Rabbi Brent Gutmann
Welcome About History Themes Complete Interviews
Interviewee: Brent Gutmann
Interviewer: Cary Levy
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Interviewee: Brent Gutmann
Interviewer: Cary Levy
Interview Date: February 19, 2021
DOB:8/19/1983 Place of Birth: White Plains NY
Location: Zoom: Troy (Levy), MI & West Bloomfield (Gutmann) MI
Interview No.: 02.19.21-BG (audio digital file)
(Approximate total length 1 hr., 19 min)
Transcription: Yousaidit (DS), Fiverr
Themes: Jewish Identity, Anti-Semitism, Doctrine, Holocaust, Immigration, Jewish Gentile Relations, Observance, Upbringing
Summary:
Rabbi Brent Guttmann’s father’s father, Max, was born in Northern Bavaria, not far from Nuremberg, Germany. Max’s father was imprisoned in Dachau on the night of Kristallnacht. On that night, Max hid in a snow-covered field, but it was too cold. He knew of a family that were Seventh-day Adventists and were not part of the Nazi party. And so, he knocked on their door and at first, they let him in and they gave him coffee and some bread. The oldest son in the family was working in a ball-bearing factory that was nearby. And when he arrived home, he was furious that they had let him in and that the whole family was basically imperiled, should they be caught harboring a Jew. And so, he was forced to sleep on the porch after some compromise. So, he never ended up getting arrested, but his father was in Dachau for some time.
To escape the Holocaust, Max and his parents along with of thousands of Jews ended up in Shanghai where they lived for 20 months. Max managed to turn a tannery job into a small business by collecting the scrap leather at the tannery and reselling it. Eventually, the family received visas and immigrated to Cincinnati, Ohio before ultimately settling in Dayton, Ohio.
Rabbi Gutmann thought about being a rabbi as early as 9th grade. In 2008, he started his rabbinic studies in Israel and his wife, Jill, joined him there. His first congregation was in Auckland, New Zealand. In the interview he reflects on how being outside of the United States gave him an appreciation of the polarity of Reform versus Orthodox Jewry.
Example of proper citation/ attribution:
Levy, M. (Interviewer) & Gutmann, B. (Interviewee). (2020) Brent Gutmann: Jewish Journeys [Interview transcript]. Retrieved from Jewish Journeys Oral History Collection of Congregation Shir Tikvah: https://shirtikvah.org/cstoralhistoryarchive
Interviewee: [00:00:00] Here, let me start here.
Interviewer: I love the trays that Joanne puts online. And cheese boards and--
Interviewee: It's fun.
Interviewer: They're pretty.
Interviewee: Here we go.
Interviewer: Okay. The name of the interviewer is Cary Levy. The name of the interviewee is Rabbi Brent Gutmann. Today is February 19th and the places on Zoom. I'm in Troy. Rabbi Gutmann is at his home in West Bloomfield. And we've discussed the purpose of this interview and you've signed the agreement to be interviewed. Do I have your permission to continue with this interview?
Interviewee: Indeed.
Interviewer: Okay.
Interviewee: Here we go.
Interviewer: Well, let's start with your family history and you tell us something about your family coming to America and settling in the United States.
Interviewee: Sure. My mother and father met at Indiana University in 1975. My dad grew up in Dayton, Ohio. My mother grew up in St. Louis. My mom's family were Pale of settlement extraction. I don't actually know the exact places or towns that they came from, but my grandpa Philip, who, I'm named after, it's actually my middle name, my great grandpa Phillip arrived one of I'm told seven siblings and three came to the United States. There's a part of the family that settled in Rhode Island. There's a part of the family that settled in Boston.
And then there was my part of the family that settled in St. Louis, Missouri, and then he had three sons. My grandfather, my mom's dad, paternal grandfather, her maternal grandfather is Theodore, Ted. The family had a department store in a neighborhood of St. Louis called the Hill. It was Fair Mercantile. And my father's side of the family, he grew up in Dayton, Ohio where a large portion of my childhood was spent and some of my young adult years. And his mother was also Pale of settlement.
Her grandfather Wulf coming to the United States, Wulf Morger (? 02:26) and settled in Covington, Kentucky. And his father who was probably the most significant influence on my life. He was my longest surviving blood grandparent, but also someone just to, a really strong character. He was born in a little town named Neaderveren(? 02:55) in Northern Bavaria. It's closest, the closest major town is Schweinfurt and it's about an hour and a half drive North of Nuremberg for those that know geography and in Germany, in Bavaria.
He had two siblings and was born 1922 Germany as Hitler came to power and the Nazis came to power. Of course he wasn't far from Nuremberg where the infamous Nuremberg laws are named after and were put into effect limiting the rights of Jews to operate businesses, but also to be involved in the arts, other areas of society, and most notably for him to be in public schools in Germany. And as a result, he had his formal school education end in sixth grade. His older brother, you know, the family became desperate to find a way to escape.
And the story is that they started collecting phone books from various American cities, looking for relatives. They could trace a connection with, to find a person who would sponsor a visa. And they ended up finding a distant cousin in Cincinnati named Sam Guttmann. Sam after discussing agreed to sponsor each of the Gutmann children as they reached working age, which was 16 years old. So his oldest brother, his older brother, Bernie was able to come to the United States before the outbreak of the war before Kristallnacht and was able to be in Cincinnati his younger sister and him, however though, did not reach that age soon enough.
[00:05:00]
And at the point that the whole family realized the direction things were going. And it was too late in a sense. So my grandfather experienced Kristallnacht in Germany. [00:05:00] He actually, it's a part of my life that he told the story of enduring Kristallnacht, for the first time a month before my bar mitzvah at my congregation, I grew up at temple Beth Oren, Dayton, Ohio. And it was really powerful.
His younger sister, my aunt Ellis after Kristallnacht, the family put her on the Kinder transport. She went to London and she lives through the London blitz and through the war and in England she was being housed at a convent. So among nuns and interestingly enough she's the sibling that became the most observant as an adult. She just passed away actually during this past COVID year but was living in Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh for most of her life. And she was Shomer Shabbas and Shomer mitzvot. All of her kids have had stayed that way as well. My grandfather was then the last of three children with his parents. His father had been in Dachau. He was actually imprisoned in Dachau on the night of Kristallnacht while my grandfather hid in a snow covered field. The family were farmers and cattle traders. So my grandfather had been told by someone that they were rounding up Jews and he went to hide in the field basically discovered he couldn't stay there because it was so cold.
He knew of a family that were Seventh-day Adventists and were not part of the SS and part of the Nazi party. And so he went and knocked on their door and at first they let him in and they gave him coffee and some bread. The oldest son in the family was working in a ball-bearing factory that was nearby. And when he arrived home, he was furious that my grandfather had let him in and that the whole family was basically imperiled, should they be caught harboring a Jew. And so he was forced to sleep on the porch after some compromise. And the next day walked to the police station to turn himself in. He got there and the policemen laughed at him and said, boy, it's over, go back home. So he never ended up getting arrested, but his father was in Dachau for some time. My great-grandmother had to find where he was, was first. She heard that they were rounding up Jews and taking them to Dachau.
So she went there and it's kind of a mystery what happened, but after she was persistent, they ended up releasing him. My great-grandfather tells the story that they were forced for long hours to stay in detention. And essentially when any of them faltered, they’d be shot. And he had been a soldier in World War I, won the iron cross, decorated war hero, and always credited his survival to Dachau...he knew how to stand in detention for long hours because of his war experience. But then the being in Dachau really left him broken. He developed dysentery and never was quite the same in health.
He was never able to work. But they were desperate to get out. So they first went to Hamburg trying to board a ship to get to the United States. It may have been the St. Louis there's some debate who was the St Louis or a later ship that left. But they were not allowed on that ship because like some Jews, the documents they had we were informed by the exit agent, whether or not it's true and who knows that they were holding false exit visas. And so they weren't allowed to leave the country. And they went back to the Alliance which was, was helping Jews in distress.
And there somehow learned that there was a official in France that was giving out visas to Shanghai, probably connected with [00:09:14 inaudible]. I think I'm trying to remember the name of the official. There's a Chinese official who was in Vienna that was issuing lots and lots of visas and tens of thousands of Jews ended up in Shanghai, but they ended up going to Marseille, getting on a ship and leaving Europe. And it was, you know, that experience, my grandfather going to Hamburg was the first time he left his town. Him then going and getting on a ship was the first time he left Europe. And so he had this experience where he was really exposed to the world over the over the rails of this ship that they were on.
[00:10:00] They had ports of call in Suez, by the Suez canal in Egypt. They had a port of call and Sri Lanka, port of call in Indochina, French Indochina before arriving finally in Shanghai and then for 20 months they lived in Shanghai. The rules of the family, my great grandfather could not work. He sort of was, he went and found out a scheme that he could through currency trading. He had some dollars sent from the family in Cincinnati that said, you know, essentially we can't get you here now, but take this money and good luck, like get yourself safe.
So they had this little bit of money and he found out he could trade his American dollars for francs back to Chinese currency back to American dollars and make like a few cents off of the whole thing. And kind of did that every single day. My great-grandmother was going to the American embassy every day to figure out if they could get their visas approved so they could rejoin their son who was in Cincinnati. And that left my grandfather is the only one really able to go and earn money for the family.
And through a friend at the Alliance in Shanghai, he learned that there was a tannery that was hiring Jews. And so he went to this tannery and got a job. And the story is that he put himself into his work. This was always like his way totally committed. He was observing that they were throwing away a bunch of scrap from tanning, these leathers. And so he asked his foreman, if he could take them home. And he started a side business, tanning leathers in their backyard that supposedly grew and grew and grew until the point that he felt like this business was real opportunity for him.
Their visa got approved and he said he didn't want to go because he had the business. And his parents literally forced him to abandon the business, to come to the United States. And so he arrived through the port of San Francisco. They had something like $5 and 75 cents to their name at the point that they arrived in the United States.
My family will correct me on the details cause I don't have it in front of me actually right now, but some meager amount between all of them. And my grandfather hardly spoke English, didn't have beyond the sixth grade education in Cincinnati, he ended up getting a job as a stock boy in a shoe store. Then his draft number came up and he was in the US army. They knew he spoke German and so he ended up as an intelligence officer. He arrived in Europe, right as the war was ending and went straight back to Bavaria in Nuremberg where he was a translator of documents in the Nuremberg trials.
So his story from there being in the army really helped his English. I think he found his stride when he got back to the United States, he went back to the same shoe store, but he wasn't working as a stock boy. Now, his English was good it could be up front, doing sales. And then that led to him going to work for a different shoe store. And he became a district manager and then a man named Arthur Bierman, who was a land developer, a real estate developer in Dayton, invited my grandfather to come and work for him and to run shoe stores that were in two department stores he had acquired one of them was a downtown store.
So, one of them was in a, a piece of land that he was developing. And basically the idea was that this was during the era of suburbanization. This man Arthur Biermann was trying to buy up a property that was at important intersections or places around the city. And then he would develop it by putting a strip mall on it. And the strip mall always needed an anchor. So we'd open up an elder Biermann department store, and that's the way the business grew.
My grandfather really, Arthur Biermann took a liking to him and he started treating him almost like, you know favored son and called him, "the boy" was his nickname for him. And my grandfather loved the experience. There was a major lawsuit that developed between Lazarus and Arthur Biermann 10 years after he had come to the company. And it went to federal court and it was extremely stressful for Arthur Biermann. And probably as a result of that, he ended up having a heart attack died prematurely. And at that 10 years after being in the company, my grandfather was selected to be the next CEO. So he became CEO of the company.
[00:15:00] Some years later, he became chairman as well. So he was chairman and CEO for 25 years working at the company. And this was like being a Jew in Dayton, Ohio. I was a Guttmann and anyone who saw my last name, Gutmann, it was, are you related to Max? And I remember I worked at Chase Bank for a while and one of their retail branches and customers would come in and they'd say, look at my name tag Gutmann, are you related to Max Gutmann? And I'd say yes. And then I hear a story about how, you know, they had a bathroom that was purchased from elder Biermann and something didn't go right. And my grandfather was such a mench that he showed up in person at their door to apologize to make things right.
This was kind of my experience in the Jewish community too. When my grandfather came to talk and share his story about Kristallnacht he was coming and donating as well, a new ark for the congregation. That would be there when I had my bar mitzvah a month later. So there was an aura about my grandfather and just this guy that really made it out of the hell that was Nazi Germany for Jews and became very successful in this era where without a college degree, without even a high school degree, just hard work and grit and you could thrive.
Interviewer: Yeah. It sounds like the American story. It sounds like the American dream come true for sure.
Interviewee: It doesn't happen often in my opinion today, but yeah.
Interviewer: What a great story. Sounds like your family [00:16:34 inaudible] back in the day. Can you tell us about your personal family life, your immediate family, your siblings, and growing up, Hebrew school and stuff like that?
Interviewee: Well, so I have, I'm the oldest, I'm the oldest grandson, which probably said something about my relationship with my grandfather with my late grandfather Max. I have two younger siblings, I have a sister who is an Irish twin. My parents always say 15 months younger than me. And she's married with two kids in Brooklyn, New York. And then I have a younger brother as well, 6 years younger lived in New York for many years and just moved to Chicago to be with a girlfriend. And we, so, you know, the story to that, my father, I think, wanted to follow in his dad's footsteps. And so he had decided to pursue a career in retail as well, department store retail. After graduating from Indiana, my parents married in 1979, moved to Boston where my dad first was working as a CPA as an accountant. And then two years later was working on an MBA from Harvard. And when he graduated, he went to work for Bloomingdale's and the whole family moved to Scarsdale, New York in Westchester County.
And they tell the story, you know, cuter that, they, my sister and I were tossing a ball in the backyard. I was 6. She was 5. And they hear my little sister yell out the one who went back to New York, Brent throw me the ball. And they said, Oh gosh, we can't deal with that accent, we got to get out of here. No offense to anyone. Who's got a New York accent, but, you know, that was one of the signs. The other thing that happened was that my grandfather was getting close to retirement, and he called my dad and said, I want the opportunity to work with my son before I retire. So the whole family relocated back to where my father was raised in Dayton and grew up in the shadow of my grandparents. And my dad worked for a number of years at elder Biermann and then was the vice president of the shoe division, which had like 150 stores at their peak somewhere around there, approximately.
And when I was early middle school, I think my 6th grade year, my dad decided that he wanted to go off and be an entrepreneur. And so purchased a franchise of an entertainment company called Quzar [00:19:22 inaudible] that ran laser tag arcades. And we went into the family entertainment business with laser tag arcades and video games and I was employed in the store. I wasn't legally allowed to work yet. But 14 and a half or whatever it was. I, you know, giving the briefs, teaching people how to play the game. The best part of the job was that I knew how to operate the token dispenser and so that became a nice way to win friends, that I always had a pocket full of video game tokens that, you know, I could dish out, you know, quietly as no one was looking.
[00:20:00] But yeah, that was sort of the family experience. My, I say that my grandfather knew people have different reactions to what they experienced in the Holocaust. And for my grandfather, it drove him towards his identity and his faith, more that I asked him at a later age. And this is a whole story as well, because we were in Needa. And I actually asked him to travel with me back to his birthplace and to show it to me. But while we were there, I remember we just parked in Needa and I asked him this question. I said, you know, how did you stay determined when the whole society was set to work against you?
And you were being told, and other people tell you like less than human. And he looked at me without missing a beat and said, I wanted to show those bastards, what a Jew was worth? And that kind of described his whole feelings about his identity as Jewish. So he was very prominent in the Dayton Jewish community. Very generous with the Federation, belonged to the conservative congregation before I became a reform Jew which is really a story about my parents wanted me to be educated in public schools.
And all of the students at the conservative congregation were going to the Jewish day school. They didn't want me to be there and they wanted me back here. So there was a newer reform congregation in the city Temple Beth Or [00:21:33 inaudible]. And I mentioned before with rabbi Judy Chesson. And there I had classmates and such, and that became very central to my own life and surroundings. My mother and father were both on the board of the synagogue. My mother was the chair of the membership committee very successfully for years. She's kind of a bubbly butterfly kind of person. And my dad was the treasurer of the congregation for many years as well. And I was going once a month for their bimqh duty or whatever it was to be there at temple. And I became a member of the board of the youth group became president of the youth group. We were called BOTY (Beth Or Temple Youth) and the whole feeling. I mean, it was part of who I was. It was core to my life that we did Friday night dinners together.
We were on the more traditional end of reform Judaism for sure. I mean, dad never allowed us to bring pork or shellfish or generally tref into the house, although we didn't keep strict kosher. My mom grew up less observant in St. Louis. And so, you know, I grew up with like, we go to a restaurant she really liked shrimp and whenever they were shrimp on the menu she ordered shrimp and my dad teased her about it and I never, I followed my dad's path.
So, I've never really indulged in those needs. But that was the background. And that was the life. I guess, I started contemplating becoming a rabbi fairly early and actually had the experience in 9th grade. When in school I was assigned to do a project researching a future career, in shadowing, someone who worked in that career, I called up my rabbi and asked if I could shadow her and spent a couple of weeks shadowing her and watching what she did as rabbi. And when I became confirmed in 10th grade, I, stood on the bimah and delivered my remarks that I intended to be rabbi one day, which was something very brave and also something a little bit rash because it meant that everyone was seeing me and viewing me in that light.
Here's a future rabbi and watch you in a different way when they have that sense of where your future is headed. I will say I didn't immediately go to seminary after graduating, I mentioned Chase, it was actually Bank One before I started before it became Chase when I started there. I worked in banking a little bit after graduating from college. And then I worked at a consulting company in Chicago for about 9 months after that. The other big part of this story is that Jill, my wife, she was born in Dayton. Her dad's a surgeon.
And when he was training in his specialty, in Pittsburgh, she moved there, but then had moved back, shortly before my family moved to Dayton. And when my little brother was born in Dayton and after we had arrived there her father who's a urologist was called in to be the mohel and our families met that way and we became somewhat close. Like they were bowling friends and she has an older brother who's more close in age than, to me than she is. [00:25:00] We went to camp together, actually multiple camps together.
And Jill interviewed me, in high school she was writing an article for the Dayton Jewish observer, the equivalent of our Jewish News. And the article was about Jewish boys dating non-Jews and what the implications were for intermarriage with that. And there's kind of funny, years later when we were in a relationship, we found that article and, you know, there, I didn't even remember that she interviewed me actually, but sure enough, there it was. I've, lots of stories about the development of our love. We started dating in college when I was home for my second summer break. I actually, I took advantage of the opportunity to do something completely different than my studies, which were philosophy, political science and economics. I took a job at a landscaping company.
And I was dating a non-Jewish Latino woman. She had been on an internship in Bangalore India and after the summer came home briefly before leaving again to study abroad in the Czech Republic, she came home in a relationship with an Indian man named Adam Rahman [00:26:39 inaudible] Adam Rahman Krishna, excuse me. He, three gods in a name is never good for a monotheist, I don't know. He was a Brahmin, you know, had that Hindu priestly background. And my mother-in-law's a character, she was determined to not have her daughter venturing down the road of a relationship with someone who wasn't Jewish. And knew that I was in town as well and invited my family to come over for dinner.
And we were very intentionally seated next to each other at this dinner. And the entire dinner my, now mother-in-law was saying, Hey, Brent, you know this about Jill and Hey, Jill, did you know this about Brent? And Hey, Brent, did you know this about Jill? After the dinner, we hit it off. We ended up staying up until 3:00 AM just talking. But needless to say, neither of our relationships endured beyond that more than a week, we were then more interested in each other. That went on for a period of time, Jill spent a year in Korea after she graduated and then came back to New York. I was living in Chicago already at that time. And we had a commuter relationship until the recession hit.
And when that happened Jill ended up leaving her job, which was at a Goldman Sachs and investment banking, seemed that the writing was on the wall about where the world was going in 2007, 2008. And then I was working at this consulting company in marketing, and it became very hard to secure new accounts.
People were having their budgets stripped because of the oncoming recession. And I was at the same time, I'd always see it involved in Jewish communal life. It was just part of my DNA, I guess. I was volunteering at Temple Shalom, which is on Lake shore drive in Chicago and was working with their youth group. And they had a homeless shelter. They operated a shelter once a month that I was involved in the planning committee for, and Jill looked at me as I was really frustrated with my consulting job and said, Hey, Brent, it looks like you're enjoying your weekends a lot more than your weekdays. Why don't you consider going and becoming a rabbi again? And I said, okay, I applied, I was accepted.
Jill actually got an offer to go and work for a hospital think tank in Washington, DC. And so in between we moved to Washington DC. In, she moved in January and I moved in February of 2008. And then in July, I went to Israel to begin my studies to become a rabbi. Jill followed, Jill is in the background, on the recording. Yeah. She's saying that that she was hoping to be able to stay in her role at this, at this think tank. And there was a way it could happen if I was in New York, but students aren't always given their first choice.
[00:30:00]
I ended up being placed in Cincinnati and she had to leave that job. But it all worked out. We were in Cincinnati for 4 years. [00:30:00] Following being in Israel for a year and after that had the opportunity to do a real adventure. We went to live in and work in Auckland, New Zealand, where I was the rabbi of the largest non-Orthodox congregation in New Zealand for three years. And was the only non-Orthodox rabbi in New Zealand for three years, which is a whole another topic. I mean, I think people are aware that during the pandemic New Zealand has fared pretty well.
Interviewer: Yeah. So were there any life lessons learned in New Zealand? Any things that-- How much time do we have for this interview?
Male Speaker: Well just a few, just a few quick thoughts maybe.
Interviewee: I'll make it succinct, hopefully, Hey honey, can you come and grab for a second please? That's our youngest, who's making noise. We have four daughters, I should say at this point, the first was born in Cincinnati. The second was born in New Zealand and the last two we added while we were in Detroit, in Metro Detroit. So yeah, you know, this was a real interesting decision. And Jill and I, we both traveled a lot around the world and loved being in new places to learn new things.
So I mentioned Jill had been in India, Czech, Republican Korea, South Korea. I'd spend time in Honduras in central America, in Israel, of course where we've traveled all over. I'd been to Europe a couple of times as a tourist more than living there. And then we spent a honeymoon with American Jewish World Service working with a Burmese refugee organization in South Thailand.
So, when students at Hebrew Union college or getting close to being ordained close to getting to be rabbis, they have a conversation with the Dean of the rabbinical school they're brought in and sit down and whoever the Dean is, you ask them in this case, it was Rabbi Ken Cantor. What are you thinking? What are you interested in? What are you looking for? I went in to have this meeting and my conversation didn't go like that. Rabbi Cantor had been in Melbourne Australia for two separate internships where he spent 6 months each there.
And so, he had a perspective on this and also, I was working in a Conservative congregation as their rabbinic intern and one of the previous interns there had gone to Sydney, Australia to be a rabbi at Emanual synagogue in Sydney. And he was just returning, and Rabbi Cantor thought that position might be coming available and said to me, as I sat down, you need to go and work in the world union. You need to take this opportunity to go and do that. It will be something that will be an experience that will enrich your whole life, you know, take it essentially.
And so he told me where to inquire and I wrote to the congregation in Sydney and they said, actually, they were eliminating the position. Actually, I didn't write, I should correct that. I didn't write to the Congregation in Sydney; I wrote to the Union of Progressive Judaism of Australia. And they told me that a Emanual I'm sorry, yeah, Emanual synagogue was not hiring the replacement for that position. However, there was a position available in Auckland, New Zealand.
And would I be interested in, in speaking to someone at that congregation about that position? And I came in and talked to Jill and we very quickly said, yeah, absolutely, we'd be willing to talk to them. So there's a formal placement process for rabbis after they're ordained in January. I'd already, actually the family my family, my daughter and nephews and a brother-in-law and sister-in-law, brothers in law and sister-in-law were all in Walt Disney world.
And it was my last year I was working on my thesis and also had the opportunity to start interviewing. So, when I got to placement in January, I'd already had a couple of interviews with Auckland and got callbacks to five congregations and was being considered all over the country. And I went back to Rabbi Cantor and said, you know, okay, so if I'm offered a position at this congregation and I'm offered a position in New Zealand, where do I go? New Zealand. If I'm offered a position at this company, this company? New Zealand. He looked at me, he said, Brent, if you get offered a position in New Zealand, you're going to New Zealand. And that's the way it was.
[00:35:00]
So, when you go and work at a congregation and when you live in a Jewish community outside the United States, it is an experience that just broadens awareness [00:35:00] and appreciation of what it means to be Jewish. There's a number of things, some specific to New Zealand, some specific to being in a non-American, non-Israeli, a non-sort of center Jewish country today that can provide insights about what it means to be a Jew outside of the United States. But, you know, sure.
One of the things that typifies Judaism outside of the United States, it's true of Israel. It's true of world Jewry is that here Reformed Judaism is the default. The largest movement [00:35:42 inaudible] of Judaism is reformed Judaism. And so that's the reference point that many people have of what it means to be Jewish outside of the United States Orthodoxy is the reference point. That meant that the congregation in Auckland, even though it was affiliated with the Reform movement as a progressive congregation it had a default to deference and orthodoxy that, you know, they were not comfortable having music in services and they tried having a pianist at one point, but it felt churchy to them.
I actually started bringing guitar into services because I told them that, you know, it'll help us be a little bit more on key together and make our services more enjoyable for the people that are there with the guitar. And so I brought a little like guitar, like some chords and did that while I was there. Now I use guitar every week at services back here in West Bloomfield.
But that was one of the things that was really significant. And it wasn't so much again, that they didn't want to have Jew music because they felt that it was wrong to have music. They didn't want to have music because [00:36:51 inaudible] God forbid someone from the Orthodox congregation walks in on a Friday night and hears music during synagogue services, what will they say? What will they think, it'll be ashanda. Other ways there was really significant New Zealand being the country that it is, it's very non-hierarchical. And I'd been trained as a rabbi that when you get into a community, you always insist on people calling you Rabbi, that that title carries weight and means something.
And if you don't insist on it, then you lose some stature within the eyes of the congregation and are not able to operate with the same amount of breath. I think that our culture has changed and that's different today than it was for the environment that rabbis previously served, so I'll leave that as an aside. But in New Zealand being so non-hierarchical, I tried to have people call me rabbi as I was trained, and they outright refused.
And I even had a member of the congregation that started an argument with the board saying, I will not refer to him as rabbi. And at a point, you know, it wasn't helping. I just, I dropped it and became Brent. And so even today, like, my members know that I am very comfortable being called Brent and many of them call me Brent and, you know, yeah, they'll introduce me. This is Brent Guttmann, the rabbi of our congregation. But at the point that that finishes it's, you know, Brent, what do you think of this? Which, which is fine with me.
Brent is a name I'm very happy with. I know that the origin of it is, tongue in cheek [00:38:27 inaudible] have to do with the fact that my mom is Beverly. And her father named her Beverly because when he was a student at UCLA Beverly Hills was like, you know, that's the place to be. And so he named his daughter Beverly and my parents looked at a map and said, what Brent, what is nearby Beverly, so we'll call him Brent. For me, Brent has that Yiddish, it's Fa/brenta, you know, fiery, passionate. And so that's kind of where I draw my associations today with my own name, and I'm happy to have people call me with it up, by it, I'm proud of it. First name or last name, the only thing I don't like people calling me as Mister, cause I'm not a Mister.
Interviewer: Okay. So I assume knowing, knowing you and being, how friendly are you still have what many friends left in the Zealand that you're in contact with?
Interviewee: Sure, sure. Not only New Zealand, I mean, we had very close relationships with the Jewish communities in Australia and other places in Asia were part of it, Singapore, Tokyo, my whole family, I've got, I know it's going to be audio, but I've got a banner behind me. This is a hand painted Chinese banner Mount Haw [00:39:41 inaudible] which is one of the sacred Confucian mountains, Daoist mountains actually in China. And when the family went on a trip partially with the reason of going to Shanghai and seeing where my [00:40:00] grandfather had escaped the war, we ended up going and visiting with the congregations that were in China. I officiated a wedding in Beijing while I was there. And having those connections and knowing those people that are in those far-flung places, the globe means something. So there's been lots of regular communication with them the whole time I've been back. And actually my third oldest child, we were staying at a friend's house after we vacated our apartment. My wife had come to the United States to do house hunting for us. But a week that we spent in this friend's house was where we figured out by timing that we had to have conceived our third oldest child. So that couple is still a couple that we're pretty close with. And they're interesting too. I mean, the wife in the couple is actually descendant on one side of well, Jewish ancestors her mom's side and on her dad's side, her dad was part of the Hawaiian Royal family. So she ended up marrying a Kiwi from Christchurch and they now live in Auckland.
Interviewer: Very nice. So you're in Auckland and it's a fixed three year commitment, no chance to stay. And you started looking for a job when you returned. And how did you happen on Kol Ami?
Interviewee: So I think that being an Auckland, I mean, something that folks may not realize about Auckland and it's continued to be true since we left, is it is the most expensive city per capita in the whole world. The home we lived in, an Auckland had just sold for $1.8 million. It was a three-bedroom bungalow built between 1900 and 1910. And the electricity that was added in the 70s was still that electricity. We didn't even have wall switches. They were pulled down cords hanging from the ceiling, which was just a joy when my then four-year-old would go and think that she could be Tarzan on one can rip it out of the ceiling. And then we'd have to call the electrician to come and replace the cord in it. Cause we couldn't turn our lights on and off. We had an outhouse in that house.
Again, it's sold for 1.8 million New Zealand dollars, and it was 85 cents to the New, 85 American cents to the New Zealand dollar when I arrived, it's currently about 65 New Zealand cents, sorry, 65 American cents to the New Zealand dollar, but it's still a tremendous amount. So, we, in a city where they have so many gorgeous sunny days and shades of green on the volcanic mountains, all throughout the city, 54 volcanoes are what Auckland's built off of. It is unbelievable terrain, you know, the Kiwis say when God created the world, God created New Zealand last. That's why it's so pristine. Shades of green, the Crayola couldn't invent. But, you know, we were really looking for a place that we could be able to have, the amenities of life that we were accustomed to growing up.
And be able to give our kids opportunities both within the Jewish community and larger, you know, opportunities to experience life. Midwest cities had a certain allure, both being from the Midwest. I actually, had my best friend growing up is a surgeon at Beaumont. And you know, he was here, his mother grew up in Metro Detroit, and my wife's best friend was finishing up her studies to become a doctor as well, living here.
So we both two best friends. I had distant cousins on my dad's side who are part of our congregation, Temple Kol Ami and my wife has cousins, the Davidson's that are on her dad's side that are here, not the [00:44:13 inaudible] Davidson's, different Davidson's. But it made sense as a place and then the congregation Temple Beth Or, they were about 220 households, small congregation where people really knew each other.
And there's a real sense of community. When I was going once a month, it wasn't only to attend services and see my parents on the bima, but we were in charge of setting up the oneg and bringing food in and cleaning everything at the end of the day. And, you know, like I knew all the ins and outs of the building. When I was used for youth president actually I didn't follow the right procedure I learned, but decided to paint the wall of the youth group lounge and just like went for it and did it. So that was a comfortable kind of [00:45:00] feeling that I felt Kol Ami had being a unique sort of self-selective smaller community, similar to Shir Tikvah. But it was a real attraction for me.
And beyond that, you know, it was a place where Kol Ami tends to attract I've learned a type of person who's just very humble, salt of the earth down to, down to earth. People who aren't really looking for recognition but do amazing things. The kind of people that run a food pantry that can serve 90 people a week, 18 volunteers and they're doing it because they want to make a difference. So that that's really appealed.
Interviewer: Do you have any professional or accomplishments in mind when you get there and how is that going?
Interviewee: At Kol Ami? I think that we were, our family described ourselves, we use the term crunchy, which, you know, some who are listening to this interview may be familiar with that term. I don't know. Crunchy to us it's like granola crunchy. We're natural, we were cloth diapering from the beginning, recycling was very important, trying to grow a garden and New Zealand, very much that being the mainstream culture, just kind of accelerated that for us. When we got to West Bloomfield, it seemed there was a real opportunity to lean into this.
And we have a massive garden, it's our entire side yard, you know, a quarter of our yard, we're on a half-acre in West Bloomfield is a garden. And we actually went through the process with the zoning board to get approved, to have domesticated ducks. So I have four domesticated ducks with my family and my girls are in charge of duck chores every morning and every evening. We get to collect the eggs. At temple it's meant being a little bit environmental. I mean, they had just gone through the process to become Leed certified for their building. And that was a real point of pride.
And beyond that, we were at the very first Hazon, Michigan Jewish food festival. With our table, touting who we were became part of the SEAL sustainability program. We've really tried to put in bio swales around the building, plant butterfly gardens, we've introduced recycling to the building. There is a real environmental current that I feel strongly connected with. Which feels like a good development to the congregation and to go with that, just being outdoors and loving to explore. I mean, I'm a bicyclist and when going into Kol Ami, I mean, it's, I don't go in as much now during the pandemic, but I'll cycle there two days a week during the summer. It's a nice way to get a 20-minute workout in, and I get to use the beautiful trails that are here.
And in addition to that, one of the programs that we established, which has really just been a wonderful source of new community for our temple is a program called Forest Kats, Kats, K-A-T-S standing for Kol Ami Tots where we've done stroller friendly hikes with young families and have a collaboration with the West Bloomfield nature center, as well as the Farmington nature center and bring in nature specialists. And I offer a Jewish lens on environmentalism. You know, it's, the food pantry is probably the most successful initiative we've had, but I'm really proud of Forest Kats. I'm really proud of what we've achieved there. And I think, you know, beyond that, like just learning to love our community, learning to love each other. This is a place where we've got approximately 70,000 Jews living in the metro area.
And it's interesting going from a place where there were very few Jews and of those Jews, they weren't outwardly Jewish because, you know, you didn't talk about your religion in New Zealand. And they had one American style Deli, which it wouldn't hold a candle to anything we have here. You can go to a Deli every day of the week and go to a different one and not run out for several weeks. And it's a completely different environment in that sense. But with regard to being a small community-based congregation, where we really care about relationships, I mean, being able to know all of my members and call them and talk to them and catch up with them, how are you doing?
[00:50:00] You know, how's, have you been surviving this year? And then the relationships that come from that. And I've really tried to strive to create that partnership where we put our community first and we engage volunteers and you know, on a weekly basis here, it's been one of our sources of strength that when people come to give their time to temple there, they're not only giving us something, they're getting something really profound out of it. And they're creating relationships that I pray are going to be enduring and are going to help our congregation.
Interviewer: Yes. Right. Hamish, I think is the word that comes to mind to me anyway. When you're on the pulpit and meeting the services, do you find it hard to keep your politics out of the--
Interviewee: So, you know, it depends, like it depends on how someone defines politics. I would say that there are definite views on what's, right and what's wrong in Judaism. And we need to talk about and teach and practice our values. And when getting up on the bimah to offer a sermon, or when teaching or talking in a program, I don't shy away from stating Jewish values. And I think that there's much that every one of us, regardless of where we are on the political system has found disturbing about the last several years in the United States and our leadership and around the world too. Does that get said from the bimah? It sure does. But I will also say that it's been a goal of mine, that my role is to be the Rav, to be the teacher.
And as the teacher, I can't teach anyone unless I'm able to give them a reason to listen to me. And if someone feels that I'm going to just be delivering a party line statement, which is never what I've striven to do, then they're going to shut off me at least. So, I like to talk about what are our values and what ought we to be doing. And I've given sermons over the past several years at prominent times, one of my high Holy day sermons that's pretty memorable two years ago was based off of a Forward article where the author of this opinion piece was saying, you know, Rabbi, I love you, but when it comes to talking about politics from the bimah, please shut up.
And those words please shut up, really, they kind of irked me and I got up on the bimah and I said, no, actually that should not be our reaction. It shouldn't be that we shut up. It should be that we're willing to talk and, you know, express our position more so long as we're listening to other people. And I can tell you giving that sermon that was written from the perspective of someone who's probably more on the traditional, the conservative side of the political spectrum. I felt very hurt by the congregation. And when I came on, it was yesher koech from my members who I know to be my most conservative members. And it's very important to me that they feel as though they have a safe space to speak their mind and speak their truth and share their thoughts and express what they're feeling in this moment. Because I don't view conservative or liberal politics as one or the other's the right approach. It's actually really important. I mean, my father and grandfather as well were very adamant that we were independents and we did not affiliate with political parties.
And the same is true of me. I am an independent, I've never affiliated with a political party. I never voted in a primary because I didn't want to affiliate with a political party. My wife's all about it. I mean, that's, she came from a different set of instructions, and I love her and, you know, that's great, it's her thing. But for me, you know, I want to be an independent thinker and I want my authenticity to be in having my ideas and presumptions and thoughts tested so that I can also get closer to truth. And I think that, you know, saying that for as strongly as I've made statements of Jewish values, at times ones that can be interpreted to support a particular policy perspective in my entire time at Temple Kol Ami, I've never once heard a person [00:55:00] complain about hearing politics from the bimah.
[00:55:00]
Interviewer: Okay. The last year has certainly been a challenge for everybody, but being a rabbi and doing virtual services, do you think you've picked up any new skills or new something that will help you in the future when you get back to the services in-person and stuff like that?
Interviewee: Well, so I think that streaming for us is going to remain a permanent part of the package. We had zero streaming capacity prior to the pandemic and, you know, I've been learning on the fly on an ad hoc basis, how to do this. I've been training high school students to come in and produce our services on a system that I'm setting up each week. It's actually, what I have to do after we've finished talking is to go and align all of our siddur pages and all of the parts of our, so that it's produced so that it can be streamed it's right now, streaming to Facebook, YouTube and Zoom. And this has been a huge learning curve. I’ve become proficient at it at this point. So it feels like a skill set that's developed. I [00:56:24 inaudible] geeked out on it a little bit as well, I'd say.
And there are times when, like I got really into constructing a B roll of some interplanetary space thing that I put in a service and some of the members thought, Oh, cool and some of the members thought, really, this is what I'm watching? Services, so either, there is no right. I think when it comes to what congregations, especially reform congregations are doing right now, we're all doing different things, trying to respond to this moment and to continually pivot on the fly. But it's been a real positive to open that up. I mean, we've had remarkable response, especially proportionate to our size and people involved in Friday night services.
And also, you know, Saturday morning, we've had some luck with getting that going as well. It's never really been a core service for us as a reform congregation, but we get a decent turnout there as well. I would say that, that's something that has really helped us and something that we've really been able to connect with each other. And, you know, it's not only me, but it's the members getting on every single week and seeing each other they're in the service and speaking to each other and checking in on each other and offering support when one of them experiences some sort of tsores during the year. That it's hugely important and it's taught us in a way that social distancing need not mean social isolation.
Interviewer: Nice. I once took a class with you and at the beginning of the class, you asked a question, which are you like, do you feel like you're a reform Jew for sure and then if after everyone in the class answered, you had made a statement, like I'm not always sure or something, or you'd be surprised at my answer. And I thought, I always wanted to ask you what that meant.
Interviewee: Well yeah, I mean, I think that when, early on thinking about becoming a rabbi I was never dead set on becoming a reform rabbi. I applied to, I think 4 rabbinical seminaries conservative reform and one non-denominational one. And this goes back very early. In the year, 2000, I was on a Nifty summer in Israel program. And, you know, I like, I, I think as a young person I experiment with a lot of different things. And this was a phase where I was wearing tzitzit flying around, wearing a yarmulka, whatever, and a girl in my group came up and asked me and said, are you Orthodox? And I just looked at her and I responded, I said, I'm Jewish. You know, I don't need the label.
So I'm ordained. I have Smitha from an Orthodox, from a reform institution. I'm a member of the CCAR, which is the reform union of rabbis. I work at a reform congregation. Someone could easily, you know, look at me and say, okay, he's reform on that basis. But I also got up this morning and help lead the conservative minyan at B’nai Israel that shares a building with us. And I worked for two years in a conservative congregation. And you know, I don't necessarily feel that reform perspectives are ones that I identify with personally. I mean, personally I would love to [01:00:00] to have a conversation on a movement wide level about what is reform Halakha because we're a non-Halakha movement.
We say we have no Halakha. Well, does that mean? Anything goes or what, like, what does that mean in terms of what observance is appropriate as a Jew and choice through knowledge, you choose your practice based of what you understand and feel as meaningful. It never really was sufficient for me, I guess. Like, I kind of always wanted to feel obligated to a little bit more and welcome that. I'd say as well, like I'm a reform rabbi who really loves the Musaf service.
I mean, especially when it comes to yom tov or where you have Olam aled [01:00:53 inaudible] It's Musaf where you have the distinction on Succot that this is Succot when it’s not yom tov. It’s Musaf during Pesach when you learn that this is Pesach. And in the Reform service, we’ve gotten rid of Musaf. So, you know, I kind of have some views that are a field, but again, these are my personal views and, you know, we don't thrust our personal views on each other's reporting views.
Interviewer: Nice. So is there any event in your life that you can think of, but either shook your faith or strengthen your faith or made you feel more Jewish or doubted it?
Interviewee: Plenty. Plenty. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a lot of challenges in organized Judaism today. And those challenges can really feel like they're insurmountable at times. And it's a moment of continuity of smallness where, you know, like they pass. I mean, I guess me on a personality level, like, I definitely experience occasional bouts of depression where, you know, I'll have a sad week and it's not more than one or two a year. But yeah, I'm very human in that sense. And it's also important, I think to be able to compartmentalize that, especially as a Jewish leader, that when I'm in a moment of [01:02:36 inaudible] it's not a good moment for me to be out front in front of my congregation. And so I'll try to find ways to limit my exposure and you know, work my way out of it.
And I've got to say that exercise and a healthy diet and doing things that are good for me, it really helped to bring some stability. But you know, going back to the very beginning. Yeah, I think what I didn't say is that that moment, when I came out and said, I intend to be a rabbi as a [01:03:07 inaudible] and the sort of perception, it put upon me that, and, you know, others were now seeing me because of my own statements, this is going to be a rabbi. And so we want to watch how he behaves and everything like that, turned me off a little bit from the rabbinate. I mean, I did, you know, beyond not being wanting to identify as a Reform Jew, I didn't want to be associated as like, this is a future rabbi.
And so that was part of going into banking and part of going into consulting and finding other ways to live a Jewish life that didn't include the rabbinate at that early stage. But there was a moment in there and I had a very sensitive moment, my sophomore year of college where, I hadn't been involved Jewishly really, I hadn't been going to Hillel. I hadn't been even praying regularly. I was taking modern Hebrew and very Zionist but beyond that, Zionist, I should say, during the second Intifada when I really felt like people were being super critical of Israel while they were having daily suicide bombs.
But, my uncle, my aunt's husband, not a blood relative, but my aunt's husband was living in Louisville and took his own life. He was an anesthesiologist and unfortunately for someone who had a capacity for self-harm, he had too much access to, and knowledge of ways that he could do this without pain. And he took his own life. My cousin, who was his oldest daughter, was a student at Indiana university too at the time.
[01:05:00] And, I remember like I went straight to her apartment and I was there to console her. And I was there like, it was this terrible crisis that none of us anticipated. And then I realized that like she was going to need help. And I instantly offered to get in the car and drive her back to Louisville We drove back together and I made a playlist and played it in the car and, you know, trying to do whatever I could to distract her.
Then I got to her house and you is going to be a couple of days until the funeral. And my knowledge, I mean, I've been really involved in youth group and knew observance and knew from my own family, like what needs to happen to help a family prepare for Shiva. And I became sort of their Shiva [01:05:51 inaudible] I went and I covered all their mirrors and I cooked them food, and I did everything I could to help through that moment. And, you know, I think that that was a moment that really reminded me of why I had an interest in becoming a rabbi. It was a tough moment, you know, sudden a sudden loss of that nature for someone who really was mentally unwell. And the family who was left in shock and grief after that.
Interviewer: Have you ever experienced any antisemitism in your life?
Interviewee: So personally, you know, school yard arguments where someone would use anti-Semitic epitaph against me, were, I had a couple of those stories. But I think, well, two areas that stand out. So being the only non-Orthodox rabbi, New Zealand and being one of only three rabbis in the country I took a pretty prominent role with the Jewish council, which is the equivalent of the ADL in New Zealand, the Anti-Defamation league. And we had a couple of, of incidents during my time there that were pretty traumatic. There, before I arrived even, I mean, there were cemetery desecrations.
Actually, there was a cemetery desecration in [01:07:24 inaudible] in the South Island when I was there, that I advised them on and how to talk to media and react to. But in, in Hamilton, International Holocaust remembrance day was going to be held in a public square and Hamilton, New Zealand. And some anti-Semites came and spray-painted swastikas over a public fountain where they were going to hold this, so it would be seen.
The prior prime minister of New Zealand, John Key was Jewish, his mother Jewish, halachaly Jewish. And there were incidents of people defacing his campaign posters, drawing like a Hasidic like black hat and tzitzit on him with his spray paint or whatever. And then my colleague in Auckland, he was assaulted by a person, self-identifying as a Muslim Arab in the streets of Auckland, who was drunk at the time. And that was something that we went through.
So that, I mean, that was sort of exposure that made anti-Semitism real from a leadership perspective, then here during the summer of 2000 and, Oh gosh, the years are escaping me. I think it was 2018 in the summer when there were a lot of community organized events to basically give the Jewish voice and say that Jews welcome asylum seekers and refugees and immigrants, knowing that we have that tradition and that history.
And I was pretty involved with other rabbis in our community and planning a number of that, a big one that was at Beth El. It was a learning event. But also a protest in Dearborn at the ICE detention center that was there now it's not thanks to our protest. And then another protest that happened on the sidewalk outside of the Holocaust Memorial center. And that was a protest that I was asked to speak at. And there was a big counter protest that was organized, and it was in the newspaper for anyone to Google. I'm sure you can still find it online. Multiple articles on it because the counter protest that were politically organized, we weren't, it was the Oakland County Republican party and Michigan Republican Jewish caucus and Chabad that primarily put together this counter protest.
[01:10:00] And okay, you know, they have a right to be there, but the day of the protest came, and the Proud Boys showed up. And I know we all know who the proud boys are. This was like my first learning of who the proud boys were. And as they were there, you know, it was kind of, like we had our program and in perception, it was sort of like the proud boys with these Jews, you know, Israeli flags next to Trump flags. And they're sort of screaming at us with the police, you know, holding a line, sort of like bullies at a school yard, screaming over a fence. And when my family went to leave, my wife was walking a stroller out past them and you know, this is like, gives me so much pride that they were screaming at my wife, your kids belong in cages.
You'll remember that it was kids being in cages. That was the real outrage during this whole episode. And, you know, they're screaming at my children, your kids belong in cages. And at this time, gosh, Sippie is 6 today. So, she was 4 then. She looks back at them and says, All kids deserve homes. And just a four-year-old being able to respond to that, gosh, I'm like tearing up just talking about it. I will say that I got noticed at this event for my remarks, which were talking about, yes, the administration's policies were not equivalent to the policies of the Nazi party during the Holocaust.
However, there was a slippery slope in what our Holocaust education was meant to do was to teach us to recognize the warning symbols so that, the warning signs, so that we could prevent things before they escalate. Someone from the Jewish organizers and the counter protest misidentified me as the orchestrator of this whole thing.
And I wasn't. You know, I was just a speaker and identified my congregation as the organizing congregation and labeled me by name as a flaming liberal rabbi, which I've already told you, I'm not. And said in a Facebook live feed next to these proud boys you know, these proud boys here are better Jews than that Rabbi’s. And that really concerned me given that, there were people who were associated with Michigan gun clubs and militias and all sorts of right-wing white nationalist folks who were tuned in to this counter protest that was happening. And so I got a call from the ADL and I was concerned and like we had a couple of weeks where we wouldn't let our kids play outside. And the FBI was watching chatter on 4Chan 8Chan or whatever it was about someone that might try to target me or my congregation.
So there are real consequences to the anti-Semitism that's been allowed to fester. And I think it's our obligation not as liberals or Republicans, again, but as human beings to recognize the toxicity of a hateful culture and to try to curb that. And you know, until we do, and as long as we allow for they're not alternative truths, they're false hoods and politicization of things we can look at what government leaders in Texas said this week that Windmills and the Green New Deal are causing these power outages. They're not. But they're so ready to go for lies. I mean, we have a Jewish value of emmet and Torah and emmet it's truth, it's revelation.
We have a commitment to truth and also to learning when we have an idea or a position in our mind that's not true that we search for truth. That truth can come aligned with a group that we have an affinity for working common opposition and it doesn't matter. We have to defend the truth. We have to defend Torah. We have to stand by our values because those are the things that are going to help us fill the role that we have on our planet and, and things that are going to help ensure that we have a future for our faith.
Interviewer: Nice. One final question is what is your dream for your 4 little girls as they grow up?
Interviewee: Yeah. I don't want to pigeonhole them in the future as I allowed myself or invited myself to be. I want them to be able to make their own choices and to choose their own paths in life. [01:15:00] I'm very proud of my girls and where they are. I've got some exceptional musicians budding in the family. My daughter, who was in fourth grade was just invited in, has joined the high school orchestra at Bloomfield Hills schools, which is something that I didn't imagine was possible, but, you know, like, wow. I was never in the high school band when I was playing saxophone in fifth grade. I mean, that's pretty cool. And they're just, they're amazing artists and really good kids where you know, being crunchy, you all know what that means now.
Being crunchy we have always been anti screen, which has made this year interesting. We have other reasons to be anti-screen, I should say as well that there was an awful car accident last year that, I guess two years ago now, but November of 2019 that really threw us through a loop, really threw us through loop. I guess it was the summer of 2019 that these protests were not 2018, so correct that earlier one. They have just come through that experience with strength. My wife, Jill has really invested a lot of her time right now. I mean, she would like to have a career. She's got two masters already, in public health and in Jewish bioethics and teaches for the Federation and in other places in the community. She, I think will want to have a career when the kids get a little bit older, but right now she's really thrown herself into homeschooling.
And my daughter Daria has learned how to use a sewing machine and is making doll clothes, you know, ad nauseum. Here's my 10 new items I made in one day. She doesn't measure anything, it's all by sight. It's, but yeah, they are just really good kids and they play together and have these, they would game, vivid game with Barbie dolls. That's been going on for two years and it just develops, you know, more nuance and like it's sort of like a writer's workshop for elementary school kids, I guess. I want them to be able to pursue whatever opportunity they desire and I want their only limitation in pursuing those to be there, physical or intellectual or emotional capacity. I don't want to see them limited by gender stereotypes or different obstacles that we have all too prevalent still, that we need to work to erase, so it's really important to me.
Interviewer: Great. Well, this has been fabulous to me. Any story you want to tell, anything we missed? Anything you want to add, or we hit a lot of topics?
Interviewee: Well, I, you know, I would say first of all thank you to anyone who stuck around and listened to an hour and 20 minutes of me talking rabbis are used to talking quite a bit, but yeah, I think what, what, what story can I tell that we haven't touched on? Excuse me. Well, I think you might want to edit out the pause here as I'm thinking about a good story that's in there. Yeah. I'm thinking about Jill, my wife. I'm not sure that this is a story that I want to share, actually. I'm sorry Cary.
Interviewer: It's been very, it's been fascinating. It was a great interview. I want to thank you for your time and your stories. They were delightful. And it was great. So thank you.
Interviewee: No, I appreciate it. Thanks so much. And I'm happy to be a part of this project and feel very honored. So, thank you for asking me for the interview.
Interviewer: Okay. I'll stop recording.
[01:19:47]
END OF INTERVIEW
