Dena Scher

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Interviewee: DENA SCHER

Interviewer: Stacy Ziegenfelder

Interview Date: Janurary 26, 2019

DOB: 1/12/1948 Place of Birth: Wilmington, NC

Location: Rochester Hills Library, Rochester, MI

Interview No.: 01.26.19-DS (audio digital file)

(Approximate total length 1 hour, 26 minutes)

Transcription: Yousaidit (DS), Fiverr

Themes: Jewish Identity, Doctrine, Observance, Upbringing

Summary:

Example of proper citation/ attribution:

Ziegenfelder, S. (Interviewer) & Scher, D. (Interviewee). (2019) Dena Scher: Jewish

Journeys [Interview transcript]. Retrieved from Jewish Journeys Oral History
Collection of Congregation Shir Tikvah: https://shirtikvah.org/cstoralhistoryarchive

INTERVIEW Transcript

 

Interviewer:   So, your father relocated to south after World War Two?

 

Interviewee:   Uh-huh. He was stationed near to Wilmington, which is where my mother was and the story goes that he asked for a list of the Jewish women, single Jewish women and he went down the list until he got to my mother. Then he got to my mother and he stopped.

Interviewer:   Do you know how many before? You just know he had a list.

Interviewee:   Yeah.

Interviewer:   It couldn't have been a long list.

Interviewee:   I know and also I think she heard about it before. Somebody else was talking.

Interviewer:   So, maybe she had her own list and checking them out.

Interviewee:   So, he had a lineage, like a Jewish lineage. He also knew a lot because he grew up as Orthodox. Yeah, and he probably went to synagogue a lot. There's a funny story of -- he had an older brother, Hy. Then his next brother was Meyer. So, they were out and it was close to the end of Shabbat. One of them saw like $1 or something on the ground but they couldn't pick it up.

Interviewer:   It was still Shabbat.

Interviewee:   It was still Shabbat. So, one of them put their foot on it and the other put their foot on it waiting until Shabbat was over. It was that kind of upbringing and then he comes down to the south and everything is watered down, in terms of Judaism. You're living in a culture that isn't Jewish and there's no doubt --

Interviewer:   Right, there is no easy access

Interviewee:   But he brings his love of Judaism and his knowledge of Judaism. So, he was a leader in the synagogue. He was the president in the synagogue. In a way, we were kind of like the model family. Our family did a family Shabbat. Our family would be the one that would be on the bimah. Here's the Jewish family. Like In Hanukkah -- he had an architecture degree and he could draw, he could sketch things. We had these huge sketches of the story of Hanukkah that were all around the living room and there was a contest to see whose house was best decorated. I don't know if we won or not. He wasn't successful so much in business, as many Jewish -- there weren't a whole lot but Jewish men in general were successful in business and that was not his forte. But he was successful in being seen as a righteous Jewish man.

[00:15:01]

Interviewer:   A model to live life by.

Interviewee:   Yeah.

Interviewer:   Okay. So, your father came down from the north during the wartime. Met your mom, had his list. They got together and he didn't use his architecture degree but he did draw things in the home. He started in a business with the help from your mother's father, not his passion but good living and enough to support the family and --

Interviewee:   Send the kids to college.

Interviewer:   -- send the kids to college. Very important. But his heart was --

Interviewee:   Family and Judaism.

Interviewer:   Right. Heart and soul was Judaism and studying the Torah, sharing it was others.

Interviewee:   He wasn't particularly rigid in terms of the laws, and he wasn't particularly strong or rigid in terms of belief.

Interviewer:   Maybe in a sense, he kind of had a little reformed thinking in there.

Interviewee:   He would never.

Interviewer:   He wouldn’t call it reform. He was a little progressive in his thinking.

Interviewee:   I don't know. Oh, I know why I --

Interviewer:   Situational.

Interviewee:   Let me try and explain. He had an uncle who was -- at that time there were people who were communist or socialist. If you were socialist, you didn't really believe in God, you believed in party. He had an uncle Lou, I think, who was a socialist. After my father’s father died, it was difficult. Dad, he was the youngest, was shipped over to Lou because they didn't have any children. So, Lou, he could help. It didn't work out. He was so unhappy that his mother brought him back but I know that there was an element of the family, it wasn't very -- like we talk today about spiritual and God and that was not part of it.

He was not unhappy with the ideas of socialism. He had a strong belief in injustice. I mean, we lived in a racial society in the south, and he had strong ethical beliefs but about God, I don't think he really cared much. I mean, he said the prayers and everything, but I haven’t seen my father as someone who was praying to a God for something to happen. I didn’t see him that way. But in terms of being able to tell you the ethics of the fathers or what was right or how Judaism -- that was strong in him.

Interviewer:   So, your dad was more than learning versus a deeply spiritual one but still seen as a reference point or model by the community?

Interviewee:   Yeah.

Interviewer:   If I didn't mention it, to recap too. You had a religious sort of a religious background had a Bar Mitzvah when you were younger, which still wasn't done a lot for women. So, that's very nice.

Interviewee:   I don't think that at that time, whatever it was that I did was not seen as something revolutionary. You could or you couldn’t.  It wasn't like, “Wow, this synagogue is doing something for women.” It wasn’t like that. Now, my mother on the other hand -- did you want to continue my father, want to go?

Interviewer:   No, I think we've summarized that. I was going to ask you if you have some stories about your mother and the influence because you already have your father’s, his orthodox background, but you mother's is more --

Interviewee:   I think my mother would have been just as comfortable in the temple, the Reform. My mother, they were absolutely Jewish. My mother's mother, my grandmother, was a force. She was head of Hadassah. There was a chair in her house, a beautiful blue embroided chair in my grandmother's house, which was called the Henrietta Szold chair because Henrietta Szold came to her house and sat in that chair. Now, it's in my sister's house.

[00:20:25]

Interviewer:   Was anybody else allowed to sit in the chair after that?

Interviewee:   Yeah, you can sit in it. She could give speeches. She would fundraise. If one of the grandchildren was having a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, she would be up there to give a little talk. She was not a shy person.

Interviewer:   Where did she come from?

Interviewee:   I think her family came from Washington, DC. I think that she was born in this country. My grandfather came from the area of Florida and I'm not sure if he was born in United States.

Interviewer:   Where did they?

Interviewee:   Ancestry. Poland, Russia.

Interviewer:   Not a southern or whatever?

Interviewee:   No. So, I think Charles, he was also helped by some uncle, some family member, and he makes his way up from Florida to Wilmington, which I think that's where -- she was from Washington. Anyway, they met somehow. He had the pawn shop and it was during the war and he did very well, so they were wealthy.

Interviewer:   Wait for him to -- that was World War One?

Interviewee:   Two.

Interviewer:   Oh, it was still Two?

Interviewee:   Yeah.

Interviewer:   But this is your grandfather?

Interviewee:   This is my grandfather. Not my father.

Interviewer:   No, I was wondering if this is how your grandparents got together because your parents came together with World War Two kind of. So, I thought maybe it was the previous war.

Interviewee:   No, I don't think so. I think they shared a love of music because they can sing together but he was quieter. I don't really know him because he had a stroke. I mean, he probably was in his mid-to-later life, but I don't remember him. Except I remember him in a bed in the front room of this beautiful house that they had. It was all stone and in the back, it had a little fish pond, not like a farmer's thing, like a stone thing with carpet and a little bench. It had a kitchen room that had a built in place where you sit, and all these little details.

So, that's where my mother and her sisters and her brother grew up. She had all the china dishes. She had a baby grand piano and they took a lot of dance lessons. So, they were well off. They had the life -- my mother I think had the lifestyle of someone who has music lessons and dance lessons. They're part of the synagogue but that's not just -- I mean, they were always Jewish in their Jewish holidays and Passover. She had the change the plates and all. But not the same studious kind of quality that my father…

My grandfather on that side, Charles, who his name was Finkelstein and the store, the pawn shop, was named Finkelstein's and it's still there today. So, it went through some family members. My father comes through… Oh, Charles was known also as a nice man and if a Jew came into the pawn shop and they needed something, he would give them money or when my mother talked about when he’d come home, they’d go through his pockets because there’d be candy there, but he was quiet. I mean the real voice was Jennie, who was the

 [00:25:03]

Interviewer:    That was your grandmother with Hadassah and all?

Interviewee:    Yeah, with Hadassah and all. So, I think everyone else was in her shadow and then he had the stroke. So, he's alive, but he's out of the picture. Jennie, she did a lot of traveling. She traveled around the world. My mother and her next sister were very close. They were in the same dance recitals. Then she had an older brother. She wasn’t as close to him and she had a younger sister, which was the one who had the six children and was in Greensboro. 
So, all I remember about the courtship was that my father and my mother were out on date and they went to this -- they happened upon this field that had these beautiful daffodils in it. He picked a big bunch of daffodils and brought it back to Jennie, to the mother -- Paula's mother. Paula’s my mother -- to Jennie. That was just charming for when he did that. So, then Charles sets, Harold, my father, up in a new city that's about four or five hours away, Greensboro…

Interviewer:    Pretty far away. You’d think that Charles set him up close by.

Interviewee:    Yeah, well, in town, there was another one and the sister she was so close to, Horty, her husband --

Interviewer:    They have it.  

Interviewee:    Right.

Interviewer:    So, they had expanded outside?

Interviewee:    Right. Wilmington is on the coast of North Carolina and there's also, the coastal beaches. So, Charles gave Jennie $100 and said -- and you had to get over there by ferry to the beaches -- said, “Go buy a cottage. Go buy some land.” She went over and she bought this. So, that was Wrightsville Beach and they built a cottage and eventually there's a bridge and everything so by the time that we come along, we go to the beach every year for either a month or two weeks and so do the cousins: the one with the six children and then, Horty, who has four children. The beach was just a huge part of my childhood. You looked forward to it. When we went there, we just had the whole beach to roam. There was one grocery store and the putt, putt and we used to play hide and seek in the grocery store. Everyone had a cousin that was either their same age or a little older or a little younger. It was just something a 

Interviewer:    Immediate friends.

Interviewee:    -- pack of kids.

Interviewer:    Did you all stay in the same cottage?

Interviewee:    The cottage had three --

Interviewer:    The cottage was actually a really big house to hold, what is that like, four families?

Interviewee:    Well, all you needed was a bedroom for the boys, the bedroom for the girls and then you could stack beds.

Interviewer:    How many boys and girls were there, like 10 boys, 10 girls?

Interviewee:    Well, there was an upstairs and there was a downstairs. So, the first week that you came, you would have upstairs but then when the next group came, you move to the downstairs. Then Horty's family was in town. So, they would come back. So, my father would work in the store and then come on the weekend. I don't know. I think Shirley mainly just brought her kids and -- I don't remember my uncle being there much. Everything was Jewish but nothing was Jewish.

Interviewer:    Yeah, I was going to ask you that. So, was the large grouping of people willing to forming and not destroying the Jewish surrounding.

Interviewee:    Even less so than Greensboro. Greensboro’s bigger.

Interviewer:    What did you do to --?

Interviewee:    Never made the synagogue there.

Interviewer:    There wasn’t a synagogue, did you have

Interviewee:    Lit the candles on Friday night. We lit the candles. We said the blessings. There were no restrictions. It wasn't like you weren't going to go out and go swimming.

Interviewer:    Right. So, they could go out and if they found a pile of gold, they could bring home? (Laughter)

Interviewee: None of this waiting for Shabbat.

 [00:30:04] STOP

Interviewee:    That is funny. I don't think we did Havdalah, for instance. I think that was sort of alien to us by that time because I don't remember doing Havdalah until [inaudible 00:30:18]. My father who grew up as orthodox -- they were the [inaudible 00:30:28] about kashrut. My mother never ever made a ham. I don't think she knew how to.

Interviewer:    What did you say, the [inaudible 00:30:36]?

Interviewee:    The [inaudible 00:30:36] about kashrut, my father's. But when you went out, you could have bacon. You could order bacon, which was fun.

Interviewer:    But not in the house.

Interviewee:    Not in the house, but even that became less. I might remember that we would have made bacon, but I'm not sure it wouldn't matter what you could have.

Interviewer:    You probably could have the ham, pork.

Interviewee:    If you went out. See, I think I got relaxed over the years.

Interviewer:    Okay. So, just to summarize, trying to remember where I last summarized. We had spoken about your father and now you just spoke about your mom's history. It sounds from both of your parents’ ancestry, your people have been in the United States for a long time. You may not have been here from the 16th century or 17th century, but definitely a long time. You're not a first or second generation American. You've been here for a long time.

Interviewee:    Well, I guess I'd be a third generation.

Interviewer:    On your father’s side, but if you count to your mother's, it's even longer.

Interviewee:    I don't know. It’s probably, I just don't know it that well. I think it's probably about the same. 

Interviewer:    On your mother’s side, it was a more affluent family not really [inaudible 00:32:16] you're snobby because your grandfather, well, he had a pawn shop and a whole empire of pawn shops out there. People in need could easily go in to talk to him and he was generous with helping people out.

Interviewee:    That was a story about him. Yeah.

Interviewer:    That’s nice. They went to Temple. They built a cottage --

Interviewee:    [Inaudible 00:32:43].

Interviewer:    -- for family. Long vacations in the summer and all where the whole clan came together and had a lot of fun, but the religious aspect was really mostly having a Shabbat dinner. It was more about family.

Interviewee:    But we were so Jewish. All of us have Jewish --

Interviewer:    It was part of your blood.

Interviewee:    Like I was thinking sometimes in these interviews we ask people when do you first remember being Jewish. I was thinking, I always was Jewish. I mean, it would be like asking me, when do you remember that you had a brother or sister? Well, I don't ever remember not. We were always Jewish. Even though my father would look down on the people who were not as Jewish as we were, that side of the family, if they were reformed, and they went to a Temple where they spoke things in English. But there was no doubt that we were not anything but Jewish. We were Jewish.

Interviewer:    What does that mean to you that you were always Jewish?

Interviewee:    Well, it means it was a really big part of [inaudible 00:33:55]. Until I was a teenager --

Interviewer:    Before you became a teenager --

Interviewee:    -- and then things changed.

Interviewer:    That’s heavily influenced because, big family, lots of cousins, still Jewish, not assimilated.

Interviewee:    Right. In a larger community and is also in a community that is the antithesis of our ethical credit. We were, “This is a time of segregation. This is the time of discrimination. This is the time of the Ku Klux Klan, the idea of anti-Semitism.” It wasn't as if -- I mean, we weren't happy in our world. It wasn't as safe to go into a non-Jewish community.

Interviewer:    Did your family, anyone in your family or yourself feel threatened?

Interviewee:    Only one time and that was significant. [00:35:05] I mean, nobody was hurt or anything like that but this happened to my brother. It's important for what happened and it's also important for him, I [inaudible 00:35:16] dealt with it.

Interviewer:    How old was he? 

Interviewee:    My brother? He was about 10, 11. We had friends in the neighborhood, our neighbors weren't Jewish, you might say he ran around with. So, my brother had a couple of boys that they build forts, they'd run around. This is my younger brother. So, I was probably 12 or so, maybe a little older. Somebody rings the doorbell and runs away and leaves a little folded up piece of paper. You open the piece of paper and it has a caricature of a Jew with very -- it's just pencil drawing, but the Jew has a real long nose, and it has coins, like money dripping from its nose.  That's about all I can remember but there may have been a word or something.
It was clearly anti-Semitic. I don't know how they knew who would run away, but they knew it was one of my brother's friends. There has not been -- I won't be able to tell you if any other thing like this -- this had never happened. It was shocking. It was shocking that my brother was playing with these boys, his friends, and then this horribly anti-Semitic; at least to us or me, it was shocking. It was shocking just as impressive --

Interviewer:    But you said there were mean thing, words written on the note too but you don’t remember what it was.

Interviewee:    There's no doubt about it being anti-Jewish.

Interviewer:    So, anti-Semitic note left on the doorstep for you brother by someone who he thought was his friend.

Interviewee:    Right. So, equally impressive or shocking, not shocking but impressive was my father's response. My father took the note and went to the neighbor who, they knew, the boy's parents, and from the report of my father, he said to them -- I'm sure my father reported back because he wanted us to know how he’d handle it. That they'd always been good neighbors. They'd always go along. They saw each other as friends, the fathers here and that he was hurt and shocked by this. The neighbor was apologetic. I think the neighbor was shocked in a way himself. That was the end of it, but to me that was so impressive that there was no --

Interviewer:    Repercussions?

Interviewee:    Yeah, there was no fear. This was the right thing to do. That's what it taught me. He didn't just bury it or say, “Oh, it's terrible. That bad guy that is --” He went to the person and said, “This is not how we should be and I don't see you that way,” he says to the man. Then it's over and then that's the end of it. I don't know if my brother was ever friends with this kid again. I don't know. I think probably not, but it wasn't like left out there in the ether land. It was finished. It was taken care of. So, that was the kind of Jew my father was. That’s the thing I was saying about he wasn't particularly spiritual but he was ethical.

Interviewer:    Right. Ethical and would stand up to [inaudible 00:39:29].

Interviewee:    Yeah, and I think his Judaism formed the basis for his [inaudible 00:39:33].

Interviewer:    Right. For righteous actions. 

Interviewee:    Exactly. He wasn't wealthy. So, he had his major --
Interviewer:    [Crosstalk 00:39:44] your character, right?

Interviewee:    Right. His character was strong. 

Interviewer:    Right. So, he set a very good example for you and your siblings on standing up for yourself and --

Interviewee:    Well, I always felt Jewish and I always felt good about being Jewish. [00:40:01] I think that's…

Interviewer:    So, you feel, even though you were vastly outnumbered by the population there, you didn’t feel like you had to be in hiding and especially in the south after the war.

Interviewee:    We weren't threatened. We knew there was anti-Semitism, but it really didn't touch us. We knew that there was horrible racism, but blacks didn't live near us. So, in later years, we got to know people, but not when we were kids. No, that's not exactly true. They were the traditional roles. We had a maid. Our maid was African American but that's all. That's the only way I would have seen someone who was black or colored at that time.

Interviewer:    So, you're affirming again where your childhood you had friends in the neighborhood who weren't Jewish, you had your family, friends who were Jewish and friends at a synagogue that were Jewish. 

Interviewee:    [Inaudible 00:41:15] were cousins.

Interviewer:    You cousins and you knew discrimination against the blacks and anti-Semitism, but really only this one incident with your brother that [inaudible 00:41:27] --

Interviewee:    I’m trying to think if there was anything. Oh, but they weren't personal. I went to Easter mass and they talked about Jews killing Jesus. [Inaudible 00:41:37], I just came here to see what your Easter was like. When there were people who tried to convert you at school because you were a Jew, but they weren't personal in the way that this had happened. 

Interviewer:    Is that what happened in your teen years? I think I stopped you. You said things changed in your teen years.

Interviewee:    Yeah. Do we want to go on then? In my teen years, I had a boyfriend. This is high school, early high school. There was nothing wrong with this boyfriend. He was smart. He was a leader. He was my older sister’s friend.

Interviewer:    Was he Jewish?

Interviewee:    No, he was not Jewish. He came from a union background, that's a liberal. His father was, but his father was a union organizer. 

Interviewer:    I’m sorry --

Interviewee:     His father was a union organizer in the south. This is what we believe. Everything is right about him, except he's not Jewish. 

Interviewer:    Good values and good character.

Interviewee:    So why not? Why shouldn't I have this boyfriend? Well, that really drove a wedge between me and my family. So, I had an older sister. I belong to BBYO, [inaudible 00:43:08] in the Jewish groups but I really fell for this guy. I just couldn't understand why. If everything was okay -- it just seemed so wrong to me that you should say this is not a person that you should go out with because he's not Jewish. I continued to go out with him and hide it and it continued to be a split between me and my family. It's really a shame because it was going to fling out anyway, but, I don't know, in the process it had its good and its bad.

Interviewer:    You had [inaudible 00:43:57] things with you and your family for a while.

Interviewee:    Yeah, but also I was building my own identity and my own character. I think in having this relationship, I was forming my own identity, which in some ways changed my Jewish identity. 

Interviewer:    So prior to that, what did you think your identity was, just follow the line of the family? 

Interviewee:    Yeah, and also it had a “what women do” kind of role. I didn't say as much about my mother. She had this very, not domineering, but amazing mother. She wasn't quite like that. She was more retiring but she was raised to be pretty and musical. She wasn't raised to be thoughtful or to be oppositional or anything. So, for whatever reasons I don't particularly know why, but I didn't want to be that way. [00:45:04] I didn't really like that ad that was always a problem. I wore my hair long and straight. 
There were lots of arguments about wearing lipstick, or about cutting my hair or any number of those things. So, what you were supposed to do as a Jewish girl from Greensboro, North Carolina. You were supposed to get to Atlanta, and you were supposed to get a teaching degree, so you could teach in the school. In Atlanta, because it's a much bigger in a Jewish -- I mean, this is kind of a myth, but it's kind of not a myth and then you are supposed to marry. That was a big thing. You were supposed to get married to someone who would be a successful Jewish man, and then you would have kids. I didn’t want to do this. 

Interviewer:    So, what did you do?

Interviewee:    I was oppositional and then I had this boyfriend, and that was oppositional. He didn't care if my hair was long or if I wore lipstick or not. What that then bled to is I wanted to leave for college. So, there was a good women's college in the same city and my sister went to it and I went to it. 

Interviewer:    Back in Atlanta or south?

Interviewee:    I never went to Atlanta. That's like saying Shangri La or something.

Interviewer:    Where did your sister go?

Interviewee:    In Greensboro. Its name was University of North Carolina.

Interviewer:    Which is actually closer to your home.

Interviewee:    No, that's the same place that we grew up.

Interviewer:    Where you grew up, right?

Interviewee:    Yeah. My sister went to -- it was then called Women's College. Also, then where my mother had gone. Today it's a co-Ed school and its University of North Carolina, Greensboro. In high school, I had this boyfriend. [Inaudible 00:47:03] I’m oppositional and I’m questioning what's the matter with the [inaudible 00:47:07]. I had a few more friends who aren't Jewish. So, I’m kind of getting out of that more. 

Interviewer:    Broadening your world. 

Interviewee:    Yeah. Right. So, I go there for one year and I stay in a dorm, but I didn't like it. So, anyway, I had a Jewish girlfriend who has gone to Atlanta, but we both want to leave and go north. We want to get out of the south and that's exactly how I thought about it. I wanted to get out of the south. There were a number -- that's when there were the demonstrations in the ‘60s and that sort of brought it more to our attention.

Interviewer:    Was before Martin Luther King and the sales right [crosstalk 00:47:54].

Interviewee:    Well, it was right around the time when he was assassinated and so forth. So, there were the sitting demonstrations at the lunch counter, which started in Greensboro. My sister and I and a male friend of hers went downtown to see the demonstrations. That was a critical moment in my life because I saw these black people, lines and lines of them walking around the city square and these white guys screaming at them “Nigga. Nigga.” It just went on forever. The black people were not doing -- they were just walking and [inaudible 00:48:46] people spitting at them. Then we went home and I've never seen my father so quiet. He wasn't angry. He was scared. We didn't tell him where we're going but somehow he knew. He was so afraid and furious for us. So, there were a number of other little -- I'll just mention one other if I'm not going on too long. I was in a service in high school, we had service clubs. They gave me an award because I had worked at a camp for retarded children, that’s what they called it, and nobody else actually did any service but I don't know why I did it. It's no big deal that I did it. I was going to get this award and the award was going to be at -- there was Woolworths which was where the city demonstrations and there was another and I can't right now remember the name of it, but they had not integrated. [00:50:00] A black person could not walk in there and get service. So, because of all the upset and the demonstrations that's where we were supposed to have this banquet. I said I didn't want to go because I didn't want to go to that -- so I'm developing this kind of righteousness. 
It's not different from my family, really my father except for the Jewish things. So, it was moved. It was moved to a -- not because of me -- but it was moved to a park. I thought they had moved it because I had said I wouldn't go and I didn't want to -- no, that's not what happened. It dawned on me that it was catered by the same people. So, while there was this growing kind of recognition, there was also this recognition of this is the south. By this is the south that means they're separate drinking fountains, they're separate bathrooms. They're separate places where blacks live. I just wanted to leave. Also, I want to get away from my family and I wanted to go to the big city.

Interviewer:    [Crosstalk 00:51:34].

Interviewee:    Boston University instead of Martin Luther King. So, we go out there and my parents help and all. We get an apartment and I live the wildlife life.

Interviewer:    In the city --

Interviewee:    In the city.

Interviewer:    -- much different, right?

Interviewee:    We weren't really on campus. We had an apartment. So, I got my degree from there. 

Interviewer:    Did it end up being in education?

 Interviewee:    Well, I got my Ph.D. in clinical psychology, so I ended up as a psychologist. 

Interviewer:    You got at Boston University, the Bachelor’s?

Interviewee:    Was a Bachelor's in psychology. So, it didn't end up being education.

Interviewer:    I was just wondering if you were [inaudible 00:52:21] the Atlanta tutor whatever.

Interviewee:    That is what it was supposed to be. I mean, you could have been fine except that's what you were supposed to do. You were not supposed to have a nice boyfriend if he wasn't Jewish. I lived a more independent life, a more free -- that was the time when women were experimenting different things.

Interviewer:    You lived through a lot them: the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, [inaudible 00:52:52].

Interviewee:    The assassination and then Watergate. 

Interviewer:    That’s fun, right? How did coming to Boston --? Did it change, you were coming more to becoming an adult thinking for yourself and what’s right and wrong? 

Interviewee:    Yeah, and also a sense of Judaism change. So, I had a somewhat bad experience with Judaism. Like you were supposed to do this and do -- it was restricted. I think I tried to sort of not be Jewish because I remember there was -- I always found someplace to go to for High Holidays if [inaudible 00:53:38] wasn't living there. There's one High Holiday I decided I wasn't going to synagogue and I was going to paint my room. I remember doing that and not liking it and not feeling good about it. I mean, I didn't do much of anything Jewish in those college years. Although, I did have a Jewish roommate and it was Boston and the people next door to us were Jewish. There were dailies. It was in some ways easier to be Jewish because there was such a Jewish community but I don't remember accessing that except that my friend who I had moved there with had a aunt who had a sale for holidays and that was it. Then I'll try not being Jewish by painting room on Yom Kippur and I thought, “I don’t like this.” So, to quicken things up in terms of Jewish identity, I worked in Boston for a year at a VA hospital and then I got into graduate school. Graduate school that I got into with funds, with money was the University of Arkansas, which means there are no Jews. It's not as southern as North Carolina, [00:55:02] but it certainly is not Jewish, much less than but I wanted to get my doctorate. I wanted to be a clinical psychologist. Meanwhile, I've had several other boyfriends, none of whom were Jewish, but not that first one anymore. I don't think any time in that time did I ever think that I would convert, like if I were to marry someone. I don't think it ever -- I never would have -- I don't think I could have been something else. I could have not been Jewish, but I couldn't have been some -- Anyway, so I go to graduate school. There was one Jewish professor, young guy. We were just friends but so we would [inaudible 00:55:53] for [inaudible 00:55:54]. We went to Memphis together. So, there you had to work at it. I think that was also something that had always been there. You can't tell me I'm not Jewish. I'm going to work at being Jewish. I'm going to be in your face Jewish, unless everybody else is Jewish, but if you're going to say there's only Santa Claus. I'm going to say no. So, that was strong. Being one of the few Jews, I was happy too to be the Jew because that was different or something. 

Interviewer:    Did you prefer it when you were in smaller communities so you could be freer in how you wanted to be as a Jew and not have others kind of judging, you're not following the standards role [crosstalk 00:56:54]?

Interviewee:    No, I don’t think I really miss that, but I don't think it was really -- it wasn't really possible to be that Jewish because you really didn't have that kind of… So, it was more like, but I'm special kind of like.

Interviewer:    Even during your rebellious teens, cultures, whatever, where you're coming into your own adulthood and thinking and everything, your Jewish identity may not be per se by the book, the Torah, whatever, the standards, but through your upbringing and your education, it coincided with the values that you had.

Interviewee:    Exactly. Well, I didn't see myself as a religious Jew. I did see myself as a Jew and it's because of exactly what you said because I had values that I felt were grounded in Judaism. I had values from my father, from my big family, from the way that we were always Jewish. So, I never felt not Jewish, and I never wanted to hide that identity. At some point in there, but that didn't come stronger until [inaudible 00:58:21] actually. I came to think that I was privileged to be Jewish. So, I don't think I exactly felt that but I did feel some pride or some sense of value, and then later it became stronger. 

Interviewer:    You jump from Arkansas to -- how did you go from Arkansas up to Michigan and to [inaudible 00:58:48]?

Interviewee:    Well, there's a very important thing for my Jewish identity and for my life. First of all, I got my degree. I left with the Ph.D., but I met my husband, Dean. Dean has a -- I won't go off too much on doing that. He has an odd sort of religious background. So, Dean was raised by his grandparents and he never knew his father. He has his mother and his maternal grandparents. Dean's mother is half Jewish because her father, that would be Dean's grandfather, was Jewish, and his great mother's not, and neither of them converted. Julius, that grandfather was always Jewish, but never practiced except he’d bring in [bagels? 00:59:54] and [inaudible 00:59:55], like that. 
Dean, the father has left, [01:00:02] Dean’s not [inaudible 01:00:03], but I have to get back to the father at some point. The mother has a couple of other children and she can't take care of them so Dean grows up with his grandparents. He might get into Sunday school but he has no religious, nothing. Then we meet and we decided we want to get married. The place where there's a Jewish family is my family. That's it. I mean, there's not really on his side. So, there's no issue on his side. The issue on my side is again --

Interviewer:    He’s not Jewish enough?

Interviewee:    He isn’t Jewish enough and also will the rabbi marry us? Is he Jewish enough that we can have a Jewish --?

Interviewer:    Right, because the mother wasn't Jewish so he wasn’t considered Jewish?

Interviewee:    Well, the mother's half Jewish, so it's maternal. The mother's half Jewish.

Interviewer:    So, he’s a quarter. 

Interviewee:    In Hitler's view, yes, he’s Jewish. It turns out, Julius, the grandfather has relatives in Baltimore and has relatives it Cincinnati at the Jewish theological center where they… and we know their names. 

Interviewer:    So, they can vouch for him.

Interviewee:    Well, no, they don't know us. They wanted to marry us too, the rabbi. This is the reformed rabbi, not the conservative rabbi but the reformed. He was a nice -- I liked him. He interviewed us and he kind of asked -- and he knew of these people. So, we were Jewish enough. Don’t ask any more questions. The wedding was in my parent’s home with a [inaudible 01:02:09]. It was a Jewish wedding and the rabbi talked about how we were both in psychology and I don't know what. There was not an issue. So, now I have my Jewish husband and I've got my Ph.D. and then I'm coming - but I'd like to just skip forward just for a minute because when we finished with Dean… That's what we knew of Dean's family. Then many years later, we were, Dean's during a sabbatical in Pennsylvania and his grandfather's family was from Baltimore. He also knew of some of his father, he'd never met his father. Never ever met his father. So, we had those phone numbers. So, in my way, I got him called and then got his father or someone at the father's home, who had been in the hospital, but he was coming out. 
We went to visit his father. So, we go to this restaurant, and we walk in, and the father has a Jewish star around his neck, and his wife is there, Edith, and she's Jewish. So, Dean's father converted when he married this woman. So, Dean has a Jewish father because he converted and a Jewish mother. I don't know, it just seemed --

Interviewer:    When it comes around.  

Interviewee:    It was just strange. That was just an interesting sideline. 

Interviewer:    So, you moved around.

Interviewee:    Then Dean gets a job up here at Glen University that's why we move up here. I'm all committed to -- I'm a psychologist and a Ph.D. I had difficulty finding a job but then I found a job at the VA. There's no real attempt to be Jewish or not at that point or not to be -- there wasn’t an attempt to be not Jewish.

Interviewer:    But you were affiliated within a congregation at that time?

Interviewee:    No. We'd gone to Beth Jacob. 

Interviewer:    Did you do anything at home like celebrate the holidays, the High Holidays or Shabbat?

Interviewee:    Probably but not memorably. [01:05:01] I don't remember. It wasn't that much time between when we moved up here, got our jobs and then we had kids. So, what I remember from kids, but before we had kids, we went to Israel and we spent a year there. I didn't mention it before, but that also was an important part in my sense of being a Jew. My brother worked on a Kibbutz in Israel, and I went and visited him and then I went another time and then when another time. So, I had been to Israel several times. I had also had, through Oakland, there was a exchange, and I made some very good friends and Dean, through the university, both of us have made these two couples who were very good friends who were Israelis.

Interviewer:    But you went there for a year before you had kids?

Interviewee:    Yes. 

Interviewer:    Was it to work?

Interviewee:    It was part of an exchange. So, Dean and I were there and we both taught at Haifa University in Haifa. I taught Women's Studies and Dean taught -- it was a joined position. There, we were there for all the holidays, the whole year of holidays. We had these two really good friends and we went to a lot with them and we went for Passover.

Interviewer:    You they were living that Jewish life.

Interviewee:    Absolutely and amazed by it too. I mean, even from the first visits, my gosh people speak Hebrew here. I thought Hebrew was just Tuesday, Thursday, in your Bar mitzvah. Dean took an [inaudible 01:06:46] so he could speak. At one point he could speak better than me conversationally. Are you standing in front of a sign trying to make out what the Hebrew says and you realize it's a shin, it's Superman. I said, “[Inaudible 01:07:00].” So, you’re using it and you're shopping in the grocery stores. My friends were great and so we would be adopted by them for holidays.

Interviewer:    At that juncture, so you were adults married and everything not really doing a lot but value-wise, you’re now moving there [inaudible 01:07:29].

Interviewee:    It was amazing to be in a place where Jews were the majority, where it was Jews. I [inaudible 01:07:35] wore costumes on [inaudible 01:07:37]. It was just wonderful. It was wonderful and also liked Israel. It's not like it was -- that was when [Sadat? 01:07:50] came to Jerusalem. Was it Sadat who was in --? Yeah, Sadat. So, things were hopeful at that time. They weren't great [inaudible 01:08:02] Sadat --

Interviewer:    But before Yasser Arafat and --?

Interviewee:    I don't know. He was around a long time but he was young at that time. So, this is --

Interviewer:    When it was safe.

Interviewee:    It felt safe. It even feels safe to me now, when I had gone back, there's a freedom there. I mean, it’s like a huge family too. There are kids running around and the country is beautiful and so interesting in the archaeology of the country. Until more recently, I've always loved Israel and now I’m sad like I'm sad for our country. There was nothing religious about that and my friends weren’t religious in the way you might think, but they were Israelis. They're Jews. I'm a Jew. So, it made it stronger that type of Jewish identity and my pride in them and what they had done, their families had done. Then Dean comes and he's not had any Jewish experience, but he learns Hebrew. We were closer to my family than we are to his [inaudible 01:09:27] all close to them, but we always, we go in for the holidays to my family. Then we have kids, we had been to Beth Jacob, and then those first meeting, so we were at the second meeting, and it sounded just like what -- we knew we were going to affiliate not because we felt the need but because we were going to have children and not this is more me. Dean wouldn’t care, but that I wanted place for kids. [01:10:01] Then we started to reinvent the wheel along with the rest of the early family. So, we did everything. The first service, the very first service, it was Dean, me, the Spitzer's and the family that's not here, the [bender binders? 01:10:17]. Susan [Topper? 01:10:21] was in the congregation and Rebecca was born and needed to be named or so we said. So, I did the baby naming. These are things I've never done. I always felt Jewish and I felt a kinship with these other young families where we weren't going to make that… It fit well with me too that contrarian kind of spirit because nobody was in that side of Woodward and we --

Interviewer:    Were like the pioneers defining things to be how you want it to be.

Interviewee:    Yeah, right. If we didn't know how to do it, we'd figure it out. So, we did Passover Seder at one of the reception halls. We made our own [inaudible 01:11:15], just because we could because we didn't like any of the others. I mean, it was reinventing the wheel, but in doing that we made it ours.

Interviewer:    Where you adapted it to you, but you also learned a lot too because you had to look at so many sources to see what you were [inaudible 01:11:34] to be.

Interviewee:    Right. I've never read Torah from my Bat mitzvah, I was slept in and so I was determined to do that that was through the congregation that we want to...

Interviewer:     When did you do that?

Interviewee:    Early on like in the first five years.

Interviewer:    Was that before we had a [rem? 01:11:55] night?

Interviewee:    We had our new as student rabbi. So, every part of the congregation I've been involved with. I was early on with the training, what would be the stipulations for getting being a [inaudible 01:12:14] Bar mitzvah. I remember where I think it was based on the [inaudible 01:12:20], the teachings of the fathers, but it included doing something for others besides prayer. So, we have the --

Interviewer:    Right, the extra projects that the [inaudible 01:12:31] mitzvah kids do each year.

Interviewee:    Yeah. So, that was part of that project. I live in Rochester, which is not a Jewish area. So, that meant when my kids start to go to school, every month was a different Christian holiday or in my mind, they were. I mean, St. Patrick's, is that Christian? Well, Valentine's and Christmas, don't tell me that’s a secular holiday, it's not. We had the holiday wars. I would do these elaborate things about Hanukkah and that was also part of the congregation too. So, it was there, dammit, I'm Jewish, and you're going to reflect that and this is a country that promises freedom of religion. There was that involvement with the community then there was all the rest of life like I was working, kids and stuff. Sure, certainly, Shir Tikvah meant many of my needs in terms of my Jewish identity because it allowed me to appreciate my Judaism, allowed me to feel like a lot of this is about ethics and values. I think I said before that it was then that I started to feel even differently that I'm privileged, that I'm fortunate, that I'm a Jew. I think I'm really fortunate. I mean, I think it's amazing, that I should come from such a long line of people. Also, this is not really a big change for me. I've never been particularly a believer in a God. I've always felt that I'm comfortable with that in our congregation. As it's come more to sort of the renewal of the spiritual, I don't have any objections with anyone having however they feel as long as it's not hurtful. [01:15:02] I mean, if you want to believe in God, that's fine. If you want to relieve in some spirit, that's fine but I don't have to.  That's what's important to me so that we can all be under that tent. I still feel that this team that we built for Shir Tikvah is open to that and we've been fortunate with our rabbis.

Interviewer:    Let me recap on that. 

Interviewee:    Sorry.

Interviewer:    No, it’s was good. It's better to have too much or sometimes too much versus too little. We understand more. I think from last time I summarized basically, you came up north when you were looking --

Interviewer:    In college.

Interviewer:    -- in college looking for more and not the standard role of being a teacher at a specific school because you're starting to challenge the norm and want to think for yourself and have more options, which you certainly have more opportunities when you do go to a big city, where you had all these things more available to be Jewish. You did but didn't. You had ample opportunity to do it your way and see how it feels like when you were painting on your Kippur while you could, it just didn't sit well with you. So, some of your history and background was probably in your head with that. So, [inaudible 01:16:44] growing, always growing, to learn where to go next. 
With your and your husband's family history to find rabbis to perform the marriage because you come from different backgrounds and it might not be kosher enough. That's when you run from orthodox conservative upbringing to open to reform people because they accepted you and allowed you to do the same thing, ended up in Michigan. You go to Israel and having incredible experiences there and seeing Jewish life in every aspect, whether secular, religious, social, and all of these things forms your identity. Then you come here and it's time when you have children. What do you do and what do you carry on and what do you want for them? Obviously, it's been important to, as you said, for your identity, your values, and you've considered it a privilege because it felt like it forms how you see the world and react to it: what's right and wrong. We want the same for your kids to continue on. When things collide together nicely, you have the opportunity to form a new congregation to fit the changing family and based on religion and society in the late 1980s and all and carry it forward. So, well thank you for being a founding member and going on with that. Quick question, once you had children and they were going to Shir Tikvah and being educated and it everything, what kind of background or household did you have there? Were you doing Shabbat dinners regularly with them and Sunday school?
Interviewee:    Yes, but because of the congregation because also this a huge friendship group for us also because everybody had kids, about the same age we went away to [inaudible 01:19:07]. You'd have the same people you'd have Passover with. I had no family here, but there was the same for people doing all the --

Interviewer:    You had [crosstalk 01:19:22]. 

Interviewee:    Yeah, right. Now, they've grown up. We've all grown up, but it was all centered around the kids and the kids having a Jewish environment.

Interviewer:    Let’s get to the whole purpose of why we have this interview and everything. You are the founder and the creator for this Jewish journey. Can you give us a succinct definition of what it is and why this is important to you? [01:20:02]

Interviewee:    Okay. I was a professor at [inaudible 01:20:07] College for 34 years, which is a Catholic college. One wonderful thing about that is I realized that there are people who have very strong different religious beliefs, who are nuns, who were Catholics, but share the same values that I have. I went there thinking, “Here I am a Jew in a Catholic college,” and then coming over the years to understand here I am with a bunch of people who think about things similarly to what you do. That was an important part of my life that we're not going to go into because it's not particularly about being Jewish. But one interest that I had there, as a psychologist was people’s stories, how you can gather oral histories and put them together and look for themes. So, there I had an oral history collection about migrations to Detroit and I also had a subset about civil rights in black women's roles in the Civil Rights demonstration. That turned out to be significant in terms of the history. The migration one, I did that with my [inaudible 01:21:27], and it's still up and it's still running and it's been used for some books about African American migrations. So, that was a very rewarding part of my professional life. About three or four years ago now, I’d retired. I do have the skills as a psychologist in collecting oral histories because I've done it now. So, I wanted to use some of those skills and I like doing it. I was thinking about how some of the things that I've been doing for 34 years will now go into my retirement years. So, I thought, “Well, I'm interested in Jewish religious identity and why not start with Jewish identity because I've been in this congregation for a long time. People know me. It's comfortable. Let me see if I can start a oral history collection for Shir Tikvah.” This would be a retirement time activity. 
It wasn't really about like giving back. I wasn't thinking like that, but I thought it would be an interesting project. So, I first interviewed [inaudible 01:22:47] and then I use the school. So, I just with like little step by step, and then the school didn't really work out. Then I thought, “Okay, let me sort of tell people about it and see if I can get more people to join me because I can't alone collect enough interviews for it to be a collection.” Before I was using the students at the college. So, I did give this talk and out of it, some wonderful people came forward like yourself, Stacy. There were about 10 people, then I was insistent as I am that you have to be trained, that there's a training that's involved in interviewing and I would do that. But people had to come in. So, I got about 10 people. Of this 10, 6 of them completed the training. Then we had we have a core group of four, and now we've done one, a student had done one. I kept saying, “We need to have 25.” I picked the number before we have a collection. So, we were moving towards that and this is the 20 --

Interviewer:    This is a happy 25.

Interviewee:    Thank you. It’s a real milestone. We had 24.

Interviewer:    Now, we can have our service. 

Interviewee:    Terry, when I would say we should tell people more about it. Terry wanted to do it. Now things are different. Things come together. There's quite a bit more work to be done on it, but that's fine. Every step of the way, it's been --

Interviewer:    What's your dream of where this will go?

Interviewee:    I don’t really have a dream of it, but I have an expectation. I want it to be high quality. I know that our interviewers are high quality. I know we have great people to interview, but then when it gets to the site, there's things that it needs to happen index for every one of the interviews. I think that we're close to that.

Speaker 1:    Excuse me, just I'm letting --

Interviewee:    -- this opportunity to be number 25.

Interviewer:    Thank you for your time today, Dena. It was great to learn about your life and the journey that you've taken, opinionated and stubborn as you were to becoming more flexible and continuing on these traditions and always sharing with others. Thank you. 01:25:51