DEBORAH WEXLER ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney and today is October 5th, 2016. I am here in Palo Alto, California with Deborah Wexler. We're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record?

DEBORAH WEXLER: You do.

CW:Thank you. (laughter) Well, I'd like to start by asking what do you know about your family's roots in Eastern Europe?

DW:I've just started to look into that and I have family -- my father's side went to Argentina from someplace around Kiev and they -- my grandmother and my 1:00grandfather went individually. My grandmother went to Argentina in the 19-teens and my grandfather, we found out, went in 1924, we believe. We found him in the records. We had gone down to Argentina, hired a genealogist to help us with that. And then, my father, he followed -- actually, my grandfather followed his two brothers. He was one of, I think, seven sons, brothers. And two of his brothers went to Argentina. Another one went to Israel. And my grandfather followed his other two brothers to Argentina. My father was born there. He met my grandmother a couple years after he went to Argentina. I guess they had a 2:00baby really quickly, which was my father, and my father lived there until 1947. And he left to come to the United States. He was actually invited to leave by the Argentinian government. It was very anti-Semitic after the war. My father was in college there and there were classes, courses that Jews were not allowed to take. And he led a student uprising, I guess you might want to call it, against the administration. They all got thrown in jail and they said, It might be really a good idea for you to leave. So, he came to Chicago. He went to Chicago and -- where there was some family, from his mother's side. And he 3:00settled in Chicago, which is where he met my mother. An interesting story, just an aside about my dad when we went down to Argentina in 2001, which was the first time he had been back since '47. We found my cousin, cousin of his. And my dad had always told these stories. But we thought it was bobe-mayse [tall tales]. It was just, Well, daddy's exaggerating or whatever. Well, it turns out his cousin remembers my father coming to his house the night before when they did a march on the administration at the university -- with guns. So, it turned out that my father really was a rebel, and I guess I should have listened to his stories more closely. He came to the United States and he met my mom in 1949 at a dance at what was -- it was the JCC, the equivalent of the JCC. I don't 4:00remember what it was called. It was on the West Side of Chicago, rooftop dance, and a male friend of his introduced my mother and her girlfriend to my dad. And they chatted for a little bit and then she walked away and my father turned to his friend, Mark, and said, "I'm going to marry that woman." So, they got married about six months later. And then, about three and a half years later, I came along. In the meantime, he served in the Korean War for two years. My mother's side, my bobe [grandmother] and my zeyde [grandfather] came from Eastern Europe, Poland and Russia. And I'm now in the process of trying to find out more about them. I know my grandfather came to this country, I believe, in 5:001912. He entered through Baltimore. I know the name of the ship. My grandmother, I have not been able to find anything about my grandmother. My great-grandmother came, also, and my great-aunt came. But I'm not sure if they came together. I don't know where they came to or from. I know where my great-grandmother's buried. Same cemetery, different section than my grandparents. But I don't know an awful lot. So, I'm in the process of working with a genealogist to find out where they came from. And one of the reasons I'm really interested in this is that in doing my own research, there's just so much more information about males who have immigrated. And I feel bad about that. When people do their family 6:00research, it's almost always the paternal line that gets the notice and the data and the research and not the female line. And I really want to honor my grandmother by knowing more about her and giving her a history. So, we have applied for her -- the alien registration records, which -- all non-naturalized citizens had to fill out in 1940. My grandfather at that point had already become a naturalized citizen. Up until 1922, I believe, you were -- women were naturalized or could apply to be naturalized through their husbands, and that 7:00changed. And so, my grandmother, I guess, never became naturalized, even though she was married at that time to my grandfather by that time.

CW:So, do you know what kinds of stories did she tell you, if any, about her young days? What do you know?

DW:Well, so I knew her sister. I don't know if there was any more than them, than the two of them. She never talked about her father. In some of the research that we found, the genealogist feels that her father may have been -- had already passed before they moved to the United States. And the reason for that is that my aunt, who was married before my grandmother, my great-aunt who was married before my grandmother, named her first-born after her father. So, based 8:00on Jewish naming practices, it would make sense that he had passed away before they came to the United States. She did tell me a few things. I don't think she could read English. She couldn't write English. I remember, very sadly, when she used to talk to me in Yiddish, saying to my mother, "Tell her to stop talking in Yiddish. She's in America. She needs to talk in English." And I could just really kick myself now. It just makes me feel so angry about my younger self. But she told me stories about chasing her -- they would chase each other. The two sisters would chase each other and spit water at each other. So, they'd chase each other to spit water at each other. Was a game, I guess. And I just 9:00had this vision, even then, of them running around the shtetl [small Eastern European village with a Jewish community], in the dirt roads and around the little house, just trying to spritz water on each other as a game. She didn't talk very much about her mother. My mother is named after my great-grandmother, Zisl. And so, I don't have -- she didn't talk a lot about that. The story about my grandfather, my maternal grandfather, was that he crossed the Russian border dressed as a woman. And I heard this from a cousin of his, his brother's daughter. And she told me that's how he escaped Russia, because they were being used as fodder for the Russian army. So, I wish -- he was not a man who spoke a 10:00lot and I wish I had pushed him to speak. So, I feel it was a missed opportunity. And I know, for my own son, I talk to him all the time about things that happened to me growing up, things -- stories that I know about his -- my parents and Peter's -- my husband's parents, and about my grandparents, so that he has some memory of stories, because I don't think I asked enough. And I don't think people that age know to ask. They don't know how important it is. So, my grandmother spoke Yiddish to me a lot, so I understand some. And she was a very 11:00warm and loving, very Old Country --

CW:What did she look like?

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

DW:She looked like a Russian babushka. I mean, so my great-grandmother is buried in a cemetery in the West Side of Chicago. And the older tombstones have pictures on them. And I have a very clear memory of what my great-grandmother looked like. And she had the babushka on and she looked like a little old Russian peasant lady. Unfortunately, the settings that those pictures were in are worth a lot of money and there have been a lot -- there's been a lot of vandalism. And the picture's gone, and I can't -- I have not been able to locate, within the family, a copy of the picture. So, her image is just in my 12:00memory. But my grandmother looked an awful lot like her. She didn't wear a babushka, (laughs) but she had sort of a square jaw. She did not wrinkle. She had curly hair. I get my curls from both grandmothers. And she was smaller but she was very sturdy. She was really sturdily built, but not heavy. But she really looked like a little old Russian peasant lady. (laughs) But she was very sweet. And it's only now when I'm older and I'm a mother myself that I recognize how much she loved me and how petted I was, 'cause I was her first grandchild. 13:00And she was just a very nice lady. Not educated at all, but a very nice woman. Very nice woman.CW:And what did you do together?

DW:My fondest memories of my grandmother -- is she would pick me up from school and she would bring pastries. (laughs) I have an abiding love for sticky buns because of my grandmother. But she always -- when she would pick me up after kindergarten and first grade -- we lived in an apartment house. She lived, I think, two blocks away. So, she would come get me after school and she always had a sweet for me. That's one of my fondest memories. And I used to love to watch her cook. And she was a very good traditional cook: matzo ball soup, 14:00chicken soup, gefilte fish, chopped liver. She used to make gribenes [fried goose/chicken skin]. I loved her gribenes. I used to watch her kosher the chickens. I loved her cooking, and I remember one -- it must have been Rosh Hashanah because it couldn't have been Passover. She was in -- our dining room table and she had floured the whole dining room table. And she made these wonderful soft rolls that -- I don't know exactly what they were, but she just knew how to use -- play the dough, work the dough. They were wonderful, they were soft. She did some different varieties, I think, and I wish I had paid more attention to that. I did pay attention to the gefilte fish. I paid attention to 15:00the chicken soup. And another way I've tried to honor her is -- I do a lot of Jewish cooking, which probably isn't the healthiest thing to do. But I've tried to teach myself how to do it. So, I've done a lot of research -- I mean, I knew how to do it. My mother still does gefilte fish and chicken soup and matzo ball soup. But I do a lot of research. I try to recreate what my taste memory is, so I do a lot of reading and I -- lot of research on Eastern European Jewish cooking to see, Okay, yes, this is how my bobe made it. No, why are they doing that? Why are they putting matzo meal in the gefilte fish? My bobe never put matzo meal in the gefilte fish. So, I try to duplicate what my taste memory is.

CW:Can you give an example?

DW:Of something that I've tried to do?

CW:Um-hm.

DW:Well, the gefilte fish. I mean, I do a lot of reading on the gefilte fish and I just -- mostly for proportion, because that kind of thing, you just don't -- it doesn't necessarily come easy -- naturally to you, because they cooked a little pinch of that, a little pinch of that, a half cup -- that was a drinking glass cup, not necessarily the way we do, which -- we use measurements. So, I try -- I look at that and I also look at technique to see how somebody would do it. Gribenes, I had clear memories of how they tasted. Wasn't sure exactly the order of doing it. It's pretty easy but --

CW:How do you do it?

DW:So, you melt shmalts, and I do -- I collect shmalts when I skim my soup. I'll 17:00collect the fat from the soup. So, I'll either use mine or if I have to buy it -- so, I melt shmalts. I brown some onions, and then I throw in the chopped-up chicken skin and I just let 'em brown and brown and brown and brown. And then, I drain the hell out of it. (laughs) And then you salt the hell out of it and you put it in -- my grandmother used to put it in a jar and just keep it on the counter, an old jar from something. So, I love it. It's so bad for you. (laughs) But I really like it. And I do the -- I have her -- I don't have her wooden bowl to make chopped liver, but I do have her -- the pounding thing, whatever that thing is called. So, I use that. In fact, I just did it two days ago. And then, 18:00I finish it up in the food processor 'cause it takes a lot of work. Cooking that way, Old Country -- it's a lot of work. I mean, I never saw her put a fish in a tub for gefilte fish and then kill it herself. She may have done that, I don't know. But I know people tell stories of their grandmothers doing that. But it's a lot of work to do all that. And for a long time, I also owned her grinder. She would put in the filets and she would grind everything together with the carrots, I remember that. We used to do that. I used to help her with that. So, she used to like to cook with me. I used to like to cook with her. I think she sort of saw me as sort of following in her footsteps. My mother was an okay 19:00cook. It wasn't her thing. But I think my grandmother and I sort of shared that. Food is for family and it's a shared experience. And I look at food as cultural. It's the way I identify, partly, sort of as a Jew. And I like the way it tastes. My grandfather used to love going down to the Chicago River, where there were smokehouses, and he knew everything about picking out really good smoked fish, all the different kinds. And he'd kibitz with the guys and he was very good at picking out all the fish. And I also remember going with him to Vienna -- was it Vienna? There were places in Chicago where salamis would hang and all this other 20:00stuff. And he'd go up there and he would talk to the guys, I don't know if he was talking Polish or Russian, and he always got fabulous service. And we'd get these gorgeous salamis and we'd let them hang at home. And the oil would drip down and they'd get smaller and smaller and they'd get wrinkled on the outside as the oil came out. And it was just wonderful. I'm sure eating like that did not lengthen his life, but it was -- everything tasted great. I miss those foods. I do miss those foods.

CW:What part of Chicago did you grow up in?

DW:I grew up on the South Side. My mom grew up on the West Side, which was very Jewish at one time. It's amazing what you can do with Google Maps, Google Images. I actually found one of their addresses from the comfort of my home in 21:00Palo Alto. I found one of the buildings they lived in. It was still there. And that's where my mother met my dad, on the West Side. So, I grew up on Sixty-Seventh and Merrill until I was about six and a half, and that was considered the South Shore. And then, we moved farther south, to 100th and Jeffrey. And that was called Jeffrey Manor. That was pretty far south for the city. I grew up in a very ethnically diverse neighborhood. There was Polish, there was Hispanic, Mexican. There were Serbians, Greeks. I had a very multicultural high school experience. The Jewish population -- there were quite 22:00a few Jews there at the beginning and then, as the neighborhood started to change, they started moving out and moving out to the suburbs. We stayed as long as we could. I actually went away to college and six months after I graduated, they finally moved to a northern suburb. They moved to Skokie, Illinois, so -- and it was sad, because it really did break up the community. I mean, Skokie at the time was pretty Jewish. Now it's become even more multicultural. But it was never home for me. Home for me is the South Side of Chicago.

CW:So, can you describe the house that you grew up in? Was it one house or did you move?

DW:Well, first, we lived -- on Sixty-Seventh and Merrill, we -- I think we had a two-bedroom apartment and we lived there -- there were three kids. And then, 23:00when my mother was pregnant with her fourth and last, we moved to a house. It was a three-bedroom. Sort of a Georgian. Not real big. It was just a typical sort of middle class -- you walk in, living room, dining room, small kitchen. Couldn't even eat in the kitchen. It did have a nice den that was attached to the house that was -- somebody, the previous owner, had built it. And then, upstairs was three bedrooms. And it was me, two sisters, and a brother. He got his own room, of course. And backyard. And it was nice. I mean, it was a nice -- that we lived across the street from a small park -- and my grandparents, until 24:00they moved into senior home, didn't live too far from us, about seven or eight blocks. And I used to spend overnights with them sometimes. And just to spend more time with them. And I remember, actually, in the little kitchen there -- that is still there, too, that whole -- where they lived were projects. But they were not your tall, gargantuan projects that you find that were built later on in Chicago. They were little townhouses, almost. And I remember cooking with her in that little kitchen. And there were flowers all around, and it was a very nice little place for them until they had to move into a senior home.

CW:What were the languages that you heard growing up?

DW:English, of course. My father was a native Spanish speaker. But my mom never learned Spanish. My dad didn't really try to teach us Spanish, which I wish he had. But I learned some swear words in Spanish. Thank you, dad. And I heard a lot of Yiddish. And when something would upset my grandfather or my grandmother, all of a sudden there would be a burst of an Eastern European language, and I don't know if it was Polish or Russian. I was pretty young when I heard that. My grandfather died when I was, I think, thirteen, twelve or thirteen. My grandmother died when I was seventeen. So, I was pretty young. But I just remember being upstairs or coming down the stairs and hearing this strange 26:00voice, really loud. And I'm like, What is that? And it was my grandfather, who was a very soft-spoken man, saying -- yelling something in either Polish or Russian. It certainly wasn't Yiddish. And he was saying it to my grandmother. Because my mother knew Yiddish. She understood, and so did my father.

CW:But between your grandparents, usually, it was Yiddish?

DW:Yes, usually it was Yiddish until something like that happened, I guess, yeah.

CW:So, what were the relations between the ethnic groups that you grew up around? What was going on, sort of in that moment as you pointed out that things were starting to change in the neighborhood?

DW:So, when I was younger and still in elementary school -- I mean, I went to 27:00elementary school with other Jewish kids. But we were definitely in the minority. And there were issues with us and the other kids. And I really think it was anti-Semitism. They weren't Jewish, they were Catholic. It was a very Catholic area. I didn't meet a Protestant person, I don't -- until college, to be honest. It was either Greek -- eventually in high school, it was Greek Orthodox or Serbian or Polish Catholic or they were Mexican, so they were Catholic. I used to go to mass with my friends, particularly Christmas. Midnight mass. But I really did feel that, at least in elementary school, that there was 28:00a strong anti-Semitic feeling in the neighborhood. When I went to high school, which drew from -- it was a big high school, it was four thousand students. It drew from a lot of different neighborhoods, so there were more Jews, at least at the beginning, from a different area of the neighborhood which was more Jewish. But then, it also brought in a lot of Mexicans, more Polish Americans, Serbian, Greek, and I learned a lot. And also, at that point, the neighborhood was changing. There were more blacks coming in and it was really interesting. And it wasn't violent. There were shootings after I left. (laughs) But -- and stabbings, after I left school. But we really -- there wasn't a PC thing. We 29:00used to tease each other, really. Now you couldn't do that, but we used to tease each other. Sophie was Serbian -- or Greek, rather, and -- Margot was Greek, Sophie was Serbian, and there would be jokes about stuff, and Jewish jokes and stuff like that. And there was a sprinkling of Asian. And I never felt, in high school, any anti-Semitism. And I learned a lot and I got to enjoy a lot of different kinds of foods and experience a lot of different cultures that I don't think people do nowadays as much. I mean, and I don't know. I mean, I don't 30:00know. In a different way, I think, maybe, 'cause we all eat Asian food, right? But it's different if it's coming from a family, as opposed to going out for Chinese or something. But I loved where I grew up, and I actually was sad -- that when my parents moved to the northern suburbs because I don't think my siblings got that. And I remember I used to go downtown all the time and I'd take a bus. It was a long bus ride. There was also a train I could take, the Illinois Central. And I used to go down to the Museum of Science and Industry all the time and the Field Museum. I had a lot of freedom. And my younger sister, who's seven -- my youngest sister, who's seven years younger than me, really grew up mostly in Skokie. And I remember saying to her, (laughs) "Well, 31:00why don't you go downtown, look for -- summer job?" I think she was in high school -- which I had done. I had worked downtown all the time. "I can't go down there! I'll get mugged!" And it was a very suburban kind of point of view about what downtown was really like. And I was sort of sad for her. She went to a very white high school, and I feel sad that she didn't get the experiences that I did.

CW:What about your house and, by extension, grandparents' house growing up felt Jewish?

DW:Hm, that's a really interesting question. What did feel Jewish? Well, I think -- we did not keep kosher. I mean, one of my favorite lunches was a BLT. 32:00(laughs) But my grandmother did, but not real strictly because I think she would make me BLTs when she'd come over and babysit. But I'm not sure. That's really interesting. I did not grow up with a very strong religious sense. I grew up feeling very Jewish. I knew from a very early age about the Holocaust. My father was very well-read from -- history point of view. And he always made me -- always emphasized that we were Jewish, that it was a -- we had a particular 33:00responsibility, we had a particular burden. And so, I always had a very strong feeling about that, and also culturally, I guess, 'cause our closest friends were all Jewish. So, the religious thing is hard. I remember going to temple with my grandfather, but the women stayed home. They got the meals ready and the men went to shul, although my father didn't. He was bar mitzvah, but he did not like Orthodox -- organized religion. He didn't like the idea of having to pay to join a temple. I started Sunday school. I wasn't crazy about it. He said, "Okay, 34:00you can quit," which -- I really wish he hadn't done that, 'cause I think it's harder to get caught up when you don't have it as a young child. I have a much more Jewish house than my parents. When my son was growing up, we always did Friday night Shabbat dinner and he went to a Jewish day school, which actually, I might not have done had we stayed in a more Jewish area and if we hadn't moved to an area where we didn't know people. It was an opportunity to sort of reach out and build a family unit here. So, that's why we sent him initially to a Jewish day school. So, I'm not quite sure. There was always a mezuze on the 35:00front door. My mother never did Shabbat. I do have a slight memory of my grandmother lighting candles, but I don't think it was a regular thing, so --

CW:Did you do the holidays?

DW:When we were younger, we did them at our house. And then, when we were older, we started going to my aunt's house. But again, it was done -- in fact, I have film of my grandfather leading the Pesach seder at our house. But then, as they passed or they were too old -- and too old is really relative. They were only in their seventies when they passed. I think my -- they may have thought my grandmother was eighty-two. I'm not sure. But my grandfather was in his late 36:00seventies, I think. It became a meal as opposed to a religious thing.

CW:You mentioned earlier about being aware of the Holocaust, being born in this post-war, post-World War II generation. Do you remember when you were -- first learned about it?

DW:My dad had a really incredible library and I started reading pretty young. And I would just start picking out books and just start reading them. So, I think it was just a conversation we had. And in elementary school, pretty young in elementary school, they started showing films of what they found when they went into the camps. So, I remember being pretty young, maybe ten, and seeing 37:00films of the mounds of hair and the shoes that they found when they started liberating the camps. My dad was a big World War II buff and I have memories of staying up late with him watching World War II movies. And he would watch these movies and he'd say, "They're doing that wrong. That's not the way the battle played out." They went this way or they went that way or this general did this -- so, he knew enough to be able to critique, but he still liked to watch it. So, I don't know quite how young I was, but I do remember those films and they had quite an impact. And actually, to this day, I'm actually surprised that the Chicago Public School System was so, I don't know, forward thinking in bringing 38:00this out. I mean, it was in the '60s, mid-'60s. So, it was sort of interesting. I remember writing a -- one of the books my dad had was about the ship that got turned back from Cuba. And I remember writing a report, and they didn't believe it. And another instance, too, I -- there was another book my dad had, it was about the camps on the West Coast for the Japanese. And I wrote another report about that and that was, like, Really? I mean, this was Chicago. I mean, in California, probably wasn't news. But in Chicago, it was sort of, That happened? So, I would discover these books in my dad's library that I would just read and learn about stuff.

CW:Looking back on that time, what were the central things to your Jewish 39:00identity? Is that something you thought about?

DW:Well, I went to the JCC camp. I was a BBG girl, B'nai B'rith girl. I think the fact that most of our friends -- I felt more comfortable among my Jewish friends. It was sort of a shared language, sort of a shared experience. In-jokes, I guess. But it wasn't religious. I mean, I didn't -- I don't think I knew any religious Jews growing up. My father, when he came to the United 40:00States, he stayed with an aunt of his, a great-aunt of his, great-aunt Mimi, who I remember meeting and I think I was only three years old. And he told stories about how Mimi would be upset if he mixed up the spoons, the dairy versus the meat spoons, and that -- but I can't remember anyone else, with the possible exception of a little bit here, a little bit there -- of kosher with my grandmother -- of anybody being religious or observant in any way. So, it was more around who we spent time with. But I had lots of non-Jewish friends, too, and I had lots of crushes on non-Jewish boys. And so, it wasn't -- it was just, I guess, who I felt most comfortable with. I mean, I didn't -- well, I don't 41:00even think there was a YMCA near us. But there was a JCC and that's where I went to camp.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW:What organizations were you and your family involved in when you were growing up?

DW:My parents didn't really join anything. I mean, they were not joiners. I think -- so, I was in the JCC, active. I was -- I went to camp and I also was a counselor at the camp, I was a B'nai B'rith girl in high school, which was fun. But my dad worked two jobs. My mom had four kids. She didn't work until I was about twelve or thirteen. She went back to work then. Two of my siblings had educational issues. She spent a lot of time doing that. My mom wasn't a very 42:00educated woman. It was very stressful. Money was always an issue. And I don't think they had the bandwidth to do anything else. It was really almost a day-to-day existence. And they were not philanthropic. They -- it was just about keeping the family going, I think. That was really day-to-day, keeping the family going. I don't think -- it was not an easy life and it was difficult. There were definitely some hard times.

CW:Did your father talk about Argentina often?

DW:He did. He had a problematic relationship with his father. And his father and 43:00his sister made aliyah in 1950. And I met my aunt in the early '60s. My younger cousin, she is -- she had two girls. My younger cousin, Anat, had heart issues and came to the United States. Was operated on by DeBakey and then spent time in Texas, I believe, and then spent time at the University of Chicago recuperating. So, they stayed with us. And actually, I think it was in '67. I think it was right around the time of the war. And, yeah, it was '67. And -- oh God, I forgot what I was going to say. So, I never talked to my aunt about the things that my 44:00father told me about in terms of his father, because they were sort of touchy. And it turned out that my father idolized my grandmother. She died when he was nineteen. Probably septicemia after a botched surgery. And he adored her and she was his favorite. My grandfather doted on his daughter. And I could not talk to her or my cousin, who I'm very close to in Israel. She's two years older than I am, the elder of the two girls. I've never been able to bring that up. I don't think they need to hear some of the things my father said. So, I think his 45:00perspective on Argentina was colored by the relationship with his dad and also the fact that he basically was told he had to leave, otherwise he'd be going to jail. So, I think that was hard for him. He did talk about all the girls he had and then, of course, the -- being the rebel. And I really never believed those stories until my first trip to Argentina and I met a friend of my aunt's, a girlfriend of my aunt's. And she said, "Oh, yeah, all the girls were in love with Norman" -- with Nathan, that was his name, Nathan. Natalio, actually. And I -- "Really? You mean he was telling the truth?" (laughs) So, I guess he was sort of a Don Juan lothario kind of figure. But I went back with him three times, and it was wonderful to see him in his element and to be able to speak Spanish and 46:00-- with that accent, which I still recognize. I can almost always tell if somebody's from Buenos Aires because it just sounds different than any other Spanish. You can really hear the difference in the accent. And one time, we -- the first time we were there, we went to find his house. And we're driving down the road and he goes, "Well, this is where I found out my mother had died." He was at a movie theater with his sister. She was in the hospital. They came running to get him and she was either dying or had died. And then, my father said, "I'm not sure I'll remember the house." And I said to him, "Well, won't we see the evidence of a mezuze?" And he said, "Oh, no, we would never put a mezuze on the front door where it was visible." Well, we found the house and they 47:00wouldn't let us in. I guess they -- he tried to talk to them and explain and I tried to speak in English and tried to assure him that it was just the family, and they wouldn't let us in. But he loved showing off Buenos Aires and walking around and the food. And we went --

CW:Did he live downtown when --DW:He lived -- yeah, yeah. And we went to Boca, which is the Italian section, and he -- all these memories, and he would tell us about it. When I lived in Boston, we were walking through the North End one day. They had come to visit me. And the North End is very Italian and these two older men were talking and walking by us and they were talking in Italian. And my father started laughing. I said, "What are you laughing about?" He goes, "Oh, 48:00they were telling a dirty joke." I said, "How do you know Italian?" He goes, "It was so Italian in Buenos Aires that you just picked it up." And it was really amazing. It's a very cosmopolitan city. But I have to admit I was uncomfortable there myself. When you go into the big temple -- and, of course, this was before 2001 -- and you have to go through security and x-rays before you go to Friday night services. That unnerved me. And also, going where they had the bomb down there and -- yeah, and they had this Israeli security and they -- he wouldn't let me take my camera in. He wanted to throw -- take the film out. It was really unnerving for me. So, I would go. I went three times with my family and the last 49:00time we took my son, who was thirteen at the time and -- but it was difficult, it was difficult.

CW:I forgot to ask earlier: what were the occupations in your family, do you know, historically?

DW:So, my paternal grandfather had a dental supply business. My maternal grandfather was a tailor. My paternal grandmother -- so, I hadn't met either of my father's parents -- was a concert pianist. And she was also -- headed up a women's Zionist organization. So, I was shocked when -- I had no idea. My 50:00grandmother, my maternal grandmother, didn't work. My father was in dental school in Argentina and when he came here, he didn't do that. He started a dry-cleaning business and then he eventually became a cab driver and owned his own cab and was a cab driver till he retired. And my mom did office work when she went back to work when I was twelve or thirteen.

CW:So, how did things change for you when you moved away from Chicago, when you went to Boston in terms of your Jewish identity?

DW:Well, actually that's sort of interesting because when I stayed -- I was in -- I graduated from the University of Illinois and I went back to Chicago and I lived there for two-and-a-half years and I worked in marketing and advertising. 51:00And I didn't do anything Jewishly. And when I moved to Boston, I was working in an advertising agency and I was one of three Jews in the whole organization. (laughs) It was very strange. And that's when I started looking for a Jewish community in Boston. But I kept saying, Where are they, where are they? I was working really long hours and I didn't have a lot of time. It wasn't until I changed my job and I started working for Dunkin' Donuts in marketing that I had the time and I found them. And I joined a young professionals group in the Federation, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and I got active in that, fundraising, and also it was a big social opportunity. And so, I did that and I also got active at Boston University Hillel. I started taking classes as a 52:00community member. And I got very close to the rabbi there and I eventually was on that board. And I just started learning more. And I was alone. I didn't know anybody in Boston, I didn't have family in Boston, so it was a way of connecting with a community, with a Jewish community where I would feel comfortable. Boston, at the time, this was '79 -- you were either WASP or Irish Catholic. Everything else really didn't count. So, (laughs) I went -- I sought out my people, I guess, so that I could fit in. And I enjoyed myself.

CW:Did you stay connected to Zionist organizations from early on through that time?

DW:No, being active in Federation, we went on a mission to Russia during the whole refusenik thing. And that was an eye-opener. And that was also very scary. We had been briefed. We had a list of people we were gonna visit. We were told not to bring the list with us. It was scary. It was -- 1987? We went. I brought the list and I tucked it into my jeans, and as we're going through customs or whatever it was in Russia, in Moscow, she felt something when -- they patted us 54:00all down coming into the country and she felt it. I knew she felt it. So, they took me off into another room and they lifted up my top and she saw the button from the jeans. And I could tell what she was thinking, "Oh, I felt the button." But what she really felt was the little twisted piece of paper that I tucked into my waistband. That was really unnerving, (laughs) so -- and then, we were in Moscow and we were in Saint Petersburg. And it was -- we went into the big synagogue in Moscow and I saw all these little old Jewish men. And I thought, That could have been my grandfather. I mean, there were men there that looked like my grandfather, with the white hair -- and then there were men in dark 55:00overcoats, just watching, with glasses, that were -- yeah, that was a little scary. And then, we went to Saint Petersburg. And so, we met with people and we brought them things. We brought all kinds of things, educational things, we brought computer parts, all kinds of things. And we would give things to -- they had had a wish list, so we brought stuff. So, we go up to Saint Petersburg (laughs) and we're supposed to meet this guy in a department store. So, I was there with two other guys and two of the people from the mission. And so, we see the guy and we sort of hook up and we realize we're being followed. So, we have the stuff and my two colleagues or what -- whoever I was with were like, We 56:00should leave, we should leave. And I said, "No, we brought this stuff. We should give 'em to them," so -- and the refusenik is going, "Just hand it over, just hand it over." (laughs) So, finally, I grabbed it. I gave it to the guy, to the refusenik. He ran off one way and the two guys ran off another way and I ran off a third way and we were all followed. They were running after us, and that was very scary. And then, when we try to get ahold of the refusenik afterwards, they wouldn't put the phone call through. Rang busy, busy, busy. One of those off the hook kinds of things. So, we never found out if there had been any repercussions for him. But it was pretty scary. It was pretty scary. And then, of course, they take you to Israel afterwards and then you debrief. And I was just thrilled to 57:00get out of Russia. (laughs) I couldn't wait to get out of there. So, yeah, that was hard. But it was interesting from the point of view of: this is where my grandparents came from. I could have been here. I could have been living here. And to see the lines for food out of the stores, it was really interesting.

CW:Have you been back?

DW:No, and I have no desire to go back. I've just started contemplating that, depending upon what we find out about my grandparents or my grandmother, that I may want to follow up. Depending upon what the information says, where she's from, I may consider it. It depends on what we know about the area. If we think 58:00it's been overrun and there's no point in going back, there's nothing that exists -- but if the little town is still there, if they think records exist, I may go back. So, I might do that. But other than that, I'm not sure I want to go back to Russia or even Poland.

CW:Well, I want to change the focus a little bit. I want to know how you met your husband.

DW:So, I had been living in Boston and he's originally from Long Island, Old Bethpage. And he had actually gotten a master's from the University of Illinois, Chicago. And, at the same time that I was in Chicago after I graduated from 59:00Urbana, we later realized that we had been hanging out at the same bars on Division Street, which was sort of funny. But he moved to Boston and worked in high tech. And I met him in 1991. I was working on my MBA at B.U. and he was in one of my classes. And nothing happened for the first couple years. Occasionally, I'd see him on campus. Or I think one time I sent him an email, "Do you know this professor? Is he good? What's the lowdown on the professor?" And then, we had a class together in the fall of 1992. It was a -- organizational behavior class. And after that ended -- we were in the same team. He tended to be on teams where they're all women. So, he was one of, I think -- 60:00the only male in a group of seven. And the first class I met him in was a -- it wasn't organization-- yeah, I think it was an organizational behavior class. And he was one of four. He was the only male of the four of us, so that was -- I don't know why that happened. But anyway -- and then, after that class in the spring of '93, we started dating. So, he was working on his MBA, I was working on my MBA. Got paid -- both MBAs were paid for by our respective companies, (laughs) so we got -- we started dating and got engaged about eight months later and got married three months later. And got pregnant two-and-a-half weeks later (laughs) and a lot happened in a very short period of time.

CW:So, when you -- and you moved out here, also --

DW:Right.

CW:-- shortly after that.DW:Yeah.

CW:So -- to California. When you started having to make decisions about what kind of Jewish environment you wanted to create, what did you decide and how?

DW:Well, when we moved out here, our son was about five-and-a-half months old. And we first were in an apartment that the company got for us, and then we found a house in Cupertino. And I kept saying to peo-- "Where are all the Jews? Where are all the Jews?" I mean, in Chicago there were definitely neighborhoods. And in Boston, Brookline, Newton. But in California, in Northern California, it -- 62:00they were very integrated into the community. There wasn't a place you could go to get your challah or your deli food or whatever. It was -- so, I kept saying, "Well, where are all the Jews?" So, finally, when Ben was old enough, we wanted to put him -- we wanted to meet people and -- so, we put him in at the JCC in Los Gatos. We were there for about six months and then we moved him to -- Congregation Sinai had a preschool. It was adorable. It was a little house. It was very small, hands-on, and very family -- it was a wonderful, warm environment. I started -- through my son, I learned a lot of Judaism because I experienced it with him. They always did a Shabbat thing, there were -- everybody came together for the holidays. Some of my closest friends are from 63:00that period of time. So, that's sort of how we started. And then, through Sinai and then, after three years of him being at a Jewish preschool, we decided we wanted to have him staying in a -- when it was time for him to go to kindergarten, we wanted to have him stay in a Jewish environment. And so, we started looking to buy a house. At that point, we had rented for five years and we decided to buy a house. And he wound up at a Jewish day school in Palo Alto, Gideon Hausner. And he did that. He went through middle school and then he went to public high school.

CW:And at home, what did you do in terms of holidays, food? We talked about earlier --

DW:We did all the holidays. I did a lot of cooking. We always did Friday night 64:00Shabbat, even before Ben went to day school. When he was in preschool, we always did Friday night Shabbat. We had joined, when we were still living in Cupertino, we belonged to a temple in Saratoga, which was the next town over. And we just did a lot of things with our friends that we met at the day school. One of the families that we became very friendly with, the husband was Iranian and the mom, his mother, they -- she now lived in New York. But she'd come and visit her children, her grandchildren, and she'd make these wonderful traditional Jewish Iranian dishes that were just -- she made this wonderful rice, which I don't think is necessarily Jewish, but it was a crispy bottom -- it was just wonderful 65:00and it was really interesting to see the different -- how they did things and what their culture was like, their Jewish culture was like, from an Irani-- it wasn't all Ashkenazi. So, we all did -- we shared holidays. I would have twenty people with all the kids over and -- for the holidays. And I just started cooking what I learned from my bobe and what I taught myself.

CW:What do you think is the role of food in transmitting culture?

DW:I think of food as a sense of history. I think it ties people together. I think people have memories with food and what they ate and how it was served and 66:00what happened over a meal. I'm definitely a person who lives to eat, as opposed to eats to live. It's almost like place memory, in a way. Food is really interesting because it can transmit so much about where a people come from, and not just from a Jewish point of view. I'm very interested in early American history and you see the foodways of the South. Well, a lot of those foodways from the South have African origins. And I look at Jewish food that way, too. How did Ashkenazi food evolve? How is it different from the bigger culture that 67:00surrounded it? Of course, you know that -- food historians will look at a recipe and go, This is probably Jewish. Why? There's an absence of butter and an absence of milk. And instead of those, they've used oil or they've used an animal fat. So, a lot of times, a food historian can say, "This is probably -- has its beginning in the Jewish community." And the wider community's taken it over or vice-versa. The Jewish community has made it -- changed it to make it appropriate for kashrut. So, I really enjoy that and when I eat mandel bread, I think of my mother because it's my mother's recipe that I -- and it actually is a very interesting recipe, because it's butter. So, I've never asked her why or 68:00how she got it, but it's butter, which is unusual for a mandel bread recipe. And when I have chicken soup, I always wonder, How much does this taste like bobe's? How much have I changed it or whatever? So, it always brings back really -- brings me back to places and to people. It's a way of remembering people.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

DW:So, this is my bobe and my zeyde. My bobe Becky. And her maiden name was Zimmerman and her married name is Plotnick. And this is my grandfather, Joseph Plotnick, although I have naturalization papers -- that has another name on it that is crossed out. Says Israel and it's crossed out and then Joseph, in handwriting. So, I'm not quite sure if -- and I can't remember right now what 69:00the ship manifest said, if it said Israel or Joseph. I have to go back and take a look at that. But I'm not sure if maybe they put Israel because sometimes Israel was used as a male -- to denote a Jewish man, so -- but anyway, so this is Becky.

CW:Do you know roughly when that would have been taken or where --DW:I think this was late 1950s. That's what it looks like to me. They said that my grandfather turned white in his early twenties. So, there are no pictures that survive of him with darker hair.

CW:This is what they looked like when you --

DW:When I knew them.

CW:Yeah.

DW:Yeah.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

DW:This picture I really like and I'm sorry it's sort of -- was my bobe, my 70:00zeyde, and then this is me and my second sister, who's two years younger than me, Sandra. And we are sitting on a park bench across the street from the apartment building that we lived in at Sixty-Seventh and Merrill. My grandmother always made me feel like a princess and that I was somebody special. And whenever I see pictures of my younger self, I always look so happy and so -- it brings back warm memories.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

DW:These pictures are of my Aunt Fanny and my Uncle Jake. So, Aunt Fanny is my grandmother's sister. And Aunt Fanny got married pretty early. She must have been older than my grandmother and started having kids. My grandmother was older when she got married. Well, she's -- I think she got married when she was 71:00twenty-six, twenty-seven. She had my mother nine years later, and she only had one child. My grandfather was actually married before my grandmother. I found this -- I did this research and I found this out. He married my grandmother five weeks after his first wife died, which -- yeah, that -- and he had two children. And then, it was about nine, ten years before they had my mother. So, she was older. She was about thirty-eight, maybe, we think. We're not quite sure. And I think that that's probably why I was her special grandchild. I was the first and she probably maybe didn't think she would ever have a child. So, I think that's why we had a special relationship. Aunt Fanny moved with Uncle Jake from Chicago 72:00to Cleveland, and we did go a couple times to visit them. And the two sisters were lovely together. Was really nice and very nice family. And I recently discovered Aunt Fanny's great-granddaughter. I tracked her down and I found her and we talked and shared some memories.

CW:Nice. Do you have a sense of where this was, when --DW:This was at a -- it looks like some sort of wedding, actually, because she's wearing a corsage.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

DW:This is Aunt Fanny and Uncle Jake. This is at the seder, March 31st, 1961. He was a lovely guy, Jake Schaefer. The name -- it's very interesting how the names 73:00changed. The spelling changed. It's really interesting when you do the research and you see the differences and how it can just take a turn and it's -- just by happenstance, you just find something. Oh my gosh, that's how they changed the spelling? It's interesting. Very interesting.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW:Well, I wanted to know if there's anything else you want to add about your family background, what we've been talking about, what you learned from your parents and grandparents?

DW:I think you appreciate -- once you become a parent, you appreciate how important it is to relay some -- the family history, to further -- to the generations. And I think your perspective really changes. It's no longer about 74:00you. It's about, how do you inculcate in your children and their children an understanding for what their forebears had to go through for them to be able to have the life that they have? I think about my grandmother, an uneducated woman, getting on a boat to God knows what. And alone, probably. I don't know if her mother was with her, but it's clear that her sister was not with her. I'm almost positive that was the case. I can't imagine doing that myself, to leave everything behind, family, friends. And I think it's important that you know 75:00where you come from. It shouldn't necessarily define you, but it gives you a context to understand who you are. And it can be -- I have a picture of my great-grandfather, my father's grandfather. And looks just like my father. I went to Israel, I visit my family in Israel, and we went to see some relatives who we believe are from -- descended from one of the other brothers, my 76:00grandfather's brothers. And they're religious and they had pictures of family. And I look at them now, the men, and he looks just like my great-grandfather. And those things exist and it's spooky. One time -- this is a little bit of a digression, but one time I was in Boston, I went up to Marblehead. I had just moved there and I was doing some antiquing and looking around and I turned around and there was a sign that said Kuperman Antiques, my maiden name, spelled K-U-P-E-R-M-A-N, which is not -- it's not a real common spelling. And I went in there and there was a guy behind the desk. He turns around and I almost fainted. 77:00He had the exact same blue eyes as my father. And I was just -- said, "Oh, my God. My last name is Kuperman," and we started talking. His father lived in another suburb. I went and talked to his dad and I got a lot of -- some of the family history. And I'm pretty sure they were related. Some of the dates didn't match up, but I can't believe that either they didn't have the correct information or I didn't have the correct information. He just looked so much like my father. And I think those things are interesting in -- it's just -- so, I think it's very important to know who you are and to appreciate what other people have done so that you have the life you have. They didn't necessarily do it for you. They didn't know you were existing. But I think it's interesting to 78:00know and to feel in your kishke [intestines] where you came from.

CW:Well, how did you first hear about the Yiddish Book Center?

DW:So, I was in Boston and it must have been sometime in the '80s. I think I found "Pakn treger" and I started reading it and I really looked forward to it. And then, I became a member. And I think I was a member for years. And then, just the annual membership kind of thing and I'd get the magazine and it made me feel close to my grandparents. And then, I think you were building the building 79:00in the late '90s. And I thought, Oh, I want to put some money for a bookcase. And we were living out here and it was -- I'd been getting it for, I don't know, at least ten years. And I thought -- so, I called and I talked to somebody and I said, "I want to sponsor or name a bookcase or whatever in my grandparents' name." And then, we just started a dialogue. And it just happened slowly, over the years, and my interest. And initially, it was really just about doing something to honor my grandparents. And both my parents were alive at that point and -- my mom is still alive. My dad passed five years ago. And I told them and they were pleased. And it just started a dialogue. And then, Aaron came out and 80:00we chatted and we talked about my interest. And Peter's mother actually speaks Yiddish. And he didn't grow up with grand-- he had one grandparent, but I think he died when Peter was pretty young. He has some memories. So, I mean, we're both interested and Aaron is so inspirational --

CW:Do you remember when you first met him?

DW:Yeah, I think we met him here. He came and visited us here, so -- in the house. So, yeah, no it was a great conversation. I think I read the book before I met him, "Outwitting History," and at about the same time, I was doing -- was starting to do work on an MA in history and learning about oral history. And he 81:00started talking to us about some of their ideas with the Book Center, and not just collecting books but what the next steps would be, and oral history came up and we -- I thought it was -- I loved the idea of oral history, I love hearing people's stories about old times, I guess, or the Old Country. And it just felt like a really good match and the kinds of things I was interested in, the kinds of things that the Yiddish Book Center wanted to do seemed like a really good fit.

CW:So, at that point, what did you -- what was your vision? What did you think at that early stage?

DW:Well, I guess at that early stage, I was interested -- and I think this is still my main interest, and it's an interest that I have across all historical perspectives. And that is -- it's not about the great men for me. It's really about everyday people and their lives. And I was always interested in capturing the lives and the experiences of these people for whom Yiddish was their first language, that they came over on those boats to start a new life, to escape whatever they were escaping. And I wanted to grab that before they were gone. I guess, in a way -- I hadn't thought about it this way. I guess, in a way, to 83:00capture what I hadn't captured from my own grandparents and to get that from the population that still existed, so that other people could look back and see. I think that great men are always going to be -- there's always going to be histories written about great men. But it's the everyday people who really move history forward, I think. And maybe some of those people become great men or women. But what really counts is the everyday people, I think.

CW:What does Yiddish mean to you?

DW:I think at one time it would have meant a dying or a dead culture. I don't feel that way anymore. I feel -- it always surprises me that other people don't see that it's a vibrant -- and all these new -- and these young people are learning and getting PhDs and writing. And it's because I've had the experience with the Yiddish Book Center to see what is out there. I've had people just recently say, Well, isn't that a dead language like Latin? And I'm, like, "No!" I mean, there are all kinds of university programs and I tell them about the work that the Yiddish Book Center is doing and the Steiner Program and the Great Books Program and the teenagers that come and learn. And they're always, Really? 85:00Really? And they're always astounded. And the theater that's still happening in New York City, for example. But I think -- I don't think of it that way anymore. I think of it as, yeah, some of it is reclaiming a language and a culture. Some of it, also, is -- you tried to destroy us but we're still here. That's part of it for me, too. I know that Hasidim speak Yiddish. It's a very everyday kind of language for them. There's a new Yiddish-language dictionary out, Yiddish-English dictionary out that just came out, which I think is pretty interesting. So, I think that there's a lot of life, but I also think it's a way 86:00of honoring people for whom Yiddish was a first language.

CW:And how -- I mean it's been, I guess, eight years since you first -- seven years since you first talked about this oral history project. How has it changed, from your perspective, over time? What have you seen develop?

DW:Well, I think we -- it's gotten very professional. You've been a wonderful steward, if I can say that, and a wonderful director of the program. I think recently we've sort of made a little bit of a shift from the literature and theater to more of the everyman, which I love, I'm very happy about. I love the 87:00fact that we're out there in the world with it and that people know us for it. I love the fact that Aaron is saying this is the future. I mean, there are only so many books in the world and, yes, there are probably some out there we don't have or haven't seen. But this is the future, and we need to grab ahold of it before -- well, it's not going away because obviously there's a whole new generation and new work being done. So, I think it's sort of -- it's inching its way back from the precipice (laughs) to a vibrant new life. It's sort of a new lease on life and I think the Yiddish Book Center has done a great job of 88:00helping -- having that happen, to -- enabling it.

CW:And why is it im-- just to push this a little more -- why is it important to document Yiddish language, the kinds of stories we've been documenting in this project, from your perspective?

DW:Well, how else -- it's a way of making sure that these people are not forgotten, that generations are not forgotten. It's interesting, most Jews cannot trace their heritage back much farther than probably the mid-1800s. More 89:00African Americans can trace themselves back farther than a lot of Jews can, which I think is really interesting. This is a way of making sure those people survive, in a way, that their memories survive. That's not to say it's all looking backward. I don't believe it's looking backward. I think we're also looking forward with Yiddish. But I do think, for me, it's important to, in some way -- it provides a heritage. And it's not just Yiddish. It could be Ladino, it could be whatever. But I think by keeping that alive, looking -- researching it, 90:00documenting it is a way of keeping those ties and giving people a heritage that may not exist for them. That's really the only way.

CW:From sort of looking broadly at American Jewish culture today, where does this Eastern European heritage, Yiddish, fit into the broader picture?

DW:Hm. So, one of the reasons that I liked the Yiddish Book Center was that I felt American Jewish society was too fixated on Israel. And I think they defined 91:00themselves -- Israel was where you needed to be if you wanted to be a Jew. And I never felt that way. I love Israel. I have -- it resonates with me. I felt, when I first started going there, more that I belonged there. I feel it less now. But I always -- I did feel and I think this is what I felt when I was -- had this discussion with Aaron -- was I felt that the Yiddish Book Center acknowledged 92:00the importance of the American Jewish community. Part of that was most of us -- when we came over, we spoke Yiddish. That was our first language. And so, I think it's important from that point of view. But I think that what the Yiddish Book Center did for me, initially in talking to Aaron, was that it gibed with what I felt, which was we're legitimate here. This is a legitimate culture. Being an American Jew is a legitimate culture. It is not less than being an Israeli Jew. And I felt that understanding where we came from and how Yiddish fit into that was part of that. That was the beginning of the American Jewish 93:00culture. That's not to say that the German Jews that didn't come over -- and the Sephardi Jews didn't either, but really the biggest influx was really those Eastern European Jews who came in in the late 1880s. So, that really was important to me. That was really important to me. And then, I guess, after that, the oral history and documenting the voices and the stories and the memories. So, I really do think, for me, it was legitimizing the American Jewish community as being viable and just as important as the Israeli Jewish community.

CW:What is -- why has it been important for you to get involved philanthropically?

DW:So, I wasn't raised in a philanthropic environment. My husband was more. They didn't have a lot of money. But they were always very philanthropic where they could be. I learned a lot with CJP. The Boston Jewish community has a lot to do with where I found myself from a philanthropic point of view. So, we have a lot to thank CJP for. (laughs) I just learned a lot about how much -- how important it was to support other members of the community. Not all Jews are rich. I certainly wasn't rich growing up. My grandparents weren't. Most of my family 95:00members weren't. So, I see -- I learned a lot about -- in raising the money, it's not about fancy buildings. It's really about -- yeah, there's some of that. But it's really about supporting people who are disadvantaged within the Jewish community and also outside of the Jewish community. There's a lot of work that the Jewish community does outside of the Jewish community. Later, when we -- Peter and I were able to do more funding of things, we looked seriously at a lot of efforts, not just Jewish. We support educational programming and -- at 96:00universities, and that's important to us. And so, it's not just Jewish philanthropy. It's also, how do we help other people? And in the case of the educational things that we do, it's also about giving back, because Peter and I both were recipients of grants in college. I had scholarships and grants, he had grants. And it's a way of paying back what we were able to get.

CW:Is there anything else you want to talk about in terms of Yiddish Book Center, philanthropy --

DW:Well, I just want to say that I think that the Yiddish Book Center is such a well-run organization. It really -- I've learned a lot from them. And the other 97:00thing is that there's so much -- everybody gives so much of themselves in the organization. It is a labor of love. I mean, with Aaron starting it, with the collection of the books, it has been -- labor of love. And he started the ball rolling and over the years more and more people have joined for whom it's a labor of love. And it's really one of the purest philanthropic environments I've ever worked in, it's -- there are no power plays that I can see, and lovely people on the board, incredible staff, and the facility is just tremendous. So, I see -- I'm in a process now of raising money for other organizations. And I 98:00don't understand donors who want something for their donation or there's an ulterior motive or they have to be really talked into it or really persuaded. I just -- I don't understand that mindset, because it should be -- it is a mitzvah to be able to give back, to be able to help more people, other people. For whatever -- whether it's health or education or religion, I don't understand the impulse to be selfish about holding on to whatever dollars you have because you do get a lot out of it. I mean, selfishly, you get a lot out of it. And it's so 99:00hard for me to understand people who just hang on, because you can't spend it when you're dead! (laughs) So, you might as well make good use of what you have now, no matter what it is, how much it is. Make good use of it and feel good about it and do good. That's what I want to say about philanthropy. (laughs) Yeah.

CW:Great. Well, I wanted to ask earlier about your name, if there's a story about your name.

DW:The only story about my name is that -- so, my name is Deborah Rachel and my grandmother, my paternal grandmother's name is Maria Rokhl. So, we assume that 100:00she was probably Miriam or something like Miriam. We don't know for sure. But when my father said that he wanted to name me after his mother, because she was the only grandparent that had passed at that point, my mother said, "No daughter of mine is going to be named Mary." So, they chose Deborah. And so, it was Deborah Rachel. But I've never felt like a Deborah because, in those days, when I was named Deborah and I was called Debbie, people thought of -- is it Debbie F-- no, Debbie Reynolds. And I was appalled. (laughs) I hated it. Five, six years old, "Oh, you're named after Debbie Reynolds!" It was, like, "No, I'm not named after Debbie Reyn--" So, I've always felt more like a Rachel than a 101:00Deborah or a Debbie. But I've gotten used to Deborah. But, yeah, so that's the only thing about my name.

CW:Well, Deborah, I just really want to thank you, (laughter) well, for this interview but also for all of your support over the last seven years. And thank you for all that you've made possible.

DW:Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]