JERRY WEINSTEIN ORAL HISTORY

ROLA YOUNES:   This is Rola Younes, and today is Thursday, May 29th, 2014.  I am here at the Yiddish Book Center in with Jerry Weinstein.  And we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History project.  Jerry Weinstein, do I have your permission to record this interview?

JERRY WEINTSTEIN:   Yes, you do. 

RY:  Can you tell me briefly what you know about your family background?

JW:  Well, yes, my -- both parents were born in Russia, and so was there immediate family.  So, everybody -- brothers and sisters.  And they were both 1:00born in the -- what is now Ukraine.  I guess a little later on, I'll show the map of the two towns.  But my father was in -- born in Starokonstantin, which means "Old Konstantin," and my mother in Zhytomyr.  And they're both fairly close to each other, near Kiev, in the Ukraine.  And my father went to Argentina, him and his brother.  Told -- he told me that they smuggled themselves across the border.  I think they were about nineteen years old or eighteen, and somehow got to Germany, him and his brother.  And they took a ship to Argentina, where they stayed for two years and did music to keep 2:00themselves alive.  And finally, he came -- he and his brother came -- younger brother came to Ellis Island in around 1923.  I don't know the exact date when my mother came over with her family, but she had maybe four brothers and three sisters and a grand -- her father and mother all came over at a slightly different time, but -- and I don't know where they came in, but they lived in Philadelphia. And my father finally went from New York City to Philadelphia.  When you say background, they each have different stories to tell about what they remember from their early childhood.  And we can talk about that later or now or whenever.

RY:  Now, you mentioned that your father was a musician, and that --

JW:  Yes.

RY:  -- it saved his life.

JW:  Yes.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  What happens -- let's see, his father was a carpenter and they lived in 3:00this town.  He had brothers and a sister, but they took everybody into the army, the Red Army at that time, whether they wanted to go or not.  And a lot of them never came out of it, because they would send -- especially Jewish people to the -- they weren't exactly the most popular ones in the army.  They weren't popular anywhere in Russia that wasn't Jewish.  And one day, somebody heard him practicing his flute.  He had a flute with him in the army, and they said, "You ought to talk to the general about getting into the band."  So, he got in touch with -- and they did an audition for him, and they took him into the band, and that saved his life because they -- he never had to be in the front lines while he was a musician.  So, that's what I meant by saving his life.

RY:  Yeah, yeah.  How about your mom's story?

JW:  And the mom -- my mom had a huge, extended family with four brothers and three sisters.  And her father was a tailor.  But how they got over, I'm not sure.  I have the name of the ship for some of them, but not all of them.  But my mother must have gotten here when she was about six years old or so.  And she -- they lived in -- they went to Philadelphia and they all lived together in Philadelphia, and she -- they -- she was the only one they enrolled in a public school.  She got to the sixth grade, but then they pulled her out because she had to go to work to help support the family.  So, she only had six -- up to sixth grade, and she was extremely disappointed not to be able to continue where 5:00-- she loved school, but she had to leave and went to work as a sales person in the department store.  And my father, as far as I know, never had any schooling whatsoever, but -- and he was a self-taught musician.  I don't ever remember him talking about taking music lessons.  How he learned to play good enough to get into the army band, I don't know.  But that's what it is.

RY:  It's interesting, because you, yourself, have made a career out of music, but also out of education.

JW:  Right.

RY:  So --

JW:  That's right.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  There was a marriage of the two --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- (laughs) streams.

RY:  Whereas your father had no formal education --

JW:  Right.

RY:  And your mother had a limited --

JW:  Right.

RY:  -- formal education.

JW:  Well, they never expected me to go to college.

RY:  Oh.

JW:  They told me that, Jerry, when you go into high school, take the commercial course, because maybe you can become an accountant or do business, do 6:00something in business.  The main reason we're telling you this is because we don't -- we want you to have a job that doesn't require any heavy lifting and that your hands stay clean.  So, that's what -- that was their criteria for what I should do with my life.  As long as my hands were clean and I didn't do heavy lifting, that was all right with them.  So, I signed up into the high school for commercial course.  I never had any college preparation courses.  And they had typing, shorthand, business law, and graduated -- but I didn't really want to go to work when I graduated high school, so I applied to Temple University in Philadelphia, and for some reason, they let me in.  And they said I passed the entrance exams but I'm going to have to make up language, algebra, everything that I didn't have in high school.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  So, they never -- you -- even though they loved education, they never -- but they help-- once I got in, they were very supportive.

RY:  Would you say you grew up in a Jewish home?

JW:  Oh -- well, absolutely, a Jewish home.  Not highly religious, but culturally, they observed all the holidays.  My mother changed dishes on Passover, and I lived in a Jewish ghetto in Philadelphia that was around 36 square blocks that was all Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe.  The Gentiles were in the minority, so I never felt out of place there.  In fact -- so, there were two synagogues in this area, and all kosher stores, kosher 8:00butchers and so forth.  And the public school I went to -- on the Jewish holidays, nobody was there.  They had to keep the school open, because the teachers were Gentile and some of the kids from the orphanage were bused in and they were Gentile.  But that was our --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- that was our place --

RY:  You -- yeah.

JW:  -- so, it was very Jewish --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- but not religious.  My family.  I mean, I had to do all the -- my bar mitzvah and do the preparation, but --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- but they sent me to a school, after school, to learn Yiddish writing and --

RY:  Yes.  What kind of school was it?

JW:  I forget.  It's a -- was like a Yiddish cultural center.  Yeah, and they had a teacher who -- that's where I remember learning to write a little bit of Yiddish and speak and read a little Yid-- that's how I learned to read a little 9:00bit.  I hardly remember it now, but --

RY:  Was it a pleasant experience?

JW:  (laughs) I felt sorry for the teacher.  Imagine coming home from school, after all day in school, to come to the class.  And we were troublemakers, a little bit.  So, we gave him a rough time.  I don't know how I learned anything.

RY:  Right.  (laughter) So, were there things you did together as a family, like holidays or --

JW:  All the holidays.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  The whole family, my mother's side of it, the Goodmans --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- the -- we had big seders over everybody's house.  And since my father was the only musician in the family, he played all -- everybody who got married, he played all the weddings, him and his brother, and all the bar mitzvah parties.  And any Jewish celebration, he was the klezmer clarinetist that 10:00played all the Yiddish music and dances.  So, in that way, it was very Jewish and celebratory.

RY:  You also mentioned he taught you piano.

JW:  That -- yes, he --

RY:  Yes.

JW:  -- wanted to -- I wanted to go out and play in the streets and he said, "No, I want you to pra-- I'm going to teach you -- have you learn piano, because I want you to be able to accompany me."  So, he made me study piano.  I didn't want to do it at first, but he taught me all the chords that you play for Jewish music, and eventually, I was able to play with him and -- while I was in college --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- I joined the musicians' union and --

RY:  What --

JW:  -- we played together.

RY:  Was it also for marriages or bar mitzvahs or --

JW:  Yeah.

RY:  -- was -- yeah.

JW:  Yes.

RY:  Yeah. 

JW:  And while he really didn't know much about child-raising -- 'cause he was uneducated, and sometimes he would become very punitive to me.  But it wasn't until I played with him outside of -- that he actually expressed pride for me -- that he was so proud to have his son and his brother and his brother's son, who's a trumpet player -- we all played together.  That was his proudest moment.

RY:  Okay.  What languages were spoken in your home?

JW:  We spoke -- they spoke English, but when they didn't want me to understand what they were saying, they either spoke in Russian or Yiddish.

RY:  Yeah, and who were the people who lived in your home?

JW:  Just my mother, father, myself, and then my sister.  And every once in a 12:00while, we'd have a border.  They would have a border --

RY:  Oh.

JW:  -- that rented a bedroom.

RY:  Okay, and how was the relationship with the border?

JW:  Well, I was always very friendly with them.  There was a couple, the Gentile couple up there.  (laughs)

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And he became my bodyguard.

RY:  Oh!

JW:  So, I would tell him when anybody was bullying me.  He would go out and --

RY:  Oh.

JW:  -- talk to them.  (laughs)

RY:  Did you experience bullying often?

JW:  Well, you see, we lived in a Jewish neighborhood, but when I had to go to junior high school, it was in a black neighborhood and you had to cross an Italian neighborhood to get there.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  So, there was a lot of opportunity for bullying when we were in the minority.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  But it wasn't bad.  I mean, I made friends with some of the black kids 13:00and they protected me from bullies.  (laughs)

RY:  Okay.

JW:  But that's where I became interested in the whole race issue.

RY:  Yeah.  Who were your friends at that time?

JW:  Everybody on the block.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  It was a row home, and each house was separated by -- our porches were separated by railings.  So, if I were to go out of my door, front door, I would look up and see who was on the porch.  And there must have been a dozen kids that I played with regularly.  And if it was raining, we'd just climb over the rails and play together there.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  But Jewish holidays, like Passover, nobody went to school and we were all dressed up.  And we had many, many games that we played with nuts.  Pecans, 'cause they roll good.  And I remember -- and we used to carry pockets full of -- filberts.  That's what they were.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Filbert nuts, a handkerchief, and we'd be out on the street with our pocket full of filberts.  And we'd put 'em in our handkerchief and bang them against the sidewalk to crack the shells so we could eat 'em.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Plus, we play games with them against the wall.  So, it was really a --

RY:  So, you -- yeah.

JW:  -- a neighborhood celebration.

RY:  Yeah.  So, you had Jewish friends and also Gentile Black friends?

JW:  One or two.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  There weren't that many.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  I had one Gentile friend who lived up (UNCLEAR) but he -- they were Russian, and he was the only person on the street that had a Christmas tree.  And we would look past the -- gee, look at that!  A Christmas -- it was so -- and we would look in the window, and he had electric trains going around.  It was such an unusual thing for us --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- to see that.

RY:  Did you know what it was at that time, or was it --

JW:  Oh, yeah.

RY:  Yeah, yeah.

JW:  And he would let me come in and play with his trains, and we'd --

RY:  Oh, yeah.

JW:  -- we'd have a good -- in fact, he and I played our first piano duet in public school.  He was taking piano lessons from the same teacher I was.  His name was Boris Honchuk.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And we were -- we practiced every day, these -- he was -- I was on the bottom of the piano, he was on the top, and we played these duets.  And we told the teacher we'd like to play it for assembly program.  So, the teacher let us play, and she put us up front and said, "And now, Jerry and Boris are going to play a duet."  And there were three classrooms in a row, listening to us.  So, we started to play and we got lost.  So, I said, "Boris, let's start over again."  So, we started again from the beginning and started -- we got lost again.  "Let's start over again."  Well, after the third time, the teacher said, "All right, everybody give them a nice round of applause" and she got rid 16:00of us.  So, we never really finished the song.  But that was my experience with my Gentile friend on the block.

RY:  Yeah.  I -- what I know of western Philad-- of Philadelphia, where you lived the first thirteen years of your life --

JW:  Yes.

RY:  -- is that it is a very Catholic city.  Or is it not?

JW:  Oh, no.

RY:  No, not necessarily, yeah.

JW:  There were big pockets of Jewish ghettos.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Yes.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And even in the suburbs -- eventually, they moved out to the suburbs.

RY:  Yeah.  So, did you experience anti-Semitism in Philadelphia?  You talked --

JW:  No.

RY:  -- you mentioned --

JW:  Not much.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  It's only when I moved to Atlantic City.

RY:  Oh!  So, you would not call the bullying anti-Semitism?

JW:  No, no, because --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- it was Jewish kids doing the bullying sometime.

RY:  Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.  (laughter) Okay, yeah.  Yeah, so you moved to Atlantic City when you were about fourteen.

JW:  Right after my bar mitzvah.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Thirteen, yeah.

RY:  And was it a big shock --

JW:  Yeah.

RY:  -- or a big change?

JW:  Yes!  First of all, they moved to an Italian-Irish neighborhood.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  So, there were no Jews around.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And -- but I felt very comfortable.  I got involved with them, and all of the hotels -- there were many hotels in Atlantic City that were prominently Jewish.  And so, there were a lot of Jewish people in Atlantic City.  But I was more involved with the gentile boys than I was with the Jewish boys.  But I did experience anti-Semitism a couple of times, just being rejected by a gentile girl because I was Jewish.

RY:  Oh!

JW:  When she found out I was Jewish, she didn't want me -- to do anything with me.  And yet, here we were -- we were very friendly and going out, and then she found out I was Jewish.  And then, "Oh, I'm sorry."

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  So, that was one kind of anti-Semitism.  But I knew there was anti-Semitism all around me about who could get into what college and everything.  And there were limitations about how many Jews were allowed in certain colleges.  Frankly, Temple University was a -- because it was in the city, was a city campus, there wasn't that issue.  There were many Jewish kids that went to Temple.

RY:  Were there any universities you wanted to go to, but that had --

JW:  Not really.

RY:  -- limitations on Jews -- no.

JW:  'Cause all my relatives were in Philadelphia --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- and my friends were there --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- from before.  I felt very comfortable --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- living in the same neighborhood.  I was able to live in the same neighborhood where I went to elementary school, at my aunt's house, while I took the trolley car to the university.

RY:  Oh, yeah.  Was there any political atmosphere in your house?

JW:  Oh, definitely.

RY:  Yes, yeah.

JW:  I mean, we grew up worshiping Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

RY:  Oh! 

JW:  He was the next thing to God.  And as far as I know, everybody in my neighborhood voted Democratic and Roosevelt, he could do no wrong.  He was -- he would --

RY:  Why?  Why Roosevelt?

JW:  Oh, first of all, he was for the working people.  He took over during the Depression.  That's when I was born, right at the beginning of that Depression, in 1929, 1930.  And he did everything he could for the working person.  My father even got jobs for musicians.  Roosevelt gave money to the musicians' union to sponsor concerts that would pay the musicians.  So, he did so many things for the working person, that we loved him.

RY:  Was your father a unionist?

JW:  A musicians' union.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Yes.

RY:  But was he like a --

JW:  And so was I.

RY:  -- an activist, a --

JW:  No.

RY:  Yes.

JW:  You just couldn't play the jobs --

RY:  Oh, okay.

JW:  -- unless you were in the union.

RY:  Yeah, yeah, okay.  Do you remember your bar mitzvah?

JW:  Yes.  (laughs)

RY:  How was it?

JW:  I remember it.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  I remember, you know, going after school and learning to do the reading and sing it.  And I enjoyed the singing and the --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- reading of the Hebrew.  And I remember singing my -- singing the -- my section of the Torah.

RY:  Do you remember which one it was?

JW:  No.

RY:  No.

JW:  No, in the Torah.

RY:  Or what it talked about?

JW:  No, I had no idea.  It was just the idea of being able to sing it and say the words correctly.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  But all my relatives were there, and they gave me money presents.  And with those money presents, I went to -- it's very hard to think that there was a 21:00Boy Scout troop in a Jewish neighborhood.  The Jews were never known as outdoorspeople, campers, campfires, things like that.  It was very kind of alien.  And to have a Boy Scout troop that was all Jewish in our neighborhood was very interesting to have.  And they had a summer camp called Treasure Island, in which Boy Scout troops from all over would come to the summer camp and spend a week there.  But it cost money.  But my bar mitzvah presents paid for it, so I went with my friends in the Boy Scout troop to this island, and we had tents that we slept in and -- we were the only Jewish kids in a whole island of Gentile Boy Scouts.  And we had nothing to do with anybody else but each 22:00other.  So, we were kind of an island.

RY:  Yeah.  Which organization organized the Boy Scouts?

JW:  It was called the Boy Scouts of America, was the --

RY:  Oh, it's the -- yeah, it's the Gentile organization.

JW:  Yeah, the national organization.

RY:  Yeah, yeah.  So, did you meet Gentile Boy Scouts, or not -- there were no -- yeah.

JW:  I mean, we were all packed together on that --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- and yet, everybody --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- stayed with their own group.

RY:  Okay, interesting, yeah.  So, you mentioned this Boy Scouts organization.  You mentioned the musician union.  Were there other organizations or -- you were part of?

JW:  There was one --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- that was common to most Jewish neighborhoods at that time from Eastern Europe, where -- I forget what it was called, but they would send me around about to pay dues to this organization that took care of all the burial --

RY:  Oh, yeah.

JW:  -- burial grounds.  I forget what the name of that organ--

RY:  Chevra kadisha [Hebrew: Jewish burial society]?

JW:  Huh?

RY:  Chevra kadisha.

JW:  Yeah, something like that.

RY:  Yeah, yeah.

JW:  And that was the only other organization I remember.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And, of course, planting trees for Palestine.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And then, we -- collecting the boxes and --

RY:  Yeah.  So, was it a KKL box?

JW:  Yeah.

RY:  Yeah, or --

A:   I think so.

RY:  Yeah, yeah.  Did your family go to a synagogue?  Go to the synagogue?

JW:  My father, not so much.  We would go on certain Jewish holidays.

RY:  What kind of synagogue was it?

JW:  It was a Conservative.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  There was no such thing as Reform or anything else.  There -- I guess there was a more Ortho-- no, I guess it was just Conservative.

RY:  Did your family subscribe to any publications, like newspapers or magazines?

JW:  No, my family did not.  But my aunt that I stayed with when I went to college, she subscribed to the "Forward" newspaper.  And that was the only 24:00Yiddish newspaper there was.  And it came from New York and she used to read it every day and listen to the news -- Nathan Fleischer was his name, was the Yiddish newsman at the time.  And he would come on the radio every evening, and his first, opening remarks were -- I forget.  "Mayne fraynt -- a gutn tog, mayne fraynt [My friends -- good morning, my friends]" or something like that.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And then, he would give all the news in Yiddish.

RY:  Yeah.  And did you listen to him?

JW:  Yeah.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  I listened to it, but I couldn't understand all he was saying.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  But my aunt -- and there was another old woman living at my aunt's house, who did not speak English at all.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  She only spoke Yiddish, and she would look at the television set and give them -- all the stars' Yiddish names.  So, if somebody's name was Ed Sullivan, 25:00(laughter) which was a very popular -- she would call him Ed Solomon.

RY:  Oh, yeah. 

JW:  And Billy Eckstine, he's Jewish, he's Yiddish, so she -- watch him.  And, I mean, anybody she could -- oh, Arthur Godf-- Friedberg, she would call him.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Arthur Friedberg instead of Arthur Godfrey.  That was --

RY:  Did -- what kind of books did you have at home?

JW:  We had one bookcase, and I remember -- I don't know where they got the books, but we had the first volume of an encyclopedia, because they give you the first volume free, hoping you'll buy the rest.  But we never bought the rest.  So, I knew all the A's very well.  I remember the first one was aardvark -- anteater -- and I knew -- that was the only -- and then, I had -- they had some 26:00political books, but -- oh, I know they had a little library, American -- "The American Library of Wit and Humor."  Now, I don't know where they got it and why.  I never saw any -- either of them read it.  But I read it, some of -- but my mother always used to take me to the library.  So, I would get piles of books from the library.  It was -- I don't know why.  None of my aunts ever took their kids to the library.  But for some reason, my mother thought it would be good for me, and she did.  She took me regularly.  So, I was a big reader.

RY:  Yeah.  When you moved to Atlantic City and started living in a non-Jewish environment --

JW:  Right.

RY:  -- did non-Jewish influences get into your home?  Did your parents change something?

JW:  No.  My father, because he not only played for Jewish audiences -- he played semi-classical --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- for Gentile audiences.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And even when we lived in Philadelphia, he would get jobs in Gentile hotels for the summer.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Like -- and he had a job in Portland, Maine.  Poland Springs, Maine.  And he would pack up -- we were the only ones with a little car, and we -- he would drive me and my mother to Maine, and we would stay at a farmhouse.  And he would play at these very elegant Gentile hotels.  So, he was very used to mixing with a lot of different people.  And when we moved to Atlantic City, we had an Italian family right next door to us.  They became our closest friends.  I would pal around with their son.  They -- we would have dinner there and then so forth.  They were like sisters and brothers.

RY:  Okay, yeah.

JW:  So --

RY:  So, why did you move there?

JW:  My father thought he could make more money as a musician in Atlantic City because of the hotels.

RY:  Oh, yeah.

JW:  And he could play at the hotels, which he did.

RY:  Okay.  So, after high school, you decide to go to university.

JW:  Yes.

RY:  Yeah, and you got a B.S. in English.

JW:  And a master's degree --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- in education.

RY:  What took you to study English and --

JW:  All right, first of all --

RY:  -- education?

JW:  When I got accepted to Temple Univers-- it was in the accounting program.  That's why they let me in.  I didn't have all the requirements.  So, the first year, I took accounting, and a part of the second year.  But during the first year, there was an English class that I took, and the professor read an essay.  It was a -- the "Apology" from -- by Plato.  And I had never heard anything in my life like that.  And after class, I said, "What is that you were reading?"  He said, "It was a -- Plato, he's a philosopher."  "A 29:00what?" I said, "What is a philosopher?"  And he said, "Oh, they talk about big questions.  Life, death, the meaning" -- I said, "Is there more books like that?"  He said, "Yes."  He said, "Go look under the philosophy" -- well, I went to the library and I also discovered there was a word, psychology, that I never heard of before, and that there were books written about that.  I couldn't get enough of it.  So, I asked if I could change my -- I didn't want to do any more accounting.  This is after a year and a half.  "I would like to change my major."  They said, "You can't do it.  What major do you want?"  I said, "I want to major in English."  They said, "You don't have the proper academic credits.  But maybe, if you majored in education with an English major, that might work.  We would let you major -- you would become an education major, but would have an English minor or something like that."  30:00Well, that's what I did.  I didn't want to be a -- know anything about teaching or to be in education.  I just wanted to have those literature courses, and also become a music minor, because I was playing piano in bands at the time.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And so, they let me in, and I fell in love with the education courses and had wonderful experiences there, getting my master's degree in education.

RY:  Is there any specific story you would like to tell?

JW:  When, about --

RY:  Yeah, about your wonderful experience.

JW:  Well, it was a very progressive education program.  They didn't give us the usual education courses.  They had us learn what is called a core curriculum, which is a problem solv-- you plan a project with the kids, and as 31:00the proj-- they try to solve the problem, they learn the subject matter.  It was very progressive.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And also, they took us on trips to study segregation in the South.  The first time, they didn't tell us.  They said, Who wants to go on a trip to a Southern college, and we're going to study segregation in education.  So, I volunteered.

RY:  And this was in the late '50s, right?

JW:  Yeah.

RY:  Yeah, yeah.

JW:  I vol-- early '50s, right.

RY:  Early '50s.

JW:  Yeah.

RY:  Yeah,

JW:  When there was total segregation --

RY:  Yeah, yeah.

JW:  -- in the South.  So, I said, "Yes, I'd like to go."  And I went, and a whole busload of us went.  And we landed at a university that we were going to stay at for a while, at night.  And got out of the bus, and all the students from the univ-- the college there came out to greet -- they were all black.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  I said, "Nobody told us we were going to an all-black" --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- "univ"-- "Well, we said you're going to Kentucky State College."  We 32:00didn't know at the time that whenever the word "state" followed the state name, it was an all-black --

RY:  Oh!

JW:  -- college.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  So, Virginia State, Kentuck-- University of Kentucky was white, state university was black.  Virginia State was black, University of Virginia white.

RY:  Okay.

JW:  So, that was a shock for them, too, because nobody told them that we were going to be white.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  So, that first evening, we were assigned to a roommate (laughs) from -- each of us to a different roommate from that school.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  We stayed up all night talking, talking about what it was and what -- about issues of race and so forth, and they found out I was interested in jazz -- and so many black musicians that I knew.  And they came in with records, and we stayed up all night listening to jazz.  It was a fantastic experience.

RY:  So, did you feel that, as a Jew, you related differently to them as --

JW:  Yeah, absolutely --

RY:  -- Gentile -- right.

JW:  -- because I understood --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- what it felt like to be discriminated against, you know?  I just had, I think, a greater empathy as a Jewish person than my white -- Gentile friends.

RY:  And did they feel more comfortable with you because you were --

JW:  I don't know.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  I think it was my personality that they felt comfortable with, 'cause they let me sit in with their jazz band --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- yeah, and -- was the first time I ever danced with a black woman.

RY:  Oh, okay. 

JW:  Although, I was very friendly with black kids in the high school, because even there, there was segregation.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And my Atlantic City High School, there were more kids in the commercial or technical, very few in the academic.  Atlantic City was segregated.  There was a black section and so forth.

RY:  Yeah.  So --

JW:  I've written --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- my black-white history.  I have stories of my whole relationships with 34:00black people.

RY:  Okay.  Is there any anecdote related to your university years you would like to tell, or --JW:  Well, I --

RY:  -- to -- yeah.

JW:  -- they -- in addition to that, they also took us -- this is why -- you asked me about Temple --

RY:  Yeah, yeah.

JW:  -- what was special.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Another trip they took us on was to live in the home of black coal miners in West Virginia.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  We actually -- me and my w-- a white Italian guy were guests in the home of -- they gave everybody an assignment.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And that was an interesting experience --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- to l-- I remember the first night we were there, they sat us down for dinner and then they wouldn't sit with us.  They just wanted to serve us, and we said, We're not going to eat 'til you sit down with us -- because they were so used to --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- taking a position, you know, not to be in any way equal to -- and I 35:00remember speaking in the black church.  We were invited to their church service, like -- and we talked about what it was like.  And they talked about what it was like to have us in the house.  And they -- I remember the father, who had black lung disease from the coal mines saying, "We didn't know how it would be with these white boys coming in our house" and so forth, and -- "but after dinner, when they unloosened their belt of their pants and sat back, I knew everything was gonna be all right."  (laughter) So -- and that made a big hit, so --

RY:  Okay.  (laughter) That's good, yeah.  And you also, while you were studying at Temple University, you volunteered at Camp Yeshiva, or --

JW:  Yes.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  I was a counselor at Camp Yeshiva.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  I was the music counselor.

RY:  Yes.

JW:  And usually, what they do at that those camps is they'll teach, you know, the popular songs or the -- but I was very into mambo music, because I worked on 36:00the beach chairs all summer long in Atlantic City.  And in the hotels behind me, the best Latin bands would come to play for the Jews, because the Jews were into mambo dancing.  That was a big hit.  And Tito Puente came to play there, I remember, one day.  And anyway, there was a boy I was working with who played conga drums.  And I would play guitar and we would -- he taught me how to do Latin music.  So, when I went to this camp, I said, "We're gonna learn how to play mambo."  And they do-- so, I gave them rhythm instruments and so forth, and taught them.  I remember one song, it goes, "Sit down, sit down, you're rockin' the boat.  Sit down" -- and they're playing congas, drums, and cowbells and everything.  And that's -- with -- that's the kind of music we prepared for Parents Day.  The parents -- when the parents heard us playing mambo music, they got up and danced and so forth, so it was a big hit.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  So, that's the kind of counselor I was.

RY:  Yeah.  (laughs) Yeah.  So, after the -- after studying at Temple University, you went to the army.  You served at the main --

JW:  Well, no, first --

RY:  Oh, sorry.

JW:  -- I got a job --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- as a permanent substitute in a junior high school --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- in South Philadelphia.  And I was a substitute teacher for a year or so.  And then, I got drafted into the navy for two years.  But they -- and I was the educ-- and two years, you couldn't be an officer or anything like that.

RY:  Yeah, yeah.

JW:  But they put me in charge of education, helping people take tests that would let them go up in rank.

RY:  Okay, yeah.

JW:  So, they gave me my own office and everything.

RY:  Yeah, yeah.

JW:  But there is one little anecdote I want to tell.

RY:  Yeah, sure.

JW:  When I went to boot camp, which is very rough, there was a sergeant there, 38:00a -- let's see, a chief petty officer.  And he was very -- and we were all college kids from Philadelphia.  And they never had college kids coming into the navy before in a group, like this.  He didn't know how to treat us, anyway.  But he was harder on us than anybody, 'cause he wanted to teach these college kids some humility.  Anyway, we went all right, and after the basic training was over, we all got assignments to go to different places.  I wanted to go on the ocean, I -- 'cause I love the ocean, I love the sea, I love ships.  Instead, they sent me to the ship -- Philadelphia Navy Yard, which was right in the neighborhood that I taught school in.  I said, "That's where I'm gonna be for two years?  I'm gonna -- you're sending me home!"  Well, I was so 39:00disappointed, but he, this chief petty officer, he said, "Weinstein, come here."  He says, "I hear you got signed to Philadelphia.  Do you think you could get me assigned there?"  I said, "Why?"  He said, "I'm sure you know somebody that helped you get" -- I think part of it was: these Jews always do things, you know, they got connections.  They're going to be able to get -- "Can you help me?"  So, I couldn't believe my ears.  Here's a guy that's been torturing us for six weeks, eight weeks, and now he wants me to help him get an assignment that I had nothing to do with.  So, that just kind of --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- emphasized who I was --

RY:  So, it --

JW:  -- in relation to him.

RY:  So, it was the Cold War at that time.

JW:  It was right after the Korean War.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Yes, right after the Korean War.

RY:  Were there -- any suspicion on the Jews in relation to the Soviet Union, 40:00or --

JW:  No.

RY:  No.

JW:  Not that I know of.

RY:  Yeah, yeah.

JW:  No.  The Jews were most suspect during the Roosevelt administration for leaning so far to the left they were called Reds.  I mean, a lot of -- and a lot of the communists in the Russian Revolution were Jewish.  In fact, they -- you know, they blamed the Jews for --

RY:  Sure.  Did your parents have sympathy for the Soviet Union?

JW:  Not for the Soviet Union, but for -- I think they leaned left --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- because it was for the working person --

RY:  Yeah, sure.

JW:  -- to give them some elevation.  And communism did some of that.  I found a book on communism in my booksh--

RY:  Yeah, yeah.

JW:  -- in my parents' bookshelf.

RY:  Oh, okay.  So, we talked about a few things that were going on in the US.  But there were also things going on in Israel during your lifetime.  So, 41:00when you were -- maybe eight years --

JW:  All I remember is --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- planting trees.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Then, eventually -- well, I'll tell you a little bit about that later on, when -- after Israel --

RY:  Yeah --

JW:  -- because that's how I got into developing anti-Semitism workshops --

RY:  Yeah, yeah.

JW:  -- on the UMass campus.

RY:  Yeah, you were eighteen when the state was created.

JW:  Right.

RY:  Yeah.  Can you tell us about --JW:  I think it was more -- we were more involved in the World War II --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- when I was bar mitzvahed --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  It was the middle of the -- World War II, and we hadn't heard about the Holocaust yet.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  But we knew something was wrong with Germany, and that war period took over our lives.  My father even got a job as a -- to work in the shipyards, out of the -- because they needed people to help build -- and he didn't want people 42:00to know that he was working with his hands like that.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And he would go to work with his lunchbox, though the alley, so none of the neighbors could see that -- 'cause he was the big artist and a musician.

RY:  Yeah, sure, sure, yeah.

JW:  But it was -- the establishment of Israel, I remember it, but it was the war that took over our lives.  And when I moved to Atlantic City, all the wounded soldiers took over the hotels --

RY:  Oh.

JW:  -- and that's where they put them.  And in nineteen-for-- I remember the peace when it hit and how we celebrated with the soldiers on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  That was the big thing in our lives.

RY:  Yeah.  And -- yeah.

JW:  But all -- it was after I was up here teaching, I was doing a lot of anti-racism --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- work.  The United Nations passed a resolution equating Zionism with racism.

RY:  Was it in the '70s?

JW:  Yes.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Late '70s.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And when I heard that, I said, "How come we're not doing" -- it was a -- was a social justice program.  We were doing racism, classicism, ageism, heterosexism, all of those isms, but not anti-Semitism.  So, I said it's time for that, 'cause that really woke me up.  And I began to create those workshops, and that became very popular, and they're still using --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- some of the designs we created for --

RY:  Yeah, can you tell me more about the designs, about the curriculum --

JW:  Well --

RY:  -- the content that you've created?

JW:  -- it's been so long since I -- but I had a design of the workshops.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  In fact, I've written a c-- I might have written a couple -- how to do those anti-Semitism workshops.  We had exercises for them to do.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  You know, what -- what's everything you -- I mean, one of the opening ones: "What's everything you ever heard about Jews?"

RY:  Oh, yeah.

JW:  Put 'em down.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  You know?  And we would brainstorm the --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And we would talk, and we keep that list up during the whole workshops -- as I went through some of the history of anti-Semitism, how people talked about their own personal history, even if they weren't Jewish, what they knew, how they learned it, and --

RY:  Yeah, so this was at UMass.

JW:  Huh?

RY:  This was at University of Massachusetts in Amherst --

JW:  Yes.

RY:  -- just for our viewers?

JW:  Yes.

RY:  Yes.  Did you meet any kind -- encounter any kind of resistance in implementing these workshops --

JW:  No.

RY:  -- or did they cooperate?

JW:  No, because --

RY:  Yes.

JW:  -- that's one of the reasons I came up here.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  The school of education was going to be revolutionary.

RY:  Okay, yeah.

JW:  They got rid of all the old programs.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Dwight Allen took us all out to Colorado, to a dude ranch --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- and said, "Create a new school of education."

RY:  Okay, yeah.

JW:  And we built one from scratch, and anything we wanted to do was okay.

RY:  Yeah, so you really got to experiment.

JW:  Oh, my God.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  It was totally experimental.

RY:  Yeah.  Do you have any anecdotes about these workshops or any surprising answer?

JW:  No, only that the students that I trained have gone out to different places and started programs in their other institutions.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Not -- for racism, for all of them.

RY:  Yeah.  You mentioned you trained doctoral students --

JW:  Yes.

RY:  -- in creating workshops against --

JW:  That's right.

RY:  -- anti-Semitism.

JW:  These are all graduate students that I train -- which was training.

RY:  Okay, yeah.

JW:  And I'm even friends with some of them now who are living in Amherst.

RY:  Yeah, okay.  Yes, you mentioned Philip Roth as one of your favorite authors, along with Saul Bellow.  How did you discover their writings?

JW:  Well, as I said, I was a literature major, and I was always interested in literature.  And in -- and into my Jewish culture.  And I think reading "The 46:00Adventures of Augie March" (laughs) was a mindblower.  So, it was -- these guys didn't write from a Yiddish perspective.  But, I mean, they were like my generation.  I'm first generation.  I think they were, too, similarly.  And so, they were kind of liberated from any of the rigid cultural notions of Yiddishkayt and were able to either make fun of it -- but at the same time never deny their own.  And they got a lot of criticism for being anti-Jewish for writing books that more conservative Jews considered anti-Semitic.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  But I knew what they were.  They -- it seemed to me you have to be very comfortable in a society to be able to kid yourself and to have a sense of humor 47:00about something that was very hurtful to people.

RY:  So, which one is your favorite Philip Roth book?

JW:  I think that -- and let's see, I think it was "Adventures of Augie March," because that was a -- the first one I read --

RY:  Yeah, yeah.

JW:  -- and it really opened the others.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  But I also liked the one -- I think it's called "Patriot," where he wrote about a gentile American boy who became a father with a radical daughter.  I think "American Pastoral" it was called.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  I enjoyed that a great deal.

RY:  So, what did that -- what touched you in his -- in --

JW:  Oh, just a father and his relation to a daughter, and all the conflict that ensued from her taking radical positions and so forth.  And he was the star athlete of his high school, and so -- like Jack Armstrong of the society.

RY:  And what's your -- Saul Bellow's -- favorite book?

JW:  Well, I can't think of it right now.

RY:  Okay.

JW:  I have -- (laughs)

RY:  Yeah.  You mentioned -- yeah.

JW:  But I read most all of them.

RY:  Yeah.  You mentioned the "Apology" by Plato that made you fall in love with literature.

JW:  Yes.

RY:  Is there anything in the "Apology" or in Plato's work that struck you, or --

JW:  Well, it's -- I had never heard anybody talk about issues like that.  That's why psychology was new -- I never knew you could talk about behavior from analytical point of view.  I became so intrigued when I -- I mean, I could have easily become a psychotherapist.  As it is, the -- some of the programs I created in education were very psychologically oriented.  I created a program called psychological education.  Humanistic psychological 'cation, which would 49:00deal with some of the emotional life of students rather than strictly the rational.

RY:  Yeah.  Can you tell us more about it, like how --

JW:  Yes, I have (laughs) a few --

RY:  Pract-- yeah.

JW:  You shall have to see my resume.  We should have --

RY:  Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.

JW:  We should've scanned that.

RY:  Sure, yeah.

JW:  But I created experimental curriculum that allow-- and that went out and -- all over the world to train people how to use that curriculum to get kids to express their feelings about what's going on with them at the time.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  I remember one that I created was called one-way feeling glasses, and that was done at the Horace Mann School at Columbia University.  I had a sixth-grade class imagine that I'm going to give them sets of glasses, sun-- different color sunglasses.  And each set of glasses would represent a different emotion.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  So, here are -- the first one I'm going to hand out are suspicious glasses.  When you put on those glasses, everything you see, you've got to be suspicious about.  So, we experimented, what it would be like if you had suspicious glasses on.  And somebody said, "Hello, how are you?"  What would you say?  What would you think to yourself?  "Oh, I would think, Hmm, why do they want to know how I am?  I -- well, they never asked me before.  Why are they asking me" -- and that's what we'd play.  Do -- kind of scared glasses or feeling proud glasses.  You had your proud glasses on, what -- and we would talk about which kind of glasses do you wear most, of these feeling glasses, when you're by yourself, when you're with your friends?  So, we had a way -- giving them a tool to talk about inner life that never was expre-- never was called for in the classroom --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- where you're learning about things outside of yourself, totally.

RY:  Sure.  No, interesting.  Who were your mentors in education, in life?

JW:  Well, (laughs) some of my mentors -- I think the whole -- let's see, like even -- Sigmund Freud, who was a -- introduced me to a deeper sense of psychological -- Erich Fromm.  Then, I -- when I was teaching in Philadelphia, I wanted to do something more -- I did an -- there was a center in Philadelphia that was a Jewish center that talked about -- I think the Philadelphia commission on human relations.  And they were looking for experimental teachers 52:00who were doing something about improving human relations.  And I created an experiment of teaching anti-racism to kids in their junior high.  And it was my first publication.  But I wanted -- the school that I was in was very rigid, and I wanted to get out of there to do something more adventurous.  So, I went to Temple University -- this is way after I graduated -- and I heard that somebody there was going to do an experimental program in Syracuse for inner city schools.  So, I went to talk to him, and he said, "Who are you?"  And I told him, and he had been teaching down there before he got this --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- position at the university, and we began to talk, and it was very easy -- an Italian guy named Mario Fantini.  And he said, "Well, I'm going up to Syracuse next weekend.  You want to come with me to see what it's like on a -- 53:00because the Ford Foundation is gonna give me money to take over four schools in the inner city, and I'm going to try some experimental programs.  You want to come with me?"  I said, "Sure."  So, I drove up to Syracuse with him, and in the car, we had such discussions on -- we were seeing eye to eye about education, about race, about this, and we were both brought up on the city streets of Philadelphia, so we knew how to -- how you talk on the streets.  Well, we just bonded.  And he became the director of that program, I became the curriculum coordinator, and for two years, we experimented, turning these schools upside-down that were totally neglected.  And that's described somewhere in my writing.  And then, he went -- oh, we also started a teacher 54:00training program at Syracuse University that would train teachers especially to work in inner city -- so, he was a mentor.  When he went to the Ford Foundation, I went with him, and the both of us did world experimentation together. 

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  So, I was very close to him.

RY:  Can you remind me of his name?  Sorry.

JW:  Mario Fantini.

RY:  Yeah, Mario Fantini, yeah.

JW:  And then, after I had moved out of New York City to come up here, eventually he came up here and became the dean of the school --

RY:  Oh, yeah.

JW:  -- of education.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And the other day, I -- there was a program on television called "Criminal Minds."  And I didn't watch it, I just saw the end, the credits, and I saw "music by Steffan Fantini."  And I knew that he had a son called Steffan Fantini.  So, somehow, I got him on Facebook (laughs) and I told him, "Are you Mario's son?"  And he said, "Yes, I am."  And I t-- oh, he remembered me and 55:00we started to correspond.  And he's been doing all the music for that show, and now there's a new movie out called "Mom's Night Out."  He's done the music for that.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  So, we're in touch with each other.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  So, that's -- more than a mentor.  He considered us brothers.  He says, "You were like a brother to my father, and you were the rock stars of the education movement in the '60s."

RY:  Yeah.  (laughter) Oh, interesting.  So --

JW:  Oh, and --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- but there were a couple professors at --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- at Temple who -- imagine creating programs like that, taking us to stay at the homes of coalminers, to study segregation in the South, to teach us about this coworker --

RY:  Can you tell us --

JW:  It was unbelievable.

RY:  -- their names?

JW:  Well, I remember one was named Clayton, John Clayton, doing -- and Mickelson was the head of that program there.  But that opened my eyes in so 56:00many ways.  That college experience was just --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- mind-blowing for me.

RY:  So, were there other ways you took part in the Civil Rights Movement you haven't -- ways you haven't mentioned?

JW:  Yes, I -- not only did I do the experimental program for the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, they also wanted me to do some training of black leadership, to give them some of the leadership skills and tech-- so, I did.  I went to different communities and worked with some of the groups -- and I hope, that was an unpatronizing manner.

RY:  Oh, yeah.

JW:  Because one of the things they watch out for is do-gooders.  White do-gooders --

RY:  Yes, yes, yes.

JW:  -- that come in, and I didn't ever want to be --

RY:  Yeah, yeah.

JW:  -- classified as that.

RY:  To -- did you -- yeah.

JW:  Oh, and -- go ahead.

RY:  Oh, please go ahead.

JW:  No, no, no.  Just remind me of T groups I was in, which --

RY:  Okay.

JW:  -- is a whole other story.

RY:  Okay, what's the T group?

JW:  A T group was created in the '50s as a way for groups that are working to begin to discuss what processes they were using with each other.  Nobody ever -- in any group meeting, they always talk about the subject matter and so forth.  And there's all kinds of things, dynamics going on in groups.  And somebody named Kite created T groups, which -- their program was not only will you have a little subject to talk about, but you're also going to talk on how you are talking to each other, and what roles each of you are taking.  And Temple University was one of the first universities to incorporate it as part of their curriculum.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And I'll never forget the first T group I was in, in which the teacher 58:00said, "Okay, so, what is it like to be sitting here for you?"  (laughs) That was the opening question.  And we began to talk, and gradually, when she gave us a little assignment, she would interrupt us and say, "Who's taking the dominant role here?"  And (laughs) who's not saying anything?  Oh, you're noticing?  Why do you think that is?"  And so, that's what T-group was.  And later on, it became a medium by which whites would have to encounter blacks.  So, they were then called encounter groups, and I was in some of the initial black-white encounter groups that had people talk about what their feelings were like, to be in a group with each other.  They were very intense.  So, that was 59:00one of the things I incorporated in my training.

RY:  What did you learn in these groups?

JW:  Oh, just the anger -- I mean, to hear what it's like to feel like what the anger directed at you as a white, even though you were doing everything you possibly could to be anti-racist, and the realization that no one brought up in our society can be totally anti-racist if you're white, even if you're Jewish, that it is so incul-- in fact, right now, one of the issues is, oh, we're beyond racism.  It's much more subtle now, and the blacks are having a hard time keeping that agenda still up when there's no obvious segregation in the schools, even though there is, right now -- no legal segregation -- because of class issues, social class and poverty and income.

RY:  Can you give me an example of how white people cannot be completely 60:00anti-racist, even for a Jew?  Even for you?

JW:  Yes, that you find racist feelings coming up --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- and what we're taught, trained to do now, as more enlightened, is to recognize them, not deny them to yourself.  There's all -- because originally, what most white people did was to say, "Oh, I'm not prejudiced against all" -- right?  "Some of my best" -- this was their clichéd -- "some of my best friends are" so-and-so.  And so, they were unaware of any of their own -- but even the people who feel most liberated from racism still -- I have feelings that come up -- your initial reaction, it's like you're -- like if you remember a song that you don't even remember memorizing, but the minute you hear it, it 61:00echoes something in your system.  The same thing with -- if you see a black person for the first time, or you're going through a bla-- some encounter, you might feel an issue coming up that is racist.

RY:  Do you explain that by cultural conditioning or social conditioning, or by some kind of lower animal brain reaction to someone who is --

JW:  I would say it was mostly --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- by cultural conditioning.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  There might be some protective gene that -- I mean, why is it so prevalent?

RY:  Yeah.  Oh, because some people say that just as much as you prefer your own family, you might prefer your ethnic group as the prolongation of your own --

JW:  Of course.

RY:  -- family, so that this is --

JW:  That's true.

RY:  -- due to lower brain, animal brain --

JW:  Yes.

RY:  -- processes.

JW:  Right.

RY:  So, yeah.

JW:  But for some reason, I was always attracted to the outsiders.

RY:  Yeah, yeah, okay.  Yeah, so I wanted to ask you -- it's around the same subject, whether you had to question your privileges as a white man or you had to --

JW:  Oh, absolutely, that was one of the --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- that was one of the topics in our racism courses.

RY:  Okay, yeah.

JW:  All right, let's talk about white privilege --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- and how that works and so forth.  That became a big -- helping people recognize that you're not starting off evenly.

RY:  Yeah.  So, did you -- yeah, so what are -- are there other things you had to question, or were you, for example, trying to take a dominant role?  Or were you expected to be loved by the black people for being a good white, like --

JW:  That's what you got to beware of.

RY:  Yeah, yeah, okay.  Any other -- yeah.

JW:  Now, you see what helped me much, mostly, was my interest in jazz.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Black musicians were my heroes, and I knew of all of the ones who were playing, and that -- and it was -- the black musician-- and white musicians integrated -- one of the first integrations, as they played together, because the white musicians were so interested in the black jazz that was coming up.  And they finally -- like Benny Goodman when he had a black -- the only one -- the first -- one of the first big bands to have a black piano player.  Other bands began to do the first integration, and that -- and to play in clubs where there were not -- blacks were not allowed.  Oh, and some of the white bands refused to play in clubs.  In fact, when I went own on that busload with white kids --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- to West Virginia, they would not let us eat in the same restaurant, 64:00'cause we had two black kids with us.  And if we did, they put up a big partition so that none of the white customers could see that we were a mixed group.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  But I didn't want and didn't intend to use the whole thing about racism today.  I wanted --

RY:  Oh.

JW:  -- there was some other items I thought of, but I --

RY:  Sure.

JW:  -- forgot.

RY:  Sure, okay.  Let's talk a little bit about transmission, then.  Jewish transmission.  What do you think are the values and practices your parents tried to pass on to you?

JW:  Oh, as Jews, as --

RY:  Oh, not -- or as -- or maybe more as --

JW:  Well, first of all --

RY:  -- universal, yeah.

JW:  -- education was the most important thing, at least from my mother's perspective, that somehow -- and, as I remember, all the other parents on the block, that was the key to get unlocked from the subservient positions we had 65:00been in.  So, that was key, that -- (laughs) that we make fun of Jewish parents being overprotective.  Jewish mothers, this, that.  And yet, I understood that Jews never felt safe in the world, especially coming from where they went.  And so, they had a right to be overprotective, to worry about their children.  But at -- sometimes, it was a tremendous burden on us.  But at the same time, it was the caring about us that was so strong, so intense, that that's something that was a gift that I got from them, to be able to be with my own kids, that gift of this -- even though they would be kind of critical of what I would do, they would always accept me in the end.  So, that was key.  I think they were 66:00made for democracy, even though they argue a lot, that -- and Israel's a good example of -- for every three Jews, there are twenty-two opinions.  (laughter) How can you run a country like that?  (laughs) But there's something about that -- trying to battle it out and to figure out things, and use their wonderful minds to try and come up with solutions to problems.  So, I think that that -- I always respect and take pride in.  So, I -- very prideful of much of my Jewish culture, although I am not prideful of the religion itself.

RY:  So, what values and practices did you try to pass on to your three children?

JW:  Well, I hope some of the things I just said --

RY:  Yeah, yeah.

JW:  -- about caring, about education, about the value of human life.

RY:  Oh, yeah, or how did you try to give them a Jewish education.  Were there any organization--

JW:  I didn't try.

RY:  Oh, yeah.

JW:  I didn't try to give 'em a Jewish education.  I just tried to give them an education.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And they knew of my work in terms of a -- Judaism -- my work at the schools.  And so, they knew that -- I followed some of the holidays, for a while.  They had their little seders and things like that.  I would -- I never married a Jewish person.  I always married -- was involved with Gentile women.  And so, all of my daughters are mixed.  But the part that's Jewish, they -- I did my best to keep them strong with it.

RY:  Was your intermarriage an issue for your family?

JW:  Oh, yes.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Absolutely.  When I met my first wife, who I was introduced to by a Jewish couple, (laughs) and we decided to get married -- and my parents, oh, they couldn't believe I was gonna marry a shiksa.  But in the end, my relatives and my parents gave me a nice little wedding, just the kind I wanted.  He played flute for the ceremony.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  The rabbi gave a little speech on the Pied Piper, how the Pied Piper would follow -- would take -- all the mice and rats --

RY:  Yeah, yeah.

JW:  -- followed him out of town.  So, in a way, the flute reminds him of the Pied Piper, leading to a new life.

RY:  Were you the first one in the family to marry a non-Jewish --

JW:  Yes.

RY:  -- person?

JW:  First to go to college, the first --

RY:  Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.  And how were you received by your wife's family --

JW:  Well --

RY:  -- or your in-laws?

JW:  -- very friendly.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  My -- all my -- I remember -- in fact, I met my wi-- see, I was playing an Italian club in Philadelphia, playing the piano.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And they have dances every Saturday night.  I invited my cousins to come down and hear me play.  Well, the night they came down, my other friends brought this woman to meet me.  And all of my cousins were jitterbugging with her.  They danced the whole night away with her, and so they loved her.  And it was never an issue.  And with my kids, they're --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- they related to everybody.

RY:  Okay.

JW:  It -- that's what I meant, that they can become critical -- by end, they 70:00accept you.

RY:  Yeah, okay.

JW:  Oh, I -- even my sister married a Gentile boy.

RY:  Oh, okay.  So, did you go on having a career as a performer, as a musical performer?

JW:  I was always -- my father always said, "Always have music as your sideline, never for your main profession."  It's very difficult to make a living that way.  So, it was always-- that's the way I helped pay my college.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And I would play on weekends.  I would play in the summertime.  But I was pursuing my education career.

RY:  Yeah, and what difference do you feel between klezmer music and non-klezmer music?

JW:  Well, all klezmer music -- most of it is written in a minor key.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And to me, even the happy music's not -- but they switch to major and minor.  When my father used to play a slow -- there was a -- I forget the name 71:00of it, but before they'd start the dance, he played a slow introduction.  And that introduction was -- I associate it with the crying of the Jewish people, that -- the sadness that they went through, and the crying of the cantor that when -- to me, when a cantor sings and they're cracking their voice and they're -- that, to me, is like a crying of the Jewish people.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  And somehow, they were able to emulate that on a clarinet, that crying, and switch back and forth to a very spirited -- that, to me, was the essence of Jewish music.  Now, it's become more like jazz, and you're finding klezmer musicians that play bluegrass, that play -- but my daughter, my youngest 72:00daughter, who I helped (laughs) develop as a classical violinist, when she got to college, she became very interested in bluegrass music.  And they said, Well, you gotta move to Asheville, North Carolina if you want to do that.  She moved down there, and now she's making a living as a bluegrass fiddler.  But at our -- my last birthday party, she came up here, and we have a cousin who plays clarinet.  And the three of us played klezmer music for her.

RY:  Yeah.  Have you noticed that the relationship to klezmer has changed through the decades?  Like the new klezmer generation might have --

JW:  Yeah.

RY:  -- a different relationship to it than --

JW:  Well, even the way my cousin plays --

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- is different.  I would call the way my father and his colleagues played raw, very -- they would make the clarinet squeak, they would bend notes 73:00and come -- and it was very raw sounding.  Raucous, almost.  And now, I hear my cousin play very elegant, but is still the same tunes, but none of the squeaks and shrieks.  So, it's calmed down, and it's -- as I said, there's a movement now to relate it even to hip-hop.

RY:  Yeah, okay.  Yeah, and do you like these (UNCLEAR)?

JW:  I don't know.  I haven't heard -- I can't take hip-hop, so -- (laughs)

RY:  Okay, okay.

JW:  -- or any of the new -- any of the popular music --

RY:  Okay.

JW:  -- except jazz.

RY:  Yeah, okay.  Did your knowledge of Yiddish help you in klezmer music, or would -- or did the fact that you don't speak fluently Yiddish impede you in --

JW:  No, it didn't --

RY:  No, yeah.

JW:  -- didn't have any effect.  Right now, I have only maybe one or two 74:00people I can -- we can talk a little Yiddish to.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  Friends.

RY:  Oh, do you still use Yiddish?

JW:  A bisl [A bit].  (laughs)

RY:  Okay, okay.  Can you elaborate on that?  In what context do you speak Yiddish?

JW:  Well, my -- well, we'll come out with expressions, like "A kopveytik [A worry, lit. "a headache"]."

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  "Oy, mayn boykh tit mir vey [Oh, my belly hurts]."

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  When you get to be as old as I am, to talk about your physical ailments is the main topic of conversation.  And the Jews have plenty of words for physical ailments.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  But curse -- little curse words, "Gey in der erd [Go to hell, lit. "go into the ground"]," "zolst vi a tsibele, mit dayn kop in der erd un di fis aroys [May you grow like an onion, with your heard in the ground and your feet up]."

RY:  Yeah, okay.  Do you have a favorite Yiddish word or a favorite Yiddish expression?

JW:  Yes.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  "A leybn af dayn kop [A blessing on your head]."

RY:  Oh.

JW:  Whenever we said anything clever, whenever our parents -- "A leybn af dayn 75:00kop!  Listen to how clever he is" -- I wrote a short story about my mother, that -- that's one of -- oh, "My Mother the Poet," how she used to try to write poems, but it would all come out like a Hallmark card.

RY:  Okay.

JW:  But I wish you could hear that story, because I end up with "A leybn af dayn kop," that's what she said to me at the end of the story.

RY:  Oh, yeah, okay.  Okay, and you also -- so, you've -- you have spent decades as an educator, both in a public school and at university.  Have you noticed a change in the students over the decades?

JW:  Oh, yes.

RY:  Yes, can you elaborate on that?

JW:  I just -- I think that the whole issue of diversity, dealing with diversity, has expanded on a lot of campuses.  So, whether you're homosexual, 76:00heterosexual, what race you are, that -- even some of the people who complained about who the commencement speakers were going to be --

RY:  Oh!

JW:  -- Smith College didn't -- wouldn't allow the commencement speaker because she was in -- on a -- let the war -- was this -- well, Condoleezza Rice --

RY:  Oh, yeah.

JW:  -- they wouldn't let speak.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  -- or they were signing petitions.

RY:  Yeah.

JW:  But mainly, I think they didn't like the Gay Rights Movement that -- there's tremendous support for gay rights that there never was before.  And many of my -- I would say that a third of my graduate students were lesbian, and we did a lot of issues dealing with gay rights, and there's -- and one of my 77:00former students has become a whole spokesperson for the whole LBGT movement.

RY:  So, would you say that you are happy with the way things have turned out?

JW:  Yeah, I think they're evolving --

RY:  Yeah, okay.

JW:  -- in a good direction. 

RY:  Okay.  So, we're nearing the end of the interview.  I would like to ask you whether there's any advice you would like to give to a new generation of educators and musicians?

JW:  (laughs) To -- I don't know.  I would just say -- I hope that this evolution toward acceptance of greater diversity were to continue.

RY:  Okay.

JW:  And then, do everything in your power you can to help it along.

RY:  Okay.  Is there anything else that you would like to add before we conclude this interview?

JW:  I don't think so.

RY:  Okay.  So, I want to thank you personally for sharing your stories and reflections with me.  I also want to thank you on behalf of the Yiddish Book Center for participating in the Wexler Oral History Project.  Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]