ed Sullivan Show" was on and everybody would gather round. I'm already the generation beyond radio shows. It's Ed Sullivan. And soon as a Jewish comedian comes on, they all gather around the set, whether it's Jackie Mason or Alan King or a Borscht Belt comedian. And in the family, while we're watching Milton Berle, we're watching Carl Reiner, we're watching the "Show of Shows," my neighbor aren't watching that. They're watching the competing channel, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, and we're watching all the Jewish comedians. So, it gives you a view of the world that is different than all of your neighbors in terms of the 33:00absurdity, the irony, the tragedy and the laughter about it. And Sunday nights were very special in that way. And as I say, the family always did that. My uncle -- when my uncle took over some of the Passover seders and family dinners, all of the children were pushed out of the room. I told you that my grandfather had a collection of cantorial music. My uncle, on the other hand, had a collection of Belle Barth albums, and -- filthy, dirty Jewish comedienne who was appearing always in Las Vegas, and she was telling the dirty jokes. And all the kids would gather around the door, and you would hear the setup of the joke and you would hear about the stuff and you're giggling and you're turning red. And then, the punchline was in Yiddish -- (gesturing with hands) (speaks in Yiddish 34:00gibberish) -- and all the adults are laughing and every-- all the kids are looking -- we had no idea what it was about, but it was warm, it was growing up -- and much of it the way Woody Allen portrays Jewish families -- crazy, yelling, screaming -- it really did feel like that, but it felt good. So, somebody asked me what was it like growing up in South Philadelphia, growing up Jewish? And I said, "Gee, it's fun!" It was a fun life growing up. So, that was a great experience down there.

MG:Was Yiddish spoken in your household at all?

DB:Well, my parents understood Yiddish from their parents. The only times my parents would speak Yiddish was when they did not want us to know what they were talking about. As I said a little earlier, their parents, my grandparents, wanted them to be able to assimilate and get right into the culture, and to get 35:00work and to be a part of America. So, they knew Yiddish. What the kids would pick up were the curse words in Yiddish. So, I could probably curse right now for you. I won't, but you picked those up. And I know that my friends growing up in South Philly had that same kind of experience along the way. I can tell you a story about my wanting to learn Yiddish a little.

MG:Did you ever study Yiddish? Yeah.

DB:Yeah, so -- yeah, about 1979, I am already about, at that point, thirty-one years old. I'm a psychologist, I teach at a community college in Philadelphia. And I went through a program to be trained to do family therapy. So, in that program, you had to put together a genogram. We call it a -- in everyday 36:00parlance, a family tree. And my grandfather's interview and my aunt's and everyone were a part of that. So, I began to get a little more interested in Yiddish after speaking to my grandfather, since it was all in English and I couldn't speak to him. So, at the YMHA in Philadelphia, the -- I saw an adult course in Yiddish. It was going to be eight weeks, conversational Yiddish. I said, "This is great, I'll be able to talk to my father's sisters who were still alive, I'll be able to speak to my grandfather in Yiddish, wonderful." So, I show up to the course. There are about a dozen other students. And so, this is 1979. The teacher was a -- a Jewish woman who had immigrated. Her family had come from Germany in the early 1920s. And she explained, seeing the clouds on 37:00the horizon, they fled. They -- before Hitler would come to power. And she had grown up there. And she was going to be our teacher for eight weeks, and it was called, again, conversational Yiddish. And the class starts and she goes in a circle, "Why do you want to learn Yiddish" and so on and so forth. And to each one of us, the dozen, it was almost the same answer: "I'd like to talk to my relatives, my grandparents. I'd like to know more about my ethnic background. It's a language I had heard all my life," that sort of thing. And then she starts, in a very stern way, that to have a conversation in Yiddish, you had to be able to read and write Yiddish. Now, I -- I'm a psychologist. I know about 38:00language development, and I know that the way you converse is by conversing. And you hold up a cup and you say what the word is and you say, "May I have a cup" and so on and so forth. She gave out a book and she starts with the alphabet, and I'm banging with my finger, because this is an aleph, aleph, aleph, aleph. And she -- this was like the German Gymnasium. She was going to be as strict as can be. About the third week -- and none of us could speak anything by the third week. There was no conversation. We're learning the alphabet. She gives a homework assignment, and she assigned each member of the class a letter of the alphabet. She gave me the letter "shin," okay? So, she says, "Do a little 39:00lesson." That's an okay thing to do if it's gonna be conversation, but it was alphabet, again. So, I consulted Leo Rosten's "Joys of Yiddish," in which he goes through the letters of the alphabet. And, with each letter, he gives you the vocabulary in Yiddish and a meaning and a joke. And so, I put together a list -- for your listeners, we had typewriters in those days -- and I put together a list, right from his book. And it's my turn to present. I duplicate the list for the group, and I explain that the S-H sound, Shh, is very big in Yiddish, and that lots of words are S-H. And Leo Rosten makes a point that you 40:00could turn any word into a Yiddish word with S-H or S-H-M. Finger, shminger. Foot, shmoot. You had to eat food today, food, shmood. And the class is laughing. She's looking sternly at me. She's not very happy. So, I then start on my list of vocabulary with S-H words, and it starts with "shalom," then it goes to "Shabbos" -- not "Shabbat," it's Yiddish. Then, it goes to "shlep," and then it goes to "shlemiel." Then it goes to "shlimazl," then it goes to "schmuck," then it goes -- and it goes and it goes. Well, you'd think that a dybbuk [an evil spirit or the soul of a dead person believed in Jewish folklore to enter a living body until exorcised by a religious rite] walked in the room and I'm Nosferatu to her. She explodes. She says, "How could you give us a list of these 41:00words?" She says, "This is terrible, why would you" -- I said, "Well, I thought that we would have a little fun with the language." And she says, "You're not here for fun! You're here to learn." I showed up one more time. The class had already dwindled to four. I don't think I showed up beyond the fourth of the eighth class, and I doubt if anyone else did because, as an adult, the principle of learning is there better be some self-reinforcement, something that gives you a good feeling about learning. Language is tough for adults anyway, to learn a new language. You -- it's better when you're young, when the language areas of your brain are just maturing. So, when it's fun, you remember. So, that was my one round of Yiddish. I have a friend who -- in Massachusetts who went and 42:00learned Yiddish, and he was phenomenal with it. And he would always give us Yiddish jokes and he would give us all the Yiddish proverbs, and I think that he was always trying to insult us subtly and laughing about it. And he learned very well in there.

MG:Was your family involved in a synagogue?

DB:Let me tell you, my father's family were in various places. I'll come back to South Philadelphia, with my grandfather. When he settled into South Philadelphia to a little street called Emily Street -- he never called it Emily Street, by the way. He always referred to it -- he lives on Emily Straße [German: street]. And around the little street, as I said, it's multi-ethnic and diverse. Jake the barber is on the corner, who came from the same area. Kopasser is the tailor. Granoff became a chiropodist, which I think was a foot doctor of some sort. He 43:00cut your toenails for you. On the corner was probably the most famous soda fountain in Philadelphia, Feldman's, and -- all Jewish -- and Mr. Carton became the pharmacist on the corner. And these were -- you were surrounded by these kinds of things. As I said, there were over a hundred shtetl synagogues in Philadelphia. My grandfather went to one literally around the corner from the 1930s until he ended up in nursing care in the 1990s. It's congregation Shivtei Yeshuron Ezras Israel. And I don't know what that means, but I think it means something like "the wild and crazy men of South Philadelphia." Or the alternative might be "the righteous worshippers who love Israel." You can take 44:00your choice of it. He went to that synagogue, and that's all discussed in the book, "The Little Synagogues of South Philadelphia." And I'll tell you a little bit more about that in a moment. The synagogue became the place where, of course, you worshipped, but that's where you met your landsmen, men who came from the same land as you did. It became a beneficial association, it gave you loans, maybe to get a mortgage or you needed a new boiler. It provided cemetery plots for you in the future with cemeteries that were on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Very important -- my grandmother was part of the women's 45:00auxiliary. And this little congregation was started in 1890, and it moved once or twice into its final little place. And for anyone listening, it's near Fourth and Snyder Avenue in South Philadelphia. It was built as -- though it is Ashkenazic, it was built in a Sephardic design. So, here is this synagogue, no more than sixteen feet wide and maybe fifty, sixty feet long. Small. The men built pews. The walls and the ceilings were tin, which is the design of that era. Memorial plaques. The Ark, certainly on the Eastern Wall. But the bima is in the center. Now, no one still could explain why they did that kind of design. So, with the bima in the center, the pews are behind the bima and in front of 46:00the bima. Everybody's facing the same way: the Eastern Wall. And the rabbi and the cantor and the prayer leaders are worshipping as part of the congregation as opposed to standing on a stage with everyone looking up to them. The -- my experience -- Little Shul, then I'll bring you up to date with it. So, take you back to the 1950s -- so, my grandfather -- my father joined the Little Shul, but he worked day and night. He would sometimes be able to go on Shabbat. He -- Shabbos. He'd always, of course, go on the High Holidays. My grandfather went as 47:00often as he could, and this became his social place, as I already mentioned -- the Canadian Club -- and the men would sit and drink there and do whatever they did for socializing. The shul -- I remember my grandfather taking me to, and I remember two special occasions. The first would be -- and I had to think about this for a while -- had to be Yom Kippur day, because I remember the shul in a blaze of light. The only time you'd have a blaze of light is yizkor, when all the memorial plaques are lit up in the shul, and it's wondrous to a little kid. A blaze of light. There's the rabbi on the bima, and above the rabbi there is a 48:00hole in the ceiling. There are several holes in the ceiling. This is an Orthodox shul. The men are separated from the women, and the women are on the second floor, looking through the hole. It was constructed -- there could not be balconies, so the women are on the second floor of the place, looking down directly into the bima, into the congregation. I always found that weird. Never understood, 'cause there's my mother, my grandmother, my aunts looking down into the congregation. The place is lit up, the old men -- I'm standing with my grandfather and probably with my brother. My father's probably on the other side, and I will tell you that these old men -- I don't remember young men. My father was middle-aged at this point. The old men took their suits out of 49:00mothballs once a year. And, as a kid, you're almost fainting from the odor. The old men eating bef-- filling themselves up for fasting on Yom Kippur, probably on liverwurst and onions. I don't think that they had discovered dental floss or toothbrushes by this point. And it -- you could get overwhelmed by these old men, especially when they would talk to you. And it was like flamethrowers coming at you. As a kid, this is -- this is a very egocentric view. It's my view as a kid. The rabbi on the bima, he wore the -- a -- a talis that -- that looked like a Batman cape to a kid, and his yarmulke -- we don't -- we don't call it kippah where I come from. His yarmulke looked like it stretched up to the 50:00ceiling where the women were looking. He had a beard that -- that was -- you'd be proud to have a beard like this. He spoke only Yiddish. At least, I'll tell you the one time I heard something else. And they did the prayers. Every time I would go -- the one time, at the end of the day, he would do a homily of sorts. He would talk about -- this is Yom Kippur. He would talk about Jonah and the whale and the story of Jonah, the whale, and redemption. He would mention it in English, and then he actually opened it up to discussion. But, of course, it was all Yiddish at that point. So, you -- as a kid, I learned about Jonah and the whale. It's probably the first story I know about -- and I'll tell you, when I say this is an egocentric view of it, I'm saying, oh, Jonah's swallowed by the 51:00whale. Oh, isn't that the story of Pinocchio? And, of course, the story of Pinocchio being swallowed by the whale and then having to do a good deed comes from the Old Testament Jonah and the whale, and he gets out by only -- redeeming himself and forgiveness. The other time I remember that my grandfather -- my father worked -- he took us the -- to probably -- other than Hanukkah, the happiest holidays I remember were Simcha Torah in the synagogue. And my grandfather proudly would take -- we lived two blocks away. He'd take my mother, my brother, my sister, and myself for Simcha Torah. The ladies' auxiliary, on the second floor, were putting apples on flags, and we were all given flags and we marched around. Now, I told you this place is sixteen feet wide, a bima in 52:00the middle. And basically, you're making figure eights and the old men are clapping, singing -- I had no idea what they're singing. It was not Hebrew. It was Yiddish songs at this time. They're drinking and knocking them back. And what do they give the kids? These gummy, rotted apples on flags that were -- and it's hard to hold it. We're walking, getting dizzy in figure eights, and the ladies prepare bowls of nahit. Now, nahit are dried, peppered chickpeas. Nahit is Eastern European, Turkish, and it's little dried handfuls of peppered chickpeas as treats for the kids. It's why we never went back to shul after our bar mitzvahs. They -- they -- they scared you with the rabbi, the old men, and it was -- it really was a different world by the late '50s in -- in that 53:00synagogue. I was bar mitzvahed and so was my brother and my uncle. I believe that my parents must have been married and my grandparents married in this synagogue. So, I mentioned the immigration patterns, but what about the societal patterns? Well, in South Philadelphia, the Christians and the Irish, the Polish and whatever, when their kids would grow up and get married, they would repopulate and live within blocks, like a concentric circle, of their parents, their grandparents, and they repopulated South Philadelphia. The Jewish kids growing up after World War II did not. They first went to East Oak Lane, then an area called West Oak Lane. Then they moved to Logan, and then they moved to another area called Oxford Circle, and they'd move further and further out. And 54:00that -- by the time I interviewed my grandfather, probably 1980s or early '80s, the -- there are very few Jewish families left. What are left are the senior citizens who are going to the senior citizen center, which in turn happened to be the Ben Rosen School, where I had grown up and had my Hebrew school lessons. It no longer did that. There were no Jewish children who were learning at this point. The hundred synagogues dwindled and dwindled, because the population continued to shrink down. Now, in South Philadelphia, out of the hundred shuls, my grandfather's synagogue, the -- we call it the Little Shul, and you can find 55:00it at thelittleshul.org, dot-O-R-G, is the last of the synagogues down there in South Philadelphia. Out of over a hundred, one remains. Three years ago, there was another one about four blocks away. It became a Buddhist temple, because the population in South Philadelphia changed. Instead of Fourth Street and Seventh Street with all the Jewish merchants, they all became Asian and Hispanic, Latino merchants, and all the Jewish signs were replaced with Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Spanish writing down there. This little synagogue that became the Buddhist temple -- our joke is -- and they've maintained all of the interior. They're very respectful of where the bima and the mezuzahs on the door and the yizkor plaques and stuff. What -- our joke is, of course -- is new tenant, same 56:00landlord. And they've respected it. So, that is intact, but it's a Buddhist temple. So, I'll mention a video that came out in the late -- oh, toward 1995-6-7, and it's called "Echoes of a Ghost Minyans." Minyan is the term -- I -- minyan is a term -- maybe Yiddish. I'm not sure if minyan is Hebrew or Yiddish. And in order to open the Torah and to worship, you have to have ten men in Orthodox rules. In Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and other, they will count women. But strictly Orthodox, ten men. So, a video came out that was on PBS that I had seen called "Echoes of a Ghost Minyans," put together by two 57:00men, Joe Van Blunk and Gus Rosanio, neither Jewish, and they are, believe it or not, longshoremen. They worked on the docks of the Delaware River in Philadelphia. And Joe had grown up as what is called the Shabbos goy. His father was paid by the synagogues, the Orthodox synagogues, on Friday night and Saturday, to go in to turn on the lights, unlock the doors -- because that was forbidden to do. You could not carry keys, you could not turn on lights, you could not turn on the heat. So, they would do it and they made the rounds. And they got paid for that. And he did that for many years. Joe said that, as an adult -- his father had passed away. And, as he's driving -- and he lived South 58:00Philadelphia -- as he's driving through in the 1990s, he's telling his friend, Gus, a fellow longshoreman about all of the little synagogues that they went to every Friday night and Saturday to turn the lights on, open the doors, and where were they? And some had become churches. Some were dilapidated, boarded-up buildings. Some had become homes. Remember, these were all row house homes to start with, and people had ripped out all of the innards and reconverted it into homes. It's working-class, blue collar neighborhoods. And he decided that -- they got a camera, they got video cameras, and they decided that they were gonna go around South Philadelphia and find all of these places that had been synagogues and video them. So, what you have in "Echoes of a Ghost Minyan" -- 59:00the beginning one was fourteen minutes, and they go from synagogue to synagogue, and the camera pans up and down, and you see these empty buildings, broken stained glass windows -- they -- they get the camera into some windows, and you can see the remnants of worship, of the hundred synagogues. The Little Shul congregation that my grandfather was part of and that I went to was still in existence. So, they went in and they spoke to -- his name was Alvin Heller. Alvin had grown up in the synagogue, and in 1990s is already a man in his sixties or seventy. And Alvin single-handedly maintained the Little Shul. He devoted his time and love and effort to keeping it alive, though they could not 60:00even get a minyan. And he's interviewed in these fourteen minutes. Well, these guys put this together. They edited it, they put music in, and it showed on PBS around the United States. They then got a grant to put together a thirty-minute version that included all of the synagogues. I highly recommend that anyone who wants to learn about this buy, look at "Echoes from a Ghost Minyan." So, I had seen the video, and I went back down to the Little Shul after the video. So, I'm talking about 1998 or '99.

MG:But you're no longer living in South Philadelphia.

DB:I'm no longer living in South Philadelphia. I live in a section of Philadelphia called Chestnut Hill, a lovely section of Philadelphia.

MG:And you're far-removed now from this whole environment that you've described from your earlier childhood.

DB:Yeah. Yes. Correct.

MG:Right, yeah.

DB:Correct. But I'm a member of Germantown Jewish Center, which is the most -- it's in Mount Airy and it's the most activist synagogue -- they have committees on social justice, homeless -- and people who want a synagogue experience but who also want all of the values of education, justice, charity go to Germantown Jewish Center. And again, it is politically active. It's a Conservative congregation and it is welcoming. It is a wonderful place, and that's where I'm a member of. I married Edna, who helped us make a wonderful Jewish family -- and one daughter, Alex. Alexandra, but we call her Alex, named after my father, Avrom. Since we're having one, I decide on -- pick a name that could go a boy or a girl. So, Alex. So, I went to there, the synagogue, and I met Alvin Heller, 62:00who's been taking care of the synagogue. So, at that point, I started a relationship with him. I started sending money to the Little Synagogue. And then, I broached an important question with him: could my daughter have her bat mitzvah here in this little Orthodox shul. Again, by this time, they barely can get a minyan. Alvin Heller's putting his money into it. The place has fallen into disrepair. And he said, "Sure! Why not?" Now, Alvin is an interesting man. He was even on the board of -- we have a Mummers Museum dedicated to the mumming in Philadelphia, and Alvin was part of a Jewish mummers troupe, and every 63:00Veterans Day and every holiday, he would get the Jewish mummers to go to the cemeteries. And on Memorial Day, they would play their banjos and strut around the graves of the veterans. This is what Alvin was all about: preservation and keeping the heritage. So, we made a deal that my daughter would have her bat mitzvah on a Sunday. So, on a Sunday, you would not offend the congregants. You would not have to worry about the rules of Orthodoxy. And so, she had her bat mitzvah there on Memorial Day, Sunday of the year 2000. We brought in our own rabbi. A woman rabbi. This would have made the congregants go bonkers already. 64:00She brought her own Torah. It was like have bat mitzvah, will travel. And we did -- we filled the synagogue. We filled the synagogue -- it had not been filled in at least twenty years, and we filled the downstairs and the upstairs. We did not hold to the rules. Men, women, all mixed. We had klezmer accordionists serenade us. We did Jewish songs. My daughter did her bat mitzvah. All of my wonderful friends were there who helped us do this. And we had a really wonderful, raucous time at the bat mitzvah. We did not want to do a cookie-cutter bat mitzvah that looked like a coronation. We wanted to do something that had meaning, legacy, ethnic heritage. We also -- I will tell you, we did have a party at the Mummers Museum, and we had real mummers and it was a really wonderful celebration. Over 65:00the years, I contributed to the synagogue, and I contributed in two ways. I made a deal with Germantown Jewish Center that most of my dues went to the Little Shul as donation money. And I would show up on Rosh Hashanah morning, the first day. I would show up on the first day, the morning of Yom Kippur. I would sit there until they got a minyan, and then I would leave. So, that was what I was doing. Alvin Heller died in the mid-2000s and the synagogue fell into greater and greater disrepair. They could not afford a rabbi. A couple of the congregants, who were wonderful, who grew up in the shul, '60s, '70s, '80s -- ages -- were leading the services. And after Alvin died -- the synagogue, I say, 66:00was in disrepair -- the City of Philadelphia condemned part of the building, which means it would have had to close, because the back roof was falling down. Whether this is karma, serendipity, whatever, a man in his sixties is driving down -- he'd grown up two doors from the synagogue. He'd been bar mitzvahed there. He had the same basic story I did with his family settling into South Philadelphia. He goes in and he finds out -- he had known Alvin Heller. He didn't know the synagogue was still going. Alvin had died and nobody had taken over, and he declared that he was going to take it over. He became president. 67:00His name is Rich Sisman. He appointed his brother, Steve, who I went to high school with, as the vice president, and they went on a fundraising campaign with the local councilmen in South Philadelphia. They got a grant, they found a wonderful architect, Joel Spivak, who has devoted his time, energy, and his own money into rebuilding this synagogue, the Little Shul, and they were able to get license and inspection to say the shul could stay in existence. Move forward, I met them gradually over time. I was still going on Rosh Hashanah morning and so on and so forth, and I volunteered to be on the board of the Little Shul. So, I'm now a board member of the synagogue. And there are about ten board members. 68:00They're all people who, some way, had something to do growing up. Most are in their fifties and sixties who go there. Last year, in Philadelphia, there was a festival called the Hidden City Festival. This is -- they were planning to highlight ten architectural sites that had fallen by the wayside, that had some major impact in the community of South Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, West, East, all the different directions. And one young man, his name is Morris Levin, who's on the board, pushed to get the synagogue as part of the Hidden City Festival. The festival happened from this past late May of 2013 through the end of June. The festival brought people to the synagogue. We've now had hundreds of 69:00people come through the synagogue. We had speaker series -- I spoke three or four different times. We had programs at the synagogue that talked about the Clarion Colony that my grandfather had mentioned. That's how I learned about it. We had programs that talked about -- we had Billy Yalowicz, who talked about leftist, socialist Jews who were members of the Sholem Aleichem Club. Identified ethically Jewish but not religiously -- but they were the lefties in the Workmen's Circle groups. And all the Workmen's Circle people came, and that's -- pretty much socialist organization. They were singing Workmen's Circle song-- this was wonderful. He's a professor at Temple who talks about that. We had 70:00someone come in who talked about the SHPAs or SPAs, South Philadelphia Hebrew Association basketball players. This was some program. We filled the synagogue. The South Philadelphia Hebrew Association basketball players were a group of immigrants and immigrant children who went to South Philadelphia High School. South Philadelphia High School, as I mentioned -- Israel Goldstein, founder of Brandeis, was there at this time. Basketball is a ghetto game. And when I say ghetto, I'm talking from the Jewish ghetto in Venice to whatever we refer to as ghetto now. To play basketball -- poor person's game, poor people -- you need rolled up papers if you can't afford a ball and a fruit basket hanging, and you pass it around and you play. This group, at South Philadelphia, led by Eddie 71:00Gottlieb, "Red" Klotz, eventually Dave Dubrow, who was major camping force in Jewish camping in Philadelphia, Harry Litwack, who would go on to be a major mover and shaker in Temple University basketball, on and on, they were -- and became the most winning basketball team in America. Now, let me tell you, after they left high school, they still continued to play. They were sponsored by the YMHA, which now has the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. Who knew? And they were then sponsored -- because they couldn't get uniforms, they were sponsored by the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, SPHA, and they became the SHPAs. They continued to play basketball, and they were, and it is on record, the most 72:00winning basketball team. Here you have Jewish men no taller than five-ten or so, all chubby, and showing that Jewish men have a natural athleticism. Must be born in -- and I carry about five-ten and chubby, and -- but I was not on the team. What's interesting about the team is that they began to disperse in the 1940s, and -- but they continued to play. Eddie Gottlieb, who was the captain of that team, went on to do two things. He was a founder of the NBA and he was a founder -- and some of the players became the Philadelphia Warriors. The Warriors would eventually give and become transformed to the -- our other team, the 76ers. What happened to the rest of the team? Well, they became the Washington Generals. 73:00They became the team that would travel with the Harlem Globetrotters. Abe Saperstein, who forms the Harlem Globetrotters, needed a team to always put up. And so, the rest of the South Philadelphia SHPAs became the traveling Washington Generals. And so, this is a part of a South Philadelphia history that's remarkable in terms of Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. And we had a speaker who talked about that in the speaker series, and we filled the place with Jewish sports people who just loved that kind of stuff. The synagogue exists today. In September, we're gonna have the 104th consecutive Rosh Hashanah service. I will show up until they get a minyan. And we had membership -- I said hundreds of people came through. What we did is we set membership at thirty-six dollars. 74:00Double chai [eighteen]. And everybody coming through wanted to contribute, so they all joined the Little Shul for thirty-six dollars. Yeah, how can you beat that as your donation? One person signed up Barbra Streisand as a member for thirty-six dollars. She doesn't know she's a member of the Little Shul, but she is. Through the festival, we did some other things. They had three concerts of radical Jewish music. John Zorn, for those who know music. They had three groups come in and do his music, and we had movie night at the Little Shul of a Jewish doc-- of a documentary of Jewish punks, and it's called "Punk Jews." And it's a recent documentary out of New York of groups who want -- who grew up in tight 75:00Jewish communities, but they have rebelled. They want -- the kids want to stay Jewish and they have formed punk rock groups. And it's a documentary certainly worth seeing. I think in the fall, we're gonna -- my favorite movie this year was a movie "Hava Nagila," a documentary of how that song came about from a Ukrainian nigun melody, how it became this song in America that we dance to and sing to, and that's -- I'm going to bring that to the shul for movie night next. So, the shul exists and we're doing all that we can to keep it alive for the heritage and the legacy down there.

MG:Okay. I want to ask you a couple more questions.

DB:Okay.

MG:You described this, you know, this rich world of -- your background, your grandparents and your parents, and Jewish South Philadelphia. What does -- and I 76:00know you're not a native speaker of Yiddish, but what does Yiddish mean to you today? What does it represent to you?

DB:Well, I'll tell you.

MG:After you drink some water, and that's fine.

DB:I -- to answer your question, as I said, Yiddish, the language, was the language of my grandparents. And since I devoted my degree to family therapy, I think family is very important. So, the language is part of my heritage. So, when I hear Yiddish, something resonates in me, though I don't understand Yiddish. But a smile comes to my face, even if I'm being insulted in Yid-- you don't know -- the language just seems to resonate in your bones when you grew up hearing it. In 1979, University of Pennsylvania sponsored a guest lecture by 77:00Isaac Bashevis Singer, who was making the rounds on the death of Yiddish and the Yiddish renaissance. And so, I went, and that was the prelude to taking the course, the awful course at the Y that I told you about. So, as far as I'm concerned, it's a language -- it was a living language growing up, and then no one was speaking it along the way. And as part of the Yiddish renaissance, I began to start listening to klezmer music. And Hankus Netsky of the klezmer group grew up in Mount Airy, in -- and his parents are part of the Germantown Jewish Center. So, they would come in and play, and you start listening, and 78:00though I don't know the -- what the words mean, I certainly have two hundred songs in my Yiddish playlist on my iPod. And the melodies and the words kind of make you feel something. So, for me, it's part of heritage, part of legacy. And it gives me a lot of good curse words, too.

MG:Do you have a favorite Yiddish word or phrase or song that you'd like to share with us?

DB:Well, I will tell you. I think that there -- the Yiddish word I probably use most is the word "shlep." I certainly use a lot of the Yiddish curse words. You know, gey khakhn [go shit] and you call somebody a schmuck and you -- "shlemiel" and "shlimazl." I'm stuck on those Leo Rosten S-H words. I have not graduated or 79:00matured from those words. I think that the two songs that I grew up with knowing were -- and it may not be Yiddish -- was "Dovid melekh yisroel [David king of Israel]" -- (sings wordlessly while gesturing) that we learned in Hebrew school. But it -- since I was Dovid, it, like, boom! You know? You -- it becomes imprinted. And then, the other song that was really -- the documentary -- is "Hava Nagila." Every time we have a dinner at our house that my dear wife, Edna, puts on for the family -- and we can have twenty or thirty people -- I pass around song sheets. Now, that's easy to do for Hanukkah, certainly. But we sing at the end of Passover. Now, not only one kid, two kids, and so on and so forth. But other songs. And I always include "Hava Nagila," "Dovid melekh yisroel," and 80:00even, for Rosh Hashanah, I found a Yiddish transliteration of "Auld Lang Syne," and everybody sings. And we sing these songs. A lot of them are Yiddish songs, and the young people at the table don't know what we're singing. The older people do. And we have song sheets, and so we're always singing. So, I love "Hava Nagila." I guess it's imprinted from any bar mitzvah, any wedding that I've gone to. And that just sticks with me in there.

MG:Well, in conclusion, we've been talking a lot about Jewish life and growing up --

DB:Yes.

MG:-- Jewish and what have you. Do you have any advice for -- words of thought for future generations?

DB:Yeah, I think that it's the journey that people probably go on in their early 81:00transition into middle adulthood, from early adulthood to middle adulthood, about -- I mean, this will sound trite -- but about finding your heritage, your legacy, your roots, and to try to learn how you got invented. That starts as a very egocentric view of things, but how did I get here? I don't want to blame my parents or my grandparents. I grew up in an ethnic culture, and there's a larger culture around me and a soc-- I'm a psychologist, but I know there's a sociological culture of gender and religion and socioeconomics. And how do I fit in with all of this? Then, you find out your own rootedness, who they were, how 82:00they got here. There -- there's plenty that you can learn about on genealogical stuff on the internet. And I've done some research, and in fact, in my researches, I found the boat that my grandfather came on. I found the boat that Harry and Rebecca Kalinsky came on. These are the people who became Henry and Rebecca Martin. So, they're on the boat as one name, and I could verify that. And it gives you a whole view of your world around you. Then, you have to decide how you're gonna celebrate life. I mean, life is torturous. We're all fragile beings in this world. And what does the culture transmit to you in terms of doing good works? Education, charitable kinds of things, you and your neighbor. 83:00And then, if you have children, how do you transmit that to your children, the joy of some ethnic heritage and legacy? My own daughter, who goes through her own lifestyle changes and her own search for an ethnic identity showed up to one of the programs at the Little Shul. She had, in her haftorah -- remember, she was bat mitzvahed there. And she's not particularly religious now, and I doubt if she ever was. Maybe she'll come back to it. But her haftorah was the Little Shul as the ohel mo'ed, the sacred space that, when Moses leaves Egypt, the priests and Aaron set up a worship tent, a sacred space. And her haftorah was that this Little Synagogue became the ohel mo'ed for the immigrants to begin to 84:00practice and to have their freedoms. That's what those things mean to me with Yiddish, and those need to be transmitted. What she also said is that she was glad that they were reaching out to the hipster Jewish kids. And I could see some of the old congregants saying, "Vos, nu [What, well], hipster? What -- what's that?" And there is a transmission of culture that is valuable and rich. So, that -- that's what it basically means to me.

MG:Well, thank you, David. I want to thank you very much for all your thoughts and insights and stories about --

DB:You're welcome.

MG:-- growing up. Thank you very much.

DB:And thank you for giving me the opportunity to give my very egocentric point of view to the world.

MG:You're welcome.

DB:You -- thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]