Interview with Morris Kleinman, October 2, 1977

Interviewer:

...Maurice Kleinman. Today is October 2nd, 1977. We would like to begin the questioning, or the line of discussion with, "What was Louisville like when you first came here?" And if you could describe the city and the people and the areas?

Maurice Kleinman:

My parents brought me to Louisville from the east, from New York in the year 1914. Being the product of an eastern European segment of the Jewish people we settled immediately in the then Preston street area. And became affiliated with the orthodox oriented Jewish community at that time.

M.K.:

At the age of 10, I found myself first of all being introduced to a Hebrew school that was newly founded by the Jews who were interested in Jewish learning. There seemed to be a strong recognition of Zionism and the value of Hebrew as a language, living as well as biblical. And the Hebrew school which I attended from 10 to the age of 13 was founded by Rabbi Zarchi and by the learned and informed Jews of this period and area.

M.K.:

The living area of the Jews whom I met was very much like the shtetl which they left behind them in Europe. My father came from the Ukraine and I met some of his relatives who came from a similar background. They were not too learned in secular matters but they had all gone to cheder or to yeshiva and they had all made Yiddish their common tongue, although they may have understood Polish and Russian. They transacted their lives in Yiddish, whether it was in business or in the shul or with each other as tradesmen.

M.K.:

The segment of people that I knew tended to be employees of tailor shops, small merchants like the butcher and the milkman and the baker. Some of them had one thing in common, that they started with a pack on their back and went to peddling in the outskirts of the city. Others were craftsmen, shoemakers, tailors and all of them had one thing in common, they were poor. Even as relates to that period of time. And they tended to re-enact their lives as they did in Europe. They had a common interest in music but it was not popular music. It was the record on a Victrola, principally Hazzanisha pieces.

M.K.:

At that time it was common for every Jew to know the nature of a Hazzan Quartain, of a Hazzan-like cantor-

Interviewer:

Gessler Rosenblatt-

M.K.:

-Rosenblatt, the various coloratura type of singers. And other than that, operatic records. It was very common to have a Caruso or Chaliapin in the records of a Victrola at home.

M.K.:

What was also very common is, almost in every home an effort for a piano. And with it came Jewish music as well as contemporary music. And everybody seemed at that time to me to be performing rather than to be listening. They sang and they played. My first experience in the synagogue was in the choir.

M.K.:

The synagogues were poor. My father belonged to the poorest of the poor. To the then Beth HaMedrash HaGadol. Which later united with B'nai Yankov and became Keneseth Israel in 1928. But until that time, everything about the shul and the shul was the principle life.

M.K.:

There was a YMHA at that time, but it was not generally attended by the Orthodox Jews as such, they couldn't afford to pay dues. The dues in the synagogue were six dollars a year, which included the right to a burial plot. But that being insufficient, they had to make collections. They had to have picnics, they had 6:00to have all kinds of efforts to raise money, including donations. And this went not only for the shul, it was a problem for the Tal Metola, and even the city rabbi, Rabbi Zarchi, who was recognized by all the Synagogues, had to be subsidized by a Kimachi device. Every week the stalwarts of the support would go round collecting enough money to pay him his week's wages. Which in those days was that of a poor working man.

M.K.:

The old way of life was poor, but we didn't know it. We thought we lived very richly, because the Friday night was a special celebration, every holiday was 7:00observed and nobody had a transportation problem. We lived within two blocks of everything. We didn't have to have carriages, there were no cars. The only one who owned a horse was the bread driver and the milkman and possibly the butcher who had to go buy his meat. The Sialkot was on Preston Street and the households were occupied with bringing the chickens to the Sialkot and having to pluck the chicken themselves, most of the homes were observant. And though they may not have been very ardently religious, they observed as a matter of course, purely as a continuum from their European background.

M.K.:

The homes tended to be kosher, because they dealt with each other and the Jewish butcher had only kosher meat. The idea of treif or non kosher, was an abhorrence for that reason. It was not because they had reason to doubt, to be a proper way of life. It was done as a matter of faith. And everything was done as a matter of faith because that's all the poor people had. They had no insurance, so they organized a Chevra Kadisha who buried them. They couldn't go out and buy expensive cemetery lots, so each synagogue had a little plot, even if it was the size of a little farm house.

M.K.:

The life, the community life of the Orthodox element at that time tended to be very small, very narrow, very self contained. Everything was brought from Europe, including practically the ghetto wall. Families tended to stay with each other, children didn't move away when they were married. Marriages were more or less arranged or were matched professionally by a Shadchan. And the community life in the whole was patriarchal type of existence. The influence of the mother was tremendous, but always done in a self effacing manner. The synagogue was 10:00attended, if for no other reason, there was no other place to go.

M.K.:

The Jew of that group was not athletically inclined, he didn't inter-marry, he didn't inter-mingle, he didn't inter-date. So that the social evening was spent by simply walking a door away, or a block away and meeting with someone else sitting out on his doorstep.

M.K.:

The families were pretty much self-contained because they got here by bringing each other over from Europe. They introduced each other to whatever communal life was here, both secular and non-secular.

M.K.:

The sermons in the synagogue were all in Yiddish, interspersed with Hebraic references. And the big advent, the big upheaval perhaps, in our synagogue life, 11:00occurred when we brought "an English speaking Rabbi" into shul for the first time.

M.K.:

He was a Shiva trained man and he was a foreigner, he was a [Compestinian 00:11:35]. His English was a slanted English, but it was done in order to retain the attention of the young generation who could hardly understand the sermons because of their depth, ferocity and their constant referral in Hebrew to 12:00Talmudic terms that the young generation, growing generation didn't really understand.

M.K.:

Our Hebrew education extended to 13, 14 years and while it was a more intensive education than is given today, in the sense that we were taught conversational Hebrew, we were taught the Bible by translating it Yvris for Yvris, so that we had a pretty good knowledge of the language, the alphabet, the meaning of the words and could use it in an archaic sort of form, to put together a translation of another Hebrew sentence.

M.K.:

But we were really not versed deeply and barely skimmed through the Komish and barely touched on the Talmud and the Gemara.

M.K.:

Our lives became interrupted when we entered high school and became interested in all the activities of the outside world at that time offered.

M.K.:

When the two orthodox shuls with which I was familiar, the B'nai Jankov and the Bethsmeda Shagodden merged they built another Synagogue in which the size of place could accommodate both memberships and typically at that time we began to increase our dues as the congregation began to prosper. And as I recall it $24 a year was the standard goal of the synagogue. Not everybody could afford that. 14:00And again we supplemented the synagogue funds, first by taking a mortgage, which was hard to pay. And secondly by running picnics and programs and put on plays and indoor festivities, to raise money to pay off what was then a horrendous debt for us. Something like $100,000.

Interviewer:

This was the structure on Floyd Street?

M.K.:

This Floyd and Jacob Street structure and it became such a burdensome thing, that when the depression hit, we lost the services of the rabbi who had left the place and we took on another English speaking rabbi, and that was the development of a concept of trying to reach the young generation on their own terms.

M.K.:

It was an upheaval when sermons where preached in English, because far into the Jewish speaking community, not all of these Yiddish speaking people had learned enough English to understand the sermon. There was a restlessness. They wanted to hang on to the traditions that they had lived, they wanted their children to be educated, but the children themselves didn't have enough lingual ability to stay within Yiddish and Hebrew. And the young people asked for a more understandable kind of presentation of Yiddishism in the faith.

M.K.:

It became a sort of a schism, between what we called the old generation and the new generation. And the small town, shtetl type of Jew found himself at a loss to master the gap both of age and of language and of custom and of social environment. I think our fathers did a heroic job of keeping us within the bounds of our faith considering the various difficulties that they had to overcome, just to orient themselves to American life. In addition to the difficulty of making a living.

M.K.:

There came a time when the young men could not understand why their entire 17:00families should not sit by their sides in the synagogue and they sought for a compromise with the old ways. A modification of what is known as the Mechitza. And the very, very hardcore of orthodoxy felt that this was a crumbling away of the defenses against differentiation from the old ways. They treated it pretty much as a sort of Hellenistic approach to Judaism and they felt like it was a scheme to change the orthodox shul into a temple and from there to total assimilation.

M.K.:

They resisted any move, even though it was within the terms of authoritative Halakhah, to accept seating on the same floor of the synagogue. The synagogue found itself in a paradoxical situation. In that the biggest attendance of the services were women and they were compelled to go up on the second floor, on a balcony, and look down on a synagogue of men that was becoming thinner and thinner because the men drifted away from Sabbath observance. The synagogue found that it could rely more on the women to maintain, not only their attendance, but the attendance of the children. So they called on the Rabbinate to alleviate the difference, so that they should have a sense of gathering 19:00together, of praying together, of being together and observing together. And within the bounds of orthodox Halakhah.

M.K.:

The idea of a Mechitza was broached within our synagogue. Authorities was consulted at that time as to what would constitute a proper Mechitza and even the consultation was denied by those people who felt that this was an infringement of their basic, traditional lives. That caused upheaval and schism developed and there was a separation of membership from that synagogue, which went in two ways.

M.K.:

Part of our members went to the conservative movement. Another part went to another orthodox movement which maintained a different kind of separation or 20:00Mechitza and on the technicality of how the people should be seated, aside from mixed seating, the synagogue had a critical period and it developed the leaving of one Rabbi, the coming of another. The leaving of that Rabbi, the coming of another. But it was as if the assimilatory influences of an American society were trying to break open some of the traditional, spiritual ghettos, mental ghettos as well as physical ghettos and re-organize Jewish living.

M.K.:

I found myself, here in Louisville, confronted with people of goodwill who could not or would not understand the need for "change". Not in beliefs, not in basic religious concept. Certainly not in Yiddish-kite, but in the ability to co-habit and to co-relate with variations of opinion. In spite of the fact that everything that they had studied, Talmudicly in their schoolings and under the the Rabbis who lectured them, it was always presented with the opposing opinions of various schools of thought. Whether it was Hillel or Shammai or any of the 22:00other great authorities in Judaism. Talmud being full of differences of opinion, more so than unanimously of opinion, did not seem to have a reasoning effect on people who knew only the immediate narrow concepts of their own lives. And were afraid of losing their children.

M.K.:

This is my introduction to the small segment. Certainly not to the whole city of Louisville. To the small segment of traditional Jews who came from east Europe and had to scratch out a living from the very bottom up. Peddlers, artisans, craftsmen, tailors, shoe makers. [melanden, schuchtern 00:23:00] rabbis, hazzanen.

M.K.:

They had a great feeling, even those Jews who didn't observe well. They had a great feeling for Yiddish-kite, and as poor as the synagogues were, they didn't hesitate to spend thousands of dollars for the importation of a well known cantor to preside over the High Holidays. They maintained a choir, which was not volunteered. They paid a choir and it measured in terms of thousands of dollars, in order to have a beautiful synagogue service.

M.K.:

All of them wanted to retain the form of their spirit. Not all of them wanted to observe the forms, even though they retained the spirit. So that a good percentage of the young generation of the early part of the century. Dating from 24:00what I met here in 1910 and going up into the depression period of the 30s, was very much enthused about expressing themselves artistically, expressing themselves in the presentation of their holidays, of their Synagogue service. And they embellished the home with music. They sang the Psalms and they patronized Jewish artists that came to the city. Whether they were cantors, like Rosenblatt and others.

Interviewer:

Rosenblatt came here?

M.K.:

One time. They imported various artistic men from the theater, from a comedian like Menachem [inaudible 00:25:03], Skolnick, Menachem Skolnick and other, I 25:00think Schwartz came here one time from the Yiddish theater. And they would go to other cities to attend Jewish concerts, Jewish theater. They bought Yiddish records, not necessarily synagogue records, they bought the Jewish comedian and the Jewish singer and the tear jerking records. They had in their homes, everything from Jewish opera to Jewish comedy. And the homes were always utilized in the evening for inter family communication. For get togethers that included singing, chanting and story telling.

M.K.:

It was a transformation and the Yiddish little town, whether it was Vilna, Ravnec, Tyczyn or any of the other small communities and the larger communities. And they were represented by their own dialects in Yiddish. They had their segmentation. A Lithuanian was something apart from a Ludwach. A Ludwach was something apart from a Romanian and all of these were certainly apart from the German Jew. And the same differences that existed in Europe between the Haskalah 27:00movement and Hasidic movement translated itself here in Louisville.

M.K.:

In a diminishing sort of way, it wasn't quite perhaps as ardent a manifestation, but it was very, very Jewish from the olive base to the way the housewives baked and kept the house. [Audio interrupted 00:27:30]

M.K.:

The synagogues, which are the Anshei Sfard, the then existing Beth HaMedrash HaGodol and B'nai Yankov shul, the four orthodox groups.

M.K.:

The congregations were too poor for each of them support a rabbi at the beginning when they first got started. So they used a common rabbi who was the 28:00city Rabbi, at that time when I came to Louisville, it was Rabbi Zarchi, who alternated his services for the various synagogues on the holiday occasions. And also served the entire community when matters of religious importance came up.

M.K.:

He served not only at weddings and other occasions, but in those days, the rabbi was consulted on many questions, other than religious questions. They were questions of course of conscious and of Halakhah and so forth. But firstly he was a scholarly man, he had a Hebraisch Haus, which was a group of Jews who had enough learning to sit with the rabbi and study a little Gemara or Talmud as the 29:00the case may be. And Rabbi Zarchi served a very dignified and very erudite person. But spoke no English. He served the Jewish speaking... the Yiddish speaking community. He was called the city Rabbi and he served that way.

M.K.:

As the orthodox synagogues grew and each one felt the need for having congregational, religious leadership, that they could fall back on without having to split the services of the rabbi. Each began to hire and retain a rabbi of their own.

M.K.:

The city Rabbi still served as the head of the Vada Koshrut, he still served as the founder and head of Tamatorah, the religious head and he still served for 30:00anything that resembled a Din Torah or a judgment relating to marital affairs, the granting of a divorce and the other Jewish problems that required the judgment of the rabbi.

M.K.:

It was common in those days for a Shagetz or a woman to bring the rabbi chicken to determine whether the chicken was trade or not trade. Whether the utensils that were used had been properly koshered and all of this was done practically in the rabbis house. His parlor was the counseling room for that part of the community which used him.

M.K.:

It was only in the latter years, beginning with the end of World War I, that 31:00every synagogue had it's own rabbi. This was not always true about Guldastahin which was a rather small congregation and used a rabbi intermittently for holiday occasions and for special services. The Shilkrat of the city was also the Mohel who was used for circumcisions and the rabbi acted as a Mashgyekh over the butchers shops, over the shape of it, over the-

Interviewer:

Is this Rabbi Zarchi?

M.K.:

Pardon me?

Interviewer:

Is this Rabbi Zarchi?

M.K.:

Rabbi Zarchi or someone whom he designated, who would be a competent person to supervise. He tended to stay in his own quarters and depend on a Mashgyekh for 32:00those functional duties which required a lot of time and which he couldn't spread himself out on.

M.K.:

But everybody relied on him as the orthodox City Rabbi. The head of the orthodox community. He was a very erudite and very revered person and he lived very close to his religious functions. He did identify with the young people, he had a love for children and it was realized in his founding of the wonderful Hebrew school in his day.

M.K.:

But it was not merely the difference in age which separated him from the younger 33:00generation, it was the entire complexity of a difference of language, customs, environment and the whole communal living was a non synagogue oriented life. Everybody observed the holidays, everybody venerated the customs and then went out into a non-Jewish life, many of them, to make a living. And it was hard to reconcile the difference between a complying ghetto like physical and mental attitude with the American way of life, which these immigrant peoples had to 34:00become a part of.

M.K.:

They managed to present a dual face, to meet the outside world in its American manner and come home and live an intensely Jewish life in a Yiddish manner. Their children found it more difficult. In the twenties the children began to go away for schooling rather than remain in the city for secular schooling.

M.K.:

Even in the case of those few children who went to a Yeshiva, to do so they had to leave home. The gap that existed between the parent generation and the new American generation was not merely one of age, it was not merely the mentality between young and old. It was also the difference between a very European kind 35:00of approach to life, to living, to customs, to food, to shelter, to clothing, to style. As compared to the American system which these children were born to.

M.K.:

This was the conflict within a conflict. Not necessarily open, not necessarily hostile. The conflict was not imposed by the people who felt it. It was imposed by the environment in which they were born and in which they found themselves.

M.K.:

Some of the orthodox settlement could try to dress themselves mentally and physically and bodily in the American style, others persisted in what was then a very marked difference. Like maintaining of a beard, the maintaining of the wearing of Tzitzis, the constant observance of carrying the head covering, the attendance of prayer meetings in the mornings, the services and even in the home. Or simply attending synagogue as a believer, rather than a participant.

M.K.:

These differences didn't happen in one day or one week or one month. They grew as the young generation grew. And it was hard for me to look back and recognize 37:00my synagogue as the one in which I was first affiliated as a member of the choir and as a member of the congregation as I grew older. I find the Jews to be the same, their appearance is different, their way of life is different. It seems that it's an inevitable kind of difference, but nothing else, than the manner in which it finds expression.

M.K.:

Our children are not as exposed today to the Yiddish-kite of the previous generations. On the other hand there is a much greater cognition of the Hebraic 38:00quality of Jewish life and this has to be attributable to the establishment of the Jewish state.

M.K.:

Our children today are perhaps more Israelite than Yiddish. They are more Hebrew than Jewish and they are more Zionistically oriented than-

Interviewer:

[inaudible 00:38:36]

M.K.:

No, they are Synagogue oriented but they are more Zionistically oriented than traditionally oriented.

Interviewer:

If you don't mind I'd like to go back to the Vada Koshrut, if you could go into that.

M.K.:

The Vada Koshrut was composed of the observing Jews who supervised Koshrut. 39:00Because the community organization which ensured that there would be kosher meat, kosher chicken, kosher killing, that a Shohet would be supported and who set the fees for Koshrut. Both for the slaughtering of animals and for the killing of chickens and there was no other organization to pay for a Shohet's salary or his quarters. There was no other organization to arrange for a slaughter house, to set aside a portion of the slaughter house for Jewish killing.

M.K.:

And in a small city like Louisville the slaughtering of kosher animals was a great problem in those days because it was a costly experiment for the slaughterhouse that was not a kosher slaughter house. The problem was always 40:00that not only was there a fee for slaughtering but the slaughter house used to pay their own employees. But the manner of killing was such that a Shohet found himself killing much more kosher meat than the city could possibly use. Simply because there was only one kosher liver to a calf, but there could be requirements for 10 kosher livers in a certain butcher shop. So the Shohet had kill 10 calves in order to provide 10 livers. Even though the rest of the calves were not consumed.

M.K.:

This was expensive in many ways. It meant that not only the hind quarters, but many fore quarters of animals were sold to non kosher butchers. Who wouldn't pay for Koshrut, who wouldn't pay for the fee of killing the kosher. In fact there was a deterioration of the skins, the hides of cows, of cattle which were killed 41:00kosher, because the slaughtering by the neck spoiled some of the leather. It meant that the skin was not used as an entire skin. It couldn't be used as a totally whole skin. It was, in a sense, damaged.

M.K.:

There was also the question of getting in the way of regular production. There had to be the kosher supervision, had to be under the auspices of a Mashgiach, who would make certain that no non kosher meat would enter into it, which would not be true in an entirely kosher establishment. So the Vada Kashrut was a group of volunteer participants, pretty much as the Havekedisha was volunteer, they never were paid for their services. And they supervised, first of all the 42:00collection of funds. They eventually did it by putting a poundage tax on all kosher meats that were stamped kosher by the Schilkrat. And this butcher paid for the slaughtering and the koshering of the meat and passed it on to the consumer. And that accounted for a difference in price between kosher meat and non-kosher meat.

M.K.:

And since it was imposed on a very poor community because the non-orthodox element of Jews would be less apt to use the Jewish butcher. The Temple tended to stay away from the use of the Jewish butcher, although there was no, it was not absolute, there was no prohibition against it, but many of the Temple members felt no need for observing Kashrut in the first place.

M.K.:

This also had a fencing in effect of the communal life of the Orthodox Jewish community. The same Vada Kashrut that preserved Kashrut, was the organization that went around and collected weekly for the Rabbi's salary. And it may seem today like a very undignified way to support a Rabbi, to go from door to door and ask for the Rabbi's stipend to be subsidized, but in those days it was considered a Mitzvah. And it was one of the peculiar things that I found. as compared to modern day, in the Jewish community. It was very simplified and perhaps under organization, as compared to a highly organization community today.

M.K.:

When a charity had to be done, it was done on a personal basis. If there was a family in need, we went from door to door and collected money for that family. The donors didn't always know who the donees were. But they knew that they were helping out for a cause, for a case of sickness or death, or even to help marry off a poor child. Certainly to subsidize the Talmud Torah for a child that could afford to pay tuition. And even membership in the Synagogue was not dependent on dues, and people who couldn't afford to pay dues, didn't pay dues. But they were still members of the synagogue. So charity was very personalized in that day. And it was only crystallized in organizational form with the entrance of America 45:00and perhaps two, three years before that, into World War I.

M.K.:

Then the overseas demands for charity, the Ṣadaqa that had to be sent to Europe for orphans and for widows and for the wounded and the maimed, they were called Mehannukah bonds. And that constituted a collective, charitable effort which embraced all the Jews of the community of all the various synagogues. And this led to the Federation of Charities which began to consolidate all the efforts of charity and took away the personal involvement on a one to one basis 46:00of charity.

M.K.:

Perhaps the beginning of charitable cohesive efforts began with Zionism. With the Jewish National Front, with the establishment of a fund for the purchase of land and the reforestation of Israel. Then known as Palestine. The existence of charity, I found here, and I've always been aware of, going back into the history of my family, as it was told to me. And Ṣadaqa was a very common exercise in Jewish life, and I'm sure all over, and I found it here.

M.K.:

If a poor family didn't have, for Friday night or for Sabbath night, if the 47:00didn't have Matzo or they didn't have a Challah, the neighbors who knew it, provided it. Many of them had to bake it themselves, because they didn't have the money to go out and buy a Challah, so part of their baking constituted charity.

M.K.:

There were some people, women especially who were involved in this personal bringing of support to the very poor and to the afflicted as a weekly effort, actually, physically carrying a basket of food from door to door to the needy. These were particularly unusual sect of women, there were a handful of them, but they would go on the then known Haymarket, and everybody knew that they were alone. That they were baking and cooking and making meals for sick people and 48:00for poor people. The merchants would give them food either in at a nominal cost or outright and they would prepare the Challahs each week, and I can enumerate a number of them, but it was not to feed just one family. It was called Ṣadaqa in the personal sense. But at the same time in every Jewish home I saw a little blue box where a penny was dropped in or a nickel was dropped in to express a sense of charity and to expiate for someone getting well, and to contribute to the building of Israel.

M.K.:

There were hospital funds that were also supported. I found a Jewish hospital here which was maintained and supported, not only by Orthodox Jews, but the 49:00gentile community. But other than that, the community tended to be a personally developed and personally conducted livelihood and living experiment. It was not generally organized on a professional basis.

M.K.:

The organizational work was done very much by the original migrators to the city. It began with a Young People's Hebrew Association. It began with a Jewish hospital. It began with a B'nai group and these were the extraneous forms of 50:00community living. In the orthodox element of the city, community collaboration began primarily with World War I as I saw it, in Louisville.

M.K.:

It tended to take away from the Synagogue eventually the social life of the orthodox community and co-mingle it with the conservative and reform movement in a community center. And it tended to de-intensify what was considered social life among Orthodox Jews.

M.K.:

Whether it be attending dances as compared to a synagogue picnic. Going on trips 51:00and engaging in athletic sports, because there was now a center in which that could be done. But I think that the original Jewish settler of the poor orthodox division of Jews didn't miss the community life. He had a full life, but he had it in the synagogue. The Synagogue was his center, and that's why the way of life was so concentrated in various types of servants and of conformity to tradition. The basics were all the same.

M.K.:

They had one thing in common, a tremendous sense of responsibility for each 52:00other. Jews tended not to apply for charity to community charities, they tended to take care of their own to the best of their poor abilities. So if we didn't have an old people's home, it was unheard of for a mother or a father not to be housed with their children.

M.K.:

If the hospital wasn't available to them, the bedroom became the hospital and the doctor made house calls. Or the primitive things that they knew to apply, were used for helping the sick.

Interviewer:

I want to eject right here, because we're nearing the end of the tape at this side.

Interviewer:

Getting back to the Federation and the de-personalization of Jewish charity with 53:00the advent of World War I, I'm wondering along these lines, you say the center began to... or the YMHA began to supplant the synagogue as the center of activities. When did this concept of a whole Jewish community, as opposed to the Orthodox Jewish and the Reform Jewish and the Conservative Jewish community begin. When did it begin to be a whole Jewish community?

M.K.:

This was the coalescence of segments. Probably started with Word War I in this sense. Until then, the German Jew found the Orthodox Jew rather alien. The 54:00Orthodox Jew found the German Jew rather supercilious. Because the German Jew came to America a generation earlier, it's more than a generation. He tended to be the more affluent part of the community. He had already become Americanized, he had acquired substance and to him the Orthodox Jew was a re-intrusion into the American scene of a standard of life and an occupational thrust that he was removed from by several generations. He had no immediate recollection of his forefathers coming down the Ohio River from Philadelphia by way of the Gretz family, by way of the various institutes that sent dealers down to deal with the 55:00Indians, and he was already evolved from the posture of a newcomer. He was settled, he felt he had roots here.

M.K.:

The Orthodox Jew came in as the peddler again. A sort of a re-institution of poor origin. A reminder that Jews were wanderers and poor people, as the western world knew it in the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s.

M.K.:

Also the German Jew had begun to establish himself as part of the establishment here in America. He had already proven that he didn't have horns and that he was 56:00to be trusted and he was to be understood. And he brought with him a measure of culture into the American scene.

M.K.:

The Russian Jew, the Ukrainian Jew, the Romanian, the Austrian, the Hungarian and the Polish Jew had to first prove that. And he didn't prove it immediately because he was engaged. First of all with the critical thing, like making a living. He proved it by sending his children to a school in which they served to be bright and attentive and hard working and tended to excel by dint of hard work and because of the tremendous urge of Jews to educate their children.

M.K.:

This difference of approach, this difference of time lag, between the German 57:00immigration and the Eastern European immigration made us alien, in appearance and in tongue, in habit, in custom, in style and in work approach to the German Jew, who considered himself as much Germanic as Jewish.

M.K.:

It took an upheaval like World War I to reconcile those differences. Because it then became critically true and apparent that a Jew was a Jew. If not in his own eyes, if he found a difference with his Jewish neighbor, the Gentile world didn't. And whether he was a German Jew or a Russian Jew, anything which was for 58:00or against him acted in the same degree.

M.K.:

The common purpose which evolved from World War I, beginning with the efforts of Hertzl, Hein Weissman and others to establish the political existence of a Jewish people, this was acceptable by all Orthodox Jews and by most, and I emphasize most, because there were many Reform Jews who could not see the need or the desirability for establishing a political entity that was all Jewish. They feared it, because the felt they were already well established.

M.K.:

With the drive towards a common purpose and the establishment of the homeland, 59:00for the first time, German Jews, Russian Jews, Jews of all national origin did have a common purpose. Once the purpose was common then it became a little more Kosher for an Orthodox boy to date a Reform girl, and vice versa. It wasn't very swallow-able. It was a little hard to take for many people on both sides. But they then began to co-mingle and to co-marry. And to live together with a greater measure of understanding of each other and of tolerance for each other.

M.K.:

Until then each of these groups operated and functioned and tried to sustain 60:00themselves separately. Each was afraid that the other would acquire what they didn't like in the other side. The apparent difference of this developed during World War has been wiped away by an erosion on both sides. The Reformed Jew began to find the Orthodox Jew acceptable in his social circle, which was not always true. The Orthodox Jew began to feel that perhaps the Reformed Jew was not the antithesis of what he stood for. And there has been a homogenization in the last 40 years which began with World War I and was culminated with World War 61:00II. Certainly became very, very prevalent. Beginning with the establishment of the State of Israel. Very few Reformed Jews today feel that there is no need for a State of Israel. Many of them felt that before World War I. Perhaps most of them. This includes even the Reform Rabbis. Which is not true today.

M.K.:

The period in which I lived in Louisville saw this upheaval and change and development of an inter-sect acceptance which has come about with the third 62:00generation from the beginning of the century. I have lived the last 60 years, 65 years during this change and looking back at it, I would say that the forces of assimilation, would probably have affected all types of Judaism in relation to the gentile world, if they didn't have these differences amongst themselves with which to assimilate.

M.K.:

There is, I believe, in Louisville, less inter-faith assimilation, although I am aware of the inter-marriages that have occurred. For the fact that there was an 63:00assimilating process going on between Orthodox and Unorthodox Jews. It was a question of going with Jacob or going with Esau. And Esau was still a cousin. The Jews of Louisville today, as I see them, meet with each other with less embarrassment and less doubt and less, certainly less hostility, for the fact that this stringent kind of judgment has stopped to a great between all fragments of the Jewish population.

M.K.:

I think our judgments are no longer as related to country of origin. The 64:00Orthodox group tended to question where a person came from.

Interviewer:

[Foreign language 01:04:08]

M.K.:

Yes. And we had a judgment and this judgment was a stereotype just like the gentile world has stereotyped the Jew. It was stereotyped by characteristics. Which were of course superficial and based on mannerisms more than anything else.

M.K.:

The German Jew was stiff necked and very bigoted and very narrow and very snobby. The Russian Jew was not refined, he was not cultured, he was not learned. The Polish Jew was very sharp, very hard to deal with and used his 65:00learning to take advantage. The Litsiana Jew was a peasant. The Lithuanian Jew was member of the Hasstollah movement, he was a narrow [Yishidnic 01:05:28]. The Ukrainian Jew could be a Hossid, or a Meshnagit. These were the various typification which took place which were pure stereotypes. Certainly not established by any studies or profound... we had these designations, if he is a Sephardic Jew, then a Ashkenazi Jew can't deal with him. If he was a German Jew, 66:00he wouldn't have anything to do with you.

M.K.:

All these various narrow differentiations seem to have been blurred and I think in that sense the melting pot did take place in Louisville in the last 60 years.

Interviewer:

And you think that is possibly around World War I... between World War I and World War II when the YMHA became more of a communally organization as opposed to most for the German Jew.

M.K.:

Yes, actually the difference was when the community center made more of its communal life than an athletic association. It really started out as a Jewish 67:00athletic organization. And it satisfied the need of the young Jew who gathered together for, even, intramural sports. Body development and some of the arts and some of the crafts. But as the Orthodox Jew was invited in, the community center began to function as a community Jewish project which embraced much more than just athletics. I think that the role of athletics became less dominant, and that the role of social activities, arts, crafts, social gatherings and the use of a common place for meeting, which took over much of the activities of the synagogue and the congregation.