That's true. There wasn't really a Jewish neighborhood. There weren't that many Jewish kids my age. My year particularly had very few Jewish, uh, students. I think in my class out of high school, between the two high schools that had Jewish kids in them. There were probably only five in my class. My year was particularly small, but um. There were um, and there weren't any Jewish institutions by that. Jewish butcher shops for the, the people who still kept kosher in the in the 50s, when I was really a little boy prior to bar mitzvah and things like that, my my grandmother, with whom we lived. My father passed away when I was six. And so my and and my grandmother always lived with us. Uh, my household was kosher, so the kosher meat would come in from Seattle on the bus, and the Seattle was about 30 miles away. And the the butcher shop was kosher meats. And sometimes my, uh, my mother and grandmother and we'd make the trip to Seattle to pick up kosher meat and then go to Brenner Brothers Bakery to pick up kosher bread or Jewish bread, Jewish rye and things like that with all on on Cherry Street. But anyway, those were big trips. But when that wasn't practical, which was most of the time the they my mother would call Barron's and they'd put the meat on on the bus. And it wasn't just for my, my mother and grandmother that the meat would be shipped. My mother would pick up the bus, the the meat at the bus station and deliver it to the other, uh, which at that time seemed elderly people who were still keeping kosher, uh, who were included on the shipment. Uh, I, of course, am now older than all those people were at that time. But when I was I'm recalling this. They seemed old at that time, and all those people lived within close proximity to us. There was Mrs. Sam Cohn and Mrs. Sarah Grindley, and sometimes there'd be meat for Mrs.. Sarah Tony. These were all people. I'm just mentioning a few who had been friends of my grandmother and my mother, because my mother was so good to my grandmother's friends, um, their entire lives. Um, and among my, my boyhood memories is my grandmother talking to, for example, Mrs. Cohn every day. Uh, I like to recall the story that my grandmother would talk to Mrs. Cohn every day for about 55 years, and it was such a formal generation, Eleanora. Um, they'd always refer to each other by Mrs.. They never called up each other and said, Goldie or Lena, it was Mrs.. Cohn and Mrs. Rothman. It was. The times were so different in that regard. no one called each other by their first name. It was by Mrs. Cohn and Mrs. Stone. Mrs. Rothman there. It's funny what? You remember it that way. Uh, it was a very formal generation. I don't know why that's coming out now, but that's the way it was. And of course, the phone was something that was plugged into the wall. The idea of the technology that we have today was straight out of Flash Gordon. Anyway, so those people I'm speaking of now live very close to us by that, within a mile of where we lived. Uh, we were in a much older part of the city than where Debbie grew up. She lived in a much newer part of Tacoma. Those houses were built much later. Okay. Um, I in terms of my childhood, I'd like to build up, mention a couple of things. The, uh, I attended the public schools, And I want to talk about Jewish education and how the Sinai Temple was so important in my life. Because life was done by walking for me and the car wasn't dominant at the shul, there was something called junior congregation, and probably from the time I was eight years old or so, I had already started Hebrew school. Certainly there was a thing called Junior congregation Saturday morning at 9:00, and I would go regularly to that frequently. I also attended Friday night services with my mother, but on Saturday morning I actually look forward to junior congregation and I'd walk down J Street, like I say, past the Reform synagogue and then cross Division Avenue all by myself, and walk then them down to the shore. This walk probably didn't take any more than ten, ten, 12 minutes. Uh, I'd walk in about 9:00, uh, with the other kids, and there couldn't have been more than 8 or 10 of us. And the minion of the Orthodox merchants or men would be rushing out, having completed the service right at 9:00. And again, now I'm older than these men all were at that time, and they were men. Uh, and but they'd be finishing their evening and they would lead, uh, walk out of the, the minyan at 9:00 and they'd, they'd leave and go down to their stores and open them up on Shabbos morning to do business on Saturday. Uh, but that was what I saw. There was a lot to describe regarding Tacoma. And that's one of your questions as a community and a downtown. None of which exists in real life right now. And I've had trouble describing this to my family. But at that time, there were all kinds of Jewish merchants and pawnbrokers all doing business in downtown Tacoma. And if they weren't davening together Saturday morning during the week, as my late uncle SIG Friedman would have told me, they might have been having breakfast together at Mannings on 11th between Commerce and Broadway, and they'd all have breakfast together, or many of them would dive in together, and then they'd go open their stores and be competitors. But as Uncle SIG said, there was plenty of business for everybody. And it was amazing to me that these people, uh, for example, if you if you walked into my uncle's store and they didn't have the merchandise that you wanted. They'd refer you to the competitor that they knew would have the merchandise that you wanted. It was a really interesting community, not just of businessmen, but of friends as well. I may be glorifying this a bit, but I don't think I'm glorifying it very much. They actually did business that way, and because they were either the children themselves or they were the landsmen who had come from the old company, old country and established these, these businesses. I benefited from this because I worked for Jewish people as I grew up. My first real job was working for Morley Brotman, who had the photographic concession at the Seattle World's Fair. And I was 14 years old, and I, I asked him if I could get a job working at the Seattle World's Fair. Nobody thought I'd really keep the job. And my grandmother's great niece, Molly Lambkin Cohen. Who lived in Seattle, said she'd put me up all of this sort of tongue in cheek because no one thought I'd really get through the work. Anyway, I did it, and I had this fabulous summer in 1962, working for Morley Brotman at the Seattle World's Fair. It continued on in high school, where I worked for his photographic studio on Pacific Avenue. I also worked in high school for what was then called the Value Mart. In the heyday of the discount department store, the Value Mart was owned by Weisfield's. Um, all these Jewish connections were really important. The community took care of its members in the sense that, um, I don't think I ever paid full retail for clothing prior to going off to college. Um, you'd go into a clothing store owned by a Jewish merchant and you'd always get a discount. These are the things that weren't part of me written down. But that's the way it was. The there was professional courtesy among the medical and dental people. I don't know whether that was because my late father had been a dentist, but I think it was more because we were Jewish. Uh, so it was it. I don't think I'm hallucinating all this. It it really was close knit. Okay. And what? the audio won't show is that you're actually smiling. Okay. Everything in Tacoma wasn't ideal, though. As I mentioned before, we started turning on the tape. There was the smelter. Asarco had smelter. And when I think of memories I had from where I lived in Tacoma, there wasn't there were many, many summer days that I remember that smell from the smelter and the. The taste it would put in my throat. I verily remember the the sulfur smell in my in my throat and we lived three, four miles. But when those westerly winds would come in, that Asarco smelter was was toxic. And needless to say, it's a good thing that that is gone. Um. Uh. Tacoma was a community that had a downtown. That was where the business was. I'm talking about the Tacoma before the mall. The mall opened when I was in high school and changed everything in the course of three, 4 or 5 years. But everything was downtown. All the retail was downtown. It was a world of daytime shopping. Not nighttime shopping, except perhaps Monday nights and maybe Monday and Friday nights before Christmas. Um. That's a different world from what we have today. Um. I guess I'd like to talk a little bit about my family's involvement with the shul. As I mentioned, I can't remember because I wasn't born. My my grandfather's, uh, work for it. That's history. That's something that that we can write about. What I can talk about is my grandmother's work for the shul, because she lived with us. And I like to tell the story that I grew up with a basement filled with rummage and. And if there's anything I remember from my my youth is that my grandmother would solicit rummage for the Sinai Temple rummage sale. Uh, one of my favorite stories is the advantage of soliciting rummage in a world before there was technology. Uh, that to with the, uh, the phone answering machine. Uh, my my grandmother, for whom English, of course, was a second language, Yiddish being the first and whose English was not perfect, but certainly sufficient, uh, Us would not take no for an answer, for an answer from a merchant from whom she had decided to get rummage for the Sinai Temple rummage sale, or earlier the rummage sale. So if the merchant who had tried to put her off by saying that he or she would call her back, hadn't called her back, she would call the merchant up and say, oh, you know, I was out in the yard hanging up the laundry, and I missed the phone, and I assumed that it was you calling me back with your donation for the Sinai Temple rummage sale. I heard that phone call numerous times when I was a little boy. I was horrified by the white lie. But, you know, in the course of these Sinai rummage sale, those were the values I learned. Um, anyway, um, she was not alone in raising her collecting rights for the Sinai rummage sale. She did not drive. She was from a generation of women that did not learn to drive. Uh, and uh, other synagogue members or shul members would come by to come with her, to go to the merchants, to try and and get the, uh, get the donations necessary. Obviously, all of this did not work because by by 1960, there weren't there. It was impossible to keep the shul going. It was impossible to keep Beth Israel going. And the merger took place. And you've heard, I understand from from Debbie Rosenthal. Calderon and about the the magic that her father, the our late beloved Rabbi Shalom Richard Rosenthal did in getting people like my grandmother, uh, who for whom the thought of belonging to a congregation affiliated with Reform Judaism was just anathema to get her to love. Richard Rosenthal was just an amazing, amazing achievement. Um, because he was such an amazing man and, um, he was the only person on, on this earth who could have pulled that off, and he did it. So, uh, I spoke about that at the 50th anniversary of temple Beth-El, um, about the great unification that he did. And, uh, I will reiterate that today. That was just an amazing, amazing achievement. Wholly, wholly dependent on Rabbi Richard Rosenthal. Um. I don't know what am I missing? I'm going to pause it for a second.
