JONATHAN ROCHLIN ORAL HISTORY

JANE PEARL: This is Jane Pearl, and today is August 15th, 2014. I am here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, with Jonathan Rochlin, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Jonathan Rochlin, do I have permission to record this interview?

JONATHAN ROCHLIN: Yes.

JP:Thank you. Okay. Can you tell me briefly what you know about your family background?

JR:I know a lot about my family background. I know all four of my grandparents were there for me growing up. My grandfather on my father's side came from the 1:00Ukraine, from a town called Dnepropetrovsk. He was born there and then he came on a journey with his mother and his two brothers. My father's mother was born here in the United States. Her parents came from Austria-Hungary, but near what's now Kraków, so I guess it's more Poland.

JP:Right. Can you tell me their names?

JR:Sure. My grandfather was Raymond Rochlin, and also known as Rachmiel -- that was his Hebrew name. And my grandmother was Rose Rochlin, and her maiden name was Schoenberg. And her parents -- I'm trying to remember her parents' name was -- were Anna and -- I can't remember my great-grandfather's name.

JP:That's okay.

JR:And then on my grandfather's side, Raymond's parents were also Anna and Louis.

JP:Thank you. And how did your family end up here, and what time period did they leave Ukraine?

JR:My great-grandfather came here first. He came here twice. First, he came in 1903 by himself. He was married at the time. But he was a tailor, didn't make a lot of money -- and he came to the United States to make his way. And he felt that the streets were paved with gold. Came back to the Ukraine to get his wife 3:00and two sons at the time -- my grandfather and his older brother, Eli. And my great-grandmother wouldn't leave, because her father wouldn't let her leave. My great-great-grandfather, whose name was Sibolski, made uniforms for the tsar's officers -- so for all the army officers, he made uniforms.

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We sort of picked up and knew that they were talking about us. And then there were the typical words that -- you know, like "schmuck" --

JP:I knew you were going to say that.

JR:-- and "putz."

JP:(laughs)

JR:It's like, those words -- (coughs), excuse me, that have made their way into everyday English language. But those you always know. Or, those are the ones you 4:00say, "Well, what's a schmuck, dad?" And dad would say, "Okay, let me explain this to you." And he would go into the difference between a schmuck and a putz and a shmekl and all of these different -- those terms. But I just never -- we just never went through the full immersion.

JP:Did you ever want to learn Yiddish?

JR:There were times. But I have trouble with languages in general, so I -- like, you know, in seventh grade, they start you with Spanish, and it just didn't stick with me. And then I tried doing -- even though -- you learned Hebrew in Hebrew school, but it wasn't conversational Hebrew, it was prayer Hebrew. And they tried to teach you some conversational Hebrew, but it really was never things that you would ever need to know, other than that "the dog barks." You know, that's what I remember from my Hebrew school, other than being able to pray. And I could still read Hebrew, I could still pray in Hebrew. And so when I 5:00was in college, I tried taking conversational Hebrew, but by that point, my brain had locked out languages for the most part.

JP:So what about your neighborhood growing up? What did it look like, sound like, smell like? Who lived there? What were the ethnic groups?

JR:It was a great neighborhood. We had a nice, big backyard. It was a brand new development when my parents bought in 1968. We moved in in 1969. So, they had a house built -- we had half to three-quarters of an acre of property, so there was space, which is what my parents wanted, because they had always grown up in crowded apartment buildings in New York -- in the Bronx. That's where they were 6:00born and raised. And so the smells were suburbia. Grass and trees and burning leaves in the fall and -- your typical, generic suburbs. But we had a family who -- my parents' best friends -- and we were one of the few Jewish families in town. And so we were very, very close. To this day, I still consider the two boys my brothers. Unfortunately, their mother passed away about three and a half years ago, but she was a second mother to me. And so, their house always had a distinct -- there was a distinction there, going into their house, that there was a warmth there, and you knew it. And then I had a friend who was Armenian. 7:00My best friend growing up was Armenian. And his grandmother lived with them, and she cooked. So there were a lot of Persian smells and spices like that. But otherwise, it was generic suburbs. It was very -- you know, our next-door neighbors were Italian. There were a couple of other Jewish families in our neighborhood, a couple other Italian, a couple other Irish families. It was just a typical suburban melting pot growing up.

JP:So even though it was very multi-ethnic, you still managed to have a very Jewish upbringing and education?

JR:Um-hm. My parents wanted to make sure of that. My parents were very -- they wanted to maintain that hold while being Americans. They wanted to have that 8:00Jewish an-- 'cause it's what they grew up with, it's what they knew, it's their family. I mean, we -- my mother took over Thanksgiving soon after we moved there, and it was -- we would have thirty people at Thanksgiving in our house. To this day, my mother still does Thanksgiving, even in her apartment, and there are years when there'll be thirty, thirty-five people in her apartment. So it was -- and while we did -- and there was always a Jewish bent to it, in a way. I mean, we had turkey and we had stuffing and cranberries, but there was this underlying Jewish flavor to it all, and I can't quite describe it. It's not that -- you know, we weren't pulling out the tongue and the kasha varnishkes and the kishke [tripe, intestines], but yet to me, it was a Jewish holiday. It was another Jewish holiday.

JP:Can you --

JR:I think it's because we got together with family. And it was the same thing 9:00that when we were together at Rosh Hashanah or Pesach -- it was, everyone's around the table kibitzing, telling jokes, busting each other's chops. So to me, Thanksgiving was just an extension of our Jewish lives -- without having to say Hamotzi [blessing over bread] (laughs), without saying -- and then I grew up going to temple like every little boy or every little kid, saying, "Oh, why do I have to go to Hebrew school? It's boring! My friends are playing baseball. My friends are doing this." But I went. And not only did we go through bar mitzvah, but our congregation had a confirmation class that went through sophomore year. And my parents were, You're going to continue with that. And I said, "No! I don't want to continue." But we ended up going and continuing through -- our 10:00Jewish education went through confirmation.

JP:And do you feel that was valuable? Would you --

JR:Yeah. The program itself wasn't a very well-run program. They tried, but it's hard when you've got teenagers who don't want to be there, feel like they're being forced. But we sort of came together. And our rabbi -- our last year, our sophomore year, he kind of brought us together. And the one thing -- what I'll say is this -- and as I mentioned earlier, sense of humor was very important. Telling jokes were very important. And there was always the Jewish ethnic bent to it. And growing up, I always felt like -- and I knew it, because people would say, You're not funny, and I would say, "But I am funny." I know I'm laughing. 11:00And I know if I had said the same thing at home, everyone would be laughing. So the kids around me didn't get my sense of humor, never got my sense of humor. The kids at Hebrew school sort of got it, because they sort of had that. And then I joined BBYO in high school. And there, everyone got my sense of humor. And I was the funny guy. And that, for me, was my formative experience -- my formative Jewish experience, in a way. And I still talk about my experience at BBYO -- how it gave me my Jewish anchor, more so than Hebrew school ever did, more so than ever sitting in any service ever did. It allowed me to express my Jewishness. It allowed me to express myself and to feel free to -- like, I'm 12:00surrounded by Jews, which is what I always wanted to be. And which is why a majority of my social life to this day revolves around my synagogue or my involvement in Jewish organizations that -- where I just feel at home. It just feels like I just slipped on a comfortable pair of shoes and a comfortable jacket and I can be myself.

JP:Very nice. So, what organizations are you involved with now?

JR:Well, I'm involved with my synagogue, Temple Avodat Shalom in River Edge. I had been on the board -- I had been brotherhood president, I had been finance chair, recording secretary. Had I wanted to continue, I could have been president of the synagogue, but I needed to take a little break from there for a while. But now I'm getting more involved again. I've -- very involved in my 13:00local Jewish Federation, formerly UJA. I was, again, on the board there. I chaired several committees, including a business and professional group, a synagogue leadership initiative that we had. And then I got involved in -- I was nominated for a leadership fellowship. It was called -- it's the Berrie Fellowship. It was started by Angelica Berrie, who was married to Russ Berrie of Russ Berrie Toys. And it was a two-year program. It was a pluralistic program bringing Jews -- Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Russian Jews. There were twenty of us, nine women and eleven men. And we would meet once a month. And we would have speakers come, and there was a curriculum. And then in the middle of it, we 14:00went to Israel for a week, where we studied at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. And there, we met with leaders from all different walks of Israeli life. So we met with IDF colonels and lieutenants, and we met with the mayor of Tzfat, and we met with rabbis who were trying to make a difference -- Orthodox rabbis who were trying to fix the marriage issues that were going on there. And then we went to Bet Shemesh and we met with a woman who was standing up to the Haredi who were harassing young girls. And then we met with someone who led a protest. And then we went to A Better Place, which is where they were trying to bring electric cars to Israel. So this wasn't a tour where we were on the bus, off the bus, Oh, look at that site! Oh, look at that relic! Oh, let's climb 15:00Masada! No, this was, we were immersing ourselves in Israeli life and understanding what the issues were. And then we came back and spent another year together, and it was, again, one of those experiences that I'm eternally grateful for, that I would have never had had I not had this Jewish background. And I look back -- again, it was BBYO that fostered my leadership ability. Because I was never elected class president, I was never even elected to student council -- even when I ran. So that never happened for me. But when I got to BBYO, they were like, Listen, do you want to be on the board? We think you'd be great. And I was always vice president of this, and vice president of that. And so that's what started me on that journey, and I've continued to this day.

JP:So how did you spend your summers and your leisure time growing up?

JR:I had very bad allergies and asthma growing up, so my mother was very protective of me. I would play outside -- I would play in the backyard -- and then she would send me to local day camp. And I went to day camp. She wanted desperately to send me to sleepaway camp, but the doctors were like, No. You'll be bringing him home within five days. Because my asthma and my allergies were so bad. And so we went to local day camp. And then I went on a teen tour when I was sixteen years old, and then I worked at day camp when I got older. And my mom's parents had a house in the Catskills, so we would go up there for weekends and for a couple of weeks. So, it was split between being in Old Tappan and day camp and then being up in the Catskills.

JP:Did you have family vacations?

JR:Yeah, we would take a family vacation. Often, actually, it would be up to my grandmother's house. Or we'd go to -- Cooperstown, we went one year. And we would go down to Washington, DC. And we'd go down to the Jersey Shore, we went to Wildwood. Virginia Beach, we went one year. So, you know, we did typical family vacations like that.

JP:And before that other trip to Israel, as a teen did you go?

JR:After I graduated from college -- when I was in college, I wanted to desperately study in Israel. And I was all -- I had an application filled out. And one of the intifadas happened, or something happened, and my mother said, "There's no way you're going." This was back in the '80s. And they were paying the bills, so I couldn't insist. And I ended up going to Washington, and I had 18:00an amazing experience in Washington. But I wanted to get back. So my mother found an ARZA trip, and I guess it was a precursor to Birthright. It was three weeks in Israel, it was all people who were twenty-one to twenty-eight years old. And we spent three weeks in Israel. And it was a wonderful, wonderful experience, and I vowed to get back. And it took me seven years to go back with my wife. We went on a trip, and we were there for two weeks -- a little less than two weeks. And again, it was a typical tour. And then in 2012 -- so between 1994 and 2012, I hadn't been back, and I was there twice in 2012. First, on this Berrie Fellowship trip, and then we did a family trip. We took our daughters and my parents and my in-laws, and we did a multi-generational trip. And that was 19:00about a ten-day trip. And we toured the country from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, all the way up north, and then to Masada -- typical, you know.

JP:How old were your daughters at the time?

JR:2012? Eleven and thirteen.

JP:And their names?

JR:Talia is my older one and Mia is my younger daughter. And they're now thirteen and fifteen. And they are at Jewish Reform sleepaway camp in the Berkshires.

JP:Eisner?

JR:Crane Lake, which is the sister camp -- the two of the camps are related. As a matter of fact, that's the other thing that I've become involved in is, I'm on the Crane Lake-Eisner board, which I was just nominated to this year. Which I've become very passionate about, because Jewish summer camping has -- I see what it 20:00has done for my children. It's given them a passion for Judaism, but it's given them independence. It's taught them how to live with a group of people. It's taught them how to have a Jewish life beyond just Hebrew school and family gatherings. And so my wife actually also works there, at the camp. So I come up and I visit on the weekends. And I like to say, my wife and I came from a mixed marriage: I was a day camper, she was a sleepaway camper. But I've become a sleepaway camper by choice. So that's our -- and that's continued throughout our lives.

JP:Have there been any experiences -- you mentioned the intifada and how that prevented you from going to Israel at that time, but while you were growing up, 21:00were there experiences or historical events or social movements that were particularly formative to your sense of identity?

JR:Yeah. This is a great story. So I grew up going to high school in the late '70s, early '80s. And during that time, the refusenik movement with the Soviet Jews was coming to light. And I got very involved through -- because of my involvement with BBYO, this was something that I latched onto. And I would go to solidarity rallies in New York City. I would talk to newspapers as a teenager. I got very involved and very passionate about this cause. And one of my -- for my world history class, I wrote a paper on refuseniks, focusing on Natan Sharansky. 22:00And I followed his caree-- you know, his jail and then his being released and going to Israel. And then, as the Soviet Union collapsed and people could move, that kind of went away. And in 2010, I went to the Federation General Assembly in New Orleans. And our delegation ended up having a private meeting with Natan Sharansky. So there we are, in a conference room -- probably about a dozen of us sitting around a conference table -- and he was talking about his role at the time, and how to get people passionate about Israel again, and what we could do. And then it came to the Q&A part of the session. And I raised my hand. And I had 23:00a comment, and I said, "But first, I want to thank you." And he says, "For what?" And I said, "Because when I was in high school, I wrote a paper about you and I got an A." So that was -- it was a great moment. And then when we were in Israel with my family in 2012 and he had just been appointed to the commission on the Women of the Wall, trying to resolve the issue of the women at the wall. And we were doing a group b'nai mitvzah at Robinson's Arch. So we couldn't be at the main part of the wall -- we had to be at the further section of the wall, which is known as Robinson's Arch, because we had girls and boys. And in the middle -- and then my older daughter was reading Torah -- she was going to be reading Torah. And all of a sudden, the rabbi who was leading our trip says, "I need everyone to stop. I want you to look up there." And who was standing there? 24:00Sharansky. And he was coming to observe and figure out what was going on and how to resolve this issue. So there's a lot of bashert [fated] in that way, with he and I. So, I hope that answers your question.

JP:It does. Are there aspects of Jewish culture that you have been particularly involved in, or that have been especially important to you -- film or theater or musical performances?

JR:Comedy. Theater. Film. Anything that's got a Jewish bent to it. Mel Brooks, obviously, just makes me laugh. Zero Mostel. The Marx Brothers are a huge influence in my life. That old-style Borscht Belt humor was always very, very 25:00important to me. At one point, I had aspired to be a stand-up comic, but I didn't have the ultimate passion to say, I'm going to take this leap and go. All on the -- anything that has humor to it is very important to me and very -- I don't need serious. There's too much serious in life. So.

JP:What has been the most important for you to transmit to the generations after you about Jewish identity. Values, traditions, rituals, language?

JR:Jews have been around for fifty-seven hundred-plus years. And it's so 26:00important to continue. There's a reason why our religion, our culture, our heritage has survived for all of these years. And it's important -- there's always been challenges, there's always been someone who has said, You're different. We don't understand you, so therefore we have to get rid of you. Whether it was the Egyptians, the Romans, the Crusades, the pogroms -- there's always someone out there. And when you look at our religion, what is our religion about? It's about kindness. It's about helping others. It's about chesed [Hebrew: benevolence, lit. "kindness" or "grace"]. It's about tzedakah [Hebrew: charity]. And it's not just -- it's like Hillel says -- when he was 27:00asked to teach the Torah standing on one foot, and basically, he was saying, Treat others as you want to be treated. Be a good person. Everything else is commentary. And it's making sure that people in the next generation and the generation after that -- they understand that, and that our traditions are there for reasons. You know, if -- I grew up eating certain foods. There's always tzimes at our Passover table. If tzimes isn't there a hundred years from now, okay. It was a peasant food from somewhere in Russia. But if my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren are having b'nai mitzvah and continuing on other traditions, I'll be happy. I'll be -- you know, that's good. Because they -- I also think, in a lot of ways, we're the conscience of the world. The Jews have been the conscience of the world in saying, We need to be -- you need to be 28:00good. You need to treat others fairly, regardless of what their real religion is. We're all people. We're all human beings. And we need to continue that -- to be there. And that's why it's important. To me, that's the ultimate importance, is that -- to remind people to be good. And to treat others kindly and with fairness.

JP:That said, how do you feel that the identity of younger generations of Jews differ from yours?

JR:(sighs) I think that I grew up at the tail end of anti-Semitism in the world. 29:00Being born in 1965, obviously, I wasn't around during the Holocaust, but it was still there, and it was still part of what we heard and what we -- you know. And listening to my grandfather's stories, he grew up wealthy in Russia, but there was still anti-Semitism -- he was still -- there were times when they weren't treated well. And for being Jewish, right? You know, it was just purely and simple, You're a dirty Jew. You're a kike. Whatever it is, whatever the -- you know. So it was there. And I grew up in a town where there weren't a lot of Jews. And at one point, there was a Ku Klux Klan chapter in our town, but not -- we never saw it, but at one point there was. And so I was always aware of that. And I think that this current generation, my children's generation, don't experience that. And that's a good thing, right? They don't experience it in the 30:00way that my parents, my grandparents, and, to a certain extent, that I did. I mean, there was still -- they weren't letting people out of Russia because they were Jews, they were throwing 'em in jail because they were Jews. The Arabs were attacking Israel because they were Jews. Now, they're attacking them again. Right? But this generation hasn't known the overt anti-Semitism, right? And they see that, you know, you can be an important person on Wall Street, you can be an important person in Hollywood, you can be a business leader. You can be in Washington. We had someone who was Jewish who ran for vice president of the United States a few years ago. Advisors to our president, top advisors, are Jews. That was not made an issue. This generation doesn't feel it as much as we 31:00do, or it's not as prevalent as it once was. So it doesn't spur them in that way, and it allows them to move in the rest of society in a way that I never felt I could. And I was able to overcome that, but I still look around -- when, you know, at my job, where I'd say, Oh, like, who are the Jews here? Who are the Jews here? And I don't think my children think that way. And that's fine. That's fine. I don't think they need to be paranoid to have a good life and to be good people and to make a difference in the world.

JP:What does Yiddish mean to you today?

JR:Today?

JP:Um-hm.

JR:Oh. Yiddish to me is the language of my grandparents, of my great-grandparents, of Eastern Europe, of -- the Old World. To me, that's what 32:00comes up. It's the Old World.

JP:Despite the recent resurgence of interest in Yiddish, some people still say it's a dead or dying language. What do you think? And what do you think makes a language living?

JR:I think what makes any language living is that it's used in different ways. It's used to communicate, whether it's person to person or through books, through television, through movies. It's a communication tool. It's a tool to express. And it's used by the majority of people. And so if someone would say to 33:00me that Yiddish is a dying language, it's a core -- it's a small group of people that are holding onto it and start-- and continuing to use it. Language, to me, is an evolving process. If you look at the way Shakespeare wrote or Chaucer wrote English, we don't understand it. It's hard for -- we have to interpret it. It's almost like we need a Chaucer-to-English, English-to-Chaucer dictionary. And that was four or five hundred years ago. Hebrew and Yiddish -- or Yiddish is the same thing. And when I was talking to my parents the other night about this, my mother said she couldn't understand my father's family because they spoke a version of Russian Yiddish and she knew the German-Polish version of Yiddish. So 34:00she says she couldn't under-- it took her a while to understand. So even Yiddish isn't just -- there isn't just one language. It's multiple dialects. It's multiple words. It's phraseology. What they speak in Great Britain and what we speak here is very similar, but there are different words, different terminologies, different idioms. So, to me, language is an ever-evolving process. And, you know, Yiddish is -- the way it was spoken a hundred, a hundred and fifty years ago could be very different the way it's being spoken now. I -- you know.

JP:Good point. What advice do you have for future generations?

JR:Oh, boy. What advice? Be good. Treat others with kindness, compassion. Try and understand where they're coming from with their culture, what their 35:00background is -- and try to find a middle ground. And try and get them to also understand where you're coming from and what your background is. Because life's too short to be angry over silly things. If you want to pray one way, go ahead and pray that way. That's okay. But let me pray the way I want to pray. Or let me eat the foods that I want to eat, and I'll let you eat the foods that you want to eat. Just treat each other with kindness, you know? That's what we're here for. That's how we're going to evolve higher and reach even greater heights than we are now. That's what I want future generations to know.

JP:Well said.

JR:Thank you.

JP:So I'm just wondering if there's anything -- circling back to your story 36:00about the shlep across Siberia. Do you want to -- we have some time.

JR:Yes. Yes. I have -- there's another part to the story. So, once my grandfather and his mother and his two brothers received money from my great-grandfather here in the United States and they were able to get enough for passage on a boat from Yokohama, Japan to Hawaii, they had to go steerage. And when they went steerage, my grandfather became very, very ill. He got seasick. And so when he wasn't sleeping, I think he was at the rail. And then they made their way from Hawaii. And on the trip from Hawaii to San Francisco, all of a sudden, the captain of the ship started sounding the alarm, sounding the alarm, 37:00because he thought he saw a German U-boat. This is in the Pacific. And so everyone took to lifeb-- you know, get to their lifeboat station just in case. And after a while, he realized it was a whale. (laughs) And my grandfather always loved telling that story. So, when my grandfather and his family made it here, they didn't set foot in Ellis Island like the majority of Europeans, but they ended up in San Francisco. And then they had to wait in San Francisco for my great-grandfather, who was in New York, to come across the country. By this point, it's 1917. And they took a train from San Francisco to Chicago, where my great-grandfather had family -- his brothers were living in Chicago at the time. And it was only at this point that they finally got new clothes. They had been 38:00living in the same clothes -- basically, what was on their back -- for months, if not a year, close to a year. And then they went from Chicago to Hoboken. That's where the train ended, was in Hoboken. And they needed to take a ferry across the Hudson River. And my grandfather, who at this point was eleven, twelve years old, refused to get on the boat. He refused to get on the boat, because he was afraid he was gonna get seasick again. Now, going on -- from Hoboken to Lower Manhattan is a ten-minute ferry ride, but he couldn't deal with that ten minutes. And there's no bridge across that river at the time, the only way to get across was a ferry. They finally convinced him to get on, and then they made their way up to the Bronx, where they settled. And so my grandfather arrived here as a twelve-, thirteen-year-old, and within ten years, he graduated 39:00from Cooper Union College. And an interesting story about my grandfather going to Cooper Union College -- Cooper Union at the time was a free school. And it was specialized in architects and engineers and drafts -- you know, they'd teach you to draft. And it was a very competitive school to get in, and you had to take a test. And my grandfather was very proud of his association with Cooper Union. And he would always go to his reunions. Every other year he would go to his reunions. And one of his goals was to be the last man standing, he would joke about that. And one year, he's sitting and talking to another man who was about his age. It turns out, they were exactly -- about the same age, but he was the class behind my grandfather. And he said, "I don't understand. How did you get in?" He said, "Well, I took the exam to get in." And the man said, "But back 40:00then, they only gave the test on Saturdays, and so" -- or, "That year, they were giving the test on a Saturday, and being shomer Shabbos [Shabbos observant], I couldn't take the test." And my grandfather said, "Well, I told them. I came to them and I fought them. And I said, 'Please, can you give me the test? I can't take it on Saturday, all right? I need to take the te-- I want to be at this school.'" And my grandfather that year was the only person they allowed to take the test on Sunday instead of Saturday. And that's how he got into Cooper Union. And he became an architectural engineer.

JP:That's a wonderful story.

JR:Thank you.

JP:Advocate for your --

JR:Right. Stand up.

JP:-- religious rights. Yes.

JR:And this is back in the '20s -- when they could have said, No. They could have said, Too bad. You either take it on Saturday or you don't go to school 41:00here. And he was determined to go to school there. And he fought and got himself -- got them to give him the test on another day. My grandparents -- my grandfather ended up having a terrific life. He had two sons, my father and his brother. My uncle Martin, unfortunately, passed away a number of years ago. And while they grew up in a Conservative family, my uncle became Orthodox and my father -- my grandfather had two brothers, as I had mentioned through the story. There was always a lot of family together. They stayed close with their family. And they also, for many years, would gather with people from their hometown, 42:00which was -- today, it's called Dnepropetrovsk, but when they were there, it was called Yekaterinoslav. And they would call it "Ekistinoslav," that's how they would pronounce it. And they had these Ekistinoslav societies, and they would get together. And their friendships -- their social circle -- were people from their hometown.

JP:This is when they were in the US?

JR:Here in the US, yes. And -- oh, I have a story about that. So this Berrie Fellowship program that I went through -- right before we started, one of the people in the group, a gentleman by the name of Ian Zimmerman, calls me up and he says, "I have a strange question for you. Do you have relatives from the 43:00Bronx named Anna and Louis Rochlin? And I said, "Yes. Those were my great-grandparents." And he goes, "Well, you're not going to believe this, but your great-grandparents and my great-grandparents were best friends. And they were best friends from back in Russia." I said, "Well, it was the Ukraine." And he goes, "Right." And when they came to the United States, they remained best friends all of those years later. And my uncle dated his aunt at one point. And the families had remained close for a number of years. And then, as time goes on, people drift. And then he and I have come back together. And even though we're not formally related, we call ourselves long-lost cousins. So.

JP:Very nice. Well, I want to thank you for telling and sharing all of these 44:00great stories.

JR:My pleasure. My pleasure.

[END OF INTERVIEW]