STUART JAY ROBINSON ORAL HISTORY

DANIELLE WINTER: This is Danielle Winter, and today is March 11th, 2014.  I am here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, with Rabbi Stuart Jay Robinson, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project.  Rabbi Z slash -- Stuart Jay Robinson, do I have your permission to record this interview?

STUART ROBINSON: Oh, absolutely.

DW:  All right.  Fantastic.  Also, thank you so much for coming.  Can you briefly tell me about your family background?

SR:  Sure.  But you know, asking a lawyer and a rabbi to be brief when you're on tape with a captive audience is a tough way to go.  I grew up in 1:00Baltimore.  My parents, Melvin Robinson and Beverly Meyer Jolson Robinson, we were kind of a Conservadox household.  We had meters, we had lights, we had no TV, we were kosher in and out of the house.  My younger sister Judy and I, we would go to shul on Friday nights after Sabbath dinner because all our friends did.  I mean, back then, the times were different, and so the education and the practice in our home was a lot different than it is today.  But we would go to synagogues on Friday nights.  We would not ride on Shabbos except to go to synagogue, and that was only when the synagogue moved from where we could walk from my grandparents' house until it moved out into Baltimore County, which made it impossible -- so we had to do that.  We would go to shul in the morning.  We would come home, we'd have a Shabbos lunch.  And I played sports in high school, so if there was a game somewhere, my warm-up was jogging to the game or 2:00jogging to the track meet.  That wasn't so bad getting there -- I was pretty warmed up -- but then the bus would pull out twenty minutes before Shabbos was over -- 'cause most of this problem was in the wintertime -- and I had to jog back.  That was a whole different story.  But we both went to Hebrew High School, we both went to Baltimore Hebrew College, growing up.  And all our friends did.  So a quick school schedule would be -- regardless of whether we were in elementary school or junior high school or high school -- the Hebrew schools would provide us a bus, we'd go from there at three thirty, four to six we'd be in Hebrew class, then we'd go home and start our homework.  When I was in Hebrew High School and Hebrew College, school would be over at 3:30.  I would go and play sports, then I would hitch -- because I didn't have wheels in high school -- I would hitch from where my high school was to Baltimore Hebrew College for class, and then I was in a car pool and got a ride home.  So that was kind of how it went.  And we grew up in an atmosphere where Judaism played 3:00a very, very important role.  And it was very hard, because social events were Friday night -- whether it was school dances, getting together with your friends, sporting events -- they knew I couldn't do Shabbos.  They knew that as far as -- even at the university -- I did my first year of undergraduate school, I was in the joint program when it was just about originally set up between Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary -- and then I transferred back to College Park, University of Maryland, because my sister wanted to go to college.  And of course, it had a great Hillel House, it had all these wonderful things that were extensions of what we grew up with in our home.  And so it was a very, very incredible experience.  And the one thing that my sister and I both took a lot of pride in is that our culture came first.  And so we understood -- friends going out -- that we were doing things differently.  But 4:00at that time, a lot of our friends -- the social thing was going to synagogue on the Friday night for the oneg after services.  On Saturday afternoon, I would generally go back to synagogue with my dad for the seudah shlishit [Hebrew: third ritual meal of Shabbos, before the end of the day] and for Mincha and Maariv when the opportunity presented itself and I could do that.  And that was special time.  And of course, we did havdalah -- whether it was the end of a holiday or the end of Shabbat, we ate as a family.  And then we went our own separate ways.  At that point, Shabbos was over, and so, depending on the hour that havdalah was, allowed us the time to be able to socialize and do different kinds of things.  And that was kind of how things were at home.

DW:  A lot of really interesting things, and I definitely want to follow up with some of them.  But I'm just curious to even know a little bit about your parents' backgrounds.  You said you grew up in a Conservadox home.  What was -- your parents' upbringings?  Where did --

SR:  Well, my parents' upbringings were pretty much the same.  Actually, they were probably more Orthodox than anything else.  They were very active in the 5:00brotherhoods and sisterhoods of their shuls.  It's funny when you mention that.  Their social circles -- they had bowling leagues and different kinds of social events that they all went to, and the sons and daughters of their friends were my friends, and we kind of did the same thing -- it wasn't necessarily bowling, but it was softball or football or something like that.  But it was the same kind of thing.  I used to love staying at my grandparents' house.

DW:  Did they live near you, in the area?

SR:  Well, they were in Baltimore, but they weren't that close to us.  My father's grandparents -- Paul and Frances Robinson -- they weren't that far.  They were like walking distance -- for me; my sister was much younger, she couldn't do that.  My mom's -- my bubbie [grandmother] and zeyde [grandfather] -- the Jolsons -- they were right up the street from the shul, and so going 6:00there, and then you'd go off to shul with zeyde, and bubbie and mom would stay home and zeyde and dad and I, we'd go off to shul.  And then, of course, you were friends with the kids in the neighborhood.  And we were kids, so we probably were kind of a distraction in shul sometimes -- for the rabbi, and things like that.  But that was the kind of atmospherics that we grew up in, and then they grew up in the same kind of thing with their generation doing things.  And I think that the activity in terms of being active in the shul -- my grandfather Paul sang in the choir at Chizuk Amuno.  They had a youth choir -- I did that, I led services, I was head of the bar mitzvah brotherhood, which was kind of the training league for the brotherhood itself, and we would meet on Sunday mornings early and have a program and daven and then play ball or something -- have activities.  But that's all spinoffs of what our parents 7:00did.  My sister was active in things at school.  We were both USYers.  I was a Ramahnik.  So when they celebrated their sixtieth anniversary this year, my sister did the Israel program, I did the Ramah thing.  And I met a couple of my best friends going on a bus to Ramah.  But these were all social activities that were very, very important.  And while they didn't have all that when they were growing up, they did have this connection with the community and the activities in the shul.   And my dad used to give out the aliyahs in the shul for decades.  And I guess the activities in the shul -- both at Chizuk Amuno when I got older, but particularly when I was on my own -- I was fortunate enough to be vice-president of two synagogues in Maryland and then --

DW:  We'll talk about that later.

SR:  But I got all that from my parents.  It's kind of -- you're the microcosm 8:00of what they gave you.

DW:  Awesome, awesome.  What was one of your favorite holidays growing up, and one of maybe the family traditions that you had?

SR:  Well, probably the favorite holiday had to be Passover -- had to be seder.  Everybody was at bub's house.  They made all the food.  My mother and bub were just incredible with that.  My aunt Ruth -- rest her soul -- she would make these matzo balls that you could bowl with -- but we all ate them.  But we all were there.  The seder was great.  My dad and zeyde conducted it.  But the minhag [Hebrew: custom] at the table was -- I'd be sitting there with my grandfather, and before we started, he always used to have a cigar.  And he'd have me sit out on the porch with him and puff on his cigar.  And he always had a glass of Schlivo.  And he'd give me a shot of the Schlivo before we went in and officially start-- and it was kosher for Passover, 'cause they were strictly 9:00kosher, also.  But you're sitting there and you're doing that.  And during that holiday Chol hamoed [Hebrew: the period between Passover and Sukkot, lit. "the weekday of the holiday"], we'd go driving -- I'd sit on his lap -- he had a DeSoto.  My mother would have fits.  My bubbie would be yelling at him.  I would steer, he'd work the gas and brake, we'd drive around the block.  That's kind of how the Passover thing developed, and that's why unquestionably -- even with all the family there -- it was my favorite holiday, because some of those same things -- as an adult -- I still do.  And you smile about it even though they're not there -- you smile because you know that they gave you that.  I think that, and the fact that it's family.  And by the way, a study was done, and the most observed holiday in the entire Jewish calendar?  People thought it was Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur.  First night of Pesach is the most celebrated holiday around the world because of family -- what it meant with freedom, but 10:00because of family.

DW:  What languages did your older family members speak in the household -- or at the Passover seder, just thinking back, do you recall that maybe the seder was said in a certain pronunciation of words?  Was it the more Ashkenazi or anything like that?

SR:  Oh, yeah.  Well, it was definitely -- it was actually Ashkenazi before the "t" became "s," okay?  Where -- it was the hard tov.  My bubbie and zeyde would talk Yiddish sometimes with my mother and father.  And we knew that they were talking Yiddish because my sister and I would figure out and say to each other, (whispers) They don't want us to know what they're saying.  So once in a while, my sister and I would throw out a little bit of Hebrew, because we were in Hebrew school.  And after a while, the Yiddish really stopped, because they wanted to know what we were saying.  But I thought it was nice.  During the 11:00seder they did that -- during the seder, you would remember family and you would remember the Eastern European members of your family and the fact that Yiddish was their language.  Yiddish was the way they communicated when they came over.  I do not know -- my father's side of the family -- nor does my father.  We know that we had to get out of France -- that my great-grandfather had to get out of France with my grandfather, Paul, his brother Aaron, who became one of the leading doctors at Wilmer Eye Clinic -- uncle Aaron Robinson -- and they came to Maryland.  When I asked dad, I said, "What was our name?"  Our name was not Robinson.  "We do not know," he said.  I asked dad, dad said, "Do not ask me that question again, because when I asked my dad, he said, 'I'm not gonna answer that question.'"  And I thought -- it's hard.  Because for me, if I could find that out, I would change my name.  I would have no problem in 12:00saying, "This is who I am formally, but this is what" -- but there's not a single lead.  And I looked through books -- I looked through shipping books of the Germans when they were taking the Jews out of France, I looked through everything to try and get a clue.  But the name was changed somewhere along the line between when they left France and before they got to the United States.  And that's a little frustrating.  If anybody out there has a clue as to where I can get a line on that, I'd certainly like it. 

DW:  And your mother's family?

SR:  My mom's family -- Eastern European -- Jolsons.  I'm Al Jolson's grand-nephew.  Well, I guess -- my grandfather was his nephew.  And Uncle Al would come into Baltimore -- my grandfather told me these outrageous stories that my father didn't necessarily want me to know about, but he'd say, "You 13:00know, he came to the Belvedere Hotel" -- which is a pretty spiffy place in Baltimore -- "when he was in town," and then he said, "And this is Al's latest adventure."  But when he was in New York, he would lead and participate and support the Actors' Temple -- he helped form it.  So you can imagine what it was like there on the holidays when he's the cantor and you've got these phenomenal talents as the choir and supporting the shul.  And when I got my semicha [Hebrew: rabbinical ordination] -- there are, what, a thousand synagogues in New York City?  That was the one that was selected for my semicha.  And I told the rabbi this shtik [story] about my grandfather -- because, you know, grandfathers will give you a bobe-mayse [made-up story] or something like that.  She faxed me the photo monograph from the wall of the synagogue and says, "It's true.  He will be here for your semicha."  And I just -- I was stunned, 'cause it was the real deal.  But they came, and he 14:00stayed in New York.  My grandfather ended up -- they came into Baltimore, and that's where they settled, in Baltimore, because a lot of the folks that came from Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Eastern Europe, would do that.  They were Ashkenazic.  The Sephardic friends that we had were from the Continent and were -- especially Main -- from Morocco and Tunisia and Ethiopia.  And in fact, one of my dear friends, who was Avi Granot, the ambassador to Ethiopia during Project Exile for Israel when they moved them out -- to save those folks and get them to Israel.  And so with this cultural blending, I mean, it was just really pretty fantastic.  And when you look back and you think, I mean, here's a guy -- your grand-uncle -- who was the greatest entertainer in the world -- many still think that -- you know, blackface, painted face, first movies, first music 15:00with movies, Neil Diamond in the "Jazz Singer" remake, they named a street after him off Broadway, Al Jolson Way.  And you're sitting there and you're thinking -- you know.  And what they didn't know about was that during the Korean War especially, he financed the USO trips and would take stars and the bands and the planes and he'd go out to the outposts.  And he was very active in the Civil Rights Movement, and I think that's something that our family has always been very engaged in -- is making equality and civil rights and human rights.  And it's a tradition -- it's a nice tradition when you look back on it.  And I think that it made it very special.  I think the other thing is, when you're coming from another country because either you have better opportunity or you weren't wanted there anymore, and then you come to a country where the doors are 16:00open, how can you not give back?  That's amazing.

DW:  Thank you so much for that.  I definitely want to hear more about that in a little bit when I ask you more about your values and all those sort of things.  But out of curiosity, if we can backtrack again to the physical space of your home growing up, if you could just describe the type of neighborhood you grew up in and what sort of -- the physical space of the place you grew up?

SR:  Well, I guess when I was first born, my parents and I -- my sister wasn't born yet.  She was very, very -- we were in an apartment that was owned by somebody you know, Harry and Jeanette Weinberg off of Druid Hill Park Lake.  I remember going down with my dad to take turns shoveling coal into the furnace to heat the apartment.  Had a little backyard.  Had an alley where we played 17:00ball.  The trains ran by the garage.  It was a neighborhood that was predominantly Jewish at the time.

DW:  What is it called?

SR:  The neighborhood?  Well, it didn't really have a name.  It was in Baltimore City.  My grandfather Paul and grandmother, Frances Robinson -- dad's parents -- lived a few blocks away.  But we lived on a wonderful block.  My next-door neighbors -- there were some people that were my age that, oddly enough, as we grew up and they went their way and I went my way, we converged again as adults, where one was a doctor doing pediatric research on abuse and I was a lawyer very active in that area -- with kids and stuff.  And they lived across the street.  And we would play football there on the weekends.  And we all went to school together.  So it was a nice -- that was the second place 18:00that we lived in.  The house -- the apartment -- with the Weinbergs, we could walk to shul, and I used to love being able to walk to shul.  And we had some relatives that lived in some apartment buildings, and after shul, we'd go there, and there'd always be treats and things.  But that was the old Chizuk Amuno on Eutaw Place that was designed after the Great Synagogue of Florence -- marble -- I mean, just gorgeous.  Spectacular.  And we moved from there -- we moved up a little further north, but in the Jewish community again.  And it was a bigger -- it was a house this time.  It was a row house -- I guess today you'd call it a condo or something -- they were all linked together.  And we were there up until I was in third grade -- through third grade.  And I liked it because -- both my parents worked.  My mom was a third-grade school teacher and then she became an educational psychologist -- one of the first in Baltimore City.  Dad worked as a salesperson.  But I got to take the trolley -- walked down the 19:00block -- it was about a half a mile -- five cents, get on the trolley, take the trolley, let me off at school.  I thought that was pretty cool -- to be able to do that as a kid.  And then for Hebrew school, the buses were there, and then the rest of it kind of took over.  And then we moved out into the County in the fifties.  And that was a nice neighborhood.  It was predominantly a Jewish neighborhood.  We had Orthodox synagogues down the street.  We tried that, but we stayed with Chizuk Amuno, and when Chizuk Amuno actually opened in Baltimore County, a group of people -- with Rabbi Kaplan, who was the chair of the Board of Regents for Maryland -- they bought the old Chizuk Amuno and renamed it Beth Am.  And so we would drive to synagogue and back.  But that was the link on how we got there.  The houses weren't big -- you know, they were very nice, they were ranchers.  And my parents were there until we had to put them -- they 20:00had to go into assisted living, very late in their years.  But it was ranchers with the three short steps to get to the second floor where the bedrooms were -- that kind of thing.  And it had a basement.  But it was a very nice house, and the neighborhood was nice.  And the neighbors were pretty friendly.  The next-door neighbor happened to be head of the National Guard who came on campus when we were having the demonstrations against Vietnam -- but that's another story.  But that was the physical part of it.  We could have gone to a synagogue that was Orthodox and walked, but being four generations of a synagogue, we made a decision that -- actually, dad and mom said, We're gonna do this.  We're staying as a family.  We're good with this.  And then later in their years, they had a hard time with women being rabbis, women getting aliyahs, women participating in services like the men.  My father and I were on 21:00opposite lines.  I kept the membership at Beth Tfiloh Synagogue in Baltimore, which is a very lovely place, but they went Orthodox, because they said, That's just a little much for us to do.  And then that's kind of how that developed as I was growing up.  And then when we were in college, that kind of came in and -- my sister and I kept our memberships at Beth Tfiloh, but we stayed at Chizuk Amuno.

DW:  Can you describe a specific aspect of Jewish culture that was particularly important to you as a child?

SR:  I think the ability to be able to leyn Torah [learn Torah], do a haftorah, and lead a service -- where you go some place and somebody else may not be able to do that, and regardless of your age, you can step up and do that -- to me, 22:00that was really important.  And my father made sure -- and the khazns [cantors] at the synagogue made sure -- that when I was done my bar mitzvah lessons and when I was done everything, that when I walk out of there, no matter where I went, if I went to shul and they needed somebody to do any of this stuff, not a problem.  And I still do it today.  I mean, the socialization and all that, that's import-- but this, this is so important.  When somebody can't get through kaddish because they can't -- I have a hard time reading the transliterations of the Aramaic, but I don't have the problem with -- but when they can't do that and you can be there, and in their most difficult moments get them through that -- where when they're done, they take that deep breath and they realize they can do that prayer -- all the teaching's worth it.

DW:  What was your formal Jewish education like?

SR:  Well, back in the day, went to preschool, went to Hebrew school to sixth grade, went to Baltimore Hebrew College --

DW:  And was the Hebrew school after school or on Sundays?

SR:  Oh, good point.  The Hebrew school was twice a week after school -- generally, it was four to six -- and on Sunday mornings from ten to twelve.  And then Sunday began.  Now, with Baltimore Hebrew College, classes were generally six to ten twice a week, two to five on Sundays.  So it would not be uncommon for me to have a transistor radio, listening to the Baltimore Colts as I'm sitting in Hebrew class --

DW:  Was this in college?  Or this was in high school.  Oh, really!

SR:  No, this was in high school -- at Baltimore Hebrew High School and Baltimore Hebrew College.  And I'd be sitting there and maybe an expletive or 24:00something would slip out, and the rabbis -- they'd look at you and go, Okay, what's the score now?  You know, that kind of thing.  But that was the schedule.  I mean, it was a pretty tough regimen when you consider that -- first of all, you lose a lot of your Sunday, but as far as during the week, your homework -- for me, because of the sports and extracurricular activities in the school -- started for me at ten thirty, eleven at night.  It'd be nothing to be up until one thirty, two in the morning.  And I think that's what helped with my lifestyle -- where I don't need a lot of sleep, and I can multitask pretty easily.  But now, it's because of my staff.  Cheryl Brown, who's my administrative assistant -- both in my law office and the Akeda Foundation -- we'll talk to in a little bit -- her daughter, Jen, who does the graphics for us -- she designed the cards -- and Stephanie, who is helping with the media and the website development -- who works here -- in fact, she's the one that 25:00contacted me and said, "I think you should -- need to have you meet these people."  But they were all here today.  And you can't do it by yourself -- no matter what it is, no matter how good.  I found if you miss a meeting and they make you chairman, then I appoint my friends on the committee.  Because if anything good comes out of it, we all get it; if anything bad comes out of it, I realize I take the flak, but that's -- but I'm good with that.  Because I think it's all about team, it's not about self.

DW:  Awesome.  I love that.  Did you study any Jewish languages in school?

SR:  Oh, yeah.  I was in the Judaic Studies -- I did Hebrew.  And, of course, in Hebrew High School, I had Rabbi Joseph Baumgarten, who was one of the scholars for the Dead Sea Scolls.  So when we were doing Bible Studies, we were doing Rashi.  So sometimes Rashi was in Hebrew, sometimes he'd share with us -- we'd do it with the French.  Because I had taken French and Hebrew and Latin in 26:00high school, and then Hebrew in college, so I was multilingual.  And of course, that was very helpful -- especially when you're communicating and when I was working in Israel and I was working in multi-language, so --

DW:  So far, we've been talking a lot about the early part of your life, so we're gonna fast-forward now, and can you give me a snapshot of your life today?

SR:  Well, today, it's fantastic.  The family -- we live in Vermont.  I never figured that my Lech Lecha [Hebrew: Torah portion corresponding to Genesis 12:1-17:27, lit. "Go"] was going to be to Vermont, but that's how it turned out in terms of doing things, and we moved to Vermont.  I'm practicing law there.  I'm licensed in Maryland and Washington and Vermont, still.  I was president of 27:00the largest Conservative synagogue there, Ohavi Zedek, for eighteen months.  And then I was vice-president of Ahavath Gerim, which is a Conservative synagogue -- it's the oldest synagogue -- and got the first synagogue grant for restoration in Vermont.  Part of that will be in the artifacts that you'll see.  But -- I'm kosher in and out of the house.  I still -- I don't do work on Shabbos.  My Shabbos starts a couple hours before sundown on Friday, runs till havdalah on Saturday -- nothing changes there.  I daven three times a day.  I do a drash [textual interpretation] in my weekly publication that I put out -- I do the week's drash -- with some modern-day commentary and rock-and-roll music thrown in, if the words fit what I'm talking about.  And by 28:00and large, that's where it is.  I got to Vermont because my wife was in the military.  When she got out of the military, I told her, "Anywhere in the world you want to live."  I was a beach guy.  My tie -- my boys got me my tie, because they know I'm old surfer, liked it.  And -- she wanted a house with a red barn in Vermont.  And she knew I needed the beach.  And we ended up on Lake Champlain -- that's where we live.  We live in the islands on Lake Champlain in a house on the beach -- shale stone, not exactly powdery sand -- but that's how I got there.  And I think that God's journey takes you on these incredible -- you just don't know.  I mean, I wouldn't have bet that that's where I would have been, but that's where I ended up.  In Baltimore, before we moved, I was very active in B'nai Israel, which was the original Chizuk Amuno that my great-grandfather was part of, and I was vice-president there -- which 29:00was an Orthodox shul.  But they were modern Orthodox -- it was a totally different setup.  And then when I moved to Harford County, I was vice-president of a synagogue that was eclectic, and then it went Reform, and that was a little tough.  And now, I do a lot of freelancing.  I do a lot of interfaith work.  For the last High Holidays, for the Jewish Society in New York -- for Applied Science, I ended up doing their High Holiday services in New York.  And that was enjoyable.  And I like the ability to be able to reach out and share.  There are a lot of blended families that have nowhere to go, or they feel like their -- fingers are pointed at 'em and they can't practice.  And what I've been able to do, which I'm very thankful for, is help fill that void -- and help to be able to finally say, You can blend.  You can blend cultures.  You can 30:00share with things.  You can do holidays.  It's not an either-or proposition, 'cause if it's an either-or proposition, the likelihood of having anything in your household is very, very, very remote.  And you want them to feel that comfort level.  So that's what I do now.  So I travel both in-state and out-of-state, doing lifecycle events, things like this, publications, both in this and in my law practice.  So I enjoy that.  And of course, I couldn't do that without support -- whether it's staff or family.  Because you're away a lot.  You're part of the community.  And I believe in giving back to the community.  I believe you try and take more back than when you get.  And I've tried to instill that in the boys.  And I think that you get to see that.  And it makes you happy, because they know if somebody's on the street and we're 31:00walking by and they need a buck, they'll see me and they'll just go reach into their pockets and whatever they have -- and they'll ask me, (whispers) Well, do you think they're going to use it for food?  And I say, "It's not a matter of what they're going to use it for.  You put a smile on their face.  Don't worry about what they use it for.  You did the right thing."  And I think -- you know, when you do that, you know that your upbringing of the boys has been a good one.

DW:  I actually once worked at an interfaith school that I can tell you about more about after the interview, but I'm curious to know exactly how you got involved and how you realized that this is an important thing to get involved in and reach out.

SR:  With interfaith or --

DW:  Yeah, with interfaith work and really making it inclusive for everybody.

SR:  Well, I've always -- going back to my childhood -- at the time, he was Cardinal Shehan -- well, Archbishop Shehan from Baltimore -- he had a weekly TV 32:00show.  And he had four of us on.  I represented the Jewish community; there was somebody there from the AME community -- the African Methodist community; there was somebody there from the Catholic Church; and there was someone there that I think represented the -- and we had discussions on social issues.  And it was all about the interfaith sharing.  And then it got to a point where, for the holidays, maybe they'd come over the house for Hanukkah, we'd go out to midnight Mass -- they knew we were there, people would talk to us.  That's kind of where the seed's planted.  But living in communities where you have so much blending of households -- especially where I was living -- not so much in Baltimore City, but in Harford County, up in Bel Air -- which is about maybe thirty-eight miles north of Baltimore -- was a rural community, not so much anymore -- but you have a lot of blended households, where you needed to be able 33:00to do something different.  And then when I moved to Vermont, you definitely needed to be able to do something that was gonna be different.  And what really started it up there is a member of the Jewish community lost her husband.  And he was Episcopalian, but she was Jewish, and they wanted to do a funeral.  And they called me up and said, Would you mind?  And I said, "Of course not."  And then the minister of the church, Cordelia Burpee -- Reverend Burpee -- was really nice -- Congregational church.  We did this -- and there were a lot of people from the Jewish community there, 'cause he worked at IBM, he was a very young guy -- and we did a service.  Next thing I know, I'm doing a Purim class.  Next thing I know, I'm doing the community seder.  Then we did a service for peace.  And the crowds just kept coming along.  And it was the fact that it wasn't so much -- it was so unique, but it was the fact that here 34:00you are as one.  And making no mistake about it, too -- you know, you're in their facility -- because there's no synagogue on Grand Isle, so when you're doing things, you're going into their fac-- that they are just terrific about it.  I mean, she said, "If you ever want to use our place for synagogue services at some point" -- with people -- 'cause we're pretty private at the -- they said, We can do things to make it less noticeable in terms of the religious symbolism of the church.  And I said, "You're very kind.  But you know what?  You don't have to do a thing.  Because we'll be there, and it's a reminder to us that we're a community.  And the reason that we're here is because of your gracious hospitality."  And that's the way it's worked.

DW:  That's really awesome.  Have there been any experiences, historical 35:00events, or social movements that were particularly formative to your sense of identity?

SR:  Well, yeah.  No question.  Well, I think probably early on, when I knew things were gonna be different when I was playing sports and my teammates knew that I would be jogging to and from events to get warmed up and I wasn't on the team bus and I wasn't all this but I would get there, I'd be -- I knew what time I had to be there.  But they knew I couldn't get there until after shul was over.  So it may be that I would go in the synagogue, I'd change into my warmups and my uniform and I was out the door -- the Shabbos meal would wait till later.  But I think definitely -- I was in the Vietnam era.  I was in the era where the Civil Rights Movements was just starting to take off.  I was in an era where I realized that for me, you had to stand up and be counted.  You could not sit on the sideline and watch what was going on -- whether you were on my side, in terms of where I was thinking -- of being big against the war, but I won the lottery because my birthday was number fifty-two.  When they drew -- 36:00and when the head of the Armed Services had the lottery, there were thousands of people on Fraternity Row.  I was a member of the ZBT Phi Sig Delt, and there were bunches of us together, and our numbers got picked.  And then we all went around looking together for things.  I picked the Marine Corps because they did Toys for Tots.  I turned down the officer programs, I turned on the flight school, and I decided, You know what?  This is what they do, I'm just gonna take a whirl at it.  It was the Fourth Engineer Battalion out of Baltimore.  But it was defining, because I'd be out on that college campus, and there'd be thousands of kids.  And we're right in the light of Washington.  And my neighbor's there with the National Guard.  And you've got these battle lines drawn.  And this is America.  I mean, you're not getting gunned down.  You're going to have to stand up and take this heat.  And I just thought -- same thing with the Civil Rights Movement, and the same thing with the equality -- making sure women -- equal pay for equal work, which is something that the Radcliffe 37:00women tried in the '20s.  It was just an amazing, amazing time.  And that, I think, defined me in terms of having the ability to know that I'm a strong enough person that I can take the heat -- I can take the accountability, I don't mind the accountability, I welcome the responsibility, and you take your best shot.  Only thing I can tell you is that if you don't knock me out, I'm going to be more than you can handle.  And I think you're developing this self-esteem but keeping your feet on the ground -- it's not -- you've got to maintain your center.  But I mean, I'd give a speech, and they're clapping on one line, they're booing on the next line -- and I got it marked --

DW:  Through which organization were you --

SR:  Oh, the Student Government Association at Maryland.  That's where I did all the wor-- and then I was in the National Student Association.  And I was 38:00treasurer first at the University of Maryland, and then I became the school president.  I mean, I did a lot of -- and I couldn't do this stuff at Maryland without having some really dear, dear friends in different organizations that would be there.  And it'd be mixed.  I mean, there was no question about it.  You'd have guys on both -- but, you know, we respected each other, and I think that that was the important thing.  There was some anti-Semitism that we had to deal with -- at the fraternity house, where somebody threw a Molotov cocktail on the roof of the fraternity house.  And we caught him.  And then we called the police.  But fortunately, one of the guys was up.  And it could have been a disaster.  And you're not -- you know, you're talking the late '60s?  I mean, this isn't that long ago.  I mean, in Maryland, restrictive covenants that said you can't sell to Jews or Blacks were found to be void in land contracts and in deeds in the mid-'60s.  That's like current history compared to things where we 39:00are.  So I think knowing that I could do this and knowing that I could stand up and knowing that whether people like it or not, I'm comfortable -- and I realize, a lot of my friends didn't get into graduate school because they took the positions that we took together.  I was fortunate.  I got in, and many years later became a rabbi.  I mean, I had that thought at one time in junior high school when they were saying, Oh, write something about what you want to do.  And I thought that's something I wanted to do, but I realized I just didn't have the calling.  And when I went to Columbia to the joint program, I knew that I wanted to be an educated Jewish layman, but I still didn't have it.  And it wasn't until recently where I knew, You know what?  This is really the next Lech Lecha -- this is the next step in this journey.  And then the 40:00Akeda Foundation, which was kind of a spinoff of Abraham's Tent Ministry and Vayerah [Hebrew: Torah portion corresponding to Genesis 18:1-22:24, lit. "And she laughed"], which was my bar mitzvah segment.  I thought, You know, it's identity -- it's, people can see your name and they know that this is what you stand for as a human being.  And it doesn't matter what your background is, it doesn't matter what your economic class is.  And like you say, you know, in identifying yourself.  When you can make that kind of impression in the community -- my parents, olev-hasholem [rest in peace], and my family and my friends that are no longer here at least can look down and they know that their souls have joined with mine and that nothing has changed, because they're here spiritually and I'm here physically.

DW:  And thinking about that, how does your connection to Yiddish and Yiddishkayt and Eastern European Jewish heritage fit into your broader sense of 41:00Jewish identity?

SR:  Well, first of all, you know what your family has done.  You know the fact that in Eastern Europe, it was a lot easier -- maybe not when you come over and everybody's coming over with nothing or very little materialistically, so if you have a skill -- my grandfather happened to be a custom tailor -- that's what he did.  My other grandfather -- dad's -- or granddad -- did haberdashery stuff.  So there was this kind of separation -- they didn't work together, but I mean, they had these skills.  They had the language communication.  I mean, my grandfather would tell me how, if it wasn't for the Yiddish newspaper -- because people came from different countries -- communication -- it was like a Tower of Babel, you know?  Communication was just very difficult, if not impossible.  And so Yiddish became the common language because it had German, 42:00it had Russian, it had Aramaic, and it had Hebrew.  And so having a language -- and of course, then, there was Ladino, which I could never understand, but from the Sephardic side of the coin, that was their comparable version of Yiddish.  But it became not just a means of communication -- some synagogues would use Yiddish on occasion, but most of the time it evolved in the Hebrew.  And the reason that Yiddish was used versus Hebrew is, for my great-grandfather and his generation, Hebrew was a holy language.  Hebrew was a language that is spoken or used in synagogue or blessings or doing something in the sanctification line, not in ordinary commerce -- of course, outside the State of Israel, of course.  And so Yiddish became this connector to that whole Eastern portion of the United 43:00States.  And then you have this, which is incredible.  And I told Jessica this story -- one of my drashes, I was dealing with 1881 -- it turned out it was -- and what's in there but Michael Knight's article from the "New York Times" on the bookstore being founded in Florence, Mass -- the first Yiddish bookstore -- the predecessor to this one -- and how they were getting volumes and they hoped to get fifteen thousand volumes within part of a year, and what it meant to the community, and they're now hoping to expand, and da-da-da, you know.  And I'm thinking, This is, like, serious karma.  Because here I'm coming on this interview -- I sent her the thing, and I said, "You'll never believe" -- I sent her the drash, so it made sense to her -- 'cause I put it in my drash, that this is what I was doing because it had certain significant historical events for that week that I could link up with the parshah [Hebrew: Torah portion].  But I think what you do here is so incredibly important.  I mean, we didn't get 44:00Yiddish in our household.  I got "Gey shlofn" -- I knew that one -- "Go to sleep."  "Sheyne punim" -- I knew that one -- "Oh, you're pretty."  But basically speaking, the conversational Yiddish that we heard in the house would be our grandparents -- particularly bubbie and zeyde, my mom's parents -- and their friends in the neighborhood, because they all lived together.  Their parents all came from the same kind of area, and so that became part of the conversation.  And I thought that that was really, really something very, very special.  And in synagogues today -- depending on where the synagogues are -- I know there's one synagogue, for example, out in Troy, New York, because of the Russian Jewish population, the service, the prayer book, and the blessings of the Torah are in English, Russian, and Hebrew.  I went to -- had the opportunity to go -- I was in Curaçao -- went to the Spanish-Portuguese shul in 45:00Curaçao -- Portuguese, English, Hebrew.  And they daven that way.  And I thought, This is just absolutely amazing to think that you had that.  And then after services, the older members of the congregation -- they're talking in Yiddish.  And then they'd come over to you and they'd start in Yiddish, you'd tell them you didn't know Yiddish -- I could get by on a little bit of -- but then they started in English or they wanted to do Hebrew and I was good with that.  But that was basically it.  I mean, I think it was alive and well as a language.  And as a culture, what it did for the community as a culture -- I mean, it gave us arts, it gave us hazzanut [Jewish liturgical music], it gave us klezmer music, it gave us just incredible kinds of things that otherwise we 46:00never would have had -- or maybe we would have had, but it wouldn't have been identified with a culture.  And you know what's interesting?  In Vermont, one of the communities up in Montgomery near Jay Peak, they had a klezmer band.  Place, packed.  People dancing inside, outside.  They're telling the story of how the band started, how they were part of the Eastern European -- and I just thought, This is amazing, to be on the hill of Jay Peak, in the valley, in a church, and this is what you get.  But klezmer music is big.  And people like it.  I mean, I have klezmer tapes.  I'm a more rhythm-and-blues, rock-and-roll guy -- sang in a band, always been in a band.  But for this, in terms of where it is culture-wise, I think it did that.  I think the rock-and-roll music for us broke the segregation lines, it broke the human rights and civil rights 47:00lines, it opened doors where you were dancing together -- you know, you didn't have to go to a separate water fountain.  My father would tell me business trips where he had a hotel and the Jews had a separate entrance and Jews could only go in certain places.  All that seemed to change, and music becoming a great equalizer -- like the klezmer music, uniting a community, Jewish or not, because -- or same thing with music that's Hispanic or Italian in heritage or whatever it is -- or Celtic -- it just has a way of bringing people together.  And I think that's just such a critical part of our culture.

DW:  Definitely.  I think there's this component -- something that you've mentioned is this idea that people like to preserve, almost, some sort of culture and think about the roots in places like here are able to survive and go 48:00on because people have this interest in knowing where they come from.  And one of the things that I thought was really interesting that you mentioned on your CV was this restoration for Ahavath Gerim, and I would love to hear what the mission of that was and maybe some things that you did to work on that --

SR:  Well, it was very interesting.  It was the oldest shul in Vermont and certainly the oldest synagogue in Vermont.  And actually, that was in the heart of what was the Jewish community in the Old North End -- they had several shuls there.  But what happened is, when the Lithuanian Jewish population settled predominantly there, the masons that were part of the population donated their time and they built the inside of the structure and the outside of the structure.  Well, it's like the shoemaker and the shoes -- you go and you take care of everybody else's feet and you're going and now here it is and you've got this shul and it needs some work.  And so I came up with the idea -- I said, I 49:00want to try and get a historic grant.  I went to this conference -- I got a barn grant for our home, because our home's on the historic list in Grand Isle for farm properties -- and so I said, I want to try and do this for the synagogue.

DW:  Is it still a synagogue with a minyan --

SR:  Yeah.

DW:  -- like, an ongoing minyan and everything?

SR:  Well, they have minyans when they need them.  They have services regularly -- once a month on Shabbos, they'll have services.  For example, they won't be able to maybe make a minyan for the Jewish holidays if it falls during -- Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, no problem -- I'm excluding the High Holidays.  So what would happen is, I developed what I call the all-in-one or sometimes the twofer service where for a holiday, we would take the Shabbat, because that would be the intermediate Sabbath of the holiday.  If it had Yizkor, you read one of the megilot [Hebrew: five biblical books read on certain Jewish holidays], you did everything -- we put everything on that one.  Simchas Torah -- we generally had a Simchas Torah service, so we would do the three scrolls, we would do everything -- you know, that kind of thing -- but we would give it 50:00so the synagogue wouldn't miss.  And I think it's because you had a lot of the older, older members -- they'd go away, and the younger people -- I don't buy the fact that, Well, you've got soccer, you've got this, you've got that.  'Cause I had that growing up, and parents got together and made decisions that -- Okay, instead of having soccer in the morning, let's do it in the afternoon so the kids can go to synagogue -- or church, because, you know, you have interleague activities in terms of things on Sun-- but anyway.  So I got this grant.  And I was looking -- I went in the books, I went in the history, and I started looking at American Gothic architecture -- and you can find it, by the way, on Wikipedia if you go and you'll see the synagogue.  B'nai Israel was an exact duplicate of this synagogue -- which is the one that was the original Chizuk Amuno in Baltimore -- which I couldn't believe.  But anyway, so I go in and we get this grant.  And then I start walking around the shul, and I'm 51:00noticing that the floors were -- they were dark -- dark wood, but then when you got to the front, the maple wood didn't go all the way -- and it was actually light maple, and they had put tile over it.  And we ripped up all the tile and we replaced it with maple.  We took care of the brass, took care of the stained glass, the chandeliers.  We switched the pews off so instead of being stuck in the ground, you could move them around -- so if you wanted to do a service in the round, we could do a service in the round.  And while we were doing all of this, we never missed a regular service or a holiday service.  The only change that we had was because the huge amount of dust -- instead of pulling out a Torah to read the Torah, I read the Torah from one of the big books.  So that way, we had the aliyahs, we had everything going on, but we weren't gonna go and jeopardize anything -- I mean, you know, that ruins -- makes it unkosh-- 52:00potentially.  And it took a while to do, and we got the first floor done.  The next phase, was what we do in the downstairs, where they've really got to gut it and redo it -- but it's a historic building.  It's on the National Historic Register, it's on the State Historic Register.  So we're trying to work that out.  That building -- the rabbi's home also contains the shul office, the reception area.  They had the Hebrew classes upstairs in the balcony -- there were kind of partial walls, so you could -- and so because it's a historic building, couldn't put an office in, couldn't do this, couldn't do that.  So that's a work in progress.  But we got that synagogue.  And I brought the newspaper article, I think, so that way you have it, to see what we've been able to do with that -- to start to bring it back to life.  And it's very exciting.

DW:  That's incredible.  Yasher-koyekh [Congratulations] on that.

SR:  Again, it's a team thing.  And the guys that did our barn who were historic preservationists -- because our barn went back to the early 1800s -- got them to do the synagogue.  And so it was just magnificent.

DW:  I'm going to turn our attention back to Yiddish again, for a short amount of time.  What does Yiddish mean to you today?

SR:  I think what it means to me is the fact that it provided, number one, a vital lifeline for grandparents and great-grandparents when they came over from Eastern Europe to be able to communicate -- not just with the Jewish community, because Yiddish was pretty well-known beyond the Jewish community, but with the community at large who, because of language differences, you may know German and 54:00I may know Russian and never the two shall meet, but we both know some Yiddish and you can get through.  And I think that -- to me, that's a fantastic part of the culture.  To me, I think the music is a fantastic part of the culture.  Literature, I haven't had a chance to read as much, frankly, as I'd like to, along those areas.  I do read a lot of Israeli authors when I get the time.  But I think the idea behind it being a solidifying factor allowed this culture to continue -- allowed the Weinbergs to be able to -- who are magnanimous and wonderful, and I went to school with Amy -- we went to high school together, we had lockers together at (UNCLEAR) High Sch-- their family, you would never know it that they had what they had, but they give.  And obviously, the center is just a piece of it.  You go to a hospital -- it doesn't matter where it is in the United States -- odds are, somewhere along the line, close, it's gonna say 55:00Harry and Jeanette Weinberg.  I mean, they're just -- you know, and I think they knew about the lifeline.  They knew the importance of collecting the books.  They knew.  Just like, when you go to a synagogue and the synagogue goes and they have all these old siddurs and ah, you know, what do you do?  You keep them, because you can use them as a learning tool.  And I think that they realized -- especially now -- I mean, there's a surge in Yiddish on academic communities.  There's a surge in Yiddish classes.  Just from the stuff that I got from here, when I went online to do a little homework on what we were gonna do here -- to see that there is a energizing of Yiddish as a language and as a culture.  And I think that that's really important.  And the other thing is that when we were facing our darkest hours in history, Yiddish was the language 56:00that was the common bond against what was happening with the Nazis in Germany and Mussolini and Vichy France.  And alone, the communities -- yeah, they could speak their languages, but Yiddish was the link.  Yiddish was the link that allowed people to be able to do things to be able to save tens of thousands of children -- and younger people and older people -- because of a willingness to communicate and not worry about what your ethnic background is.  It is a general cultural situation, and Yiddish allowed that lifeline to be extended.  And then that's why it probably -- I mean, we all lost family.  Don't know how many or who.  Obviously, I don't even know the names of one side of my family.  But the toll would have been much greater had they not had that link.  And Yiddish is not something that you find very often -- that's so 57:00multicultural and yet so important.

DW:  What is your favorite Yiddish word, phrase, or song?  This is a light question, yeah.

SR:  Probably the twinkle in my grandmother's eye when she would grab my cheek and go, "Sheyne punim, gey shlofn."  And first time she said that, I looked at her and she says, "Pretty boy, go to sleep."  And I always would associate that with my grandmother, you know?  Bub.  And I thought that, probably, on the surface, it doesn't seem like much, but emotionally, there is a link that you just can't beat -- you know, as far as doing things.  And in fact, I found the 58:00Yiddish -- I don't remember it exactly, but I found the Yiddish for "Happy Purim," and I put it in my Zachor [Hebrew: Torah portion corresponding to Deuteronomy 25:17-19, lit. "Remember"] drash this week -- because you know, Purim's this week.  And so it's important because it's about freedom.  Passover's four weeks away from this weekend already, and Shabbos Zachor is the Shabbat, of course, that we remember what Amalek did with the rear action against the Israelites and how that stopped, but "zachor" also means to "remember."  And so there are good things to remember.  You remember your loved ones.  You remember your family.  You remember starting to get ready for Pesach.  You remember getting dressed up -- I went dressed up with my grandfather where he gave me one of his hats and sunglasses -- I later translated it into a Blues Brothers outfit -- but we would go to shul in costume.  We would go to neighbors and take the two food dishes, because that's one of the mitzvot [Hebrew: commandments] -- and they're supposed to be pre-prepared, so all you do is sit down at the table.  Giving to charity -- the 59:00shalach manot [Hebrew: basket of gifts given at Purim] -- making sure that you're doing something for the poor.  Making sure that you heard the Megillah, of course.  And being in costume.  And of course, my grandf-- you know, having that drink of Schlivo because you're supposed to engage in alcohol until you don't know the difference between cursing Haman and blessing Mordechai or cursing your enemies and blessing your friends.  And I thought that that's interesting, because they're recognizing that no matter how things get, we're all one community.  And so this week, doing this interview -- this week, where we're gonna be getting into Shabbat Zachor, which is our -- the Sabbath right before Purim, and we know four weeks from Purim is Pesach -- it's a symbol of freedom.  It's a symbol of redemption and liberation.  And it's a symbol that we keep in mind that if it had not been for Yiddish as a language and as a 60:00culture, when our people came from Eastern Europe to wherever they settled, those people and the culture would not have existed.  And I think that -- so it has a special meaning other than getting prevented from a rearguard attack by -- and it also means that no matter what the odds are -- I mean, Purim's a great story, we all know -- but no matter how the odds -- no matter how long they are, don't sell yourself short.  Take this step, 'cause you can do this.  And I think that that's another great message that comes from all of this.  And the fact that we fast before Purim kind of puts everything into perspective.  It's like you're getting ready to move into a very solemn part of the year, because you're getting ready to recognize Shushan Purim -- what happened in the walled cities, and that's why it's the fifteenth of Adar and not the fourteenth.  You're getting ready to recognize the fact that we're getting -- gonna have an exodus out of Egypt.  And it's a redemption and it's the season of freedom.  61:00And we know that family members and friends that were there last year are just not going to be here this year.  And that's the Zachor -- that's the other part of the Zachor.  So this interview this week was very special to me, because it had another kind of message to it.

DW:  Thank you so much.  We're nearing the end of our time, so if there's anything specific you'd like to talk about -- I do understand you are the founder of Akeda, this international Jewish nonprofit creating an exclusive space for people of diverse backgrounds, so feel free to mention that or any other specific stories or topics.

SR:  Oh, well, thanks.  I think Akeda Foundation, you're thinking about, What can you do in the community?  And aside from doing services and traveling and doing services and life cycle events and putting out this weekly drash -- which 62:00takes a good bit of work -- I wanted to create a foundation that wasn't the same old, same old -- that wasn't the same old thing where it was just tied into one thing.  I wanted to create something where people can feel a comfort level, where yeah, it's based on the Jewish factor because I'm a rabbi and it's Jewish services, but taking services for shut-ins, making sure that we don't forget them, making sure we have the bikur cholim [Hebrew: commandment of visiting the sick], just like the three messengers that came in Vayerah to Abraham and Sarah, and setting this up.  And so I thought, A perfect way to do this is to set up a nonprofit.  So it was joyous time.  I mean, we filed it in Delaware, and then we just got our certification of authority in Vermont.  And of course, like any other organization -- like what you have -- and I'm hoping that we're gonna find a way to be able to get the Yiddish Center -- the Book Center -- out on our site, because we do have a lot of folks that read it, that see it -- and even 63:00the non-computer-oriented older members, we mail stuff to 'em -- to be able to have the funding that we'll need to be able to really have this thing take off.  I envision using not just media and webcasts and podcasts -- I'm hoping to be able to also put it on TV, just like the evangelicals do.  I love watching them, because there's a personal contact there that they get when they go on.  And we don't have that because we've never had that -- really -- like that.  And I'm hoping to be able to -- and I know there'll probably be those that say, This is just not what we do.  But you know what?  When Abraham started, that's not what we did, either.  And I think that Akeda -- the binding of Isaac, symbolically, is having unconditional faith that things are going to 64:00work out.  If you believe -- whether it's in yourself, whether it's with a faith-based -- things are going to work out.  And that's the message of Akeda -- that we're open to anybody.  That women aren't second-class citizens.  That nobody's a second-class citizen.  That participation is welcome and endorsed, that the way agunah [Hebrew: a woman who cannot remarry according to Jewish law because her husband has left without a divorce, lit. "chained woman"] is treated with women and divorce is my battle line in the sand for our project -- where I have talked to my Conservative rabbi friends -- and I realize I'm a post-denominational semichah ordinate from the Rabbinical Seminary International out of New York, which is a combination of the Hasidic, the Orthodox, Conservative, and some Reform, Reconstructionist thinking -- but the restrictions that are on women in being able to go and get a divorce and being able to have representation and being able to initiate an action -- instead of being held economic prisoner -- this is unacceptable.  And I don't care whether 65:00the sages thought it was a good idea in the mid-sixteenth century -- that's fine for then, but this is now.  It's fine when they say, Well, women shouldn't be leyening and doing things -- it wasn't until the 1990s that you started to have women rabbis.  Why?  Women are half the households.  If the mother's job -- you know, getting the Ten Commandments -- real quick, 'cause I know we're ending -- the deal that closed the deal was the children -- passing it on to the children.  That sealed the deal.  The women's job was chinuch habayes -- education in the house.  They're good enough in the house and they're not good enough in the shul.  And I tell my friends, "That's unacceptable."  And you need to take a look at your values and where you are, because there's more than cooking and cleaning and having children.  It's being able for your child to say, "There's mom."  "There's mom."  I remember my niece Jamie watching my 66:00sister leying from the Torah up there and say, "That's mom."  And I said, "That's mom."  And my nephew.  And I understand that.  And I think that we need to realize that if Judaism's gonna survive, it's gonna have to be relevant.  And if it's gonna have to be relevant, it's more than just, yeah, being the social conscience of the community.  In practice -- in cultural practice -- the relevancy is taking the women who are not equal partners and making them equal partners -- taking that step.  Separating in seating because you're not gonna be able to concentrate is, in my view, a smokescreen for being worried about having the equality actually take place.  And I just think that if synagogues are gonna survive in the future -- and Hebrew schools -- and our kids taking the culture forward -- it's gotta be because women feel that they have a rightful place.  And that it's recognized.  And that when they go to 67:00shul, they can get an aliyah, they can count for a minyan, they can do all these things that we do as men -- that we're charged with.  Bas-mitsve means that you are becoming a woman under the eyes of God and the Torah.  It doesn't mean, "But, here's the exclusion."  You know, like a commercial -- it is not applicable for synagogue leadership, it is not applicable for leading services, it's not applicable for getting an aliyah, not applicable for doing a haftorah.  Those days have to be things that we looked on to get us here today and say, Thank you for getting us here today.  Now today and tomorrow, we take the next step -- we level the field.  That's what I hope Akeda and I can bring to where we are.  Because there's a gap.  And I hope that we'll be able to fill that gap, and I look forward to further partnership with the Yiddish 68:00Bookstore.  And the Weinberg family -- you can't say enough about 'em.  Their hearts are just amazing.  Their family's hearts are amazing.  And I think that what they have done around the world -- and certainly here -- has provided an incredible opportunity for sharing and learning.  And thanks so much for having me.

DW:  Yeah, definitely.

[END OF INTERVIEW]