PAMELA LAVITT:  This is the oral history interview of Dorothy Wittenberg. Today’s date is April the 26th. The year is 2001, and we are in the kitchen of Dorothy—Dorothy’s apartment at 3200 80th Street Southeast, Apartment number five on Mercer Island, Washington.

DOROTHY WITTENBERG:  It’s 80th Avenue.

PL:  Eightieth Avenue. Thank you. And my name is Pamela Brown Lavitt, and I am conducting this interview for the Jewish Women’s Archive’s “Weaving Women’s Words” Project in Seattle. And I just want to ask you, Dorothy, if you agreed to be interviewed and you are aware that I am recording this interview?

DW:  Yes.

PL:  Wonderful. Let’s begin. Thank you for inviting me over to your apartment. I wanted to ask—for us to start by you telling me the story of your name.

DW:  My name, Dorothy?

PL:  Yes.

DW:  The name Dorothy is after my father’s mother, and my middle name is Lillian, and that’s after my mother’s grandmother.

PL:  Hmm, how did it feel knowing you were named after these particular people? What did it mean to you?

DW:  I felt honored.

PL:  Was that in a particular tradition?

DW:  In my family? Yes, I think that we always tried to name after someone who—I was going to say has passed on—but mostly who’s revered, somebody who—and they want the name to continue. In the Yiddish, it’s Leah-Dvorah, so that’s who I’m named after—my [great] grandparents.

PL:  Did you know your grandparents?

DW:  No. I mean, my immediate grandparents—not the ones I was named after—but my immediate grandparents, yes.

PL:  Where did you know them? Were they here in the United States?

DW:  Yes, my grandparents lived in Denver, Colorado. They came from Russia; I don’t know what part of Russia. And they raised seven children. My mother was the oldest, and I was born in Denver, and my grandfather was a teacher of Hebrew. He also conducted services during the high holidays in Wyoming in areas where they didn’t have large Jewish communities. He’d go there for the holidays.

PL:  Was he trained as a Hebrew teacher?

DW:  Yes. 

PL:  Can you tell me what you recall about why it was that he was the honored person to go to Wyoming and teach?

DW:  Well, I don’t think it was really what we called an honor.  It would be more of a request to have a leader to come and conduct the services.  I think this happened in many Jewish communities where there were—I will call it a handful of Jews.  When it came time for a holiday, they really wanted someone to lead them, although we know in our religion that lay people can lead services.  But this happened in different communities.  Wyoming was one.  I know now from my own experience with my husband, Sam, that in Alaska, too, they would hire someone for the high holidays, and that was it. 

PL:  Do you remember ever seeing your grandfather deliver a sermon or a teaching?

DW:  No, not a sermon, but when he would teach in the—they would call it a cheder in those days.  There are a number of—well, I guess we’ll call it leaders in the Jewish community.  I recall the son of a cousin of mine is now an attorney living in Boulder, Colorado, and he was in Denver handling a case.   Afterwards, another attorney or a judge—I don’t know which man it was approached him because his name is Marylander, and that was my grandfather’s name, and said, “Was this Mr.  Marylander—was he your grandfather?”  He said, “No, my great-grandfather.”  So, he was well known, and he taught for many years in the community. 

PL:  What recollections do you have of your grandmother?

DW:  My grandmother was—all I can see is her preparing meals for us.   [laughter] She would tell us stories too.  We loved her, but [inaudible], she was always around the house; that was it.  I do recall that, as a child and visiting my grandparents, my family lived in Tacoma at the time, and my mother went to Denver.  I was about nine or ten years old, and on Shabbat, my grandparents would take us to visit [friends].  We’d go in the neighborhood and stop at different homes, and I remember there was always a nice bowl of fruit or some cookies, and I guess we looked forward to that.  But we went with my grandparents. 

PL:  So, let’s establish a little bit of the chronology then.  Your grandparents came to the United States.  How old were they, and do you know why they decided to immigrate?

DW:  Yes, I know.  I mean, I don’t know how old they were.  They came with six children because their youngest, my uncle, was born in the United States.  My grandfather had—he left a note.  It’s called a will; he left it for all his children.  It’s not a will in the way that we leave material things to our children, but this was to tell each child his feeling for them and so forth and explaining to, I guess, one of his daughters—my mother was the oldest; she was second in line— [what he expected of them].  She was very unhappy about making the move.  She felt she came from a comfortable background to a very sad situation in a new community.  He explained to her, “You could not see what was going to be in the future, but I could, and I felt that we had to leave.”  So, he had a—he lived on the outskirts of one of the larger cities, and they were building roads, and it seems he was a foreman.  With that, they had a home provided for them, and peasants worked—who lived around the area and would work for them.  When my aunt, as an older person, when she would tell the story, she spoke of the estate and the help they had.  [laughter]  You thought she came from royalty, but that was her feeling, from what she came from, that atmosphere to one where her father had to sell—had to be a junkman to provide for them food and things of that [nature]—clothing.  That was her remark to her that, “You didn’t understand, but things were not going to stay.”  Of course, that was when the—they were comfortable then even though he was a Jew.  But the pogroms had not reached them yet, but he saw them coming. 

PL:  How old was your mother when she emigrated?

DW:  My mother was about ten—about ten years old, in that range. 

PL:  And they settled in Denver?

DW:  Yes. 

PL:  Can you tell me a little bit about how that came to be?

DW:  I know that they came because there were other people they knew—they would call them landsmen—who had settled there before.  I think that happened in many places in the United States when people came from Russia and Poland, that they would follow cousins or some relative who had already settled there.  That’s what I remember [from] the stories that they told about some.  They had some family.  I don’t even recall the name. 

PL:  What did—what did your mother tell you about growing up?

DW:  Well, she said they started school, and that would be she—that she would—she and her sisters—but when they became [teenagers]—and I don’t know just what age they would have been, but they had to go to work.  They couldn’t—they didn’t complete schooling like, say, the eighth grade or high school.  They did go to work, and I know—I remember her telling about she and her sister next to her, the two of the them, and I know they worked in the Denver Dry Goods like she often spoke of that store in Denver.  But that’s all I know about that. 

PL:  Can you trace for me the steps that led up to your arrival in Denver?

DW:  To my birth?

PL:  Yes, and when you were born and where exactly you were born. 

DW:  Okay, yes, that’s a—that is a story.  My mother—my father courted my mother in Denver, and when the war started—World War I started—my father went to San Francisco and was in the jewelry business with a partner, and my mother followed him.  They were engaged, and I guess for some reason—why, I don’t know—but he didn’t come back to marry her.  But when I think about it, it was sort of unusual for a young woman her age to go and marry him.  They were married in San Francisco at Temple Shearith Israel by Rabbi Nieto. 

PL:  Can you spell that?

DW:  N-I-E-T-O. 

PL:  And can you give us your parents’ full names as well?

DW:  Yes, my mother’s name was Eva Marylander, and that’s spelled just like the state, and my father was Adolph Miller. 

PL:  With a P-H or an F for Adolph?

DW:  A P-H. 

PL:  Wonderful.  So your mother, when did she, or how did she, make the decision to go to San Francisco?

DW:  Because they were engaged.  My father courted her in Denver, and for whatever reason, a business reason, I’m sure that he went to [a job].  As I say, the war had just broken up. This was 1915.  It was just before the war.  Then he and the partner decided to go to Demming, New Mexico, with this business. It was a jewelry business.  They went there because there was an Army camp.   I don’t know any of the details, but this is the gist.  My mother went with him, of course, and she became pregnant with me, but Demming was a very primitive area. 

PL:  How do you spell Demming?

DW:  D-E-M-M-I-N-G—Demming, New Mexico.  So, when she was probably in her eighth month—I don’t know quite how far along she was, but when she was getting on, she went to Denver and had me, and that’s how I was born in Denver.  She also stayed on.  Her sister—the sister next to her [in age]—was living in Tacoma, Washington.  She, too, was pregnant.  My grandmother wanted to go and be with her, so my mother stayed on in Denver and took care of her father and the other children while my grandmother came to Tacoma to be with her daughter, and my cousin was born there.  We were four months apart.  Then my mother went back to Demming, and she became pregnant again, and, the same way, she went back to Denver to have my brother.  He was born there.  Then—that was 1918, and the war ended, and they had to decide where they would settle.  Because the sister lived in Tacoma and urged them to come, that’s how they came to Tacoma. 

PL:  Wow, that’s quite a story.

DW: [laughter] That’s why I’ve lived in Tacoma for a while.

PL:   Okay.  Do you remember or recall your mother ever talking about her travels to give birth to go back to Denver?  She did it alone or did your father go with her?

DW:  No, no.  She did it alone, but she didn’t ever—I didn’t ever hear any part of that.

PL:  What do you think of that?

DW:  Of her doing that? [laughter]  I think that she was quite a brave lady.  As I say, I think she was way before her time in the fact that she came to San Francisco alone—and to get married in that day.   Today that isn’t anything at all—[we don’t] even think about it. But in those days—in fact, one of the things she did tell me was Rabbi Nieto was very interested in why—in her relationship with her family, like why was she there [laughter] alone.  But when she explained and he knew—he was very kind to her—in fact, invited her to his home for [dinner]—on a Friday night.  Then he married them on the time that they—when they got married.  But no, she didn’t say anything about the trials and tribulations of traveling alone or having to go alone.  She just seemed to do it. [laughter]  I guess as I’m thinking of it now, she was quite an independent lady.

PL:  Do you remember—what are your earliest memories of where you grew up?  Are they in Tacoma, or are they in New Mexico?  You were only there for a couple of years.

DW:  No, I was just a child, a baby.  My brother and I are—were, he’s passed on—we were 18 months apart.

PL:  So, before we get to that, did your parents in Denver or in New Mexico live in particularly Jewish neighborhoods or have a Jewish community?

DW:  Yes, my grandparents lived in Denver.  Their address was on Hooker Street, which was like the heart of the Jewish community [called the Westside].  That’s where [my mother was] raised.  I mean, you only knew Jewish people around you.  When I went to visit my grandmother when I was probably eight or nine years old, the vegetable man would come by in a truck, and they would buy vegetables.  The fish-man would come, and they’d buy a live fish, and my grandmother would put it in the bathtub.  It was—[laughter] had you ever heard of that?

PL:  No, why the bathtub?

DW:  To keep it ‘til they were ready—to keep it fresh or alive until they were ready to make gefilte fish.

PL:  So, it was a gefilte—was it the type of fish that you buy for gefilte fish?

DW:  Oh, sure.

PL:  So, what would that have been?

DW:  Well, I don’t know what kind of fish they could buy there. [laughter]  In different parts of the country, it’s different, but I’m sure there was carp probably and, like, in the East, I know they use white—different whitefish.  But like here, they use salmon or other fish too, so I think the kind of fish that she got probably was the whitefish and the carp.

PL:  So your relationship with your grandmother lasted how long?

DW:  Well, I wasn’t raised with her.  You see, we moved away when my mother came here.  I was probably two, three years old when she came to Tacoma because I’m just—my brother was just a tiny baby.  He was about six months, so I was two or three.  Then the only time—Grandma came to visit one time.  I remember she came to visit one time with my mother’s youngest brother.  He was about sixteen.  Then the time that I told you [about], we went to Denver when I was about ten.  So, those were the only opportunities I had to be with my grandmother until I grew up.  When I worked and had money to travel, I went to Denver to visit my grandparents, but there was a long period when I wasn’t with them.

PL:  Can—we’re jumping ahead, but I’d like to know about your visits then.  You spent your own money to go visit your grandmother when you were a working woman?

DW:  Oh, sure.

PL:  Why?

DW:  Why did I spend my own money? [laughter]

PL:  Why?  You have only so much vacation time, and you went to visit your grandmother’s—and what were those visits like?

DW:  Well, I mean, to me, it was a real treat.  It was—not being able to—see, I have to go back to that part of my life because my father died when I was in my last year of high school living in Tacoma.  My mother had to make the decision [what to do].  Her parents were still living.  They were devastated that their daughter was widowed.  They wanted her to come and live with them.  She gave that a lot of thought and then felt that probably the best thing would be for her to come—to move to California, where her sister lived and her [brother-in-law] had offered her a job so she could work.  With that—my father had always—they’d talked about me going to college and being a teacher.  So, since he was gone, she wanted to—felt she’d like to carry out his wish. If she went to California, where my uncle had the store, which was in Richmond, [California], I could go to school in Berkeley and carry out my father’s wish, and I didn’t have to live there.  I could go by bus.  I could live at home—save the expense.  I would mention again that tuition was very reasonable.

PL:  At Berkeley.

DW:  Yes, at Berkeley, it was $26 a quarter.

PL:  What years was this?

DW:  This was between 1934 and 1938.  But that was—in Tacoma—that was—my life in Tacoma was from that point through high school.

PL:  Now, when you went to visit your grandmother, and you said your recollections of her are in the kitchen and—what do you remember?

DW:  I went back to this time when you asked me about going there—paying for my trip because after I left school, I went to work for my uncle.  They were—Kaiser put shipyards in Richmond.  Many people were leaving his store to go to work there, and—because he had let me work during vacations and so forth, my mother and I both felt it was only fair that I stay on and help him.  That was part of my life, like, after school.  Then when I had a vacation, and I had earned the money—we’re getting back to what you asked me—that was when I chose to go to Denver and visit my grandparents.

PL:  In growing up in Tacoma, can you tell me a little bit about the neighborhood you grew up in?

DW:   Yes. In Tacoma, there were—at that period between—well, it was—I’ll say 1918—probably 1920 up through 1934, there were very few Jewish people in Tacoma—many people—no, most of the Jewish people settled here in Seattle.  So, my grand—let’s see—I would say there were maybe 50—about 50 Jewish families.  That’s a rough estimate.  So, going to school—I remember when I was in grade school, there—my brother—there was my brother and me and my cousin and her sister. We were the only four; we were four Jewish students.

PL:  What school was this?

DW:  That was the Lowell Grade School in Tacoma.  Then my parents moved, and I went to a school called the Washington—Washington School.  Then they had intermediate school after that from the seventh grade through the ninth. We went through the—an intermediate.

PL:  The Mason Junior High?

DW:  Yes.

PL:  Also in Tacoma.

DW:  Yes, that’s right.

PL:  What was the neighborhood—you said your parents moved—so what were those neighborhoods like in Tacoma?  Who were your neighbors?

DW:  Our neighbors were all Christian people, both Catholic and Protestant. We had a wonderful relationship with our neighbors.  I guess saying—it’s hard to judge your own family and say that, but my mother was a really beautiful woman inside and out.  People were drawn to her, even later, where she worked—all—everybody seemed to love my mother.  She was good, and she was happy.  She laughed a lot.  She was just pleasant, and so that seemed to be—I didn’t think of it as a child, but we always had good neighbors who would come to our house, and we’d go to theirs.  This is one interesting little thing.  I remember when I went to the Washington School—that was in the sixth grade—left Lowell and went up there.  My—I have to mention too—my father really loved children, and many times the children would gather at our house.  He would play games with us and build things, and one particular thing they would [do] before the canning season—my mother always put up peaches and pears for winter.  But before she used the jars, they would—the treat would be that they would buy a tube of something to make root beer.  I don’t know just what’s in the tube, but I think they still sell it.  Anyway, they would buy that, and she would sterilize the quart bottles [jars].  I think it would make 20 of them, and they would make root beer, and all the kids in the neighborhood would come. We had a wood stove in our kitchen, and she would put a blanket down, and the jars would all be on their side, and in a week, it would ferment, whatever happens, to root beer.  At the end of the week, the children would all come back, and we would open it.  Oh, my father would buy ice cream—vanilla ice cream, and we’d all have root beer floats.  That was a big outing in our community—in our neighborhood. [laughter]  But that was one of the fun things.  But we did have a nice relationship with our neighbors.

PL:  That’s an amazing story.

DW:  [laughter] That’s a funny one.

PL:  Do you think your parents did that for you, for them, for socializing within the neighborhood?

DW:  No, I think they just did it because they wanted to do it.  It was a—as I say, my father did love children, and he did a lot of things, and that was sort of a fun—just a fun thing, sharing.  You’ll have to remember in those days there wasn’t a lot of money and so this was a very inexpensive outing.  I can’t imagine what a quart of ice cream, or whatever amount would be, would cost in those days but probably very little.  Milk was 10 cents a quart.

PL:  What other kind of outings did you have as a child with family and with neighbors?

DW:  We would take rides on a nice evening.  We weren’t too far from Point Defiance Park, and we would go there.  I have to say—I remember a neighbor, a very nice lady, and she lived next door to us with her husband and little girl.  Her husband worked for the “Tacoma Ledger.” It was a morning paper, so he’d go to work at four in the afternoon and come home at midnight.  So Mrs.  Dyer had a whole evening, so many times, like after my father came home—we had our dinner—we would take a ride, and she and the little girl would go with us.  We would sit by the water and—or just go see the animals and do things like that.  Many times on Sunday, we would just take a drive.  That would be an outing for a family or even take a—some kind of a lunch—maybe have a picnic someplace.  But those were our outings.

PL:  I want to know a little bit more about what it was like then to have been one of the few Jewish students in your school growing up.  Were people aware that you were Jewish or different in any way?

DW:  No, I don’t recall having any [uncomfortable] feeling, you know, about it.  I guess our Jewish holidays, when I’m thinking of that, were just celebrated in our home.  I don’t—if my mother kept us home, let’s say, for Rosh Hashanah [and] for Yom Kipper.  Probably.  If she did, she would always write a note why we weren’t in school.  But nothing was ever said, and I don’t recall anything unpleasant or—of course, in those days, too, now that I [am thinking about it]—when it was Christmas, they would decorate the school.  There would be a tree probably and many decorations.

I’m thinking of another funny little story.  At one Passover time—I mean, it was Passover and then Easter—coincided with Easter.  And the teacher would have us—one of our little projects was to—this was probably all in the third grade—to make little baskets out of strips of paper.  And then on that day—whatever—maybe it was Friday before [Easter], she would have us put our heads down, and she would put—she’d give us some of that paper grass, and we’d put them in our little baskets when they—and then she’d have us put our heads down.  And she’d come by, and she’d put little candy eggs in the basket.  So I remember my cousin was—I sat in front.  I was like a third seat, and she sat in the next row in the back, and I looked at my [cousin].  Oh, and my mother told us we couldn’t eat candy on Passover.  I mean, that’s all I knew.  I didn’t know about certain things, but I knew we weren’t supposed to eat candy on Passover.  And so I looked, and I looked, and all the kids were eating the eggs.  And I picked one up, and I licked it, and I remember my cousin sat in back there shaking her head [laughter] as though I had committed the worst crime.  But there weren’t any unpleasant situations that I recall in growing up.

PL:  Why did you choose to lick it as—

DW:  I would have eaten it, but I just thought, ‘I have to have a taste.’ That was my taste of it.  I knew I wasn’t supposed to, but I just licked it, but she caught me.  [Laughter]

PL:  Were there any situations where you had to make your being Jewish known?  For instance, leaving early for a Friday or you couldn’t get together with Friday night—perhaps, actually, I should precede that question with—you mentioned that most of the holidays were spent in the home.  Did you belong to any kind of organized Jewish community in Tacoma?

DW:  No, Tacoma was a very—I think many communities with groups of Jewish people probably went through the same—I don’t know how to call it—I’ll say unpleasant situation.  There was a Reform temple.  I think the reform temple in Tacoma was pretty stable, but the orthodox one, I—in looking back—and maybe it’s not right of me to say, but I don’t think it was.  There were—a number of different rabbis came in and left, and because I was young, I don’t know why.  But I remember my mother starting me to Sunday school, and maybe I’d go for two or three weeks, and then there would be some kind of blowup there.  Maybe the rabbi left or whatever.  But it didn’t ever continue.  I had very little training or going to school because of that.  I don’t know about other people in Tacoma, but I know I didn’t have any—I can’t say any Sunday school training.  All that I ever had came from my mother.

PL:  Let’s talk about that then.  What kind of training did you get from your mother Jewishly?

DW:  Well, I mean, I can’t say that it was like real book learning.  It wasn’t anything like that, but she would tell us stories, and she would observe the holidays, and then we always knew things like that, and that was our only observance that way.

PL:  So if, in fact, as I said before we began, that it’s in the little moments that the big things are told—

DW:  Yes.

PL:  —Can you share a little moment with us when your grand—when your mother told you a story about being Jewish? A specific or detail—do you remember anything with detail that she told you or taught you?

DW:  I can’t say that I do; I really can’t.  I mean, it’s all pretty general, in my mind.  It wasn’t a big thing.  I just sort of recall—I know when the holidays came, like—because Christmas—living in a Christian community and Christmas is such a big holiday—I remember that—like Hanukkah.  Mother would—she would explain Hanukkah to us.  My grandparents always sent—we always got—and I don’t even think it was a decorated card but maybe a letter—but we’d get one-dollar bill [sent to] all the grandchildren.  We looked forward to that so much, our Hanukkah gift.  As far as other children, I can’t remember ever exchanging anything with anybody or even in my family.  In the Christian—our Christian neighbors—in those days, they didn’t have electric lights on the tree.  They used candles.  They used to make paper rings to put around the tree, you know.  They would hang little bags of candy, and I know that some of the neighbors would invite my mother in of an evening in that week, and they’d give us these little bags of candy.  But there’s not too much of religion that I remember in those days.

PL:  Well, maybe to put in another way, I guess how then did you consider your home a Jewish home?

DW:  Well, I guess mostly because my mother observed all the holidays.  When it was time for any holiday—and, as I say, when it was—when she’d keep us home from school, she always wrote a note of why.  She didn’t say we were sick or anything.  It was a Jewish holiday.  She would explain that in the note.  That’s what we’d take to school. 

PL:  Do you remember your teachers ever responding to that in any way?

DW:  Never.  Never.  They accepted it that—why we hadn’t been in school that day, but they didn’t bring anything up.  I never remember anything derogatory.  Well, I recall one cousin of mine—and this was not in Tacoma—but she had—she was living in a community too with very few Jewish people.  The little girl was in school.  She was probably about 10 or 12 at the time, and there was an Oriental child in the school too.  The teacher one day made a remark that, so all the children would notice that—like, there were two children who were different.  I forget how she worded it, and she named my cousin and this other child.  Well, when my cousin came home, she was so upset that she wouldn’t go back to school.  Although my aunt went and spoke, the person—teacher didn’t mean anything by it, but she pointed this out in a derogatory way.  I never felt anything like that [discrimination].

PL:  But it’s an interesting point that you make in a way because, in some ways, did you look different than your fellow classmates?

DW:  I don’t think so.

PL:  So did you—

DW:  Well, if you want to hear another little strange story, my brother happened to be a redhead, a real carrot top, real bright red, and he—my mother had him—he went to a—there was a teacher, a man who was teaching.  So he was preparing him for his bar mitzvah.  There were several boys.  They would go after school, and they used—we used to get cards, as I remember—there were cards for the fare.  The school children got cheaper—you could buy a card, and it was a cheaper fare.  So they had that.  Well, sometimes they kept—I think they were good like from nine in the morning ‘til five in the afternoon.  Well, sometimes they’d keep these boys until five-thirty.  So one time, when my brother got on the streetcar and used his card, the conductor said, “Oh, no, no.  Can’t take it.” He said, “Oh, yes.  I was at Hebrew School.” He said, “I’ve never seen a red-headed Jew.” So those were a few little things.  You see, you meet with ignorant people.  So I think he—I don’t think my brother had any money in his pocket, so he had to accept it.  [laughter]

PL:  Did your mother keep kosher?

DW:  No.

PL:  Was that something she might have chosen to have done if there had been a kosher butcher in town? Or was there a kosher butcher in town?

DW:  No, there were—I think there were a few older people—older than my mother, who—and they would have to come to Seattle to get any—have any kosher meat brought in.  They were the few—there weren’t too many that I remember.  I know my aunt didn’t do it.  My grandparents, of course—my mother came from a very kosher home—a home that kept kosher.  But I guess it just wasn’t easy to do.  I don’t remember us ever having any food like pork in the house or anything like that.  But we didn’t have separate dishes [inaudible].  So we didn’t keep a kosher home.

PL:  Do you remember any foods—Jewish foods that remind you of home?

DW:  Yes, like matzo ball soup, chopped liver.  [Laughter] I really—I can’t think of many other things.  All the other foods that we had would be [ordinary].  Oh, potato pancakes, latkes, things of that nature that, you know, mother did make for us.  But other than that, I can’t think of any.

PL:  Were there any particularly regional influences in her cooking that were Russian that you remember?

DW:  No.  No, I don’t remember.  I mean, the things were like—sort of like [Laughter] from her remembering from her own home some soups that she would make—beet borsht—things of that—like her mother made.  But I can’t think of anything that was specifically Russian.  No, I really can’t. 

PL:  You mentioned that your mother celebrated a lot of the Jewish holidays.  Can you tell me, were those the major Jewish holidays, or did she celebrate some of the minor Jewish holidays as well?

DW:  No, I think it was the major holidays.

PL:  So, what do you remember about Passover?

DW:  Well, that we would have a seder and that we would have the traditional food.  I don’t remember that we ever went through—spent hours going through the Haggadah, but we went through it in our own way.  So we knew that we were Jewish.  We knew that that was a—we didn’t just follow the crowd, you know, and—but my mother had friends—as I say, the community was so stretched out that it was hard—excuse me—it was hard for us to mingle, really, with other Jewish children.  We didn’t play with them, but the families were together.  Like if somebody had a birthday—maybe a friend of my mother’s whose child had a birthday, we would be invited to that birthday party—things of that nature.

PL:  So, at what point did you start feeling a sense of Jewish community as a youngster? You said you went to Sunday school.  What was that experience like? I know that you said it was infrequent.

DW:  Yes, it wasn’t a constant thing.  Truthfully, I don’t think that I ever had any—when I started the university, although my mother—I know financially she didn’t have a great deal—but she wanted me—or allowed to join a sorority so that I would mingle and be with Jewish people.  I mean, that was my first real connection with being with Jewish people other than my own family.

PL:  Let’s talk about that.  You’re talking about when you entered Berkeley.

DW:  Yes.

PL:  Did you have any sense yourself that you might then mingle with other Jewish people, or did that come upon you while you were a student?

DW:  I had no plans, anything for—I was a complete stranger.  I had no high school friends to be with me and all.  I was in a completely different environment, and there were—my aunt lived in San Rafael, and when we first came, we stayed with her.  The daughter of a friend of hers was at school in Berkeley, and not realizing it then, but she was doing rushing.  Of course, she belonged to the sorority, so she talked to my mother and my aunt and said how nice it would be for me to be—and that’s how—it sort of had nothing to do with me.  It was my mother’s decision that it would be nice for me to be—to give me a place to meet people, to be with girls and boys, and so forth if I was there.  And that was fine with me.

PL:  So at Berkeley—just to backtrack for a moment, did you—you said that it was your father’s wish that you were to become a teacher.  Did you have your own—did you have your own desires and aims in going to Berkeley?

DW:  I don’t think I thought too much about it.  It was just going to school.  But then later on when you decide what you’d like to do, then I would lean, you know, to other courses.

PL:  So, what was your course of study when you began there?

DW:  When I began—I remember just taking the very basic things, and I remember—the first psych course I took was Psychology 1 like everybody does.  But it was later, until I was about a junior, that I thought I would like to go maybe into psychology and some medical—some field of that nature.

PL:  What was your sense of the Jewish population at Berkeley when you got there?

DW:  I have no idea to give you any figures, but there were—there was—were two Jewish sororities and three Jewish fraternities.

PL:  Do you remember the name of those fraternities and sororities?

DW:  The Alpha Epsilon Phi was one.  I was in the Phi Sigma Sigma house.  Zeta Beta Tau, Sigma Alpha Mu—that was one.  Then there was one other, and I really can’t think of the name.

PL:  So, at what point did you rush or try to get into one of these sororities?

DW:  Well, as soon as I went over, this one young woman who I met—I told you she was a friend of my aunt’s or her family was—I just was with her, you know, most of the time.  Now, I was in a little different predicament as some because I did not live at the house.  I went back and forth.  It was about a 40-minute bus ride from Richmond to Berkeley, to the campus, and so that’s what I did all the time.  I never lived on the campus.

PL:  So in Richmond, California—who was living in Richmond, California?

DW:  In Richmond, my uncle owned a department store, and my mother went to work for him.  I told you in the beginning—you know, my—she was widowed, and that’s where she chose to go.

PL:  So your father—your father passed in 1930—

DW:  It was my last year of [high school], 1933 – September of 1933 – and my mother stayed on until I graduated in ’34.

PL:  Then she moved up to Richmond, California.

DW:  Then she moved to Richmond because her sister lived there and her sister’s husband had the department store, and he said that mother could work, you know, that—so it worked out nicely.  I could go to school, and she had a job.

PL:  Okay, so you’re—so you’re in school and tell me a little bit about what the Greek system at Berkeley was like in the larger sense.

DW:  Well, that was—this was a time—I mean, I really felt that there was a drastic change—

DW:  —in the fraternity and sorority system.  When I first went in, in the house we lived in—the Phi Sig house was right next door to the Sigma Chi house, and on the final [day] after rushing, on the first day of pledging, the Sigma Chi fraternity holds their choice of a Sweetheart of Sigma Chi.  They built a platform, and here we stood, this group of girls looking out the window.  They built a platform, and they had these girls that had been selected that they were choosing.  It was sort of like a Miss America contest.  The thing was, in their charter, it stated that the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi had to be a blue-eyed blond Christian.  So none of the Jewish houses—or neither of—were considered—were eligible to—that was the one thing.  Then at that same time in Panhellenic, because you were in a sorority—you know that’s a national group of sororities—did not include the Jewish houses.  Somehow, through the national—all our sororities, they broke this rule.  The first thing that—while I was there when I was a junior, I was president of my house, and they said they would allow the Jewish houses, the two Jewish—I don’t know what nationally—but the Jewish houses could become associate members.  I remember going to the first meeting with the president of this AEPhi House—when I think of it now, it took a lot of guts.  [Laughter] I guess you had to be young not to have—I don’t know that I would have done it—to go in as an associate member among all these who you’ve never been accepted [by] before.  Here you are, two Jewish people among all these Christians, and go sit down at their dinner table, and then they have a little business meeting.  Well, the thing that they—oh, as an associate member, you had no vote, just sit there and listen to the discussion.  And what do you think they decided—I mean, oh, they voted on? This is just an example—whether to have the dance of that year at the Fairmont or the Mark Hopkins.  Those were the big decisions.  But we couldn’t vote.

PL:  Did it matter to you where the dance was, or was it more—

DW:  No, I mean, I—

PL:  —disturbing that you couldn’t participate in the—

DW:  Well, it was just that we had to sit there and not vote.  I mean, that was—you know, it’s degrading.  The fact that we went—well, I think was okay that we went.  We held our heads high, but it’s pushing you down if you can’t vote.  But then after that—see, these were—this happened—it was my second year.  I was a junior.  In [my] senior year, there were changes made and in the fraternities too, in the charters.  I don’t know if you are aware of it—maybe because you’re so much younger—but the charters were changed.  That’s why I mentioned the Sigma Chi charter.  They could not—they would be just ousted if—unless they eliminated that they had to be a Christian and that part.  None of them could have that in their charters.  So that was taken away from all of them.  I guess what I’m trying to say, the fraternal system became more liberal.  See, it had been very, very tightly [run], and now it was opening up.  Then I found that later where we, too, as Jewish houses, had to open our rushing and our pledging to all nationalities.  We had—why, I don’t know, but there were—when I was an advisor later to the house, we had a couple of girls who were not Jewish who pledged, and we had to accept them.  It made it a little difficult because we tried to maintain [our Jewishness], like, say, have matzo at Passover, you know, and all the [Jewish] things.  It was just a little different than it had been before.  But it was a big change in those four years.

PL:  Now, how did you learn about the charter requirements of the Sigma Chi fraternity? How did you know about that?

DW:  Well, somehow, it was publicized.  I don’t really know.  I can’t tell you exactly, but I know that it was publicized, and I guess in the beginning, we didn’t know.  I wouldn’t know what was in their charter.  It was later when they were [involved] nationally—when these things came up.  I don’t know.  It might have been some of the Jewish sororities whose nationals were starting to open up, and then things do change.

PL:  So in the four years that you were there, you saw a change.  Can you look historically at other events that were going on at the time or going on at the Berkeley campus or even nationally that would have caused there to be a more liberal perspective?

DW:  No.  I mean, I didn’t see any—there was nothing else, you know, at the time.  Later, Berkeley did become ultra-liberal, I’ll say, but at that time, there wasn’t—and again, it was a time of—where money was short.  Some of the boys who were on campus with us were medical students.  They had to work so hard and, again, commuting like they did because the medical schools were only allowing a percentage of Jewish students to go into medical school.  One time, many years later, when I was an adult, I met a lady.  She surprised me when she made this remark, but she said, “Dorothy, why is it that the best doctors are Jewish?” I looked at her.  She had been someone I’d known for many years.  I was so [taken aback that] I couldn’t think, but the good Lord gave me an answer.  I said, “Well, you know, when I went to school, they only allowed the very top people to get [in]—Jewish boys to become doctors, and that’s probably why.” [Laughter] It’s the only thing I could think of.  But she made that comment, “Why are the best doctors Jewish?”

PL:  Did you feel a sense of pride?

DW:  Yes, and I was glad I could tell her this; I really did.

PL:  How did being part of a Jewish sorority and the experiences that you had watching the “Miss America” blond-eyed—blond-haired, blue-eyed pageantry [of Sigma Chi Sweethearts] go on? How did it galvanize your sense of being Jewish or being a Jewish woman?

DW:  You know, at that point, being young, being all of 18 years old, we just accepted—I mean, I don’t know how other people felt, but it was just something—we weren’t invited.  We didn’t take part.  You didn’t feel [it was something] to fight for, or “I should fight for it.” As I say, I’m only speaking for myself.  I was just looking out for me, and I wasn’t invited.  It was like watching the Miss America show.  I watched something that they did, but I didn’t feel that.  The only way we started feeling it was when a Pan Hellenic [started reaching out to us] when we were asked to join to become part of this [the sorority system].  And then we were a little older, and I think we realized, “Now, we do have to fight for it.” But it was done nationally.  It was not done locally.

PL:  I know that during my days of—I’m embarrassed to have this on tape—[Laughter] of being part of a sorority that, you know, people walked around with their letters proudly displaying their associations.  And, of course, there were also honorary sororities and fraternities.

DW:  Yes, sure.

PL:  So what did it mean then for you to publicly say that you were part of Phi Sigma Sigma? Was there any—was there—I’m sure there was pride associated with it.  Was there also some sense on the campus of—did you hold back that information in any way?

DW:  I don’t recall.  I don’t recall anything or hearing any of my friends or anyone saying anything that way.

PL:  Why do you think there was a need or desire for a Jewish sorority at Berkeley? How old was it? How long had it been on campus when you joined?

DW:  That’s hard.  I really don’t know, but I just guess—my guess would be—not that I know anything about it, but maybe a group of students—first of all, as far as sororities go—now, this is different from fraternities because they were—boys went to school, but I don’t know that there were that many girls taking part in the university.  It was kind of rare for a girl to go.  I think maybe as more came on, they felt they wanted to bond together.

PL:  What kind of things did you do with the sorority? What activities were there?

DW:  Well, again, I don’t recall.  [Laughter] I mean, the things I can think of are so superfluous, such as rushing, I mean, things like that.

PL:  Well, tell me about rushing.  How did that happen? You were the president at one point.

DW:  Yes.

PL:  So, you were clearly in a leadership position.

DW:  Yes.

PL:  What was rushing about?

DW:  It was to get more members.  It was to choose girls who you felt would be desirable.  When I say that, somebody you’d like to associate with to—and if you knew anyone, then what rushing was to try and sell them on your house.  That was the—to get—it became—it really was both social and business-like.  I mean, you needed people to maintain the house, and you wanted good people, and if you could get leaders, if you can get some that were outstanding, that was a feather in your cap.  So—I mean, that—I don’t remember any of the things that we might have done that—to help society, to be social.  That part I can’t recall at all.

PL:  How many girls were in the sorority when you were there?

DW:  About 22.  It was a small house.

PL:  And you ate together?

DW:  Yes, yes.

PL:  What kind of foods were served? Were they Jewish foods?

DW:  No, it was—you know, again, we did not have—they didn’t serve pork chops or anything like that.  But no, we had regular meals. 

PL:  Do you recall what it was like all of a sudden then—you mentioned when there were non—you had to open up your own sorority—

DW:  [Well, we were no longer just a Jewish group.]

PL:  And you mentioned the matzo story.

DW:  Yes.

PL:  Do you remember—did that diminish in any sense—did you continue to call yourself a Jewish sorority?

DW:  They didn’t—no, see, at that time, I was not in—I was out of the house.  I had been away.  I just went in sort of as an advisor, an older person to be there in their meeting.  I—no, I think it weakened the house because—see, I don’t know about the AEPhi House in Berkeley.  I don’t think either Phi Sig or AEPhi are on the campus now.  I don’t think that they—so when—I felt at the time that it weakened the house.  But whether that was the reason they closed up or not, and I—maybe you know—how strong are they nationally—any of the houses? Do you know?

PL:  I think it varies per campus.

DW:  You do? But there are still a number of them?

PL:  See, I believe so.

DW:  Yes, that I really don’t know.

PL:  Well, I guess I’m curious then.  Part of sorority life for you—was that about mixing with fraternities or men?

DW:  Yes, I mean, the—we did have a Hillel—there was a Hillel chapter there.  And we were required—the rabbi that was at Hillel wanted the houses to—not just to leave it to those who were non-affiliated, but we were all to take part.  Sometimes when we went to affairs, we had a chance of meeting people.  I think there were exchanges between the fraternities and the sororities so that we could meet, somehow.  Maybe—I’m not sure if that’s just how everybody met or through classes.  But most of the girls I was—we only mingled with our own people in our house.  I—and the—as I remember—oh, there was also—I know the other fraternity you asked me was Kappa Nu when you asked me which ones were on the campus at that time.

PL:  I guess, how do you feel that being part of the Jewish sorority affected your development as a Jewish person during that period of time?

DW:  I don’t—I can’t say that it did.  I can’t think of a way that it affected it, but coming there as a stranger and not knowing anyone, it gave me a nucleus of friends.  As old as I am—I mean, several of them are gone, but I still have sorority sisters, and we are still in touch.  So it became more like family—you know, a close relationship.  But other than that, I don’t think of anything that, you know, at the time that it did for me. 

PL:  So those social relationships that you kept up, why do you think you kept up those relationships?

DW:  Because when you—kind of when you live together that way, naturally—certain people are attracted to their—we make friends with certain ones and with others we don’t.  That’s how it is, I think, in every social part of our lives.  So some of these girls—we’ve just become close.  We were close as we went together there.  We used to visit maybe on a holiday or weekend, be at one person’s house or the other one.  We knew each other’s families.  It becomes almost like a family relationship.  I have one friend who lives in Hillsborough, California, outside of San Francisco, and we speak on the phone quite often.  And she always says, “I just—I still feel you’re my sister.” So I always [say], “Yes, we are.  We’re sorority”—[Laughter], but we feel close; we do have that relationship.

PL:  Did anyone in your sorority house meet their mates through Hillel and those activities of the Jewish fraternities and sororities?

DW:  Did they meet anyone to become [serious about]? I can think—yes, I can think of a couple of them who did.  Yes.  Everything has a problem too.  We had—because of the times—of the bad times of—financial bad times, we hired—and through Hillel, there were always boys who—they were called house boys—who would do—fix the fireplace and serve the meals, do the dishes and so forth.  One of our girls fell in love with one of the house boys.  Well, that became a very big problem [Laughter] because socially you weren’t supposed to—they got to do the work for you.  They couldn’t come to the party, you know.  So sometimes, things kind of have a backlash.  When you asked that there were several that really met at that time.

PL:  What kind of courtship practices in dating did you have at the university? Where did you go to socialize?

DW:  Well, there weren’t—there were house [rules] like there were house parties.  There were dances there.  Hillel had some social things.  I remember when the sororities or fraternities would have their big dance of the year.  It was usually over in one of the hotels [in San Francisco], and that’s when I said that about whether to have the dance at the St.  Frances or Fairmont or whatever.  That’s it.  That was—began a very interesting thing that we talked about and laughed about.  We—they went—I forget, but they didn’t call it tea dancing.  I don’t know what they called it, but you would—you could go—you’d make arrangements for so many couples to go dancing.  This could be at the Mark—one of the big hotels and a big-name orchestra.  It was around 10 o’clock that they would serve.  See, it was not dinner.  I can’t think what they would call it.  But anyway, they would often serve a—like a patty shell—would it be a patty shell with creamed chicken or tuna or something of that nature, and a dessert and coffee, like what they would serve at a tea dance in the afternoon.  But with that, it would run you around five dollars—three dollars or five dollars.  The price to be in one of those hotels with one of the big-name orchestras and have a serving like that, that was really the big event of the year.  Well, that would be one thing like our house would have it, or if a fraternity did and you were invited, those were the kind of big outings they had.  But other than that, and I can’t think—there must have been some school things like around in the football season and all.  There must be—have been something that included everybody, but I can’t remember.

PL:  What did it mean at that time—your mother was a widow.  You were getting an education at a university; you were part of a sorority.  Did that set you apart from other friends that decided—or didn’t go to college? Was it rare for you to be an educated college woman?

DW:  No.  No, I never felt anything like that.  I’m just trying to think.  I’m trying to think, too—you see, the ones I went to high school with I knew—was no longer with.  They were up here; I was down there.  I was in touch with them.  I think several of the girls did go on to school, but many—in those days in high school, many of the students, the girls, would take shorthand and typing and prepare for—to be stenographers, clerks, and that—they didn’t take courses to enter the university.  But I don’t think anybody ever looked down on someone who didn’t.  But again, it was a time when women were just coming into going to school.

PL:  Did you feel like a pioneer?

DW:  No.  No, I really didn’t ever think any—it was just kind of a continuation of school.  I never thought anything about it. 

PL:  How do you think your parents’ values—clearly, they thought education was an important part, or they would not have encouraged you so much to go—how did that imbue your experience or your goals?

DW:  Okay, I don’t think that I thought much about that.  I know that my mother, as I say—I don’t know how she did it financially because things were very tight, but she seemed [to manage].  Of course, she was devastated at the loss of my father.  She was very young.  He was 48 years old when he died.  She kind of wanted to carry on what he had planned—they planned for their children.  So that was the only thing I really didn’t think much about it personally at that time.

PL:  Can we backtrack a little bit? Your father passed at 48.  You were living—

DW:  In Tacoma.

PL:  —in Tacoma.  Do you mind if I ask you how your father passed on and what the decisions were on your mother’s part to move?

DW:  My father—he suffered very, very much for a long period with migraine headaches.  When we speak of a headache, it sounds like a very minor thing, but—even today, I don’t know that that has been conquered.  It would be a periodic thing.  Maybe he could go, oh, two weeks or so well.  My—oh, and incidentally, my father was a watchmaker and, of course, his work was very, very tedious kind of work.  But—and he could do fine until all of a sudden this would hit.  It was a violent thing when—I mean, he could hardly lift his head.  Many times it was vomiting, and very—and it would last probably—it could be 24 hours and then come out of it.  He went to many doctors.  I [remember when] he had his tonsils out.  [They tried] different things where they thought they maybe could help him with it.  But I guess, and I don’t know about this exactly, he probably had high blood pressure along with this because he did die of a stroke.  That’s what took him, and my mother—he had this store, and my mother felt that—with the advice of a lot of good people—the man who owned the building, and everybody was so nice to her—that she kept it until—well, she had me finish high school.

PL:  What was the name of the store? Do you remember?

DW:  I don’t remember.  I know it was on Pacific Avenue in Tacoma, but I don’t know what name it went by.  But anyway, she—see, it was September when he died, and so she said she would wait until I finished high school and settle up any of the business things that she had to.  And then, when I graduated, we moved to California.

PL:  What was your brother doing at this time?

DW:  He was in the school.  I mean, he was in high school.  We were—he’s passed on—we were 18 months apart.

PL:  So tell me a little bit about your resettlement in Richmond because you mentioned in the pre-interview that—and you’ve mentioned a couple of times that your mother immediately got a job working for your uncle.  You had a lot to say about that.

DW:  Well, the thing—my mother also had—her brother—a brother of my mother’s lived—he and his wife and little boy lived in Richmond and—so we had family there.  The uncle who owned the store lived in San Rafael and—with my mother’s sister and his daughter.  We were a close family, but the thing was that Mother got an—we had an apartment.  We were downtown.  I could take the bus easily to go to school, and she could walk two blocks to the store to work, so it was a very nice setup—just a setup the way we could manage everything.  Then on Sundays and so forth, we could be with my uncle and his family.  Mother made friends, of course.  You do wherever you live.

PL:  Well, how did you, as the oldest child and the oldest daughter—how did you and your mother emotionally relate over the death of your father? Was there a relationship that you built, or was there a way that you supported her, or she needed your support as the oldest child?

DW:  I don’t think—again, you’ll remember, I think of this now when I could—never thought of it before, but I mentioned it when my mother went to San Francisco to be married and again when you asked me about how she went back to have her children.  She was a very soft, sweet woman, but she must have had a very strong [character]—something in her to handle these situations.  Now that you bring this up, I never felt like my mother was carrying on or that I had to be strong or anything.  She was there [for us] just as she always had been.  I mean, I know that she was broken-hearted.  I know that it was a devastating thing to be so young and lose your husband, but she handled it all kind of on her own.  Then her parents, too, were upset, like, what would my daughter do? She made her own decision, like, to go to California rather than to go back to Denver and be [a homebody].  I’m sure she’d never—they would never have wanted her to go to work for anything.  So this way, she must have been a—just had a strong streak in her somehow.  When we’re talking now, I never thought about it before, but in these three things that we’ve cited, I see where she has handled herself very independently. 

PL:  What do you think that that independence and sense of inner strength taught you in your life?

DW:  I have admired my mother so much, and I feel—I too—[laughter] we never want to feel sorry for ourselves, but I’ve had to go through some hard times.  I’ve been able to come out of it just well—just to not depend on anyone else but handle it in my own way.  But maybe it was from her that I got that—I could—an example, I’ll put it that way—that I could follow her.  One other thing I’ll just mention about my mother, which I thought was—when my husband died—when Al—not my first husband, but when Sam passed away, and I was living up here, and my mother was living in California, and she came up to be with me.  When we talked about, like, what I would do—I mean, at this point in your life, you think, ‘What am I going—I’m at a crossroad now.  What am I going to do.’ But she said to me, “Rather than come”—my one thought was maybe I should go and be with her.  Now she’s older and so forth.  But I didn’t say that to her, but we were deciding whether I should stay on or should go.  I was just in between.  But she said to me, “I don’t think you should go back to San Francisco.” She said, “Everything has changed.  You’ve been away for ten years.  Things will not be the same.  It wasn’t like you left it.” She said, “You’ve made a life for yourself here.  I think this is where you should stay.” I thought that was a very noble thing for anybody, my mother, to say because she was looking out for me and not for herself.  That was another one of her traits.

PL:  That’s so beautiful.  You’re very lucky.

DW:  I know.  I feel I was lucky.

PL:  Did—was her advice the right advice?

DW:  Was her advice—yes, I think so.  I really think so because—true—I would have had to start out alone down there.  It’s—what shall I say? When you grow older and you look back, there are so many things.  But older—but younger people don’t have to look at it that way, but things do change, and when you’re widowed, your friends are very sorry.  You know they are, but they have—and I’m not holding or would never hold any—but everybody has their own life.  So if there’s a party and couples are going, maybe, in the beginning, somebody will say to you, “Oh, come.  We’ll take you.” But then it gets to a point you either feel like a fifth wheel, or they don’t ask you anymore.  You have to make your own life.  That would have happened to me.  See, like what she said, things would not be the same.  We had—when Al and I were there, we had friends and—

[END OF CD1]

PL:  So this is the second of two mini-disk tapes in the oral history interview of Dorothy Wittenberg, and again, today is April the 26th, 2001, and we are continuing the recording.  So, before we were so rudely interrupted by the ending of the last tape, [laughter], you were talking about widowhood, and I’m wondering if you had more thoughts to share on that before I ask you any other questions. 

DW:  Oh.  Well, no, I think that what—you know, what I’ve said—you make your own life.  You know, you just—and that’s again—I think why I’m grateful for the work that I’m able to—let me put it that way.  I’m grateful that I’m able to do some of the things that I’ve been asked to do and that I can do because it fills your life.  I mean, everybody has their own things they like.  Some people like to socialize more than I do.  But it’s nice to know you’re still worthwhile, that you still have something to offer maybe.  I like to feel useful.

PL:  When your mother and you shared this moment—

DW:  Yes.

PL:  Did you feel—your mother lived until 1985, so she—correct? She died in 1985?

DW:  Right.

PL:  I think that’s what you wrote in the interview—

DW:  Yes.

PL:  —the pre-interview.  So she lived until she was in her late 80s.

DW:  Yes, I know how old—my mother was 88.  My mother died one week before her 89th birthday.  Now, I know that, but I couldn’t—I’ll never be able to swear to you the year.  I’d have to look that up.  [laughter]

PL:  So, as a widow herself, did your relationship change, given that you had gone through a similar circumstance?

DW:  No, I don’t think so.  What I just said to you about my staying here was after Sam passed away because my mother had been with me when I was widowed the first time in San Francisco.  No, I mean, she was very—she was very protective of me.  I still continued to live in San Francisco, and I went to work, but on weekends and all, I would be with her many times unless some friend invited me—something to do.  But most of the time, I would go—they lived in Richmond, and I lived in San Francisco.  Many times I’d go—of course, I had a very close family.  I told you about my mother’s brother who lived there when we first moved there.  During the war years, my other uncle—it was her youngest brother—came because his—the brother who was there had a shoe store.  Business was just soaring.  With all the [people coming to work], there were four shipyards at Kaiser [built].  [There were] no people to work [in the store].

PL:  What is Kaiser? Can you—

DW:  What is Kaiser?

PL:  Kaiser.

DW:  Well, it’s Kaiser Aluminum.  It’s a big company, but Kaiser put in four—they were building shipyards—building the Liberty ships that carried merchandise over—you know, all through Russia, all through that area.  They would turn [a ship] out in a week.  They had three shifts of people working.  This doesn’t concern my own life, but it was interesting living in Richmond at the time.  The people who rented out rooms, and they were asked what—they needed places for people to sleep—they would bring [workers] in by trainloads.  The people were renting houses.  They’d rent a bedroom for eight hours.  That was the day and then the person—say that person went to work on the middle shift—then that bed was rented for another eight hours.   They did that around the clock, the people who had places to let them.  Sometimes they had—they’d sit in a movie house [all night] and sleep [and then] came to work.  There wasn’t enough housing; it was just terrible.  But anyway, there was a lot of money.  Supplies were needed.  Well, anyway, my uncle—the one who lived there was in the shoe business, and he got his brother to come out and be his partner.  And they were in the business together.  So the reason I started mentioning that, now, my mother, her two brothers and their families and my mother and us—so we were together a great deal of the time.  And then Richmond was a small community, and they had friends—Mother did.  So we’d get together.  That was our whole life living there in Richmond.

PL:  Now, your mother worked for—

DW:  My uncle.

PL:  Can you tell me a little bit about that because you worked for your uncle as well?

DW:  Yes.

PL:  Was there ever a time that you and your mother were working together?

DW:  No, my mother worked in the Ready to Wear Department, and she never wanted a top position, although my uncle pleaded with her, but she wouldn’t do it.  But my mother was a [fine saleslady]—in an interesting way.  In a city like [Richmond], there were ladies who belonged to the Eastern Star, and when they had their big event, they needed lovely gowns.  And they didn’t have enough [in stock].  This was just a small department store.  But my mother—there was no buyer—and so she had to take over.  She didn’t want to be it, but she took over.  But she could bring back—this way, they’d tell her what they needed—if they needed a blue dress or a white one or this or that.  And she could go to the wholesale house, and I’d say that eight out of 10 dresses she’d bring back would be just what they wanted.  She always [handled] these special orders—she was very good at that, and my uncle did appreciate it.  But with me, I only worked like on Saturday when there was no school to earn some pocket money.

PL:  What was the name of the department store, and where was it located?

DW:  It was called Albert’s, and I’ve mentioned that name before, and there was one in Richmond and one in San Rafael.  And then he started one in Mill Valley, but it didn’t last too long.  But anyway, this is [where] I went to work.  I had only been helping him, but he needed help so bad that he put me in the Cosmetic Department.  And I was doing the buying for stationery, greeting cards, cosmetics [laughter] and all.  And I was a hero because everything we bought we could sell.  So it was a—as far as my record went, it was a good time for me.

PL:  Well, would you say that that was your first main work experience?

DW:  Yes.

PL:  So what kind of satisfaction and rewards—can you elaborate what those satisfaction and rewards were about for you?

DW:  About working there, you mean?

PL:  Yes.

DW:  Well, first of all, there were many opportunities.  Different people would come to ask—everybody needed help and, like doctor—in a small community, you know everybody.  So doctors’ offices and lawyers and all—some of the people would come and say, “Dorothy, come and work for me.” I’d say, “No.” I’d talk to my mother, and she’d say, “No.” My uncle was good to us when we needed him, and Mother said, “You can’t give that up.” I stayed on and on, and I didn’t know when I could [laughter] ever leave.  But during the war years—that’s when I met Dr.  Charles Fine.  I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him, but he was an obstetrician here.  He has since passed on.  But he and his wife and little girl were stationed in—[when they turned] the hotel in Oakland into the Oakland Regional Hospital for the Army, and he was in the Army.  So friends up here had them look up my family, and that’s how I got to know them.  So when the war was over, he said to my mother, “Richmond is not a place for a young Jewish girl.  I want her to come to Seattle and be our guest, and we’ll—send her up here.” So with that, I was able to leave my job—you know, and tell my uncle that I want to move away.  That was because I couldn’t [leave the store any other way].  I mean, that wouldn’t have been right.  So that’s how I came to Seattle. 

PL:  So, how many years were you working in the department store? Was it just during your college years?

DW:  It was—no, it was after—it was after that, you see, that I didn’t quit.  I just went on staying and helping him and—so I’m just trying to think—’38.  I think I left there in about—I think I was there about four years.  I can’t think of a time exactly but about—

PL:  Did you have any aspirations from your college education or from going to college that you knew what you wanted to do?

DW:  No, I mean, at—what I was working then it didn’t seem to matter to me.  I mean, I just went on, and then coming up here, they were such good friends.  They’ve always been such good friends of mine, and so I got a job in Frederick & Nelson, and that’s when—it was actually through them that I met my first husband.  Then, when I got married, I—we moved to—he was in business in Bremerton, and that’s where I lived for—let’s see, I lived there about […] about two years.

PL:  Let me ask you a little bit about your courtship and how you met your first husband.  So your first husband’s name was—

DW:  Al Rosengarten.

PL:  How did you meet?

DW:  Well, one day when I was with my friends, Reva and Charley Fine—

PL:  Is that Fine:  F-I—

DW:  F-I-N-E.

PL:  Okay.

DW:  I was with them on a Sunday.  I guess—maybe—oh, sometimes I’d go over and stay with their little girl on Saturday night while they went out, and then I would stay overnight.  So this was a Sunday morning, and—we were going to go someplace.  I was with them to go someplace during the day.   Charley, being a doctor, made his rounds in the morning around 10:00 or 11:00 A.M.  I sat in the car.  Well, Reva and I both sat in the car with Susan, the little girl.  When he came out, she said to him, “While you’re here.  You stay with Susan.” She said, “Dorothy, you come with me.” She had a friend who was in the hospital.  So we went up there.  It was an older lady, and her daughter-in-law, who lived in Bremerton, was visiting.  She introduced me, and we talked, and then we left.  Well, the girl—the daughter-in-law called Reva and said, “I have a friend, and I’d like—would your friend like to—or be willing to meet him?” So Reva told me, and so that’s how I met Al.  We started dating, and then I married him and lived in Bremerton for two years.

PL:  I want to hear all about Bremerton because—

DW:  Yes.

PL:  But I want to ask a little bit more about how long a period of time between meeting him and marrying? How long was your courtship?

DW:  Well, let’s see.  I have to—I have to think about that.  It was 1948 that I got married—that I was in—Yes, that I got married and lived in Bremerton.  I don’t think it was more than a year.

PL:  Do you remember anything about it? What—at what moment did you realize he was the one?

DW:  I really—I can’t even think about—[laughter] you know, that part leaves me.  I remember meeting him.  He had to come from Bremerton, and I was in Seattle, and I met him at the Olympic Hotel, which is now the Four Season’s.  I didn’t know who I was waiting for.  I kept looking, “Is this the one or that the one?” But finally, we did meet.  But I can’t—for the life of me, I can’t remember now really how long—his sister lived in Lake Washington down there in Seattle.  But it was after we were married when I lived in Bremerton that we’d go there.

PL:  What did you have anything in common? Did you make the decision together? Did he ask you to marry?

DW:  Well, I’m sure he asked me [laughter] to marry him.  No, I mean, it’s just—I think that it’s more the type of person.  Al and several of my friends had—[phone ringing] can you hold it?

PL:  Yes, I will pause.  So we were—I was asking—

DW:  About Al?

PL:  —about Al and about what you remember about—

DW:  Yes, well, when the thing—when you asked—see, I don’t—I just don’t remember.  He lived in Bremerton, and I was over here, and I just can’t quite remember the courtship times, you know, when he came over and all.  Then when we became engaged, I know I went back to San—to Richmond, and I was there about a month.  Then my family came up here, and I was married in January.  January, February—one of them.  But then we moved back to San Francisco because his—he was in the jewelry business, and during the war years, it was a very busy place.  But now they [the government] put the fleet in mothballs, and there was no—the business dried up, and so he had to close his store.  So we moved to San Francisco, and that was a nice place for us to live because my family was over on the other side [of the Bay].  He passed away.  We were there about ten years.  He passed away in 1961 [after suffering a heart attack]; we moved there in 1950.

PL:  So when did—what year did you get married?

DW:  In 1948.

PL:  And can you first tell me a little bit about your wedding?

DW:  Yes.  I was married at Glendale here in Seattle.  The reason was that my sister-in-law—that’s Al’s sister, Ruth, has since passed on.  Unfortunately, a lot of these people I’m related to are not here any longer.  She arranged [everything].  She was a great—just did beautiful things socially, like she’s a lovely lady, but she really could just take everything over.  So she arranged everything.  They belonged to Glendale, which was a private club.  My family all came up here for it, but—and then I was—we were married there.  We went up to Vancouver for our honeymoon.  [laughter] Then when we came back—let’s see, so that was ’48, and then I was living in Bremerton, and that’s it.  The business was worse and worse and worse, and then Al said, “We have to make a change.” So we went to San Francisco.  He had never lived there before, but I was glad because my family was there.  But he got a job at Macy's.  It was a New York concern that had their jewelry section there, and he was their manager.  That’s how we lived in San Francisco.

PL:  I want to—I don’t mean to push, but I want to ask a couple questions about your wedding if you don’t mind.  What do you—do you remember your dress?

DW:  Yes, it was not a long wedding dress.  It was—

PL:  Can you describe it?

DW:  Yes, it was—I think it was more of an eggshell color in, like, mid-ankle.  It was a dressy dress but not the traditional wedding dress.  We didn’t have, like, a lot of attendants.  Al’s brother-in-law stood up with him, and my brother escorted me.  And we were married by Rabbi Levine with one rabbi because it was all done through—I didn’t really know anyone—through my sister-in-law.  It was all her arrangement but—and then, of course, we had a dinner afterwards.  But it was a small wedding because, just mostly family and with my sister-in-law, a few of their close friends. 

PL:  Did you have a band?

DW:  A wedding band? Yes, Yes. 

PL:  Did you have a particular song?

DW:  No, no.  [laughter] It was very—just really very plain, very simple.

PL:  Why—you said your dress was not a traditional wedding dress.  Do you remember anything about your choice and why?

DW:  No.  Well, I mean, I really didn’t want to have like a big wedding, walking down the aisle and all of that.  I don’t know why I felt that way or who I even discussed it with, but I remember that it was just really—it was more religious than a party—more religious than a—having a lot of fanfare.  That’s [inaudible].

PL:  What made it religious?

DW:  Well, I think just being—when I said religious, maybe it wasn’t the right word—just being simple—more of a simple ceremony.  I guess it would be better to say ceremony than being religious, just to have something simple.

PL:  What was Jewish about your wedding?

DW:  Just the fact that I was married by a rabbi, and when I think of it now, I don’t have a ketubah.  I didn’t have a ketubah.  I have a marriage certificate, but no, I don’t know, and I don’t remember why.  [laughter]

PL:  Was Al educated Jewishly?

DW:  Yes, it had—Jewishness—it had a lot of meaning to him, and it was interesting when I—sometimes when you think back at different things.  I haven’t thought of this very often, but he smoked.  He was a smoker, but he never lit up on Friday night or Saturday.  It’s interesting how people take certain things that have meaning to them.  I can see where very religious people would do that, but that was something that he did, never touched a cigarette on Friday night or Saturday.  It was interesting when we lived in San Francisco.  The apartment we were in was one block from temple—synagogue—Beth Sholom on 14th Avenue.  He would get off the bus to come home on the corner, and they needed another man—or needed men for the minion.  So many times, he was late in coming home because he had to go in and make up their minion.  [laughter]

PL:  So this is the first time—you moved to San Francisco.  What kind of home did you create together?

DW:  We had—it was an apartment.  We lived—I lived in apartments all my life.  First of all, it was very hard at that time—it was after the war years.  Of course, in San Francisco was always hard to find a place to live.  So when we first went to work [we lived]—it was like an apartment hotel downtown.  Then I started looking for a place.  But they had—the ones they showed me—the real estate people—they were terrible.  I mean, it wasn’t anything I wanted to live in.  So a friend—you always have to have a friend who knows a friend—this man owned the building that’s a block up on Clement from Beth Sholom.  She said she’d talk to him, and he had a vacancy, and rents were frozen in.  So he met us on a Sunday morning, and it was a three-flight walkup.  He said, “We’re going up.” He said he can’t raise the rent, and the people left it in a mess, and if I—we wanted it that way, it’s fine, but he’s not putting any money in.  So we looked at it, and we grabbed it.  [laughter] We had painters come in and clean it up and so forth.  That’s—was my first home in San Francisco.  Later, when we could kind of look around and all, I did find a nicer apartment.  It was—it’s up on 22nd between Geary and Clement, and it was a newer building and quite nice.  That was where I lived—I mean until he passed away.

PL:  What did you do during the day?

DW:  [laughter] I just did some volunteer work.  I remember working for the American Cancer Society.  They opened an office—or a little—it was a store that was vacant, and they put in some sewing machines and things.  I saw an ad in the neighborhood paper, and a group of women—none of us knew each other—about 10 of us went over, and we made pads that were given to cancer patients who needed assistance.  They distributed them.  So that was one of the jobs, and then—I don’t know, I’m trying to think now.  I think I also—I helped with some of the organizations—something maybe with Hadassah or one of them that I [inaudible]. 

PL:  Was that the first time that you had ever done any volunteerism?

DW:  Well—

PL:  Or community service?

DW:  Well, I must have done something in Bremerton.  I can’t imagine not doing any.  But no, while I was in Bremerton, I think I helped Al in the store.  Yes, I—you’re going to think that I’m crazy not remembering.  But it’s hard after all these years, and as I’m talking to you, things do kind of come back.  But I think when I lived in Bremerton that that was a—I was helping him, and then, of course, you always have some social—little social life.  I did—I could come over to Seattle too.  I had—Al had sisters living over here.  So I didn’t do very much, as I remember, in—when I was living in Bremerton.  But then moving to San Francisco that way, I think it was mostly, like, with the organization.  I know I didn’t belong to any but Hadassah at the time.  I remember working, as I say, for this American Cancer Society.  I also had a neighbor who had a mother who was ill, and she had to work.  I used to go up to the convalescent home where she placed her and be with her sometime. 

PL:  What were your motivations for undertaking this kind of work? Work helping the sick and those who were recuperating?

DW:  I don’t know.  It just seems to me that if we’re in a path where—I can’t say that I’ve ever gone out, which many people, and I admire them, go out and find things like that to do.  But it seems it’s always been something that’s dropped in my lap, somebody who I’ve known or somebody who’s told me somebody needed something or something of that nature.  That’s the only thing, and it just seems it comes—I don’t know.  It’s like religion or just a natural—what you’re supposed to do, I guess.  That’s what I feel.  I’ve never just gone out and looked for anything.  I’ve never had—actually had a job.  Some of my friends have worked in hospitals.  They sign up for work, which I admire, but I’ve never done anything like that.  But I’ve always found things around me somehow that I’ve tried to be helpful.

PL:  So do you have a sense of there being—because you can say that there’s personal will associated with your choices of what you’ve done with your life, or there’s something else that’s willed you to do things.  Has there been any sense of fate about the path that you’ve taken?

DW:  I can’t think of anything in that line.  No, I really can’t.  As I say, it just seems wherever I’ve been, if I run into something or a situation that was needed and I could help, that that’s where I kind of landed.  But that was why in the beginning, I said I can’t think of anything that I’ve done that’s so important, and yet when I’m able to or when it’s come my way, I have helped wherever I could.  I don’t know how to express it.  I really don’t because I’ve never sought it.  That’s what I—like to go to work—maybe at Jewish Family and Child Service.  When I helped there, it was because there was a need.  I went to work, found out they had a need, and I saw, well, I could do this, and then I did it.  It was—that’s how I met Sylvia Saperstein, was setting up for the new Russian people who were coming to Seattle.  And we worked for a year or two, setting up apartments for these people.

PL:  What years were these that you were working on the refugee issue?

DW:  When you ask me, I really can’t—I can’t remember.  It has to be maybe 20 years ago.

PL:  So what do you—I want to ask you about Bremerton, and then we can jump forward again—

DW:  Yes.

PL:  —to your move back to Seattle.  You had mentioned now a couple times that Al was working and living in Bremerton.

DW:  Yes.

PL:  Bremerton—can you describe what is—where is Bremerton in relationship to Seattle, and why was he living particularly there? And you moved there, and what were your experiences?

DW:  Well, he was there because he was in business there.  He had been in the Army.  He had been drafted, and he was 38.  I guess he was about 37 or so when he was drafted, so he was out at the age of 38.  They let—people retired from the Army, or they didn’t draft them anymore.  That was the borderline, but he was just there, so he had to go in.  When he came back from the Army, he had a friend, Mr.  Burnett, who was in the jewelry business.  He had a store in Seattle, and they decided that Bremerton would be the place.  Oh, and Mr.  Burnett had a brother who owned a building in Bremerton.  So they decided, because the ships [came] in [there], it was a very lucrative place—that they would open a store.  The man—Al, I guess, couldn’t do it alone—so they were partners, and he ran it.  It was just a darling little store too.  He said when—I didn’t see this, but when he first opened it, they had 14 watchmakers.  There was a back room, and they lined up [workbenches] there.  That’s because when the ships—another thing I have to tell you, which is in changing of the times, watches had springs and [laughter] that’s when watchmakers were needed.  They weren’t like batteries used today.  That's why they needed them.  Well, when the ships—when the war was over and the ships weren’t coming in anymore, the business was drying up.  When I moved there with Al, there was only the main watchmaker and one assistant.  So all of these others, that was the end of that business.  Well, that was why the business became worse and worse, and they just couldn’t operate it.

PL:  Bremerton has a large—it’s a naval base?

DW:  Yes, it is a naval base.

PL:  Where did you live when you lived in Bremerton?

DW:  I lived in a very nice apartment.  It was walking distance from town.  It was on a main road, and it was like right off the waterfront, had a beautiful view of the water.  I could watch the ferries come in.

PL:  How did you feel given that—it takes probably about an hour even today to get from Seattle to Bremerton—

DW:  Yes.

PL:  —by ferry.

DW:  Yes.

PL:  You had moved from Seattle.  Did you feel any sense of isolation or connection with people in Bremerton?

DW:  Yes, there was a nice Jewish community in Bremerton.  Al knew a number of the people.  He had lived there for a couple of years.  We really had a—and we didn’t miss—feel [laughter] that we were isolated in any way.  Often on Sunday, we’d come over and be with his sister and her family.

PL:  In Seattle.

DW:  Over here in Seattle.

PL:  You mentioned that there was some—I don’t know if it’s remote or if it was latent or if it was overt—antisemitism that you had experienced.

DW:  Yes, well, and I just said when I was talking to Iantha, the only—a time that—like, when you and I were talking about my childhood, and I said we were—I was raised among Christian people but never felt picked on or isolated or any—but this—only one time and it was when I lived in Bremerton.  These people—it was—the man was—I don’t know what his office—he was an officer.  He was over the regular [sailors], and he and his wife, and there was a baby too, they lived in an apartment upstairs.  The way I was, my entry went on the side, so they were away from me.  But there was another woman who lived there.  She had been there before, and I guess Navy people move around so much.  They’ve very friendly.  I talked to her, and several times she’d come into my apartment, and we’d have coffee together and talk.  Then when this couple moved in upstairs, I didn’t see her, this woman, anymore.  A couple of times, I think I saw her as a distance, and she waved, and that was it.  What—she wasn’t a friend that I would call.  But one day, when Al and I came back from Seattle, and we got off the ferry.  He—we didn’t have a car over in Bremerton.  It was always in Seattle.

We got off that, and we walked up, and he always liked to walk by his store before he walked the few blocks home.  When he did, the whole front was boarded—the plate glass windows were boarded up.  When we got home, he called the watchmaker because both he—I guess the number they would have for the police and all would be listed.  He called Mr.  Fugit and asked him, “What happened? Why is the store [boarded up]?” He said, “Well, the police had called him.” A sailor, who was drunk, I guess, was driving and ran into the building.  And that’s—so that was okay.  The next day this naval officer who lived above us came up to the store and took a lot of information because [the Navy was] handling it.  The police didn’t handle the Navy thing.  That was it.  Well, when I told you—I never—this woman never talked to me, but I didn’t know anything about it.  But she would have to walk by my window.  She never looked up; she never said anything.  I had a lady who did cleaning for me, a Black lady.  She came one day and took our wash.  We had time that we could use the washing machine.  She took our wash down, and this woman was there, and my lady—she felt that the woman was just—didn’t like her.  But she was using a machine, which she shouldn’t have been.  So my lady sat.  She just sat there and waited.  Well, this woman got so uncomfortable that she grabbed her stuff and ran out.  That was my impression, all I knew about her. 

But one evening, Al and I were taking a walk, and we met this couple.  The man—now, he’s the officer who had been in the store and talked to Al—he stopped and was telling Al something about this case.  This woman turned her back.  She just turned her back and wouldn’t look at us.  That’s what I was telling Iantha.  It was the only time in my life I ever felt or noticed antisemitism.  But we meet all kinds of people.  I’m sure she’s somebody [laughter] I wouldn’t care to know.

PL:  So she went from being someone who actually visited your apartment—

DW:  No.  No, no.  It wasn’t her.  It was another woman who stopped coming to me after this one moved in.  See, and then when they moved away, and I saw this lady again, she was talking to me.  I forget what it was, but I said to her, “I didn’t do anything to this lady.  Is it because I’m Jewish that she turned her back on me?” She looked down and said, “Yes.” You could just tell.  She herself, that woman who did it, was really nothing but trash.  She really was.  She wasn’t worth anything.  But hate is a terrible thing, and that’s the only thing I mentioned to Iantha.  I remember—it’s the only time I ever felt antisemitism.

PL:  And this is around 1940—late 1940s.

DW:  1949.  See, because I remember we moved in 1950.  So in between 1948 and 1950 is, when—

PL:  What perspective—maybe perhaps—you said you didn’t experience antisemitism as overtly as that.

DW:  Yes.

PL:  But you’re coming out of World War II.  Can you think back about what perspective you had on what antisemitism was at the time, given what you knew about what we now call the Holocaust?

DW:  I really can’t comment on that.  I don’t know any way to answer that.

PL:  Well, maybe if we took it in a smaller step, which would be—do you—did you in your mind go through any reasons why other than your own reasoning that she wasn’t worth it—why she might have—

DW:  Oh, acted that way?

PL:  Yes.

DW:  No, I really wouldn’t because there were so many positive things that I’ve—like when I was single when I was working in the store in Richmond, I remember when the boys were coming to Richmond.  They were being shipped out oversea to the South Pacific from this area, San Francisco.  I remember a Christian girl coming to me and saying, “Dorothy, there are about eight Jewish boys who have come to the USO.” “Oh.” She said, “Do you ever go up there?” I said, “No.” She said, “I wish you would.  I’ve been talking to them, and they would like to meet Jewish people.” That’s the only kind of—oh, I’ve ever—really ever known.  This was to me—I only thought about it because I think the question was asked, “Have you ever met antisemitism?” or something.  And that truly was the only time.  There are all kinds of people, and I would just consider her as a nothing.  It’s just like these people who are—what do they call the Nazi—the neo-Nazi—they’re young boys who you can’t understand why they develop hate.  It would put that woman in that class, and she would just follow hate.  Through my life, I’ve always—just like I remember this girl.  She was so interested, so concerned about these boys being lonesome that she came—and to me, that’s a very nice relationship [laughter] when she could come to me and say, “Dorothy, why don’t you come over there? They’re very lonesome, and they come in, you know, from the base.” They must have told her, “Do you know any Jewish people?” I even remember that it was a holiday and my family invited them for, I think it was Rosh Hashanah.  My mother cooked [a traditional meal], and we were at my uncle’s house, and these boys came and had dinner with us.  I feel that I’ve always been very fortunate with the people I’ve met.

PL:  Do you remember anything about that Rosh Hashanah meal?

DW:  No.  No, except that the gefilte fish was, my mother said, the worst that she had ever made.  [laughs] It was very difficult to get fish in Richmond in those days.  They didn’t bring it in, I guess, in the frozen—and maybe it came on some of the trains where they had all of the Army stuff, and they would put it in the—whatever it was, it was so dry.  She said she—in all the years that she had made it that she had never had fish [so dry]—and her comment was, “And wouldn’t you think it should have turned out nice for the reason”—[laughter], but anyway, I really don’t remember.  As I remember, the boys were shipped out very soon after that.  They wrote a couple of times, and then as time goes on, you just lose track of people.

PL:  Did you have any crushes or dating experiences with men other than Al?

DW:  Just when I went to school when I was there.  I met a very nice young man and I really—I think I would have probably liked a permanent relationship.  But when you’re young, you have crushes that way.  But, no, he was the only one I ever really cared about, but I think that’s natural for a young girl, and especially in those years.

PL:  Did your parents have any—or your mother at this point—did she have any expectations about who you would marry?

DW:  I think—don’t you think most [laughter] parents do? I remember—through the years, different people introduce you to different ones.  I met this one young man—as far as I was concerned—it would never be a permanent—it would be okay just to have a friend.  My mother—when he came to pick me up, she was very much against him [laughter], and I don’t really know why.  I said, “But you don’t know him.” “But he’s not for you,” she would say.  [laughter] I think parents sometimes take sides.  But sometimes you have to make your own decisions too.

PL:  Did you ever date anyone who wasn’t Jewish?

DW:  No.  No, that I didn’t do.  [laughter]

PL:  So, Al—you were married for how long?

DW:  Eleven years.

PL:  Is there anything that you would want to share about that partnership because it was a short partnership.

DW:  No, the—I guess—it was a very good—we had a very good life and a happy—I was happy then.  But—at one point, Al wanted to go—it was really the year before he passed away—he said something about going back to New Rochelle.  He had family there, two sisters and a brother.  He said something—and he hadn’t been back in all these years.  When their parents died, the sister who lived here urged him to come out and be with them.  So anyway, he said that.  I listened.  But I didn’t—in my mind, I didn’t feel that we could afford it, that we should take the trip.  But I was—this is something—I’m so glad, see, that I didn’t ever say anything.  I just listened.  That’s one of my traits.  I don’t speak too fast.  I can be proud of that because sometimes you say you’re sorry.  In this case, I didn’t say anything, but in my mind, I thought, ‘Gee, really, it’s going to be too much.  We shouldn’t do it.’ But again, I didn’t, and he got the tickets, and we went.  He showed me the whole area, which is so beautiful.

PL:  This was New Rochelle, New York.

DW:  New Rochelle where his sister—two sisters were.  We had a wonderful vacation.  He was gone the next year, and I—that was one thing I was so grateful that I hadn’t said, “Let’s wait.  There’ll probably be a better time to go.” So sometimes in our lives, we do the right thing.  But that one—I always have thought, ‘Gee, I’m so glad I didn’t.’ Because my reasoning was, my family live here; we’re with them all the time.  It isn’t fair that he doesn’t see his family.  So I didn’t let the money deal stand in the way.  As the years go on—there’s sometimes when you make a decision, you can live with it.  Well—and I’m grateful for that. 

PL:  At what point did—was—did he fall ill, or was it a tragic death?

DW:  He was a diabetic, and it was—it’s interesting too that he was [inaudible]—before we left here, Dr.  Sidney Weinstein was his doctor.  He was referred to him, and his blood sugar was very high.  Then when we went to California, he—oh, I guess Dr.  Weinstein put him on insulin.  Then when we went to California, he was on that.  At that point, they were bringing out a drug—oh, when I say a drug—a medicine that I think people could—maybe it was like a pill—something you could take.  Oh, he wanted it so badly to eliminate taking the insulin.  But his doctor said, “Don’t be the first on whom it’s tried.” So they went on, and he took the insulin.  But one time, he prevailed on the doctor, and they said, “Okay, we’ll try it.” But it didn’t work, and he had to go back to insulin.  I talked to the druggist.  He said that sometimes when somebody has—if you’ve never been on insulin—that the drug can—the pill can make the pancreas function.  But if you’ve been on insulin, it’s just dormant, and it’s hard to—you can’t get it started.  That was probably that reason.  He lived with it a long time.  He was, I have to say, a wonderful patient because he didn’t ever cheat.  He really was careful and all, but somewhere along the line, it affected his heart, and that’s what took him was a heart attack.

PL:  Were you with him?

DW:  When it happened? Yes.  He was at home, and I called up his doctor.  There was a doctor standing in for his doctor who did come out to the house, and he called an ambulance, took him to the hospital, and he was gone in a short time.  Those things happen.  We just have to accept.  I have a friend, this one who tells me we’re sisters—we should be sisters, but she remembers him very well.  It’s kind of nice to know—when we talk sometimes that she brings up something that has taken place, it’s just kind of nice to go over old times.

PL:  What kinds of things does she remember?

DW:  About him? She has brought up to me that whenever her father, who lived in Salinas—a very funny man—and something I didn’t know when he’d come to the city, he would always look forward to having lunch with Al.  He’d tell her, “He’s such a fine person.” [laughter] I like to hear things like that.  One thing that I learned when he passed away, I went up to the office—I had to go to get something—things straightened out in the office of Macy's.  When I was up there, this lady said to me, “Would you like to see Al’s record?” Naturally, I wasn’t going to say no.  [laughter] No—so I said yes.  She showed me and the reason she wanted to show me there was a whole packet of letters.  People had written thanking for the work he had done for them.  It was—they weren’t letters complaining.  They were all letters praising and that sort of thing, so I was very proud.  But she told me—I didn’t know that her father would look forward to coming up and having lunch with him.  So those are nice things to remember.

PL:  How old were you when he passed?

DW:  Forty-five.

PL:  At that point, had you two discussed having children?

DW:  The thing was, I was pregnant when I lived in Bremerton, and I had a miscarriage.  Then the doctor always prepared—at a point like that they say your body is in the best—with the hormones and all—the best condition—so—to get pregnant again—But that’s when Al was tested and was when his blood sugar was so high that that’s what they felt probably caused the miscarriage.  So with that, we never—because he did have diabetes.  So we didn’t ever try to have children again.

PL:  Can I ask you how you felt about those decisions?

DW:  I was okay.  I mean, there was nothing I could do.  I was sorry.  It’s always a blow, you know, to—you feel you prepare when you’re pregnant, and you’re going to have a baby.  But no, I mean, it just seemed health was the most important thing at that point.

PL:  Who did you talk to, or where did your coping mechanisms come from? Where did you—who did you rely on to talk to about what was going on in terms of your miscarriage and losing your husband?

DW:  Well, Dr.  Fine was an obstetrician, and so he—and being my friend—I mean, he’s the one.  In the beginning, he’s the one who wanted to prepare me with all the things to get pregnant again.  But then, when Al had the tests, they felt that that was important too for the man to have tests too.  When it showed at that point that the blood sugar was so high and he was on insulin, we just forgot about it.  We just let it go.

PL:  Did you make a decision about contraception at that point?

DW:  No.  I mean, it was just—we knew that we didn’t want to have anymore, that we wouldn’t even try, so I guess that was—

PL:  So your version of contraception—because it’s such a topic in the present, what kinds of contraception women use, and they make very decisive choices about when to have children, when not to have children—in those days, how did you know what your options were in terms of contraception or choice?

DW:  Well, I mean, it just was a matter of sort of health—you know, just thinking this way.  So I just—we just decided this is what—we’re not going to have any children.  We’re just going to live with it; that’s all.  So that’s how it was.  But when I married Sam—I guess sometimes things come your way.  His son had three children—or has three children, I should say.  Amy was four, and the little boys were six months and two years.

PL:  These are your grandchildren.

DW:  Yes.  I’m the only grandmother they’ve ever known, so I’ve had the pleasure of having these—[laughter] to care for them and to be with them and all.  They’ve been really a big part of my life.

PL:  Wow! So at what point did you become a stepmother?

DW:  At what point? Well, when I married Sam, which was—here we go with the years—it was 1965.  I remember that’s when I came up here. 

PL:  Al died in 1960, and during those five years, what did you do to support yourself?

DW:  I went to work in the Jewelry Department at Macy's.  The man who was the buyer said, “Dorothy, we need help, and I want you to—I’d like you to come in.  I know that it’s not a good time for you to be sitting alone.  I’d like you to come in and help me.” I said, “Well, there’s not much I can do.  I don’t know anything about jewelry.” He said, “If you’ve ever sold thread, you can sell jewelry.” So I said, “Well, I really don’t”—“Well, they need help in the office.” I said, “Well, that’s okay if I can do it.” So we had a deal.  If I didn’t do a good job, he could let me go [inaudible].  So I went to the office.  He had other things in mind.  He wanted me to come down on the floor and sell when they had busy times.  But I didn’t know that.  I mean, I worked in the office, and then when the time came, he said, “They need help on the floor.” When I went down, several people—shortly after my husband died, several people came in and asked for him.  There were moments that were very—made me very unhappy.  So when I went back up, I said, “I’m never going down there again.” So with that, I never did it.  But I worked in their office.  That’s what I did.  It was an interesting job because it’s a leased department, and the merchandise goes from one store to another.  You check off the things that are sold and those that have to go and all.  And it was kind of—I didn’t mind it; it was okay.

PL:  So that meant that it was only during the short period of time that you actually had client contact.  What was the social life of a department store like to work in?

DW:  Well, I didn’t really mingle with anybody there because I was up in this little office where we handled the merchandise.  So the only—the man who was the boss and there was a young man who was the secretary—I mean, we worked together, but I really didn’t have any contact with any other people in the store.  But my own social life—because I have a number of friends—like some—at that time, there were some of the girls I had gone to school with—they were married, had families and all.  We were still together.

PL:  What would you say was your main social network in that period of time after you had lost your husband? You said you were active or involved in Hadassah and—

DW:  Yes, well, that would be about—things like that while I was working and it’s different, like right now when I’m home all day, or I have things to do, then you don’t mind giving something of yourself.  In fact, you welcome going out and doing—seeing people.  But when you’re working, I didn’t feel that I really—on the weekends I’d be with my family and there were times on the evening when these friends of mine—I’d go to a movie with them and all.  But I really didn’t do much for anybody except myself. 

PL:  What were your favorite leisure activities?

DW:  My favorite activities? I don’t know.  I used to like to play—we used to have a little poker club.  That was fun.  It was just a fun game.  Then a few of my friends play mahjong, and I would play that or bridge.  So it really was a very inactive life.  I didn’t do very much—go to a movie, go to a play— something like that.  As I said to you before, when you’re alone, things you used to do as couples change.  You don’t do it anymore.  So it was just maybe a woman—a friend who was in the same position you were, or somebody maybe—there was a nice lady who lived in my apartment building.  Her husband traveled in his work.  Sometimes we’d go to a movie together, or she’d come in, and we’d visit together, something of that nature.

PL:  Did you belong to any kind of organized Jewish community or synagogue?

DW:  No, not at that time.  No, with Al, I belonged to this Beth Sholom.  But after that, I didn’t take part in anything like that.

PL:  At what point did you decide that you were ready to date again?

DW:  Well, I mean, a—there were a couple of people who had asked me—you know, [close] friends and all that.  I had said no.  In fact, I just think it’s your own feeling.  After Al passed away, I really didn’t want to go out.  I don’t know why—didn’t feel it wasn’t the right thing.  I just didn’t feel like it.  This friends that we—there were four couples—we had this little poker club that we just loved.  When they’d get together, they’d call me and say, “Dottie, will you come?” I’d say, “I don’t think so.” They didn’t question anymore.  Then when the time came, maybe six, eight months later, when somebody said that to me, I said, “I really feel now—will you come to my house? I would feel better.” That’s how we started being with this group again.  But most of the time—I don’t know—you just have to get your own feeling somehow that tells you when you ought to do that.  That’s the same with dating.

Then when I met Sam, my friend, Reva, called me one Sunday morning.  Usually, things she did were with Charley.  But she said, “He’s gone.  He’s out, and I want to talk to you.” Her sister had just come back from a trip, and someone said, “Sam is such a lonely man.  Why don’t you introduce him to someone?” So she calls her sister and said, “Why haven’t you introduced Sam to anyone?” In the meantime, Reva called me and said, “He travels.  This man travels in his work, and if he goes to San Francisco, can he call you?” So that was how I met Sam.  He called me.

PL:  What an amazing thing that the same people introduced you to both of your spouses.

DW:  Yes.  That’s right, through them.  Yes.

PL:  What did that do for your relationship with them? Did that help you through the times?

DW:  [laughter] Well, I’m friends with them.  I’m still friends with them.  Yes, they’re very—I mean, some people become part of you, almost like relatives.  When they came there—when he was in the Army, and they lived in California—they first came back, my family was their family.  Then when I came up here because he said, “A Jewish girl, there’s no place for her in a little place like Richmond.” When I came up here, they were my family.  So I guess there’s certain ones that we become very, very much a part of.

PL:  Did you ever contrast that need for finding family or Jewish family in places where often there’s not a lot of Jews—did you ever feel any sense of how the East Coast was different?

DW:  No, I don’t think I—there are just times when you realize things.  Now, do you know Rabbi Gelber from Herzl? Rabbi Gelber is leaving next month.  Her contract is up.  She’s been with us for five years, a lovely young woman—just charming, very pretty.  Now she told someone her reason for going is that she really has no social life here.  In the East, she would.  That I can understand.  I never thought of it—I mean, but when something like that comes to your attention, I can see where being a rabbi—maybe every young man—maybe some would feel intimidated to ask a woman in her position out.  In the East, she probably has—there’s a wide circle of people who she can meet.  So that’s my only thing of thinking of the two places.

PL:  Did you have any sense of yourself as being a West Coast Jewish person or that you came from a certain ethos about the West Coast versus the East Coast?

DW:  I’ve never thought of that.  You know, that never entered my mind.

PL:  Tell me a little bit—and I think this will probably be the last section of the interview for this session.  I want to hear a little bit about Sam.  Had he been married before?

DW:  Yes, that’s—Herb is the son.  He was married—let’s see, I’m just trying to think how far.  I don’t know how many years they’ve been married, but he had been—he was just devastated with his—loss of his wife.  They had had a very good life, and everything he planned for was like in his will, and everything taken care of was for—he would predecease her.  Then here it was, such a terrible shock.  It really was sad the way she died.  I think she suffered with high blood pressure.  When she went to the beauty parlor [and died there].  Oh, this is another thing that’s very sad.  They had made out a will, and then they went—time had passed on, and one day they were looking at it, and they decided what—something in it was not the way they wanted it.  It was not worded right.  So Sam called the lawyer and said, “We don’t like the way this is.  We want to change it.” So they had an appointment, say, for a Friday afternoon.  The lawyer called and said, “Sam, I”—somebody he knew well.  “I am calling East of the mountains.  I have to take care of something.  Would it be okay if you come in on Monday?” So Sam said, “Sure.” This day his wife went to the beauty parlor, and she had a stroke.  It was either Friday or Saturday, and that was the end.  Anyway, if—that was quite a blow, and they had been married a long time and all.  But I think because he was—it doesn’t always mean that you don’t love someone when you want to have companionship.  I think that because he missed her so much that that was why he wanted to remarry.

PL:  How soon after he had lost his first wife did the two of you marry?

DW:  I really—I don’t know how long she was gone, but I think it was about—it probably had been—about two years had passed.  I’m not positive of that.

PL:  So, given the sense of companionship that you both felt for each other, how did you learn about that? How did you explore this potential new relationship? When did you finally meet, and how did that come about?

DW:  Oh, well, Sam—he came to San Francisco, and we met.  Whenever he was there, he stayed a little bit.  He was there several days, and we could go out and all.  Then he was in touch with me and then he came back.  Again, I don’t remember exactly when we decided that we would marry.  The only thing I can remember is that I did not want a wedding.  I did not want a large wedding, and so we went to Las Vegas, and we were married by a rabbi.  And then Sam did travel a lot in his work, so this—we took a trip after our—we went to Hawaii, and then from then on, there were a number of trips that we were able to take together because of his work.  I think we had a very happy relationship.

PL:  How did you find a rabbi in Las Vegas?

DW:  Oh, his—the rabbi up here from Herzl—I forget who he was at the time—gave him the name of the rabbi down there.  It’s surprising.  There are quite a—I’m amazed.  One of my grandsons is living in Arizona, and there are a number of temples.  You’d be surprised how many Jewish people are living in those areas.  I don’t know how many of them are down there, but I think the one—it was Rabbi Corson who was here.  I think the rabbi that he introduced him to was a Conservative rabbi.  I don’t know anything about it.

PL:  So what was the kind of—did you get married in a temple? Was it in a hall?

DW:  No, it was in the rabbi’s study, and he called someone in to be a witness—two or whatever they need.  You have to get your papers, like, from City Hall or whatever.  It was just a simple ceremony, which was very nice.  He respected my feelings.  I just didn’t want a big wedding, and his son didn’t object to it, so that was fine.

PL:  What do you remember about your honeymoon in Hawaii?

DW:  Well, it was a beautiful—[laughter].  I love Hawaii.  Have you been there? Don’t you love—

PL:  I have.

DW:  Oh, I love it.  It just seemed the minute I landed, [I’d] never seen it before—just the way the trees bend, the breeze, the flowers—everything was so beautiful and so restful.  Anyway, we stayed at the—first, the hotel that he had made arrangements with because he had been there many times before—when we got there—first, the plane was late, and it was after midnight.  When we got to the desk, the man was almost like saying, “You’re late.” He was angry.  So Sam said, “Well, we couldn’t help it.  This is it.” We went to a room.  I think there were three hangers in the closet.  It was an awful situation.  Called downstairs, and they seemed annoyed with it.  Anyway, that was a bad—like, just a bad start.  Well, the next day, we took a ride.  He was going to show me [the area]—and they had just built the Kahala Hilton, and so we went up, and they were showing people around.  Have you been in it?

PL:  This is on the Big Island?

DW:  Yes—on—Yes, on the Big—and it was such—this beautiful suite—this room and something—so, “Oh, this is wonderful.  You know, I like it so much,” and all.  So then I said to Sam, “How much is it?” I guess he asked.  It wasn’t any more than the room he had there.  He said something that—I mean, I wasn’t bothering with money, but he said some—I said, “Well, why don’t we take it?” He said, “Do you want to move?” I said, “I’d love to.” Well, we stayed at this Kahala Hilton.  It was beautiful, just wonderful.  We went back another time with Herb’s wife—his ex-wife—her uncle and aunt were friends of Sam’s.  We went back another time with them and said, “You have to stay at the Kahala Hilton.” It’s a beautiful hotel.  Of course, it’s not young anymore.

PL:  So, was it a romantic honeymoon?

DW:  Yes, it was.  It was very nice.  Again, I just love Hawaii.  I just think it’s a beautiful spot.

PL:  In terms of your marriage with Sam, how would you describe your roles as husband and wife? Who took what responsibilities, and how did you necessarily compare it or not compare it with your previous experience?

DW:  My first marriage, you mean? I don’t think that I ever compared.  I can’t see any reason why.  I have to say—I mean, I had very good relationships with both my husbands, a lot of joy. 

[END OF CD2]

PL:  We are continuing with the oral history interview with Dorothy Wittenberg.  Today’s date is May the 8th; the year is 2001, and we are sitting in her home on Mercer Island in her kitchen once again.  My name is Pamela Brown Lavitt, and I am conducting this interview for the Jewish Women’s Archive’s “Weaving Women’s Words” Project in Seattle.  Dorothy, I wanted to ask you a little bit about your relationship to Judaism.  Can you tell me, as an adult and maybe even how you were formed—your ideas about Judaism were formed as a child and what your relationship to Judaism is?

DW:  Well, I guess—I feel very strongly about being Jewish.  I feel strongly about being able to leave my grandchildren and now great-grandchildren, who are just babies, but hope I’ll be around awhile to help them.  I like to tell them stories about family.  I know that they’re all—my grandchildren are all interested in enrolling in Jewish schools.  It’s just sort of inbred in us, and I don’t know really how to say about going about it in any formal way.  When we’re together again—mostly, it’s during holiday times the children are together, they will tell me—my grandchildren have always told me about going to camp and the things they did and all, which makes me very happy and encouraging.  But that’s just about all my connection with it. 

PL:  At what point did you take up a more formal relationship with Judaism.  You said that growing up, your parents didn’t belong to a synagogue.  So as an adult, did you and your family belong to a synagogue?

DW:  No.  When I lived in Richmond, there was no synagogue there either.  It seems—it’s hard, I’m sure, for people who have lived in larger cities with large Jewish populations to realize how it is in small ones.  I guess my first belonging to a synagogue, which actually was a temple—a Reform temple—was when my uncle, who lived in Richmond, enrolled his little boy in temple Sunday school.  Then when the high holidays came, he got tickets.  He was able to get tickets for my mother and brother, and me.  We all went as a family.  And that was my first, I guess, I’ll call it formal attendance in a synagogue. 

PL:  Do you remember the name of that synagogue?

DW:  I believe—it was Temple Sinai in Oakland.  Then, later on, when I moved to Seattle and married, my first husband coincidentally belonged to Herzl ner-Tamid, which was in Seattle at the time.  Then we moved to San Francisco, and we affiliated with Beth Sholom.  It was a Conservative synagogue too.  Then when I moved back to Seattle, that was when I became a member of Herzl ner-Tamid because my husband, Sam Wittenberg, belonged.  That was my history. 

PL:  Did you have any proclivity for the Reform or the Conservative within you? Did you feel more comfortable in one or the other?

DW:  Yes, I feel much more comfortable in the Conservative movement.  Not being—what shall I say—educated in Hebrew, I find that I need a text where I can read—pray with the English prayers.  The Reform temple just seemed a little too reformed for me.  I feel very comfortable in the Conservative movement.

PL:  What did you feel was too reform about the Reform movement?

DW:  I don’t like to criticize because I think everyone’s entitled to their belief.  But at certain points, some have gone to extremes, like not wearing the yarmulke or the tallit.  I just feel that some of our tradition has been lost by doing that.  However, I feel that the Reform movement—I guess I’ll say in my lifetime—during—and I’m trying to think what period it would be—probably in the ‘40s when it was—I’ll call it Ultra-Reform.  I really didn’t like some of the things about—the way they stood—the way that movement stood for—against, I’ll say, Israel.  No, it wasn’t against but not for Israel.  But now, again, I see that there’s a comeback in—to some of our—what shall I call it—like more Orthodox movement because they have tallit hanging in the—on racks in the foyer.  Whoever wants to can wear one.  And likewise, they can wear yarmulkes.  They recognize that.  So I see a little bit of coming back.  I think tradition has to be preserved.  That’s probably why the Conservative movement is one that I like to follow. 

PL:  When you moved back to Seattle, and you and your husband were in the Herzl ner-Tamid—can you tell me a little bit about what the synagogue was like at that time?

DW:  I mean, I don’t know how to describe really what it was like.  We lived in Bremerton, and we would come back, like—[laughter] we didn’t attend all services.  I’m just trying to figure out how I would—my association.  So actually, I only took part for—in the high holidays or some kind of simcha.  That would be the only time I was in the synagogue.  I have to add, though, there was a small synagogue.  I don’t know—no, I couldn’t call it a synagogue but a group of people who would get together in Bremerton and celebrate certain—like, maybe have a Friday night service or something of that nature.  We would take part in that if people did that, but it was quite remote.  I didn’t have a large part to play in the synagogue at that time.

PL:  I’m very interested in the group of folks who decided to, on their own, celebrate and get people together in Bremerton.  Did they call it a synagogue at that time? Did they have a name for it?

DW:  No, there was no name for it, and I’m—again, I can’t tell you, I had a feeling that they met in a hall.  But I’m not so sure about that, whether it was a hall or a room of some sort that someone, say, donated for the use of that.  But the people would just—it was those who probably couldn’t come over to Seattle to services.  Again, there were just a handful of Jewish people, maybe 30 families.  But it was a way of not being alone.

PL:  Do you remember that experience at all? Do you remember how you prayed together, or did you make it potluck, or who cooked?

DW:  No, I don’t remember any—truthfully, I was only there a year and a half, so it was a very short time.  So I don’t really remember anything of that nature that we—I can’t recall anything in that.  Then moving—again, moving to San Francisco, of course, there are big synagogues, and it’s a different experience.

PL:  When did you start becoming more involved in the life of the synagogue and community?

DW:  I guess maybe for a selfish reason when I moved, say, to come over here.  Well, for—I wasn’t active in the—San Francisco—other than maybe going to the High Holiday or a Friday night service.  But I wasn’t active in women’s groups.  But when I moved to Seattle, I was lonely, and I found that this would be a good way to meet people and to do something.  That’s how it started.

PL:  How did you learn of the opportunities for you as a woman to be more involved in the synagogue?

DW:  Well, as I said, I think, in the beginning, it was probably just for myself.  I wasn’t looking to help out [laughter] anybody else but just to meet people and to have something in common.  I guess I was just—when I found there was something to be done, I could offer my services.  That probably was the way it started.

PL:  So what kind of activities—you’re talking about the Sisterhood at the Herzl—

DW:  Yes.  Well, that would be the part that I took part in would be Sisterhood.

PL:  Where did your involvement begin?

DW:  Well, I guess for most of us women and especially—it wasn’t the olden days but even—a little different than today, it would be for preparing the gift shop that was available and for preparing an Oneg or something of that nature, just working in the kitchen and doing that sort of work.  That was the only—those two were the only parts that I could say.

PL:  In general, how did you feel about women’s roles within the synagogue outside of the Sisterhood?

DW:  You mean taking part in other organizations?

PL:  No, more in terms of public worship.

DW:  Oh, in—I really—I don’t think I thought about that at all. 

PL:  Did it strike you if women participated to the same extent that men did in prayer and in educating themselves Jewishly?

DW:  Now, do you mean did I approve—or was that more what you—did I see it as a way for women to go—

PL:  Did you—what did you witness what already was in existence, because today women are obviously very interested in themselves wearing tallit and yarmulkes.

DW:  That’s right—taking part.

PL:  How did women participate in the actual prayer? Did women get up and do the Haftorah and things of that nature?

DW:  When it was—now, you’re referring to when it started.  How—

PL:  When you began to get involved.

DW:  How did it start? I’m trying—I’m just trying to think, like when we—the synagogue that—where we are now—the synagogue had to move from Seattle.  The building was sold.  The area was not the right area, and so they looked for another location and the island—here on the island was where they found one.  Then there was a fledgling synagogue in Bellevue.  Our synagogue was called Herzl, and the other was called ner-Tamid.  It had been formed by a group of people who came out to work for Boeing.  And they became like family because each family there was alone.  So they joined forces, and they did form this synagogue.  But they didn’t have enough people really to maintain it and a rabbi.  They were struggling, and they were open for this merge, and that’s how—because it was here on the island.  Most of those people lived in Bellevue, so it could work.  It could work.  The merger worked out right.  So at that point, I—that’s—I was trying to think.  The rabbi who was here at that time—

PL:  What was his name?

DW:  Rabbi Pomerantz, and at that point, I think—I’m trying to reflect now, but I think only men took part in the service.  I can’t be positive about—I know that a lot of women didn’t take part if anyone did.  We did have the bat mitzvah.  That part I remember.  There were bat mitzvahs.  But I can’t think of anybody being called to the bimah for a part in the service.  But when Rabbi Pomerantz left and Rabbi Rose, who is the rabbi right now—when he came, things started to change.  Rabbi Rose met his wife at the seminary.  She was—had been—she was a student there, and he was, and then they married.  So she was able to take part in a thing—they started to call women in to take part at that point, but I think it was because Rabbi Rose was the leader, and it just seemed to me kind of natural that women were called up on the bimah.

PL:  When did Rabbi Rose—

DW:  Come?

PL:  Yes.

DW:  Fifteen years ago.

PL:  That’s when you started noticing a significant change?

DW:  Yes, that’s—as I’m reflecting back, and this is what comes to my mind, that I think there was—a change started to take place at that time.  I’m not authentic.  [laughter] Don’t want you to think that I’m giving you exact numbers, but I know that Rabbi—I know it’s been 15 years that Rabbi Rose has been with us.  The reason I do is that he is moving to another location.  But he has brought that up, that he has been with us for 15 years.  [laughter] So, but I do feel it was with his coming that things started changing, where more—where women started taking part in the service.  Then, of course, five years ago, when a second rabbi was being considered, Lisa Gelber was the one who was chosen.  So we’ve had a women on the bimah for these five years.

PL:  Given that you’ve been witness to what you see as a sort of opening up of the synagogue not only to giving women more play in terms of the public prayer but also you’ve opened up your synagogue to the idea of having a woman leader.  How have you seen her leadership affect the synagogue as a woman?

DW:  I really think that she has—first, I have to say, I know that she’s very well respected.  I think she’s a very bright woman and has brought a really very intelligent—I was going to say programs, but I don’t mean that—but subjects to us.  She really adores—you can just feel how she adores children, and they respond to her like a pied piper.  She really reaches out to them.  So I see a very—it’s been a very positive addition to our synagogue.  Of course, she’s come to help the women with our—when we have a branch affair when the different branch participants meet here, she is willing to be a leader and help.  I think she’s had a tremendous influence. 

PL:  So, for you, as a member of the synagogue, how have you seen your own role as a woman change over time?

DW:  Well, my role has—it’s never been—should take part in things.  I’ve sort of really been a working person in the synagogue.  I can help out in the office if things are needed there, to send out mailings and that.  I’ve helped out in the gift shop for that, which I feel is a very large part because money that’s—no profit is made, and the money that’s earned goes to synagogue projects.  I’ve helped when they needed help in the kitchen.  That has been my role.  I haven’t seen anything—any change in any other way for me.

PL:  Can you tell me a little bit about the Sisterhood and what it means to you and—

DW:  Yes.  I think it’s a very important thing for us—for women to take part.  In our synagogue right now, with so many newcomers to the area, with the way—I guess in the computer age, I’ll say, there’s so many different branches, and new people are coming here all the time.  The growth in our synagogue as well as, I’m sure, many others has been great.  Well, Sisterhood is a way for women to join together to meet.  Otherwise, you come, and you say, “Hello,” and then you don’t see them until the next time you see them in synagogue.  So this is a way for women to take part in—I was going to say in running it.  But it isn’t that.  But it’s like a facet of getting into synagogue rather than just coming maybe on a Shabbat with a family and attending services.  This way you’re taking part, and I think that it’s important.  I think the goal of Sisterhood is important because we support the library at the Theological Seminary.  I think all of those things are a good part for women to play.

PL:  When you say the Theological Seminary, do you mean the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York?

DW:  Yes.

PL:  JTS?

DW:  That’s connected with the Conservative movement.

PL:  Yes.  So, describe to me some of the activities that the Sisterhood has been involved with in terms of its fundraising, its charity work, or even just its social life because, as I look through some of the files, there have been theater parties, and wig shows, and so many rummage sales and things of that nature.  So I’m wondering—maybe you can describe some of the activities that you have been involved in.

DW:  Oh, what you just referred to, we don’t do anymore.  Times—as you know, times have changed where rummage sales were used for fundraising and so forth.  Now, it’s done, I would say probably in a more sophisticated way.  We would have a luncheon.  Maybe for entertainment, there could be a fashion show, and usually, the members can take part, which is very nice.  All women are—we don’t all go in for studying deep things.  We all like clothes and fancy things.  Right now, where so many women are working, things have to change too, like rummage sales, card parties, socializing, and that is gone.  They’re out.  There’s no way of handling anything.  Nobody wants to come.  Nobody has the time; I’ll put it that way.  So with that, the Sisterhood has had more intellectual interests, sometimes cooperating with other organizations.  It could be for political lectures before an election.  It can be—I noticed that we started when someone would lead a book club.  Now, there are three book clubs because they can only accommodate, say, 10 or 12 women.  But now they’re up to three book clubs.  There are many things—lectures and that.  The fundraising—we have what we call Mitzvah Lunch.  People give a donation, and that money goes to the camp-ships and schools, things of that nature.  Another fundraiser—we call it the Torah Fund—that goes for the library at the Theological Seminary.  So we’ve gone into a different way of activities and raising funds.

PL:  When would you mark that transition?

DW:  How far back, you mean? Probably about—it’s hard again for me to say time, because [laughter] it’s very difficult for me—I would say at least ten years—10 years back.

PL:  When you say that no one had time and that there were reasons why you shifted to more sophisticated and perhaps more intellectual pursuits—what did you notice about the change in the Sisterhood that urged these changes in your fundraising techniques and social situations?

DW:  I guess when one decided not to do something that—let’s just say you planned a card party when you found that maybe a handful of women answered to come, you just—and then you didn’t stop at one.  As things got to that point, you realized you had to make some change.  I don’t think it’s only in Sisterhood.  I see it in other organizations—women’s organizations where personally—I mean, I’m an older person—but if I had—if I worked all day, and I had children at home and a husband coming home, I can’t see where I’d want to go out for a seven o’clock meeting.  So with that, we—again, even at our Sisterhood meetings, which used to be, say, once a month, are now held maybe every other month or every third month.  We have to change with the times, and I think the interest is still there.  I think the support is still there, but our way of doing it has to be in a different manner.  How, I don’t know.  I’d be a hero if I could solve that.  [laughter] I don’t know.

PL:  Now, you’ve served—you’ve taken on leadership positions within the Sisterhood.  What have those positions been?

DW:  Well, I guess—I mean, I don’t really recall in the beginning what I did.  But I know at one time when Sisterhood seemed to be on the verge of collapsing, and I felt I was older, that I really wasn’t ready to—or not ready, but I should take the position.  That’s when I met or I worked with Sylvia Saperstein.  We became co-presidents.  It was a very low level.  We didn’t know if it was collapsing or not.  So we said we would do it.  It was a good move because from then on, other women—younger women did come in, and we started—I guess it was revived.

Right now, I would say it is quite strong.  But not with regular meetings—not that—it has a good—the gift shop is running well.  The reason that’s important and I mentioned it, I think, before, money raised there goes for Sisterhood projects, for camp-ships, children who—parents or families who can’t afford it.  They support or help children go to camp.  There are many, many things that they undertake.  The school—there—for that too.  So the gift shop is an important thing, and as long as we can keep that going and we have—it just seems now that there are more women who have come in to take over.  I see a stronger support there.  I think it was just a lull at that time, and I’m glad that I was able to do it because it just seemed to give it a spurt.  I enjoy—I haven’t—I really haven’t held other positions in Sisterhood, maybe a secretary at one time, something that they needed help.  But, as I say, right now I like to attend, and they have given me, I think, an honorary position as parliamentarian. 

PL:  And what’s the role of a parliamentarian?

DW:  The role of a parliamentarian is to see that the administration is carried properly.  If someone makes a motion and someone else—oh, and it must be seconded—I mean, these are the rules—and then a discussion.  But if someone made a motion and we didn’t have a—do it according to parliamentary procedure—made a motion and everybody was talking, and all, and it gets lost in the shuffle.  Somebody said, “I want to add this or that,” and all, so this just keeps the rules.  We follow the rules and keep order.

PL:  Where did those rules come from?

DW:  Well, there’s a book called “Robert’s Rules of Order” that most organizations follow.  The organization itself makes up its bylaws.  We follow bylaws from our national Sisterhood.  There’s a certain number to be on the board, a certain number to be on the nominating committee, and things of that nature.

PL:  What else about Sisterhood or your—first of all, what year were you president—co-president with Sylvia Saperstein? When was that? What year was that?

DW:  Oh, gee.  I can’t tell you exactly.

PL:  Was that ten years ago? Fifteen years ago?

DW:  When I said, I think it was about 10—probably, no, wait.  No, just a minute because I mentioned that Rabbi Rose came 15—about 15 years stays with me.  I would say that it’s probably been about 15 or 16 years ago that—now, see, when I said it before, I thought about 10.  It’s hard to go back.  But now, when I had that one clue when Rabbi Rose came, and it has to be about 16 or 17 years ago.

PL:  So about 1984 or so.

DW:  Something—Yes, early 1980s then.

PL:  Outside of the synagogue, what kind of holidays did you and your family celebrate together?

DW:  You mean, like, we’d have a seder here? Is that what you meant? Here, with my family? Yes.  Well, we always broke the fast here.  We’d have the seder here.  Those were the most—the holidays that we observed outside of the synagogue.

PL:  And in terms of your family, how observant have they been? Do they observe Shabbat?

DW:  Not—to some extent.  I can’t say religiously.  I use that word.  My granddaughter, Amy, lives in San Francisco.  She and her husband, their two babies, they have affiliated with a synagogue.  My grandson, Lee, who has just moved to San Diego—but he and his wife were—they were married at Herzl, and they were members of Herzl.  I just can’t say they go regularly, but they know they’re Jewish, and they—like right now when Lee—when they moved to San Diego, they have affiliated—or are planning to—they’re looking at a synagogue.  I guess I would say in a very moderate way they are observing.

PL:  Did you yourself ever go to a Mikveh?

DW:  No.

PL:  Was that a conscious choice, or were there opportunities or—

DW:  I never thought—I never thought about it—to go.

PL:  Did you know women who did in the Sisterhood or in your social—

DW:  No, not the women that I know or are close to.

PL:  Were there other ways that you explored Judaism or, specifically, the role of women in Judaism in your life? Is there—for instance, the way that you prepared holidays or participated—I’m going to—hold on to that—hold on a second.  I think what I’m trying to ask is, did you encourage children and grandchildren to participate in Judaism as a result of your experiences?

DW:  I don’t know how to say whether I encouraged it or not.  I’m a step-grandmother.  My stepson and his wife are divorced.  I tried my best—I mean, because I mentioned being a stepmother—sometimes you don’t feel like stepping in or maybe—where, if you were the real mother, you would do it in a little—have more authority or feel you had more authority.  I’ve always sort of treaded easily on things that I said.  But I’ve tried to give them as good an example as I could.  When the boys were at the university, I would ask—and their father was alone—I would ask them or have him have dinner with me on Friday night, and I would ask the boys.  I have to tell you that they were there four years, and every Friday night when they were in town—I’m not going to be specific—but Friday night, they’d come and have Shabbat dinner together and here.  To me, it’s not a formal way of doing religion, but it’s a way of observing and getting a message across.  Now that they’re older—my grandsons are both in their 30s—they bring up things to me that I don’t feel that was wasted.

PL:  Can you give us some examples?

DW:  Well, my grandson, Ron, lives in—moved to Arizona.  When he was there he told me that he had looked—there are a number of temples or synagogues there, and he was considering one, which I would—I didn’t tell him to, but I was very [happy that] he did it on his own.  I know this year he didn’t come up for—wasn’t able to come for a seder, but he went to a seder that had their friends there.  They got together and had a seder.  I just feel—well, and I can’t say—I’m not taking all the credit.  They do have a mother, and I’m sure that she has set examples for them.  This is the extent of our influence.  [laughter]

PL:  Can you describe the relationship here in Seattle and at Herzl in particular, perhaps within the Sisterhood as well, between Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews and their culture?

DW:  I really—we’re so merged together, and especially in our synagogue, that I never think about one being different from the other.  I think the only times—and we often when have parties, [talk] about it—would be if somebody serves a certain dish, a food of their culture and the other, or somebody will say—it could be a Sephardic person who says, “I hate gefilte fish”—something of that nature, but nothing major where we seem—I mean, through our synagogue.  Now, I’m not speaking for all Seattle, but I’ve never come across it.

PL:  How about in the Sisterhood? You had mentioned there were times—and often around cooking—

DW:  Yes.

PL:  —where there were certain pastries and things there were made, and you taught each other how to cook them—can—do you remember a particular example where that happened?

DW:  No.  I mean, I really don’t.  I mean, if it was Purim, let’s say we would all get together to make the hamentashen.  There would be no difference there.  There were times when we were preparing maybe for somebody’s wedding or bar mitzvah, and we were helping out.  Most of the time, we would bake regular cookies that everybody would, but there were the times when the Sephardic dishes—where they use the phyllo dough, which most of us love, and they would teach us how to roll it and make these confectionery little treats.  But there was nothing—there’s nothing so dramatic about it.  There’s no separation.  We don’t feel separation.

PL:  What do you remember about the first time you helped make phyllo dough?

DW:  Well, I have to—we never made the dough.  We always buy it.  So it’s all prepared.  I think you were—you mentioned, or someone did about someone making it and all—you know, so it probably would be like our—like the Ashkenazi strudel dough, which is stretched.  That’s what came to my mind that when it’s hung over a table and left to be stretched because it’s very fine and very flaky.  I mean, I’ve always just been interested in these, you know, things like this.  If somebody said something about it, I’d be glad to learn or watch them and see what they do.

PL:  You described to me earlier a process whereby you worked with phyllo dough. 

DW:  Yes.  Well, that—I mean, I can’t think again of the name of the pastry that is—well—and, it’s—I shouldn’t even say a pastry because many times this is used with—it gets filled with spinach and cheese and things like that.  But the phyllo dough is cut in strips, and then it’s rolled back and forth, much as one would roll a flag.  And they’re—become a little triangle, and then they’re baked, and they make a delicious hors d’oeuvres.  But that’s the kind of thing that we’ve—in fact, I think many of us would request somebody [to make].  If, say, we were having an affair, we would like that as an hors d’ oeuvre, we would request it from some of our friends who we know make it to come and help or to teach us.  But it’s always been a nice experience, an exchange. 

PL:  When was the first time that you met someone from the Sephardic culture?

DW:  I really don’t remember when the first time I just met someone.  But when I lived here—when I moved here in this apartment—when I was living here in this apartment—a friend, a person that I had known—I’d known her family—moved into an apartment in this building.  Unfortunately, her husband was ill.  He had Alzheimer’s, and she was alone a great deal because—in the evening, at eight o’clock, he would go into bed, and she would have the evening alone.  Many times she and I—she would come up, and we’d visit, and I got to learn a lot about her and her culture.  I would say that was the first time—I knew it existed, and I knew there were—I would meet people, but it would be on the surface.  I never really talked to anyone.  But she told me the things that her parents had gone through—they came from the Island of Rhodes—and how terrible things were to—in Italy with Italy joining Germany and all that.  So we exchanged a lot of ideas.

PL:  Do you remember what it was that she taught you?

DW:  No.  No, I mean, I can’t think—I didn’t ever think of her in any way except as a friend, so I don’t know.  The things she taught me—if you call it teaching, is what she told me about her background.  I know her father was one of the first Sephardic Jews to come to Seattle.  He became a very prominent man in this city.  In the beginning, though, when he got his foot in the door, he was able to bring family over.  She told me very—many very interesting stories, but I wouldn’t say I really learned—if you put learning for—to benefit me in any way, it was just as if anybody had told me a story of their life.

PL:  Well, given that you moved back to Seattle in ’65, what were the things that you—what were the stories that you heard over and over again about the history of Seattle because many women your age had lived through a longer history—a longer Seattle history.  Were there any stories, let’s say—you said her father was one of the first Sephard[im] to come to Seattle—were there stories about Seattle that you heard over and over again either by your women friends or Sephardic or Ashkenazic?

DW:  Sure—I can’t—not really.  I know through the Council of Jewish Women that they were very active in the turn of the century when they started a settlement house where they would help the—I guess immigrants, you would call it—people who were coming here.  They said they had put up some sewing machines, and they would teach—they could teach people to sew.  They were trying to help them acclimate to the area.  They also had, I guess, I would call it bathrooms where they had showers so people could come there and take a shower.  It was considered a very, very worthy cause and—but that’s about the only thing that I have, you know, ever heard about.  I’m sure there are many more, but I can’t think of it.

PL:  What about dating?

DW:  For me?

PL:  Dating between Ashkenazim or Sephardim in this, you know—

DW:  Oh, in the past?

PL:  And also within your life experiences here in Seattle.

DW:  Well, in my life experiences, I mean, the—this bad part, it seemed, was over.  But in the beginning, it was considered really, like, interracial.  Then the Sephardic girls and boys were not supposed to date the Ashkenazi and vice versa.  I really think that most of the—those that objected mostly were the Ashkenazi Jew.  They weren’t willing to accept the Sephardic, and, in fact, I feel because of that attitude, they forced the Sephardic people to stay in their own little groups.  But after—I think—I really feel that after the children went through the public schools that things started to change.  And I—again, I think I told you before, I think one of the barriers was the language barrier with the Ashkenazi Jew speaking—that older generation speaking Yiddish and the Sephardic Jew speaking Spanish [Ladino].  They couldn’t communicate, but then the children learned English; then they brought them together.

PL:  Did you witness any of that cultural contact or clashes within Herzl?

DW:  No.  No, in the time that I came, I never have.  In fact, I’m not aware, whoever sits near me, whether they’re Ashkenazi or Sephardic.

PL:  How have you served as a volunteer for other types of community or civic projects?

DW:  How have I served? Well, you know, it’s kind of—[laughter] it’s just kind of hard because you sort of go where you’re needed.  I guess the one that comes to my mind is helping Jewish Family Service when they were settling some Russian people here.  That’s when I worked with Sylvia Saperstein. 

PL:  When was that?

DW:  Here we go again.

PL:  [laughs]

DW:  I mean, I really—

PL:  I think that—

DW:  It’s very hard for me to say that.

PL:  Well, do you remember how it is you felt you were called to—that there was a need—when did you first recognize there was a need?

DW:  Well, it’s probably—it’s about 25 years.  I mean, it’s hard for me to say that because I think that’s crazy, but it has to be because it—my husband, Sam, passed away.  I found—I mean, I’ve never been a person to just sit around and cry.  I felt I have to go on and I have to do something, but I didn’t know what.  I was reading the “Transcript,” and I think Jewish Family Service had an article.  They needed some volunteers, and they were having a meeting one evening, and so I went, and Sylvia went as a representative of Council of Jewish Women.  It was open to everybody, so the things they needed volunteers were for interpreters, and that was not for me and several—whatever listing.  They said they also needed people to set up these apartments to help them get settled.  So I signed up.  It seems she did too unbeknownst to each other, and that’s how we met, and that’s how we went to work on that.  I don’t know of anything else that I have done except through organizations.

PL:  Can you describe your involvement specifically with the resettlement of Russian—they were Russian Jews? Russian—

DW:  Russian Jews.

PL:  Can you describe your involvement?

DW:  Yes, there was a man named—oh, I can’t think of it—Harold Poll.

PL:  Can you spell that? His last name?

DW:  P-O-L-L.  And Mr.  Poll had a building—he had a building down on Second and Union—and he—it was rented on the first level—he had an upper level, which he donated to Jewish Family Service.  There was another man by the name of Alex Barrett, and he had a transfer business, and so he could move the thing.

PL:  Can you spell his last name?

DW:  B-A-R-R-E-T-T.  Both of these men have since passed on.  We took this warehouse with—Jewish Family Services advertised for people—if you had any household things to donate.  Then I’m not sure just whether they had a center for it.  But they collected the thing, and Mr.  Barrett would get some of the boys from the fraternity—one of the fraternities to help him.  They’d collect it [donations] on a Sunday and bring it up to this warehouse.  When a family came, they would tell us there are two people and a baby, and they—Jewish Family Service—would rent an apartment somewhere.  They’d tell us where it was and give us the key.  Sylvia and I would go down, and we would pull what they would need, like maybe a double bed for parents and a crib for a baby.  The sheets, tablecloths, any dishes—all of that basic—the basic things.  We would put it aside, and then Alex would have someone—or whoever they arranged with—would come and take these things and take them to the apartment.  Sylvia and I, at that point, would leave the place, and we’d go to the grocery store—this was all guided by Jewish Family Service—and buy some basics, like tea, sugar, things of that nature—bread—well, not bread because we would put in—or they would put in a challah and wine, so they wanted that for the Sabbath.  Then we would go to that apartment, and we would wash out or dust out the cupboards and all and put everything away and wait there until they picked up the people at the airport.  They would bring them to their new home.  That was our job.

PL:  Do you remember the satisfactions and rewards from interacting with these people that you had helped out?

DW:  Well, from that point on, we didn’t really have any connection with them, you know.  We greeted them, and we stayed with them for a little—just so they could get [settled].  It was a very traumatic thing—you can imagine, I think, for any people to be—take this trip and come here to strangers and all.  But then other times, Jewish Family Service, they did a very good job.  They would take them to different—maybe programs in the city.  They had people—like I said when I signed up—people who could speak to them.  They took them to the market.  They’d take them to the bank.  They’d show them our ways, and then they soon became acclimated, and I think there were some who really got positions.  They were educated people.  Let me put it that way.  So they could come into society and be—as soon as they could learn our ways and all they did all right.  I mean, I don’t see any of them now.  I never really followed up on it, but I’m sure if we checked with Jewish Family Service, we could find, you know, where they are and what they’re doing and how it has come about.

PL:  How did you understand the stakes of what you were doing?

DW:  I don’t know—what do you mean?

PL:  Why was it important? What was happening at that moment that it was important that Russians resettle in Seattle and in the United States?

DW:  Well, these people were being saved from Russia.  They had—they were—I don’t know whether you’d call—being evicted or what.  They didn’t have a place.  And our government, for some reason, allowed these people to come in.  But they had to be—they couldn’t just come on their own.  You had to sign up for them, and that’s why they asked different communities in the United States to take them.  This wasn’t the only place.  Again, we’d have to find out from Jewish Family Service how many were handled.  The apartments that Sylvia and I set up, I would say, maybe were six or eight.  But I don’t know if that was the end or just what—it just sort of petered out.  I don’t know anything about that program.

PL:  Do you associate particularly Jewish values with what you are doing?

DW:  No.  No, I don’t.  The only thing—I mean, we would like these people to be Jewish—you know, to show them the Jewish way.  As far as personally, I mean, I would do it for anybody.

PL:  Did you have a sense that they—or were you taught that somehow the Russian Jews that were immigrating were not Jewish in that traditional sense?

DW:  That I didn’t know.  Now, this is interesting because we have a mutual friend in Ruth Peizer.  One young man—she took part in this too.  She picked up this young man at the airport.  She was the driver.  There were many people connected.  Sylvia—she has referred this—we’ve talked about it before—she brought this young man to the apartment, and there Sylvia and I were.  [laughter] We had set it up for this single young man.  His family were chemists, very bright scientists, and his father wanted him to get away from there.  She has been in touch—she took him to her home afterwards, became a friend.  To this day, he has a fine position in a university somewhere.  I mean, she could tell you.  Vadin is his name.  I’m sure that she can tell you about that person.  But that’s the kind of thing.  It’s very rewarding to know you’ve saved a soul. 

PL:  I know that there are other places that you’ve felt that reward.  Where have you felt it most strongly that you’ve helped out? You’ve been, for instance, at the Ida Weinstein luncheon at Council House.  You’ve been doing that for almost 25 years.

DW:  Yes.

PL:  Can we talk about that? How did you start your volunteerism here?

DW:  Well, I guess, in looking for things to do or willing to accept to fill my own life, I was asked to serve on the board of Council House.  Council House was only about two years old, [had] been built by the National Council of Jewish Women for low-income people.  I served on the board, and then I think the idea came up—I’m not sure just how—among the women on the board, and the men agreed to have this lunch from the residents.  So, how I got into it, again, I don’t know, but I started.  I was a volunteer, and it seems when you can make people happy for something you do, you just keep doing it.  This is how that came about.  It’s a rewarding thing.  [Like] so many things too that I’ve done through my own life it’s easy, or it’s been the easiest way maybe to contribute and give something.  But when you can actually see and visit with the people and do things, it becomes very real.

PL:  What is the Ida Weinstein Lunch?

DW:  What is it?

PL:  What is it, and what are you doing for it?

DW:  What we’re doing for it is preparing the lunch.  That’s the thing.  The reason for it is because it’s to give these people a little pleasure.  I will put it that way.  And it’s free.  It doesn’t cost them anything.  Those of us who prepare it—like, if we know they like a certain dish, we like to prepare it for them.  They often tell us—I think last Wednesday when we had it we served a fish—we had a fish loaf.  It’s something that appealed to them, and when the ladies who were serving came back, they said it was so good.  Well, that makes us feel good.  But no, the reason that you do that is just—it’s an opportunity to bring a little happiness, a little comfort, a little joy to some people who might not have it. 

PL:  Now, it’s named after someone.  Can you—

DW:  Pardon?

PL:  The luncheon was named after a particular woman.

DW:  Oh, okay.  That’s sort of been a confusing mark there.  It’s called the Ida Weinstein Lunch.  Edith Weinstein, the daughter-in-law of Ida Weinstein, was a—one of the original Council members who voted to build Council House.  Her part in this was to sort of oversee the building.  She was known to wear a hard hat—I wasn’t here at the time—to wear a hard hat and go and let the builders show her what was going on.  Her husband was Dr.  Sidney Weinstein.  They had no children, and she was very active in the Council and in this building.  Well, they moved her mother-in-law Ida Weinstein, who was Dr.  Sidney’s mother, into an apartment in Council House.  I think she lived there a year or so, and then she passed on.  Well, in honor of her, it was named The Ida Weinstein Lunch, but she really didn’t do anything.  Now it’s kind of hard.  Sometimes people want to honor Ida Weinstein, and it’s really Edith Weinstein who should be honored.  But that’s how it got its name.

PL:  That’s very interesting.  Now, you said that you’ve been asked—I think it was during the last interview.  I remember it very specifically.  You said when you talked about things just sort of dropping in your lap and what you are.  That this is what you are.  You’re supposed to do this, that you’ve tried to be helpful, but clearly, you’ve gone to a great extent because you were honored at some point by the Jewish Federation, the Organization of Jewish Women, with the Sarah Kaplan Outstanding Service Award or Outstanding Community Service Award?

DW:  Yes, I’m not quite sure, but it was a service award.

PL:  Do you remember why or hearing about that nomination and what specifically—what kind of community service led to your being awarded that?

DW:  I really don’t know.  [laughter] Again, I don’t feel that what I have done was—is so outstanding.  I think most people are doing the same things.  We’re filling our lives, and if something drops in our way that needs our help and we’re able to do it, we do it.  That’s sort of the way.  But because I guess I’ve been active in Sisterhood and in Hadassah and different organizations, the women decided to give me this honor.  I was greatly honored, but I can’t give a reason why.  I really don’t know why.

PL:  So you said you were also involved in Hadassah.  How have you been involved?

DW:  I’ve been in Hadassah, I guess, ever—from 1965 when I came here with—after I married Sam.  In that—I mean, I’ve served as president—I don’t know all the offices—I guess, secretary and everything else in the Henrietta Szold Group.  At the time, which was in 1965, I think I was one of the youngest people.  Today we don’t have a Henrietta Szold Group any longer.  Most of the ladies are not with us anymore, and some of them that are are out at Kline Galland Home.  So that was my—really my part.  As Henrietta Szold was fading and some of the older members really missed it and wanted to come, I was able to help with Iantha Sidell and Sheila Sternberg [who would] pick some women from [their home]—like who lived at Grosvenor House—[to attend the meeting].  There were about four women.

PL:  How do you spell Grosvenor House?

DW:  G-r-o-s-v-e-n-o-r.  These ladies lived there, and so one of these girls—they’d ride over and pick them up.  I’d pick up a few people, and we’d [meet where] Temple let us use a room—Temple de Hirsch, and we would have a meeting.  It was mostly because these ladies missed it and loved to go out.  But again, a couple of them were no longer with us and so forth, so we had to abandon that.  It’s just kind of disappeared.

PL:  How do you remember other women in these volunteer organizations, since you yourself had the responsibilities of being a step-mother—

DW:  Yes.

PL:  —how did they undertake—or how did you undertake volunteer work in the community when you had other obligations in your life? How did you do it?

DW:  Well, I think—I didn’t have a job.  I think that—a job, a position, whatever ladies—I think if you are working and being paid, say, from eight to five—I’m just taking a regular time—you are in a different position, say, than I was.  I could do whatever I wanted to do.  I mean, I could fill my time.  I could—but I wasn’t obligated to a boss, to any position.  That’s the way you could always adjust to give of yourself.  Another thing, I didn’t have children—to take care of the children at home.  So that makes a big difference when you can give yourself that way because you’re not taking from something else.

PL:  I imagine a lot of your friends did have children.

DW:  Yes.

PL:  What was it like for you having not had children and spending time and growing with women who were watching their own children grow?

DW:  Well, I was—the one—people that I’ve known or been with, I sort of shared their children [laughter] with them.  I never felt jealous; I never felt envious and all.  As I say, in fact, today—even today, although I’m not in the same area, I get notes and cards from some of these children who are now [laughter]—they’re probably either in their 50s or close to 60, see.  It’s getting on to time.  [laughs] But no, I’ve never felt left out.  I’m a fatalist.  I think what happens in our lives, we just have to accept and go on from there.

PL:  How would you say, since you’re talking about having quite a bit of leisure time and using it very well, and in the service of others, but how did you spend your real—your leisure time? What was the thing you did that you most enjoyed that was most indulgent?

DW:  Well, I mean, I—what shall I tell you? Bake cookies, [laughter] which I like to do.  No, I like to read.  I’ve never been a card player.  I’m not—I don’t object to cards, but I’ve never been fascinated by it.  I’ve had little socials playing maybe mahjong.  I have played canasta to be sociable.  But it’s only for social reasons.  For myself personally, as I say, I like to read.  I like to go to a movie.  I like to go to a play.  I like to take part in things like that, so that’s how I fill my life.

PL:  Where did you get your books from?

DW:  My what?

PL:  Where did you get your books from?

DW:  My books.  Oh, [laughter] I didn’t hear what you said.  Either the library and sometimes I buy a book.  I like to browse.  I like to—if something’s recommended, to see if I like it.

PL:  Was there a particular store or bookstore that you used to like to go to?

DW:  Well, no.  None special.

PL:  Do you have a favorite type of book, a favorite genre? Mysteries or—

DW:  No, I really don’t.  I guess I’m not really into mysteries.  I like a good novel.  You know, sometimes some of the things I see today I don’t even complete.  They’re kind of a waste.  But [laughter] no, I just enjoy all books like that.

PL:  Can you think of particular authors that you’ve read that have resonated?

DW:  No, I haven’t.  But I’ve just noticed, since you brought that up, and it comes to my mind, I like to read some biographies.  I can’t think of any authors that I really like.  But I’ve enjoyed biographies of some of the people who, even in our lifetime—my lifetime, anyway—maybe some of the actors or prominent people.  It could be—it could be like Jackie Kennedy or something like that.  I like to read those books about their lives.  I don’t know why but maybe I’m nosy—just kind of fascinated.  [laughter]

PL:  What are you reading right now?

DW:  I really don’t have anything.  I just—I completed a book.  I bought it in the gift shop one day.  It’s “The Last Days of Poland,” and it was very depressing, but it deals with how Germany—how Poland has—was one of the cores of Jewish history—Jewish people.  And another thing, one of the—I guess I’ll call him a king—ruler, emperor or king—he was so good to the Jewish people.  They had so many years of wonderful life and all, and then, of course, at the end of his life, such antisemitism in Poland.  And now, where there were thousands of Jews, there maybe are 30 in these villages.  This was an interesting book but, as I say, very depressing.

PL:  Have you ever been in a book club where you could discuss a book like this?

DW:  No, I haven’t, but I’m thinking of going into a book club.  Yes, because we have a number of them; I think I mentioned earlier.  I think a number of the organizations—I know Sisterhood has book clubs, and so has National Council of Jewish Women.  More people are taking part in those than in some of the other, like, entertainments, I’ll say.

PL:  What other kinds of informal women’s only groups have you participated in? Book clubs are, of course, one example.

DW:  I don’t think, other than the groups Hadassah and those—I don’t think I’ve participated in any.

PL:  Do you have any other hobbies or special interests?

DW:  No, I can’t say that I do.  I really don’t.  I—again, we get back—I like to bake—I like to do, you know, something of that nature.  I do it now because my children are away—my grandchildren and all.  I like to send them packages of that.  But I can’t say that I have any hobby.  At one time, I was knitting, and some—just recently, I’ve had a feeling maybe to pick that up again.

PL:  Now, baking—the two times that I’ve had the pleasure of sharing lunch with you, you’ve made wonderful cookies.  So baking is clearly one of your very significant hobbies—at least I’ve picked up that.

DW:  Yes, I mean, I will call it my hobby because I can’t think of other things that I do as much of as I do that.

PL:  What do you say that the majority of the time when you set out to bake, what are you making?

DW:  When I—

PL:  Do you make cookies, cakes?

DW:  Oh, well, it depends on what’s needed.  [laughter] There are times when some people have asked me, like in my family, you know, if we could have—if they wanted a cake or “Will you make this or that?” And then I have done it.  It’s just when I’m alone—because I can keep the cookies in the freezer.  They don’t have to be used up right away.  So if I have that urge or feeling to do it, then I can make them and put them—have them put away, ready for the time when—because I like to have a variety and just—not just have one.  But I have some neighbors, and they’re both—they’re working and have some girls—daughters.  They’ll say—I once said, “You want to help me out?” And they’ll say, “Anytime you have anything left over.” [laughter] So sometimes it’s just nice to do something for somebody.

PL:  Would you say that baking is something that you’ve often done because others have requested that you do it?

DW:  No, it’s just because I like to do it.  I mean, I guess if I just kept doing it, I’d be inundated.  [laughter]

PL:  What’s your favorite recipe?

DW:  My favorite one.  [laughter] I don’t know.  I think it has to be chocolate.  It has to have something chocolate in it.  So probably a brownie of some kind would be my favorite.

PL:  Do you have a secret ingredient or something that makes your brownies different?

DW:  No.  [laughter] No, I don’t have any secrets.

PL:  Now, over the years, there’s been a Herzl ner-Tamid Sisterhood cookbook.  Have you been involved in the making of that?

DW:  No, not—I mean, they’ve asked the members to contribute, so you contribute a recipe if you want.  But I have—in the original book—this is the second printing on another—it’s another book, but, see, it has another name—or like a second part because it’s not exactly like the first.  But I remember we put it together, and this time, I think, they hired—you send it to someone, and they—a company that puts it together.  So the women—there was a committee, see.  They were in charge, and they—I think they have to try out the recipes too, the committee.  And then they get it together and submit it.  It’s a good fundraiser.  Most all organizations have done that. 

PL:  I wanted to just ask you a little bit about how—given all these things that we’ve talked about—how you feel that your life has been shaped by your friendships and relationships with women.

DW:  Well, I think it would be very empty if I didn’t have the relationships—I’ll call it that—with the people I have.  In my youth, the girls who were with me—I’ll say my sorority sisters—through the years, we’ve been like family for those—and their children.  In later years with—I mentioned my friend, Sylvia Saperstein—working with her, having the same ideas in what we like to do, and as Sisterhood co-president—I think it’s been invaluable to me.  Another thing, say, not having children of my own, it has filled my life in that sort of—in a way, to share their families with them.

PL:  In your family or in your friendships, how have you seen the role of women caring for each other, for the ill, for the disabled?

DW:  Well, these women who I have, you know, spoken of in my life, they all give of themselves and, see, I guess I can’t specifically say any certain volunteer.  But in most all the work that they do, they volunteer too, and I have to tell you that in volunteering, the people you meet are a very valuable part of your life.  I guess it’s because maybe you share the same things in— you have the same things in common that you like to do.  I think it fills your own life.  [phone ringing]

PL:  I’ll pause for a minute.

DW:  Okay, [inaudible]—about the effect of the people.  That was what I had answered.

PL:  I guess I’m wondering also, moving into areas where these women—you shared volunteerism.  Did you also share cultural heroines? Were there women that were playing a role in more national forums that you looked up to?

DW:  Yes.  I guess the one organization that does most of that is like National Council of Jewish Women, and these young women are really active in trying to change our world to help people because they do things like—on both the state and national level in government.  This is one of their goals.  So I do admire those young women.

PL:  Were there particular role models that you had—women who played a part on the national stage during your lifetime, during the entire twentieth century [inaudible]?

DW:  Well, yes.  I mean, women like Eleanor Roosevelt.  I’m trying to think of names. 

PL:  Let’s talk about that because I’m curious.  When did you—you said—she’s the first name that came to mind—

DW:  Yes.

PL:  —so quickly? So why did she come to mind? 

DW:  Well, first of all, many times I think the people we hear of, say, who are in, like, politics—in that field, in that area are kind of out of reach.  She seemed to be a good, down-to-earth person, and she had values that she fought for, and I admire that kind of person.  I can’t think right off some of the things that she led or did, but she was a leader.  She was helping the little guy, and that’s why I admired her.

PL:  Were there particular—any other role models that you had in your life?

DW:  My mother was one.  My mother was a very giving person, a very good person, and she had a very hard life, but she didn’t let that stand in her way of helping others and smiling a lot.  She never burdened anyone with her problems, and I think she was a terrific role model.

PL:  You mentioned in the pre-interview that your uncle was also one of your role models.  Your Uncle Albert who owned the department stores in Richmond and San Rafael and elsewhere in California.

DW:  Yes.  Well, I mean, I didn’t mean actually to portray him as a role model.  My family—we felt we owed him a great deal of gratitude because times were hard.  My father had passed on, and my mother was able to work, and it [provided an income].  We don’t know what would have been if we couldn’t [work] because jobs were very hard to get in those days.  We were grateful to him, but, no, I didn’t feel—I never—with all due respect, I never felt he was a role model.  But I did have one—my mother’s brother—her youngest brother—his name was Ben Marylander—he was a role model.  He was so good to everybody, so anyone you ever saw or talked to would tell you the same thing.  He—

PL:  Hold on to your thought, Dorothy, because this tape is about to end, and I would like to put in another one.

DW:  All right.

[END OF CD3]

PL:  So Ben Marylander.

DW:  Yes.  Whoever he met—whoever was in contact with him would agree with me.  He was a role model.  He was so good to everybody, and there’s a saying, “He’ll give you the shirt off his back.” Well, he literally would; such a nice person.  But that’s what I would call a role model.  Where my other uncle was concerned—I mean, we were grateful to him, and he was good to us, but I don’t consider him a role model.

PL:  To sort of look in the larger picture of the things you’ve experienced and specifically, as well, in Seattle, are there particular landmarks or events historically that happened over the years that have had a significant role in your own life experiences? Obviously, you’ve mentioned that times were hard.  There’s, of course, the Depression and the wars, which you were largely in San Francisco Bay area.

DW:  Yes, at the time of the war.

PL:  I’m thinking—and I’m going to give examples—but I would like for you to please find your own, you know, whether or not—the Civil Rights Movement or the Holocaust played a significant role in people’s conception of their American Judaism or Japanese internment.  These are things that are more specific to the Seattle area.  I was wondering if there are things that are landmarks in your life.

DW:  I really find it hard to think of something like around here.  I think one of the things, which I don’t know that everybody would feel, was like the building of the Stroum [Jewish] Community Center, bringing together all people, the place for all Jewish people to gather.  I think that was a big event.  I really—

PL:  What do you remember about how that came to be?

DW:  Well, I imagine, I don’t know really how it started, but I’m sure that it took a group of leaders to determine this.  But the one thing, after it was built and, I mean, it was shown that there was such a great need—I guess I will add another facet to it too.  It is open to all people, so it isn’t—the Jewish people support it and all, but people can go and use the daycare there who are not Jewish, and I think they can use the gymnasium there, those who are not Jewish.  So it’s a wonderful community thing, too.  But there was a time when they couldn’t meet their payment of this, and that’s when a Mr.  Stroum came in and raised the money or support it, and that’s where it has its name, the Sam and Althea Stroum [Jewish] Community Center.  I feel that the need was so great.  Now, I think of another thing.  I think the Jewish Day School was the start of that—in these last years was an important part of this community.  But I really—I’m trying to think of things, and I’m sort of at a loss other than those two facilities. 

PL:  You live on Mercer Island, and the Stroum Community Center is not very far from here.  How has it been significant to your life?

DW:  Well, first of all—I mean, one of the things, on the High Holidays they—we have—Herzl has two services.  And one is over there at the Stroum Community Center and also the parking, so the two have joined in that.  It’s made it very nice for that.  I have been going over—not too often—but I’ve gone to the play.  They have plays over there.  There are lectures over there, things of that nature.  I don’t use the gym and so forth, but no, it offers a lot to the community. 

PL:  How have you seen the roles and expectations for men versus women change over time?

DW:  How—explain your question.

PL:  How have you watched the roles that men and women play in the community at large—in the Jewish community—change in your lifetime?

DW:  Oh.  Well, I mean, I think it’s very, very noticeable that many women have taken the leadership roles and in, say, like—in Jewish Federation, there are women who have been strong leaders.  In the community—in the temples and synagogues—not the very Orthodox—where women are taking part both as cantors and rabbis.  And I know—for women to be called to the bimah in our synagogue, and that’s very, very [laughter] outstanding and unusual.  That’s—

PL:  Do you—have you ever been involved in any kind of—how have you, yourself, been involved in that change? 

DW:  I mean, I have been on the bimah in Herzl if that’s one of the changes—that women are up there. 

PL:  What was the occasion that you were on the bimah?

DW:  I have gone up to tie the scroll or I—when I was president of Sisterhood, I would present the children with their gifts from Sisterhood and so forth.  So those are the reasons that I’ve been on the bimah.

PL:  What are your attitudes towards things such—like, as feminism?

DW:  Well, I mean, I think it’s wonderful.  I think women and men should be considered equal.  Women shouldn’t be pushed down.  However, I really do not like to see women push too much, and sometimes I have felt that I wasn’t proud of some of the things that I had, you know, heard about or seen.

PL:  What would be examples of those things?

DW:  Well, I really—I can’t think offhand what it is what has bothered me, but all I could say would be a general thing.  Women should be accepted.  Women are equal in intelligence and positions, and you should never be put down about a man should have it, and a woman shouldn’t.  But there—and I can’t really give you an example, but there have been some times when I have felt very annoyed where I felt a woman was too pushy.  That isn’t right, and that isn’t fair to all women.  But I can’t give you a specific answer. 

PL:  So is that form of more aggressive behavior something that you see as a product of sort of a feminism and of a new women’s perspective?

DW:  Well, no.  But it would only be giving an opportunity [laughter] for that kind—I mean, it didn’t create that person but would give them an opportunity to assert themselves.  I guess probably in my mind I admire a lady, somebody who would behave themselves and all.  In society, we have all kinds of people.  You know that.  So this would be the feeling that I have.  But no, I feel women deserve equality.

PL:  So would it necessarily have to do with that you would find it annoying that a woman was holding down a job and having children and a family, that it wouldn’t be in that balance of work-life and social life and family life? It’s more in interactions with other people that you’ve been—

DW:  Yes, that’s right.

PL:  —annoyed.  How would you then compare or contrast your views about women’s roles with those of your children’s generation today? I guess that’s what we’ve been talking about, but I’m wondering if your children have made different choices as a result—your stepchildren and your grand—great-grandchildren have made different choices and have had different options that you see available to them.

DW:  Well, I guess the one example I could use would be like with my granddaughter, Amy.  Amy was in the business world.  She [had a] very big [job] and [then] she married.  When I say this, I mean, I’d say, late in life.  I guess Amy was close to 40 when she married, and even like now, she wants to keep her own name.  See, there’s certain things.  And she’s still—although she has the two babies now—she still is reluctant to give up her business world, and she has the opportunity, so she’s called as a consultant now.  She’s able to handle both.  Well, I think that’s okay.  [laughter] I’m sure she’s just an example of many women.

PL:  Have the children taken their mother’s name as well or their father’s name?

DW:  No, they have their father’s name, but she wants to keep her own name. 

PL:  I think I want to end this interview then talking a little bit about you and the process of aging.  I don’t know if you want to jump in and then tell me what it’s been like to watch yourself age.

DW:  [laughter] Well, it’s a strange phenomenon.  It’s strange in the way that your circle of friends becomes so much smaller—diminishes.  To me, that’s a very, very hard thing to take.  All of a sudden, you’re faced with something that you’ve never been faced with before, and I think that’s the thing that has hit me the hardest.  The fact that I am still able to live on my own, I can still drive my car and move about as I want, that to me—[laughter] then I don’t feel any different about that.  But I do see this with my friends, with my circle.  That’s the only thing that really bothers me.  I have become very philosophical, and I thank God for every day, but I do look ahead and say, “If I can’t walk the stairs and I can’t drive, I can’t live in this facility.” So I would make a change, so each day I think about that, but I go on with the day.  But no, the only—the thing that I’ve noticed the most is that where I used to do this with a friend, and we’d take a vacation or do that, it’s not there anymore.  And so that’s what I’ve noticed most. 

PL:  So let me just ask you if I’m understanding what you’re saying.  You’re saying that your circle of friends has gotten smaller.  Is that because they’ve sort of dropped out, either due to illness or aging—

DW:  Yes.

PL:  —or unfortunately, because they’ve passed on?

DW:  Yes, that’s right.

PL:  And yet, you’ve managed—I understand that, as somebody who still drives—that you still drive some of your friends around.  So does—

DW:  Well, that’s it.  As I say, I’m still driving.  I know myself—how to limit myself, and I don’t care to go places when I don’t know where I’m going.  I like to go—if I’m going over to Seattle, I like to know exactly where I’m going.  I don’t want somebody to give me an address and have me find it.  I’m not that brave.  But no, I feel I’m still driving.  I’m still capable, you know, of driving.  But you do have to make a change if that happens. 

PL:  Were you aware at certain points in your life when physical changes happened to you and—of aging.  So, for instance, when did you experience menopause? How old were you? Or did you experience menopause?

DW:  Well, I had to have a hysterectomy.  I mean, I had these—something happened.  It was after my first husband passed away, and, of course, I was going through an emotional period too—I mean, high emotional.  But the thing was that I didn’t have to go through menopause because I had the hysterectomy.  And so, no, I—physically, I felt that I’ve been very fortunate, and I haven’t had to face too many things, you know.  It just happens that way sometimes.  [laughter] 

PL:  Are there certain things about aging that you would tell your children or grandchildren or friends who are younger as a woman in this society that you would talk to them about?

DW:  You mean to prepare for this stage in life? No.  I mean, it’s—I think, as you grow older, you know how precious time is.  You realize how—to get angry and not speak to someone for years and things, it’s so—it’s so wrong.  I mean, that’s such a waste of time.  Those are the things that I would tell.  I see people around me who are so bitter.  They’re so angry, and I know somebody with a brother who he hasn’t spoken to in ten years, and I think that’s such a waste.  So I would guide them in that manner.  Just live your life fully and enjoy, you know, and be good.

PL:  Have you had any other experiences with health or illness that you’ve had to grapple with over the—

DW:  No, I’ve been very—

PL:  —years?

DW:  Yes, been very fortunate.

PL:  That’s wonderful.  I’m also wondering about being a woman and concerned with how you look and how you dress.  Over the years, have you noticed things about your development and your aging process that you’ve thought about the changing images of women or your changing image as a woman as you’ve watched yourself get older? What’s that been like?

DW:  [laughter] I mean, it’s true watching yourself get older.  You know, things are different, especially [if you] take a picture of someone even ten years ago or 20 years ago and [it’s] like two different people.  But I really can’t—I don’t know how to answer that really, what advice or what—I’ve given anyone.  I mean, I see a change and all, but I don’t know anything more about it.  It’s just an accepted thing with me.

PL:  Well, in your lifetime, did you see or were you aware of specific images of Jewish women? For instance, I’m thinking about how people stereotype the way that Jews look, or Jewish women should behave or have behaved—stereotypes.  I’m wondering if—

DW:  Have I seen—

PL:  —if you’ve seen a change or if you’ve—over the years?

DW:  I don’t think I’ve—I have seen a change—the only thing I guess that I can’t think if I look back would be, say, my mother’s friends.  Like, if I was a little girl and we were out walking and sometimes in your mind you still—you remember a period, a time or certain people.  I think women today really look so much younger.  Like, the daughters of friends of mine are now 50 and 55.  They still look—and it isn’t just my observance and all, but they still look like young women.  Now, when I’m thinking, say, of some of my mother’s friends, they were wheeling their little children—I was just a little girl—they were women of 40—35 and 40 or so—they looked older.  They didn’t—maybe it’s exercise; maybe it’s foods that people are eating or what they’re aware of, but that’s the only things that I have noticed or have thought in my own mind.

PL:  What would you say has kept you youthful?

DW:  I don’t know.  I don’t know that I am youthful [laughter], but I try to just live a good life, and the good Lord has been good to me.  I haven’t had to face any calamities, so that’s the only thing I can—could answer you.  I wouldn’t know anything else.

PL:  Have you—has travel played a part of your—of your life? Has travel been an important part of your life?

DW:  Yes.  Well, travel was—has been something I’ve really enjoyed.  I felt I was very fortunate to be able to take trips that I have.  I think I mentioned to you earlier my husband, Sam, traveled in his business, and so I was able to go with him many times, and I was very grateful for that.  I loved seeing what I saw and meeting people.

PL:  Where did you go?

DW:  Well, there have been so many places in my lifetime.  I’ll start—Hawaii and Tokyo, and then I was in almost all the countries of Europe.  I’ve been in Italy and France, Germany—not Germany.  I’m sorry.  I was in Belgium, but we were in that part.  I’ve been fortunate enough—since I’ve been alone, I’ve taken several cruises with friends.  I think one of the most interesting was when I took with the Seattle Art Museum.  We went up the Volga.  It was in Russia, and we went up the Volga and to Stalingrad.  And the—I’m just trying to—

PL:  When was this that you took the trip?

DW:  You always ask me these dates.  [laughter]

PL:  I’m just trying to touch down with a point in your life.

DW:  But I just can’t—I just don’t remember the time.  But that’s been probably about 12 years ago—nine or 12, I’m not sure.  Reva, a friend, was to go with me and she—her sister was ill.  She had to back out, so I had to go on [the trip] alone, but I met some nice—a nice couple, some people who were very pleasant.  It was very interesting, but hermitage was a beautiful thing to see.  So I enjoyed things like that.

PL:  Up until—when’s the last trip that you took?

DW:  The last trip I took was—well, it was just about a year ago—a year, year and a half ago just to San Francisco for Amy’s little girl’s baby naming.  [laughter] That I went to.  But I’m not going to travel.  I find traveling too difficult now.

PL:  Can I digress for a moment and ask you a little bit about going to Amy’s daughter’s baby naming? 

DW:  Yes.

PL:  I’m assuming it’s a girl because you would have called it a bris—

DW:  Yes.

PL:  —if it were a boy.  What did you think about the idea of going to a girl baby naming? Is that something you were already familiar with?

DW:  Yes, because we have them all the time at Herzl.

PL:  When did they start doing baby namings?

DW:  I don’t know when they started, but I know we have it often down at Herzl where those little girls are named.  I guess, again, it was part—maybe the Women’s Movement to start that because boys have the bris, and so this was something for the girls.  I don’t know anything really about it.  I never thought about that.

PL:  Well, the experience of participating, is that a particular—is it a particular women’s experience? As the grandmother, were you asked to participate?

DW:  No, we were just there because of the—because, you know, that was going to be that day, so I went with her family.

PL:  Getting back to your travels, have you traveled to Israel?

DW:  Yes.

PL:  When did you go to Israel?

DW:  Well, again, I don’t know the time.  Sam’s been gone about 25 years.  So this is—it’s probably been 30 years ago that I went, and we were on a—he was on a business trip but decided that we would go over and [visit] my daughter-in-law’s.  She’s an Israeli and her family live there.  So we planned to visit them in Haifa, and we were going on an El Al plane from Rome, and it took probably 24 hours.  First, the plane—the ride was canceled, and then something else happened.  But, finally, we did get there.  And it was—we were there about a week.  It was a very nice experience.  It was a beautiful, beautiful trip. 

PL:  What do you remember about your anticipation going to Israel for the first time?

DW:  It was really so exciting for me.  I think most—whenever I have seen pictures or heard people talk when the plane lands on the land, you do get a [special] feeling, ‘This is my home,’ I think.  It’s a beautiful, beautiful feeling.

PL:  How long were you there?

DW:  A week.  Just about a week.

PL:  Was this a pleasure, or was this—

DW:  A pleasure trip.  Yes, we’d been in Italy on business, and so from there, we went across to Israel.

PL:  What do you remember doing while you were in Israel? What kind of tours did you take, and where did you visit?

DW:  When we were in Haifa, of course, we were visiting Ceda’s family.  And we—let’s see, I’m trying to think.  We went down to Jerusalem.  Sam hired a driver and a car, and we just drove all—you know, he took us through all these places—Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, and we didn’t go to any of the beaches.  I know a lot of people have gone to some of the resorts.  We didn’t go there.  But it was really beautiful—a beautiful trip. 

PL:  How would you say that your interest in sort of Zionism and the state of Israel—

DW:  My interest in what?

PL:  Zionism.

DW:  Oh, Zionist—

PL:  And the state of Israel have changed during your lifetime?

DW:  Well, I don’t think it’s changed.  I mean, I’ve always been a Zionist.  I’m an active Hadassah member.  However, I don’t know what the solution is, but I just worry about the war and the rampage that goes on on both sides.  It seems—there should be a peaceful settlement, and I pray for that.

PL:  Have you seen in the Seattle community the discourse around Zionism and the state of Israel change? I know that Herzl has always been known as a very staunch supporter of Israel.

DW:  Yes.

PL:  And I know historically speaking, there was contention within the community between different—more Reform movements that weren’t quite as staunch supporters of Israel.

DW:  Sure.

PL:  So I was just wondering, how have you witnessed in Seattle—

DW:  A change.

PL:  —a change, or have you seen different types of support and, even in a language of peace and things of that nature?

DW:  I haven’t noticed it, really.  I mean, because I am active in Hadassah, and it’s definitely a strong Zionist organization, and I think we all worry about Israel.  We’re all—pray for the peace there.  None of us seem to know how to settle it, how to help.  But I really haven’t been aware of—except maybe from some extreme groups that have tried to—I don’t know what their method—to bring both sides together or something, but among the people I know, I don’t see any discussions or feelings of pulling away from Zionism.

PL:  I think my last question is a Seattle-based question—perhaps a Mercer Island-based question. 

DW:  Okay.  [laughter]

PL:  Which is, what do you think about how the Jewish community is galvanized today? What do you see is the role of the Jewish community in Seattle?

DW:  The role in Seattle.  I mean, I really don’t know about Seattle but let’s say, like, Mercer Island where there’s a large Jewish community—and maybe I have my eyes or my head in the sand.  I don’t know.  But it seems to me that there’s such a good feeling of mingling of all the people.  I get a very warm feeling, like, now, Albertson’s, you know, has the [kosher] Jewish bakery and delicatessen and the meat—the whole section there.  I see people from, oh, all [over] here, even from Seattle, from the Seward Park area coming here to shop.  There’s always seemed to me to be respect there.  It’s a warm feeling.  It’s interesting.  As I said, maybe I have my head in the sand, but I just feel that things are better in this area. 

PL:  On Mercer Island.

DW:  On Mercer Island in this section, so I don’t know about Seattle. 

PL:  Is Mercer Island a unique community in terms of Washington or even nationally?

DW:  Excuse me.  I—maybe it is; I don’t know.

PL:  I know when I moved here, people very quickly identified Mercer Island as a center for the Jewish population.  Have you seen it change over the years or grow?

DW:  No.  I mean, I really don’t know.  It’s a very small area.  I don’t know if—how much like the growth.  I don’t know really what the percentage of Jewish people are, but I know there’s a large percent.  I can’t give you any figures, but there seems to be respect between all the peoples.  I never have a feeling of people saying bad things—“Oh, that’s, you know, a Jew store,” or anything—I never hear any bad—in the paper they had—the little “Mercer Island Reporter”—they have the—oh, what do they call it—it’s the ministers of all the churches and the Jewish—they even have the Bahai—but every week a different one writes.  I’m always very impressed the way they write, and there’s never anything—and I don’t see—derogatory, you know.  I really feel maybe it’s better.  I don’t know.  You live over in Seattle.  Maybe you see it differently.  I don’t know.

PL:  If there are any things that we’ve forgotten to talk about or any stories that when someone meets you that you want to be sure to tell them—

DW:  Okay.

PL:  —can—does anything come to mind that—something that we haven’t covered, something you’d like to share with posterity?

DW:  [laughter] I don’t think so.  I really don’t think so.

PL:  Well, then, I guess I will say thank you very much for sharing the time with me to do your oral history and thank you.

DW:  I thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]