BUNNY AND JACK HOFFINGER ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: Going to start by hearing, actually, just how you met.

BUNNY HOFFINGER: How we met? Well, as Jack -- and actually, (laughs) through -- at an Unser Camp sort of thing, as a matter of fact. (laughs) I could show the picture. Jack met somebody who was a summer --

JACK HOFFINGER: He was --

BH:He was a summer lawyer at the firm that you were working at, okay.

JH:Yeah, a Wall Street firm that I went through.

BH:Wall Street firm. This same person, I knew for years at Unser Camp. We knew his parents, et cetera. And apparently, one weekend -- and he married young and felt that really, people needed to marry young. So, apparently, one weekend, he was at Unser Camp with his wife. And I was not there that weekend. But he talked to my mother and said that he knew someone. Did I have someone to fix with. My 1:00mother -- now, I don't know whether he asked for a picture or my mother gave him a picture of me. I guess I was about twenty or twenty-one. And then, he set up -- it was a blind date, basically. So, during the summers, when I was working and my parents were at camp, I would stay at my grandmother's house. My parents, obviously, didn't want me to sort of live alone. And that was what. So, he came up one night, he called, and it was an actual blind date. He came up to pick me up. It was a very hot night, and where do you think we went? To Coney Island. (laughs)

JH:I was driving my father's Plymouth. So, that's -- remember? We got into the Plymouth, and they were there --

BH:Yeah, and this couple with us, they were in the back.

JH:And you were sitting next to me as I drove.

BH:I was sitting next to you and listening to all this legal talk. And I thought to myself --

JH:Which I didn't institute, by the way.

BH:No, I know you didn't.

JH:He instituted it.

BH:I thought --

JH:I don't speak legally when I'm with --

BH:I thought to myself, This will never work. I was an artist, I was a fashion 2:00illustrator. I never knew a lawyer. And I'm listening to this and immediately saying, This is not -- nothing will come of this. Anyway, so we had the date, and then, I think, Jack --

JH:[UNCLEAR]

CW:Jack, what was your first impression?

JH:Well, I had two impressions. He said to me, "You should be married." Like most guys who marry young, they resent the guys who are not married --

BH:Yeah.

JH:-- and free, if you know what I mean. So, here I am --

BH:Of course, you were quite young.

JH:Here I am --

BH:You were twenty-six.

JH:-- so, he says, "You should" -- so, he was always looking for somebody for me. He introduced me to another woman, too.

BH:Oh.

JH:You weren't the only one. Anyway, she was a --

BH:Anyway.

JH:She was a PhD in Russian literature.

BH:Oh.

JH:Very interesting woman.

BH:Anyway. (laughter)

JH:So, he gives me a picture of her, and I looked at her. And it was a nice picture, and she was quite beautiful and all. But I said, "Yeah, she's got slim legs." (laughter) Anyway, the long and the short of it is --- it was a very hot night. (laughter) I'd taken my jacket off when I went upstairs to pick her up. I 3:00rang the doorbell. She opens up. And what did I say to you?

BH:You can say it. (laughs)

JH:I looked at her --

BH:I didn't know him.

JH:-- and I said, "You're very beautiful."

BH:Yeah.

JH:And I meant it. She's one of the most beautiful women I ever met, really. He had said to me, "She is quite beautiful. She looks like an actress." She was. She was stunningly beautiful. And she was all decked out, beautiful dress and all that.

BH:Wasn't decked out.

JH:Anyway, that's what I said to her.

BH:I was in a summer dress.

JH:No, but the thing about it is, come on, let's be realistic. We're sitting on a bench at night on Eastern Parkway.

BH:We're on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, after we come back from this date, yeah. And when --

JH:And what happened was, Bunny said to me that she went to work when she was seventeen so she could help out, and she had saved some money. So, I said to her, "So, how much have you saved?" (laughter)

BH:You wanted to know --

JH:And she said --

BH:-- how much I had.

JH:"None of" --

BH:Yes, you did.

JH:And she said, "Seventeen hundred dollars." I'll never forget the --

BH:It was eighteen hundred dollars.

JH:Sorry. (laughter) Most of which I used when we got married to buy a 4:00secondhand car, which we used on a five-week honeymoon --

BH:And then we also --

JH:-- to go all over the United States.

BH:-- owed nine hundred dollars to Yale.

JH:Anyway.

BH:Used to --

JH:Yeah, well, you paid it off later.

BH:Okay, yeah. (laughter)

JH:So, I asked a question. So, tell Christa what happened --

BH:Anyway, so --

JH:-- the next day.

BH:-- the next day, I went up to camp for the weekend. I guess it was a Friday night. And my mother said, "How was it?" And I said, "Well, I think he's crazy." And I was really quite young. I was not yet twenty-two, but I was very astute. (laughs)

JH:When a friend of mine who was a dean of social work at Columbia -- Murray Otoff was his name.

BH:What was I? Yeah, I was twenty-one.

JH:He said to her, "You're going to marry him? Here's five dollars. Take a taxi. Don't marry him, he's crazy!" Ten years later, I represented Murray in his divorce. So much for predicting the future. No, but the thing about it is, look, let's say -- the thing about Yiddish was --

BH:Yes.

JH:-- Yiddish, to some extent --

BH:Connected --

JH:-- connected us --

BH:Yes.

JH:-- because she knew that I could speak Yiddish.

BH:Yeah. That was a big plus, that he had Yiddish-speaking parents and that he spoke Yiddish. Yeah, it was.

JH:Which was surprising for you, because not every guy you went out with spoke Yiddish at all.

BH:No, there was one that my father liked very much, but he was a terrible bore, so --- (laughs)

JH:So, anyway --

BH:-- no, no.

JH:-- that's what happened. It was all --

BH:No, a few -- I mean, the guys from camp knew how to speak Yiddish [UNCLEAR]

JH:So, Bunny asked me -- she said as she was listening to my speechifying with you, she said --

BH:Yeah.

JH:-- "It's a wonder, with our completely different backgrounds" --

BH:Yeah.

JH:-- "how we connected."

BH:Because, yeah.

JH:And I said, "Well, to use a stale aphorism, you could say opposites attract." But I guess what -- I will say this for myself. Aside from her being beautiful and very -- also, on the first night, I said to her, "What's your real name?" You know, Bunny. She said, "Bernice." I said, "So, if you don't mind, I'll call you Bernice." She said, "You can, but I'll never answer to it." That was Bunny. 6:00Or, to put it another way, when Jack Litman called you up -- I was being honored by the Criminal Bar Association -- says to her, "Bunny, I'm gonna be introducing Jack."

BH:Oh, yeah.

JH:She says, "I hope it's not to a younger woman."

BH:Yeah, that's right -- yeah. (laughs)

JH:I mean, you have to understand there was a lot -- she's very smart. She was not highly educated in the sense --

BH:Yeah.

JH:-- but she was a great artist. She really is. But I think that what I was looking for, she had. And that was --

BH:Stability.

JH:She had what I never had.

BH:Stability, Jack.

JH:Never. Also, she saw the world this way. I saw the world this way. And like --

BH:Jack, I think it was also --

JH:-- most artists, you see differently.

BH:I think --

JH:Bunny always says to me, "You don't see anything with your eyes. It's all with your head, isn't it?" I said, "Well, you're my eyes. I'm the head," is the --

BH:But I also think the stability of my family --

JH:Was very important to me, 'cause I never had --- you know, to me --

BH:You talk about the seders, we had Shabbat every -- always the -- all of the 7:00celebration of the holidays and the fact that --

JH:Freddy Simon said to me, "Marry her!"

BH:Yeah.

JH:"She's so healthy!"

BH:Oh, yeah. (laughs)

JH:She was psychologically healthy, she was physically healthy. She came from an intact family. My --

BH:Pretty intact.

JH:-- stepfather and mother separated numerous times, as well. They had a very stor-- I always said that -- when we had our first argument after we married, she thought the marriage was over. I said, "Arguments is what kept my stepfather and mother together. The arguments stopped, there'd be nothing there." That's what I lived through. And here, I come in and I'm looking at a family that -- unbelievable. They were wonderful people, her parents. Wonderful people. And so, I guess -- you don't parse out what attracts.

BH:Yeah.

JH:When you say, I love him or her because -- there's no such thing. You either do or you don't. But in terms of what attracted me -- well, it was, first of all --

BH:[UNCLEAR]

JH:-- she was physically beautiful. She was obviously smart. She was obviously self-confident. Go out and work when you're seventeen? When you have to present yourself to the world? I mean, I thought I was smart. I couldn't have gone out -- I could run a bicycle store, but I wouldn't go out and try to get a job at seventeen. She went out there with no backgr--

BH:Well, I went to "Vogue" and "Harper's Bazaar" with my portfolio.

JH:I mean, how do you do that when you're seventeen? So, that I had a lot of respect for that. And I understood that she was very smart. And I'll say this: I went to school with a lot of educated dummies. Education doesn't make people smart. It makes them intellectual. So, intellectualism never meant that much to me, even though I can be fairly intellectual. But I respect people who are smart and human, and that's what she had. I'm not interested in saving the world.

BH:I'm going to keep you to all of this, you know? (laughs)

JH:It's just talk, Bunny! (laughs)

BH:I mean, that's right. It's going to be recorded, Jack. (laughter)

JH:See what I mean?

BH:Oh? (laughs)

JH:So, we were very lucky.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

JH:We were very lucky. We've been married for over sixty years.

BH:It's sixty-two years, Jack.

JH:Yeah, we were very lucky --

BH:[UNCLEAR] was sixty --

JH:-- that we met, because we might not have met.

BH:Yeah. Oh, sure.

JH:And then, of course, like Jimmy Stewart in "A Wonderful Life," what would my life have been like had we not met? So, I don't think either one of us regrets that we met or that we married. I don't think there's any regrets at all. There have been blips in the marriage, like there is, because -- my kidding about it is if you want to stay married, you have to learn how to compromise. It's not a straight line. It's always -- but Bunny and I have done the best we can, and we have three marvelous children.

BH:Yeah.

JH:We have eight grandchildren.

BH:Wonderful grandchildren, yeah.

JH:And we look at our lives and say -- we invested a lot, but you need the investment to be lucky. But not all investments pay off. So, we did spend a lot 10:00of time with our children, helping them, loving them, nursing them. A lot of -- Bunny in her way, me in mine, we both complemented each other. And it turned out fairly well for us. Not perfect, but well enough. We don't have many regrets about our lives.

BH:No.

JH:There are some regrets about having done certain things that each of us, especially me, wishes I hadn't done it that way. But in the end, we've had a fortunate life.

BH:Yeah.

JH:And I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that we each brought different things to it. I couldn't do what she can do. I could never do anything like what she can do.

BH:Yeah, but that's usual, Jack, in a marriage --

JH:Oh, what the --

BH:-- or a long relationship.

JH:-- come on, Bunny.

BH:Yes, yeah, no.

JH:Come on, be realistic.

BH:People bring different --

JH:Everything we are --

BH:People bring different things --

JH:-- is what you did. You created all of this. I was -- gave you the ability to 11:00make those free choices, but --

BH:Yeah, but --

JH:-- you made the choices.

BH:Yeah.

JH:Even if you look around here, it's all you. It's not me. I didn't pick anything. I just said, "Yes."

BH:You picked the stuff that we got traveling. Of course you did.

JH:No, you were the one who picked it all.

BH:No.

JH:You knew where to hang it and why to hang it and so on.

BH:Well, 'cause that's what I did. I mean, that's different.

JH:Precisely.

BH:Yeah.

JH:That's what I just said, I mean --

BH:Yeah.

CW:So, Bunny, can you tell me more about how Yiddish kept you together or got you together?

BH:Well, it surely got us together. I mean, it was a big attraction. And it's interesting that it was, 'cause it was one of the things -- I really liked the idea that he had parents who spoke Yiddish, that he spoke Yiddish. Our lives were very different. So, clearly, hearing about his father, the divorces, and -- that was different, very different from what I knew, what I was used to. But there's no doubt -- but the knowledge and the interest in Yiddish had a lot to 12:00do with keeping us toge-- well, not keeping us together. Attracting us together.

JH:Also, I was tall. Come on, let's be realistic.

BH:Oh right, that's another thing.

JH:See, I was tall --

BH:I used to wear big hats --

JH:-- and I went to law school.

BH:Oh, absolutely. I used to wear very big hats and very high heels, okay, (laughs) and the fact that he went to law school and he went to Yale. Yeah, all of those things were impressive. Also, the life that he got past, so to speak, what he had done -- look, I had an easy beginning. We didn't have any money, but other than that -- you heard all of what I had. With his life and his beginnings, very different.

JH:Well, all you knew is that my parents were divorced. I didn't tell you all the details while we were running around together.

BH:No.

JH:Some of it seeped out.

BH:Yeah, some. Some.

JH:But --

BH:No, and I --

JH:-- you knew about the divorce, and there were no Jewish kids back in the 1930s --

BH:No.

JH:-- who got divorced --

BH:I didn't know any --

JH:-- who were products of divorce.

BH:I didn't know anyone who was divorced. It was different, no --

JH:Also, we danced, and --

BH:Oh, that's the other thing, I have to tell you: we both -- very good dancers. I mean, now I have a bum knee, I can't -- but we were at somebody's hotel room.

JH:Yeah.

BH:It was somebody that you knew, I guess --

JH:Yeah.

BH:-- from law school or whatever, and they were playing music. You won't understand this, but back in those days, if you came from the Bronx, you did a certain kind of Lindy. And if you came from Brooklyn, you did a certain kind. You know what a Lindy is? Okay. So, we danced together, and it was absolutely perfect, which was strange, since I came from Brooklyn, he came from the Bronx, really, at that whole point. That's true, and that was one thing: we danced together wonderfully. That's right. Absolutely.

JH:It worked out, because we dated for quite a while before we went steady. But --

BH:We didn't date for that long, Jack.

JH:The interesting thing about it is --

BH:But we never lived together.

JH:-- is that she met a very interesting young man when she was -- because after we met, she went --

BH:Oh, yes.

JH:-- she went to a place in the Catskills --

BH:It was the same weekend.

JH:-- and I went to Pennsylvania.

BH:I wasn't in the Catskills.

JH:Where --

BH:I was in Philadelphia.

JH:In the Adirondacks?

BH:And the -- no, it was somewhere in Pennsylvania. But anyway --

JH:Anyway, so she runs into some guy, very interesting young man, and he tells her --

BH:It wasn't just --

JH:-- he goes to Yale Law School.

BH:Jack, he wasn't just interesting. He was very cute, then. I liked blondes in those days, even though I had met you, and he was very cute and he was nice and he said he went to Yale Law School. I said, "Gee, I just had a blind date with somebody who graduated from Yale." Said, "His name is Jack, but I don't remember his last name." And I said, "Yeah, he was an editor of the 'Law Journal'." He said, "Oh, that must have been Jack Hoffinger." I said, "Yeah, yeah, that's his name." Sometime later --

JH:Well, he then called her up --

BH:Yeah, right, when we were already really only seeing each other, and he called me for a weekend -- to come to Yale for a weekend. Shucks, I'd never had that chance, so I said, (laughs) "Gee, I'd really like to, but I've been going steady" -- we used that expression in those days -- "with Jack." Okay.

JH:And I now have lunch with him. He went --

BH:We see him.

JH:-- to a very large law firm where he became an icon.

BH:Yeah, we see him, yeah.

JH:I always had a smaller law firm.

BH:Yeah.

JH:I didn't want to represent corporations.

BH:But anyway -- well, we also knew him in Stuyvesant Town, but not as well. And I knew his first wife.

JH:So, I have lunch with him now --

BH:Yeah.

JH:-- every three or four weeks --

BH:Yeah.

JH:-- with three -- he and two --

BH:His wife is also an artist, interestingly. She's a better one than I am, though.

JH:So, you see, lawyers marry artists.

BH:Interestingly, she's actually my age. She's a better artist.

JH:They don't want to marry intellectual peers. They want to marry people that come from a different universe, like you.

BH:Well, I don't know if that's true, but actually -- (laughter) no, his first wife was a lawyer, so you're wrong. They got divorced.

JH:Didn't work.

BH:Yeah.

JH:Didn't work.

BH:They got divorced.

JH:I told you.

BH:Yeah.

JH:Ours worked. You see the difference?

BH:Yeah, yeah.

CW:So, can you tell me about your wedding?

BH:Oh, our wedding. Well, it was actually a lovely wedding, although we had no money to have it. (laughs) My parents had no money. We did -- it was on Sunday afternoon. It was at a synagogue. Not the one that I grew up in, but the Flatbush Avenue synagogue, because someone who had been my father's salad man -- 16:00couple years in Unser Camp, and my father really brought him along to becoming a chef, he ran the catering service at this particular synagogue. So, it was an afternoon wedding. We just had hors d'oeuvres, and when --

JH:It was very nice.

BH:-- we just had hors d'oeuvres and a wedding cake. But we did have music.

JH:We did everything, except that it wasn't a very expensive wedding.

BH:There was no dinner and there was nothing like that.

JH:Yeah.

BH:There were just hors d'oeuvres.

JH:Yeah.

BH:And a cake, a wedding cake.

JH:But it was a very nice wedding. I liked the wedding. All of our friends came.

BH:Yeah, yeah.

JH:Family came.

BH:Yeah.

JH:Was a -- I'd like to --

BH:I got a wonderful wedding dress at a Loehmann's that you people wouldn't know about in Brooklyn, the original one. It was a famous designer who was fifty dollars.

JH:She managed to extract fifty dollars from the eighteen hundred that was in the bank.

BH:Well, I asked you if I could have some of it. (laughs)

JH:And I graciously said yes. (laughter) Yeah, but then, that's what we did.

BH:Well, but then we went on a five-week honeymoon, right?

JH:That's right. We traveled up to the Northeast --

BH:Yeah, yeah.

JH:We went to -- we had a great time --

BH:Yeah.

JH:-- and ended up in Canada.

BH:Yeah, yeah.

JH:Toured all over.

BH:Yeah.

JH:I want to say something about Yiddish. Why is Yiddish so important? A friend of ours, to whom -- Renee Krames asked, "Yiddish, why are you so interested in Yiddish? It's a dead language." I said, "Well" --

BH:No.

JH:-- "so is Latin if you want to go to dead languages." But I said, "The question is not whether it's dead or alive. The question is what do we do with it? It's dead if we do nothing with it, that's for sure. If we bury it. But as long as we don't bury it, it's always alive." And what is the purpose of its life? Well, that's an interesting question. First of all, why question the purpose of a language if the language was a medium of life. It was not only interaction, but it was a whole life. I mean, what Aaron Lansky has done -- and 18:00I've said this before, I'll say it again, and I told it to Aaron -- he has managed to use Yiddish as a jumping off point into a history of Eastern European Jewry, and all that it meant, not only in the Jewish world, but in the world beyond. All that it meant, everywhere. It's not just a language. It's simply the entrance point. I mean, whether you read Peretz or Sholem Asch or any --

BH:No, Sholem Aleichem more than Sholem Asch.

JH:No, but Sholem --

BH:Sholem Asch --

JH: -- Asch--

BH:-- was a bit --

JH:-- wrote in Yiddish to begin with.

BH:Yeah, I know, but he was a bit of a --

JH:Yeah.

BH:-- problem, Jack.

JH:But Sholem Aleichem wrote in Yiddish in a narrower framework --

BH:Yeah.

JH:-- than Sholem Asch. Sholem Asch wrote on a broader -- and got excommunicated by the Jews.

BH:Yeah, yeah.

JH:He wrote "The Nazarene," that was the end of it. But the point of it is that it's not just the literature. It is a historical perspective on a whole world 19:00that was destroyed. And, in a weird way, by studying it and keeping it alive, at a minimum, you honor the memory of all the people who no longer exist.

BH:Yeah.

JH:It's a way of paying respect to the people who were murdered. It's a way of doing that --

BH:Right.

JH:-- because after all, what can we do about it? They're gone. (coughing) At the very least, we ought to honor their memory. And Yiddish is one way of doing it. It's also much more, because it opens up a whole panorama of questions. When we support an intern, a young woman -- I had lunch with her, and I said to her, "You're gonna be taking a PhD in Yiddish? You're going to spend your whole life, 20:00professional life studying Yiddish?" I said, "Why?" And she said, "Because I want to know how my forebears lived." And I started to cry, 'cause I don't know. I don't know.

BH:Were you an intern? I assumed so.

JH:That's why I said this.

BH:I seem to remember, yeah.

JH:Said this.

BH:Yeah.

JH:But you know, it's --

BH:Were you both? No.

JH:So, in a weird way, whether we're Jewish or not, it's a way of honoring their memory. And to say that --

BH:Yeah.

JH:-- you're not completely dead -- and it's a very profound thing to do. And Aaron tapped into that, very wisely tapped into it, especially for us secular 21:00Jews, 'cause what have we got left? We've given up the Jewish God, 'cause we don't believe in it. So, what have we got left? All we have is our stories, and how do we get to our stories if we don't know Yiddish? 'Cause Yiddish opens up the stories of Eastern European -- not the Sephardis from Spain or North Africa, but all -- millions of Jews in all of Eastern Europe, all murdered. Millions.

BH:Isaac Bashevis Singer lived down the street, really, on Broadway. And when we first moved here, there was a cafeteria on Broadway between, I guess, Eighty-Sixth or Eighty-Seventh. And he had his spot in the window, almost, where he would have lunch or coffee and all of that. We never met him, though. But, yeah.

JH:Anyway, to wrap this up, though, I want to say the final thing: that's why we 22:00support and have supported the Yiddish Book Center with more money than we've supported any synagogue or UJA, even. We really have, because --

BH:Well, yeah.

JH:-- I personally --

BH:Or the Jewish Board, you're right.

JH:-- I personally feel connected that way, and I also feel -- and this is personal, me, 'cause I haven't discussed everything. More I talk, I think about other things. But it's a way of me honoring my grandparents.

BH:Yeah.

JH:'Cause I didn't enough when they were alive. Wish I had. Wish I realized more than I did when I was only a kid. But, still, it's a way of honoring them. Yiddish was my connection to them. So, Bunny and I come from different points of 23:00view, but we come to the same result, 'cause she feels the same way.

CW:What does Yiddish mean to you?

BH:What does Yiddish mean to me? Well, I know it's mame-loshn [mother tongue], but it's not just that. It is, it just connects me to what was, really, my fam-- unfortunately, our kids don't speak Yiddish. Our fault, I suppose. But just very different. Memory. All the memories. I have found, very interestingly, as -- the older I get, the more Yiddish I begin to speak. More expressions. I'm not talking about long things. More expressions. Remember I said that to you at some points.

JH:Yeah.

BH:Very interesting. I mean, I did that today with this woman, "S'vet helfn vi a toytn bankes [It's useless, lit. "It will help like cupping a dead person"]." There are expressions that I use, I think, more than I had in years. And I don't know what it means, but anyway, (laughs) it is a real connection, Yiddish. And 24:00there's not enough of it around. Has a lot to do, I think, with my youth, all of that.

CW:And what about -- you touched on this a little bit, was one of the question-- I wanted to ask you. Why is charity important to you? Why is --

BH:Why? Well, listen, growing up (laughs) from Hebrew school, I used to walk around with something that was called a pushke [alms box]. The money was to go for the Jewish National Fund, for the hope of someday there was going to be an Israel. So, I go on the streets and collect money. We had very little money, but what little there was, there was always charity -- was always given. We've been very lucky in our life, to have money, and it's important to give it. It's just 25:00very important. Of course, sometimes I rant and rail. (laughs) A lot of the charities that want money every month and we don't really (laughs) -- but it just is. It just -- and it isn't all charity, actually, in a way. It's helping out. I mean, it's just an aside, it has nothing to be with Jewish or Yiddish, but Sloan Kettering, which is a wonderful hospital, they do terrific research. I've never had to use them, but I've also -- I've given them -- not large money. I mean, I give 'em about sixty dollars four or five times a year or something. We're not talking about big money -- because they research. So, I mean, there's an awful lot of charity we give that has nothing to do with being Jewish. I don't think giving charity is a Jewish thing, is it?

JH:I don't know.

BH:I don't think so.

JH:I --

BH:I don't know. I don't think it is.

JH:From my point of view it is.

BH:I don't think it is, Jack.

JH:-- there are -- when we kid around, when I hear -- look, I said earlier, I don't care for ideologues, whether they're Democrats, Republicans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, I really don't care for ideologues. So, if any Jew has ever said to me, "Being Jewish is an ethical religion," I say, "Ethics was not created by Jews. Ethics is a Roman -- is a Greek word. It was created by the Greeks and the Romans called it morals, which had to do with custom." We Jews cannot say that we're more ethical than other people are. I don't believe any of that, and we shouldn't believe it, 'cause -- very arrogant. It's not true. It depends on the people. But for me, personally -- look, the Greeks struggled with the question of what does it mean to be human? It's an unanswerable question, 27:00which is why my kid brother, who's a philosopher, said, "Why do you give so much?" He wasn't attacking it. He wanted to have a discussion. And to be rational about why do you give to charity is a waste of time. It's a waste. Like many questions, it's a matter of choice, and every choice has a counter-decision, otherwise what is there to choose? Every point has a counterpoint. You don't need to be a Talmudist to know that there are parallel signs of reasoning on every point that exists, especially for lawyers. And for Jews. So, why do I give to charity, from my point of view? I mean, aside from Bunny, 'cause Bunny feels the same, why do we give to charity? It's a matter of how we define ourselves as human beings. I mean, I think it's humane, if you have enough to survive -- look, it gets down to the question which I raised: you need money to survive. It's like blood. But suppose you have enough money to survive. Is survival the end-all of what you are as a person? If you have money, 28:00is that it? Just to make money and to accumulate and that's it? So, I personally don't want to live that way. It's not a question of what's right or wrong, 'cause that gets into a -- almost metaphysical qu-- it's a question how you want to live. If I have enough money, and we do, to live the life we want to live, then the question is what do we do if we have more than enough, which we do? What do we do with that? Do we simply pass it on to our children? Or do we give some of it so that we can kid ourselves that we're making life better for other people who don't have money? Whatever the reasons are, it's all arbitrary, like all decisions. But I decided, and Bunny and I didn't have to have a big discussion, we were both on the same thing -- I decided, when I started making some money, that we need to do more than just use the money. And we've never spent -- we don't live a high life. We live a good life, but we don't -- so, the 29:00question is, do we help others who are unfortunate? I want to say yes, because to me, humanity is more important than intellect, everything. And I guess it's a way of being God-like. It's also what my grandmother said: "Give to charity, pray for the world." Just because we gave up God doesn't mean we give up on the world. You do the best you can, and if you want to make the world a better place or repair the world -- and I'm not using theological words, but they are theological. If you want to repair the world, how do you do that?

BH:Absolutely.

JH:You wait for God? No. No, I never believed that we wait for God. I believe that we create God. So, if we want heaven on Earth, we have to make heaven, 'cause it ain't going to come there from heaven. It's a waste of time. I learned that when I was a kid. If you want to get something done that you think is 30:00right, you'd better do it. Don't wait for somebody to -- so, it's all arbitrary. But we both, I guess, for a variety of re-- we both lived in an observant Jewish world. And in the observant Jewish world --

BH:You give charity.

JH:-- charity is part of the living.

BH:That's right.

JH:It doesn't make Jews better or worse than anyone else.

BH:Yeah.

JH:I think Jews have a right to be as good or bad as everybody else. I don't believe they're chosen for anything, except, as Lenny Bruce said, to be killed. I mean, so we're not chosen, so -- and we belong to a synagogue that is antithetical to the chosen people idea. We don't believe we're chosen. We're just people like -- with all the other people in the world. So, I'm glad we're able to give to charity.

BH:Yes.

JH:It at least makes us feel better. (laughs)

BH:I don't know that it makes me feel better. It's just what I do.

JH:It's the right thing to do.

BH:It's just what we do.

JH:And I think it's the appropriate thing to do. I think it's appropriate if you 31:00want to tell yourself, How do I want to be as a human being? Do I want to just keep it all for myself? Or do I want to share it with others who can't? That's a question. There's no answer to it. You just do what you think -- think is the operative word -- is right, 'cause there's no, this is right and this is wrong. That's baloney. Everything is optional.

BH:But we always had -- didn't you have -- we always had a box, Jewish National Fund box.

JH:I didn't.

BH:Oh, we always had it --

JH:I didn't.

BH:-- in the house. So, we just -- I mean, we put in coins, we didn't --

JH:We would --

BH:-- we didn't have any money to speak of.

JH:We were not Zionists at all --

BH:The way my -- yeah, we always had it.

JH:-- until Israel came out --

BH:Yeah, I know, it was very different.

JH:I mean, Zionism was another --

BH:Yeah.

JH:I had nothing to do with it.

BH:I mean, that was all -- there was other -- we didn't have much money, but there was always that box, was always in the apartment growing up. Always.

JH:I will say one thing more, and then I'll finish about Israel. One thing. Everything is negative-positive. You don't have to be a physicist to know that everything works on yes and nos, right? Point and counterpoint, the dialectic. That's the way life is. If it had not been for Israel -- whether it's good or bad, and that's a whole other world of discussion -- there would be much more anti-Semitism. When Israel won the Six-Day War, according to the people who are doing social research, anti-Semitism went almost to the toilet in the United States, because for the first time in American history and in anti-Semitic thinking, the Jews came out not as people who were oppressed, but people who could oppress. So, they became the victimizers rather than the victims. And that did a lot, not only for anti-Semitism, but it did a lot for the Jews who came 33:00out of the woodwork. There were people that never affirmed Jewish until Israel. Because all of a sudden it was okay to be Jewish, because the whole idea of Jews is they'd rather talk than fight. I lived with that in the army, and it was true for a lot of Jews -- talk than fight, 'cause they were brought up, Don't fight the anti-Semites. They'll kill you. My feeling was that if you don't put fear in the -- then they will kill you. Way to stop it is to make them fear you. And the Israelis learned that, and the Jews. So, Israel did that. Putting aside all the negatives, and there are lots of negatives about what Israel is doing. But power does corrupt to a certain extent. But in my view, I'd rather be a victimizer than be a victim. Two thousand years of victimhood is enough. It's enough. Two thousand years. If the world is an imperfect place, I'd rather be powerful than impotent. There are some people say it's better to be impotent, but that's them, 34:00not me. I say, No, I don't want to be impotent. I've lived with that. Makes you feel ashamed of yourself when you let other people stomp on you. I tried not to let that happen. But that's me personally, but -- so Israel did that. Whatever else it did, it did. Forget about it. I don't want to get into the philosophy of it. But just that, it did. Helped a lot of people get over a bad time, 'cause Jews were aliens.

BH:But they don't speak Yiddish that much, Jack.

JH:No. Well, that's why we have people who are as knowledgeable as you that understand that Yiddish may have a value beyond Jews.

BH:Yeah, right.

JH:Right? 'Cause you're not Jewish. So, without answering the question, why would anybody spend time studying a dead language? Because it's not dead. It's only dead if you bury it. And it's not going to get buried that easily. So, we 35:00thank you and others like you, whether Jewish or not, for keeping it alive. You're keeping it alive. And that helps all of us, especially Jews who were brought up with Yiddish. So, I thanked Aaron Lansky and I thank you for what you've done.

BH:Yeah. My gosh.

CW:Well, thank you both.

BH:Oh, thank you.

CW:A hartsikn dank [Thank you very much].

[END OF INTERVIEW]