Clare Blatt
Clare Blatt was born in 1902 to Austrian Jewish parents who had lived for about seven years in Romania before emigrating. Her father, Jacob Shachman, a skilled cabinet maker, came to America first, in 1902, drawn by circulars distributed by the railroad extolling opportunities in Texas and the promise of work. Her mother, an educated and fastidious woman who read Hebrew and spoke German and French, followed in January 1903, bringing the infant Clare, an older son, and two of her husband's nephews. Clare recalled her mother's proud refusal to accept charity, her resourcefulness with money, and her devotion to a gracious household despite modest means.
The Shachman family settled first in North Dallas on Caroline Street and later moved to South Dallas near the Cedars, living on Gould Street. Within about five years of arriving, they owned their own home, where Clare's youngest brother was born. Her father built houses, including two on a single lot, and was known for creative work. Clare remembered her mother as a guardian angel to struggling neighbors, taking in a deserted family, helping the poor and the newly arrived, and hosting a roomer, Mr. Sussman, as many immigrant families then did for men who had come ahead of their families.
Clare's family was central to early Orthodox worship in Dallas. Their home hosted the organizing celebration of a congregation, first called the First Romanian Austrian Congregation, around 1907 or 1908, with dancing, stuffed cabbage, and her mother's famed tissue-paper strudel. When a small frame shul was built on Alamo Street, her father built the pews and applied a Star of David to each end. She and her family walked great distances to services and observed holidays with great effort, especially Passover. Clare married Ben Blatt in 1924. Her sister-in-law, Annie Carman, together with Harry Siegel, helped organize the Dallas Hebrew School, and Clare shared vivid recollections of butcher Mr. Byers, Rabbi Gold, and many other community figures.
Full Transcript
December the 15th 1982 and we are talking with Mrs. Ben Blatt Now you're going to tell us about the establishment of the shul, which shul? It was called, I don't know what they, I don't know whether I don't remember it being called Anshisvar That was after I had no connection with it at all as far as my parents, I guess, were going. I think then it became the Anche Slard. But it was organized in our home on Caroline Street in North Dallas. And there was such dancing and such celebration and such joy. My mother made a huge, huge pot, which was as big as a washtub.
Washtubs are no longer seen. Nobody knows what a washtub is. She called them hollishkiss. It was stuffed cabbage. And there was beautiful strudel. My mother was noted for her strudel. We called it tissue paper strudel because the dough was that phyllo dough that was as white and as transparent as tissue paper. And there was such dancing and joy. And I remember Michael Kaufman, who was a brother of Charlie Kaufman, with his long beard. and he was dancing and trying to reach the light fixture. It was a very beautiful light fixture that consisted of a card hanging down with a globe at the end of it.
It was not Irish water for sure, and I remember that. And then when they built the little shul on Alamo Street, and it was a frame shill and my father's contribution was the pews and I as a child remember watching him build it and he put out of molding on each end a Morgan Dovid he applied that And when we built the home that we live in presently I went up Midway Road because the brick man told me there was a home there that had the same type of brick that I was thinking about using. He said, you go up there and see that. It was on Cockrell Chapel.
And as I came up on the patio, I saw a pew that looked very familiar. And it belonged to some people that I knew who they were. I knew the man. He was Jewish. His wife was not. and I was just stunned when I saw it. And I said, I know this. And she said, oh, it came from a little old shul up on Alamo Street across from where my husband lived. And I said, I know it very well. My father made this. About what year was the shul organized? About 19, I would say the latter part of 1907 or 1908. My brother was an infant and he was born in November 1907 and he was still an infant.
So it probably was a little later than that. It was probably early in 1908. and it was called the First Romanian Austrian Congregation. There were a lot of Romanian people that came here at that time. Probably they had seen these posters inviting people and extolling the wealth of Texas. and that was distributed by the TMP Railway. At that time, Jay Gould was the president of the line and they wanted this populated here And so evidently those people came here and there were a lot of those people and also Austrians and then a little later that some people I've heard them call it are particularly the members of that family Kaufman Shull was the whole family were they all members of that show yes yes was it an extensive family oh well mr.
Kaufman had quite a number of sons and one daughter and then he had a brother and he had a lot of daughters and I guess when they married they all became and then I I remember there was someone, a family by the name of Abrams, that my mother came here to this country from. They left together on the same ship. My people were Austrian. They were from Austria. But they moved to Romania and lived there. My mother lived there about seven years. My father came the year before she did, and my mother did not like it. The Romanian Jews were very deprived, and they were not educated, and they were very anti-Semitic there.
and mostly the people were ignorant. The Romanian women that came here did not know how to daven. My mother was educated and when she went to Shul, she brought her sitters from Europe and she davened. But these other people were not. They did not have the opportunity to be educated there and they were not educated and my mother could not stand it there In fact she never learned the Romanian language She just did not enjoy it there and did not want to live there but Romanian is a Romance language and French is spoken there very much and she learned French because I asked her how she got along when she moved here to this country not speaking English I said weren't you mute she said no because on one side of me lived Mrs.
Borach she was not a Jewish woman she was Bohemian it was then it was not Czechoslovakia it was Bohemia so she spoke with her German my mother spoke German fluently as did my father and she said on the other side lived a French woman a Mrs. Laval and I spoke with her where did they live when they came to the United States? On North Dallas, the street was Sumter Street. See, I was just six months old, but I remember what she said was on Sumter Street. And my eldest brother was six and a half. And when he came here, well, he spoke English. I don't know whether you could say that he spoke it fluently, but he could say you crazy.
What year was that that they came? My mother came in 1903, January 1903 my father in 1902 but she told this to me that of course there was no look post then or airmail my father sent money and at one time and it had to come by a boat, you know, and her money that she sent was running out. And I was an infant, a nursing infant, and my brother was Six and a half years older than I, and she had a very good friend who lived next door, and she thought she would go in there and tell her her situation and ask to borrow some money.
So she went in there, and she said she sat and she sat, and she could not open her mouth to say that she needed help. And she said after sitting there for quite a while, and her very good friend's name was Ruckel, she later moved to Milwaukee, and my mother went to see her. And she came on back home, and she had some lump sugar, and she said she gave my brother a lump of sugar or two and immersed me and cried herself to sleep. And the Lord hurried on the money and the next morning it came. And she was so happy that she held out and did not ask for help.
And when she went to Milwaukee, her friend came to Milwaukee and settled in Milwaukee. And when she went up to see her, she told her of this incident and she cried she said why didn't you ask me she said I could not open my mouth and she said that her friend cried she said well how could you do that you knew that I would come to your aid she said well God came to her aid but she was very very proud what brought your father to Dallas opportunity and they needed cabinet makers he had a job when he came here from the Dallas showcase company which is still in existence did TP railroad go into Europe then representatives of that company I don't know that but I do know that they put out circulars extolling the virtues of Texas My mother did not want to tell anybody she was going to Dallas because in Jewish that means poverty and she says and truly she came to Dallas The city and the situation But within five years they had their own home where my brother was born.
Did they ever tell you about what it was like when they came to Dallas that you can remember that you can recall well one of the things I heard was about a mr. Byers who was in such a predicament that he had a dead child and did not know which way to turn then what happened and my mother always there was a family here that accepted a help from it was called the society my mother wouldn't do it and when my brother got to be of marriageable age she just begged God that he should not marry a shiksa and not marry a girl and there were many girls in this family I think they the last of them are gone and named them are a well I'll call them a smith because that woman would sit on the rocking chair on the front porch and she would accept charity the society would bring her food but when the ice cream vendor went by she would buy herself two ice cream cones one strawberry and one vanilla therefore if the person had so little character she begged that they've got I said I'll score and say the name as on the house of the Nishman can ship sir and then Nishman can I must say She was a great help.
She was an intelligent woman. The Romanian women were very ignorant. They were kept in seclusion by their husbands The Romanian men have a reputation of being dandies The wives usually made the living and the men thought they made the living worthwhile I should not tell that on this but I tell it as I remember it you had started to talk about mr. Byers and the fact he had lost a son our child you don't know if it was a son or a father what happened oh go ahead huh what happened then I do not know I understand that he did not know what to do there's this little dead body and it was before my parents came in.
I thought it came in 19-Jews. I do not know. I just have the memory of that, how bad things were. Now, people helped each other. There was one family here who still lived here and they're prominent. One of them is prominent, one isn't. And there were two sisters, and they lived together. And one day, my mother went up there, and one sister was left in the house with her three children, and her sister, who has children here, and her father was sitting on the floor with her bedding. crying her sister had decided to move the furniture was hers the kerosene lamps were hers and she moved and left her sitting there with three little children on before her own little sister she couldn't speak a word of anguish and her husband had gone to the country they they rented I think a little wagon a little horse-drawn wagon and went to pedal.
And my mother came in and the house was empty and it was getting dusk. And she always called her Ritke. And she said, . She said She moved out and she left me here and Einrich she called her husband it was Henry Einrich is Nishtu and Achveis Nishti Nechzozachimke My mother says don cry come to my house and bring the children. By that time we already had our second home, which was a beautiful house next to the little one that we first bought. My mother knew what to do with a dollar. My father would get his pay and he would be handed it and carry it home in his hand.
He didn't know enough about money to put it in his pocket, but he knew who did. And she said, come on to my house, bring the children. And she said, when Yonkhoff comes, my father was Jacob, he'll get your bedding and bring it over and we'll make pallets on the floor. And she did bedded them down and then when her husband came in from the country my mother gave him $15 to go buy a box of apples and go to the country and peddle the apples and when he came back for the apples they had a few dollars how much was rent then $9 a month $12 that wasn't even of Dallas and the rentable house.
Now that's what happened with two sisters. My mother was a guardian angel. She was a very intelligent woman where these Romanian people weren't. Later on when we moved to our third home in South Dallas out by the Cedars, we were neighbors are not very near, near neighbors when they're in the house of Deloia Extra. The Jewish people did not say Hexter. He was Deloia Extra, and he was Extra. He was something Extra. And my mother had a lovely home. My father was a builder. He built it in nice things. And she built a little My father was very creative and he would build Two houses on one lot and rent one and we lived in one.
So Riffie was rented that house next door to us and she was not sterile. He was not sterile. They both were not sterile. They had children. turned them out on an assembly line. I never remember her, and I was a child then, that I didn't wonder why she was so distended in the front. It was just, you know, permanent thing. And she never had a dime to her name. The Romanian man was the boss. She stayed home and she cooked and she scrubbed floors. She did not have any carpeting. But her floors were the color of beeswax because she scrubbed them on her knees constantly with a child at her skirt and one on the way.
So I recall that one day my mother was cooking and somehow or other her box of pepper was empty. And she was a bottle of bus, so she didn't let anything run out. And she shook it and she said, go next door to Mrs. B and ask her if she had a little pepper. So I went there. Rick, you didn't have any pepper. And when I came back, I recall mothers said, My mother would go to Sanders. They always had a table of remnants. And this woman sold. She had a machine. She was a good seamstress. She had a lot of children that needed clothes.
and my mother would buy a bunch of remnants and bring it to her and she'd say, this piece of goods is good. You'll make a dress for Rachel. And this one, this one for Suha. And they would always have a table of sales shoes. She knew their sizes. She would get a pair of shoes for each one and she'd come back. And my mother called her by her first name Risky She was much older than my mother My mother but she called my mother She had great respect for her She was Ms Shachman She said my name was Shachman She said, oh, Ms. Shachman, Ms.
Shachman, I remember my mother saying, She was a marvelous, marvelous person. What was your address then? you said you lived near the cedars 1816 Gould Street all right can you tell me exactly what the boundaries were of the cedars which was a very famous neighborhood here well it was Accord Street and Irby Street, the Mittenthals, they were wealthy people. I think you've seen in the show on Park Avenue, those tall candelabra on the, I think Mrs. Herbert Marcus Senior's father gave those. I am not sure. I think so. I won't tell it as a fact. She was a Mittenthal. They lived there. Some of them moved on to New York and did not return.
But there was a large Mittenthal family. One of them was Machadoch with Dr. Lefkowitz. Blanche Mittenthal married Lefkowitz. What was the north and south boundaries of that? Accord Street was in the cedars. Irving Street, there lives with Dr. Aronson and the Wartheimers. And the Sangers lived on Irving Street. There were two big Victorian mansions there. Now my husband when he came here he lived in a boarding house on St Louis Street And there was a nurse living there And he recalls that Elihu Sander came to wake up the nurse to come and attend to the birth of his first child and she is Frances Mosterker I knew her as a child She was a contemporary of mine, and she was Fanny Sanger.
And he recalls that. Well, she's probably a year or two younger than I, because we talked on the phone recently. I think that she's a year or two younger. Now my brother-in-law, Oscar Black, used to take her out. And he had a fresh air taxi, a Ford, with a cloth top that was hanging and shredded. I said, Oscar, you have the nerve of a government mule to take Fanny Sanger out on a date in that fresh air taxi as cold as it is he says well how she's got a good fur coat I'm not worried about what year was that well that was I guess after we had married in 1924 you mentioned Gould and now did the Cedars go all the way up to what street st.
Louis Pocahontas yes about which street I saw an ad and I saw a piece in the paper where Richardson was the theaters no it was not the Sharminsky's lived on Richardson that's Sharminsky family I don't remember any oh and I'll tell you another one. Oh my lord, what was their name? The Sons were very prominent here in the theater business. I can't bring their name to mind now. It wouldn't be Harris, would it, who owned one of the theaters? No. Harris? What Harris owned there? I think Harry Harris was one of the movie theaters. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I know their name just as well as I know mine, but I just have a brain mark there. Sam Miller lived there He was a father of Henry Miller Sr and he was a very cultivated man He had a grocery store and there was a house attached to the grocery store where the Goldens lived later and he was very learned in Hebrew. However, his grandson had something written up about him recently and he said he does not observe his Jewish heritage. I don't know, maybe Unitarian or what. But Mr. Miller was an educated man. He was allowed to slaughter his own chickens, not anyone else's because you had to have a license or I don't know what it is.
but he could slaughter his own and that was kosher because he had had instruction on it it's interesting you had talked about mr. Byers before was this mr. Byers the one who later had a kosher butcher shop yes he did uh-huh can you tell us a little bit about well my when my mother moved when we moved to Gould Street South Dallas then my mother would call up and give her order and I recall some of her orders 35 cents and we always had plenty of food 35 cents worth of cob flesh that is veal and they were first cut veal shops I'm telling you great big and and a soup bean and so forth and so on and I always thought that she said college flesh and I wondered why she ordered college play she couldn't be hot you know children can just kind of ruminate and get things but college and then a big buyers who the son would deliver and a little horse, wagon.
This is his shop. It was on Alamo Street. And when we moved on Gould Street, we walked to Shul on Alamo, and it was not one inch less than ten miles if it was not more. And we were there very early in the morning. My father would carry my little brother part of the way, and then he would walk part of the way. and when it was young Kipper, my mother would have a shoebox. I don't know why. There weren't too many boxes around, but a shoebox. Got the name of Bunch there because there were grapes and chicken and challah and bread. And by the time he got there, he started eating.
and he'd be playing outside and then he'd run into the show I want a bunch and so Mrs. Eli Henry Eli's mother gave him a name Bunch and I think until she died he was called Bunch and oh we had a good time there we spent the day there and Mr. Byers would ask do you not do a domestic where did we spend the night because it was so far away and my parents would not ride. And he just could not get over that we actually walked. And when I told people that where we walked from, they say it can't be so. I said, you call my brother and I asked him.
Then you walked home after Kalnidri and then walked back the next morning? No. Mr. after Kol Nidre Mr. Kaufman had his surrey there and took us home because we did not live too far from him he lived on Pahatton Street well Kol Nidre being heir of Yom Kippur no oh Kol Nidre yes yes I thought you meant after Yom Kippur yes ma'am we walked back Yes ma But then after yeah then my mother brought a lecath you know cut up into pieces Nila it was young to that someone on the premises should be in business so they stopped that what did they do after that?
they waited until they got home anyway by that time most of them had gone home to get their lunch anyway but we looked forward to getting a ride in the Surrey home Mr. Kofman took his home in Surrey was there a cousin yes he was a Remainer sure his name was they brought him here his name was Greenberg that was Mrs. Esther Schlinger's father but she could not speak Jewish and the mama the kid but she couldn't speak Jewish I said something to her in Jewish once and she did not understand me she doesn't speak Jewish and when she became engaged to Schlinger they lived in a house we owned we had property you know and so we had two different sets of shortcuts there from in the same house and And so when she became engaged, my mother told Mrs.
Greenberg to make a dinner and invite the huson. And she did with my mother's help because she was not a balabusta when my mother wanted to tell me I was slovenly. she could call me the dirtiest name she say shahit and oh my words could call me anything worse than that so my mother did the cooking She did not even have a cloth nor napkins And my mother was a very particular person She was a great, great housekeeper. She didn't pass it on to her daughter, I'll tell you that. And so my mother gave her the cloth and the napkins. Or she had the cloth.
My mother gave her the napkins. which were beautiful damask, I remember, with a fleur-de-lis pattern, came from Europe. My mother never got those napkins back, but when they moved, we found one in the bathtub that had been used as a wash rag. And I had it here for years and years and years, and it just kind of came to pieces. and I destroyed it. I said, I don't want them to find that in the house when I'm gone and they'll wonder what on earth that was true. And I destroyed it. But she had no maternal instinct at all. She was very mean to her children.
She was inhuman. and I should not speak of the dead that way. Well now did they have a rabbi? Did they have a rabbi too or did he act as the rabbi and the chazan? No, who needed a sermon then. Okay, who could not? Oh, okay. They didn't have a sermon. I mean they didn't even have anybody to sermonize at the Jackson Street show until Rabbi Epstein was brought here and I remember when he was brought here. That's interesting. Then the Chazin did the complete service and there was no one giving any type of explanation of the Torah reading? No. No. That's interesting. No. Not at all.
I was talking with Rabbi yesterday about Rabbi Gold. And I know one of the rabbis here before had talked to me about it and said they heard such things about him that in other words he was so theatrical and such a character and all. And I said, not at all. I did not find him that way. I said, he was not fit for his congregation, for the congregation. He was too educated and too cultivated. And Rabbi could not get over it. I says, well, Rabbi, I said, you did not have the members that you have now. I said, you look at the membership list and my heavens, there are a hundred doctors I said not that they don't put their pants on one leg at a time like any other man but he's had an education I said there was one doctor Dr.
Silverman and there was the Sheph Tzainah he did I said it was a different thing I said they would fall asleep Hannah Rabinowitz would take out her dentures and scrape them with her nails and Rabbi Gold was there giving a son. I loved him and I learned much. I drank him every word. So did my child. I remember my child at the age of four said, Mother, have you noticed? He would sit there and listen to those sermons and not move. He said, do you notice Rabbi Gold's hands they are the hands of an educated genteel person and a cultivated person and he said did you ever pay any attention to the different aspect of hands I had not he just did not He just did not have the person.
Of course, I think he was an astounding looking man. That large leonine had, he certainly did attract attention. And if he felt that he was above, yes. You had yesterday commented about how the Hebrew School of Dallas was started. My sister-in-law, my husband's sister, and Harry Siegel organized the Dallas Hebrew School. Now how did that happen? they decided they needed a Tom Matora and my sister-in-law went from house to house to collect money they had raffles my sister-in-law who is living now Mrs. Bach did beautiful handiwork she made a beautiful pillow of handiwork and they sold chances on it and Jenny told me yesterday, that little pillow brought $75.
My sister-in-law, Annie Carmen, was the first president of the PTA. She organized the PTA of the Hebrew school. And yet it was a community Hebrew school that they organized. She went up on East L to every storekeeper do you know about what year it was organized in I cannot tell you it was in the twenties was Jacob Levine the first principal of the Hebrew school or was there a principal I did not have a deep affection for Jacob Levine I I know you were one of his followers, but I did not. Because of him, J.D. left that Hebrew school and went to a good Asachem where he was bar-missed by Rabbi Jonathan Bronis.
Dr. Rabbi Bronis adored, adored J.D. just adored him. No I did not like him I know you were a follower David Zesmer was a follower Herbie Shessel Jerome Eli He he would want the children on every little holiday to stay out of school. Well, what would they do? They'd get on their bicycles, strip down to the waist, ride up and down Park Row. I said to J.D., no, if you went to Shul and you observed and you went to the circus, it's okay. but to stay home, to have a holiday home, strip yourself down to the waist and ride up and down Park Row, you're not going to do that.
You're going to school. I don't mean on your kip or rush under the high old days. So he took a poll. Did you go to school? Did you go to school? Did you go to school? J.D. said, yes, I did. Why did you go to school? Because my mother told me that's what she gave me orders to do to go to school so he said to him where your mother is I don't know what the word is in Hebrew but it means an idiot Amhar Amhar so J.D. walked out and he came home he said I had been taught and I observed the Ten Commandments I observed the Fifth Commandment to honor my mother and my father and he tells me that my mother is an idiot, I will not go back there.
I said, you don't have to. And I saw him Pesach in the store buying grape juice. Grape juice is not Pesach. And they begged and they begged for me to send Jamie back and we would not. and I remember and I dislike David Zestimer very much and I should not have carried over something like that into my adulthood and my son scolded me about it he would come home every day and have a violent headache I said what is the matter I going to take you and have your eyes examined You were all right when you left. What is the matter? And he would just hold his head and, you know, he'd say, I just can't stay.
So one day he said, Mother, I'll tell you what. He said, David Zestmer, who was older than J.D. and larger, thinks my head is a football. And the minute I get there, he starts to pummel my head. I took that child by the hand. I says, come on up here. We're going to see Mr. David Zestner. I said, David, do you double up your fist and beat on J.D.'s head? I said, why do you do it? I said, well, I'll tell you something. I may go to jail for it, but the next time you ever do a thing like that, I'm going to come up here and you won't have a headlong.
And when Rockefeller Sr. died, they were just very much opposed to worldly riches. Hooray, hooray, thank God another plutocrat is dead, a child. I didn't go with that. you were not supposed to have worldly riches. But Levine was always wanting a raise. I don't know what he was wanting. He was not supposed to have worldly riches. I just did not like him. And that is, you know, my dislike, and that is, I had always hoped I was too intelligent for anything I had for him. I just liked the whole Lord. And he is a cousin to Frank, my Francis. and J.D. knew that I disliked him.
I said, J.D., I just simply do not like him. I cannot like a child who was so in principle that because you were smaller and he had a lot of fun to beat you on the head and when I asked him, he had no reason. I said, if he would have had a reason, I would have turned around and just beat the stuffing out of you myself if you were doing something that you deserved that. well he says mother listen he was trying to tell his good points there is no one who can write a theme he had to find something to say about them Like David Zestner said I said well I excel in a certain area There is no one who can embroider monograms as beautifully as I can, including David Zestner.
And I said, I think if I had an inclination, maybe I could talk his theme. J.D. said you know something whatever maybe you could but I have never been able to like you since then and that is very stupid of me I had always hoped I had more intelligence than to carry over a grudge like that but that was my child he was beating on and that's where the difference is Oh yes I used to see you and your sister of blessed memory you were you followed him like two little fussy he was a brilliant teacher he is a brilliant teacher I should say anyway what about principles and of course this is a free country that's why we left Romania do you know the circumstances of buying the Hebrew school on Park Row white that white frame building I can't tell you anything about that.
I know that my sister-in-law walked her feet off, you know, working. She and Harry Siegel. When she put her mind to something, anything she did, she did well with her whole heart. And she really did work. She made a great contribution. yes she did tell me about the shop in Dallas well she was the shop she was a Polish and there were many men that came from the old country and they left the family there. They left a wife and two children and they came here and they thought, well, they'd like to have a whole new life. Well, she would go and get her collection and the first thing you know, here would come Mr.
L's wife with two children. She was busy. She was also the official mourner at funerals. She could cry like nobody's business. I remember there was a child who was shot to death accidentally by a plane mate it was a very tragic thing and he was such a wonderful child beautiful child and she was at that funeral they lived across the street the child lived across the street from me and of course we were there he was a Zolazni child child 13 and this woman mourned him like she screamed and she yelled and nothing would do but that she would go down into the grave and the men held her back with all their might because she said no that if God took such a young tree, she would go in his place.
They could hardly restrain her until she was a very strong woman. They all had indications they were becoming herniated. So they let go. So she straightened herself up and turned to her husband with a very straight face and said, Mania, the ice man would get you in. Would you translate that last? Mania was her husband's name. Did the ice man come? But she blew her nose into her And after that screaming and that tearing and that kind of Oy vai oy vai azayinyo bai And then when they let go of her, she didn't fall in, you know, but they had to because they would all be in the hospital the next day.
So she turned to the straightest, said, Mani da, Izi, mani da, kid. They used to have to deliver Izi. But there were a lot of very funny things. I was very observant, you know. About what year was that? Excuse me. Well, I don't know what year that was. It was probably around 1930, somewhere in there. I don't exactly remember. But as I say, there were a lot of characters. but she did a lot of good too. My brother always praises him. She was a good woman. I said, yeah, she surely was. I said, she kept a lot of men from being bigamous. You know, when she'd see they were getting too involved with a young woman here, and she knew what was going on in Poland.
Honey, she'd get together some money, and here comes a man's wife with a couple of kids. she broke a lot of engagement she did a lot of good but she was just really a character just really you know a character she was a she was the official she always said about the bride and groom what they wish themselves the first night should happen to me what they wish themselves after that what they wish me after that should happen to them because if you weren't satisfied with the shidduchah but you see the children of today They don't know anything about that humor. There was a lot of comedy and a lot to laugh about with the tragedies Did most of these people come through Galveston I don know where they came from We came from New York You did come to New York and then come down to Dallas?
My mother brought two of my father's nephews, one 16 and 18, because a family would come. So they came as my mother's sons and my mother was not old enough to have sons of that age but she brought them and they did not like it here and they always said they said to my mother what did you bring me here for and it was under a great strain that she did bring them because she said when she got to St. Louis where they changed trains these boys decided to take a walk so they took a walk to see St. Louis and the train came and went and my mother without one word of the knowledge of English so she had plenty after all it wasn't her nephews it was my father's nephews well one of them went back went to St.
Louis and stayed there until his death at the age of about 90 or so. And the other one went to Chicago and married there, has a marvelous family. In fact, one of his daughters has a son-in-law who teaches. He's a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. and he had a year's fellowship to teach at the university in Haifa. And he's there now with his wife and two children. And my cousin, that is this cousin that my mother brought, his daughter goes there and her husband goes to Natanya. They have an apartment there every year for six months. have done that for quite a number of years they're there now they go in December and they stay to June the apartment belongs to a rabbi who is in Munster Indiana did they did your mother bring the boys over from Europe or bring them down from New York no they coming Europe did they stay in New York then for a few years before they came to them I came directly down brought them here to Dallas my father had a little house for them.
And at that time, every Jewish family had a roomer who was a man who had preceded his family. When he established himself, he would bring his family. At our house stayed Mr. Sussman. Do you know Albert Sussman? He stayed at our house. And they had a couch in the dining room. They called it a lunch. Couldn't say a lounge. And you know, that's why Jews have so many psychiatrists. That's where they got the idea. As a child, they saw that lounge, you know, and they thought, well, gee, I bet we can do something with this idea. So they went into medicine. Many of them became psychiatrists.
And now they do not sleep on the lunge but they sit at the head and listen to someone talk and have waxed wealthy about how long would they stay at the house i don't know I don't know. But my mother hated it. She hated that part of it. She said, I had a horror of going to a strange man's bed and making it up. And I'm sure just as soon as he could get out of there, she was a very particular woman. just perfect you know and she said it went against the grain did she do it to help the finances or did she have rumors because or you know someone bored because to help them out to help them how would they find someplace to stay say when mr.
Sussman came how did he find your mother I guess they just had banded together. I do not know. I do not know. I don't know how that happened. My mother told me that, that everybody took in a man until he could get on his feet. and I remember that sofa in the dining room it stayed in the dining room because when my little brother was born my mother told me if I didn't hushkey him on it that the doctor would take him back or it was a midwife and so I can see him on that thing and I would just my kishkes would rise up and protest because I was hooked at him and she told me that if I did not, you know, would keep him quiet, you know, kind of see after him that Ms.
Zimmerman would take him back and I didn't want it. Ms. Zimmerman was the midwife? Was she just for the Jewish community or did she deliver non-Jewish kids too? I know many I know Becky Sewell said yes she delivered and her mother's children also. How... ...Many years ago? I was six months old when I came here, so I said I'm in the year always. When was this? In 1903. Where did your parents come from? They were Austrians, but they had gone to Romania and lived there seven years. And my mother did not like it because the opportunities were very limited and the Romanian Jews were not educated.
they were considered the peasantry of the Jewish religion. They had no opportunity there. And my mother just liked it so that she never learned to speak Romanian And I asked her when she came to Dallas that she would have come with my father The reason I came when I was six months old is because when my father left, my mother was pregnant with me and she was very, very sick. And at that time, it would take a month to get here, you know, by boat. and she knew that she was a frail woman and she knew that she could not endure that. So in three months after my father left, I was born.
She was six months then, I think. And then she waited six months and then we came and brought, and my brother was seven. And at that time, he's six and a half years older than I, Mara Shacken. And she brought two nephews. And I understand that the TNT Railway distributed handbills encouraging people to come to Texas and settle. And I asked my mother why they came to Dallas. And I don't exactly know why, but the word Dallas means poverty in either Yiddish or Hebrew, and she was ashamed to tell her friend she was coming to Dallas, but that is where what she came to. and she said that well they landed in New York you know at Ellis Island she and the two nephews and they changed trains at St.
Louis she said and the nephews wandered off one was 14 and and one was 16. And I think they came as her children, because it was a family that had to go And they came as her children and she said they wandered off and she said on the train somebody was chewing tobacco a plug of tobacco and my brother thought it was chocolate and he looked so longingly at it So the man asked him if he wanted a piece and I guess he understood what he said and he shook his head yes so that was quite an experience. He took a bite of it. It was quite an experience.
and she said at that time everybody that came here had a rumor and I and we just had one rumor and it was very distasteful to her she was very fastidious and she said that it just irked her to have to go and make up a strange man's bed and our rumor was Mr. Sussman the father of the Sussman boys here and I don't think he lived there very long but I remember him. Did he come then about 1903? I imagine. So see my father came in 1902 in July I guess and my mother, or a year before, I don't know exactly that. And my mother came, you know, in January of 1903.
Why did he decide to come to the United States? I think because of the handbills that were distributed by the TNT Railway, I understand. No, I mean, to the United States from Europe. Well, you know, uh... Was it a depression or was it just... I think perhaps to keep from getting in the Army, I don't know. You know, when we are children, we don't... We have no curiosity and we don't ask. Then when we get older, we wonder these things and it's too late to find out. and I know my mother said my brother was such a beautiful little boy I had a picture of him in a sailor suit and he looked like a royal child He said when he came here, my father took him and got him a hair cut and put a straw hat and some overalls on him.
And she just wept at what had happened. I don't think there was any electricity going in. I don't imagine there was running water in the house. I don't know. My first recollection, a bathroom facility, as it was, an indoor plumbing and a tin bathtub. It was connected, you know, a tin bathtub. That's my first recollection. I don't think my eldest brother remembers that at all because I have a sharper memory than he has. I think girls do, you know, their home. They have a sharper memory. And he went to Cumberland Hills School and was very, very smart. But at that time all the people who came here, the Barners, the Ruschowskis, the Donoskis, they all sent their children to work when they were 13 into my mother's dying day.
She regretted that my brother did not have more schooling than he did, but she said, I did what all the other greenhorns did. You just followed suit, you know. But I asked her how she managed to communicate with her neighbors not knowing English. She said on one side of her lived a Mrs. Borah who was Bohemian, you know that's now Czechoslovakia, and she spoke German. On the other side, she said that Mrs. Laval and my mother spoke French. French is spoken in Romanian, it is a Romance language, but she would not learn to speak Romani. She had such a disregard. For those people, I wonder if she was a snob, but she had a great worship of education.
Now she read Hebrew, you know, because she was educated in Austria. But now these Romanian women that sat around her and sure did not, they didn't read Hebrew, and they weren't sure they didn't read Hebrew. And when we first came here, the first place we landed was my mother and I, my brother, my two nephews. And we landed at the Eli's, Henry Eli's father. and they had a restaurant in a house and I remember that they called it a shotgun house, you know, the rooms were just straight one right after another. And she had a kind of a restaurant, a served meal, I guess, to the immigrants who came, you know, up on East Elm.
And they all had little shopkeepers or shoemakers or whatever they had done at home. Did they live in their stores or behind the stores? I think they did those who had families. I know the Fathers did, I think. You know Morris Fathers' parents. I think so. I don't know. We did not live in that section. I know the seltzers did Mrs. Summer's parents because I was there many times, you know. She used to sew the dresses. You didn't go to the wholesale house and buy them, as I recall. She sold the dresses and they lived in the back of the store. I think the UK lived in that of the storm But we see we did not live in that section We lived in North Dallas There were East Dallas Jews and North Dallas Jews My father was a cabinet maker.
And five, at least five years after we got here, we owned our own home. because my youngest brother is five years younger than I, and he was born in that house. I remember the Briss Mila, and the Romanians brought a rabbi here, and his name was Greenberg. He wasn't a rabbi. He was a shepherd. He was Mrs. Schlinger's father. Of course, she knows nothing about him today, nothing. And they were a big family. They also lived in the same house where later the Fromm's came and they, of course, there were about nine children in the Fromm family then. And that's where they lived. And when Ms.
Fromm came, all of her boys were of low statue and my eldest brother is very tall and she couldn't get over it. She said, oh, you know, she couldn't get over it, you know. But that is where I saw my first sukkah. I've never seen a sukkah. There was no place even here to buy religious articles, candlesticks or something. If somebody had a store in East Elm and they went to New York to buy merchandise, then you ask them to get you something, you know, like that. And the buyers lived on Alamo Street and he had the butcher shop in the store and I think over now and then he would order kasha or grope and they called it and things like that.
And he was also the only one that you could get your Passover order from. And I think I told you before, there was no granulated Passover sugar. It came in a cone or a kind of a pyramid with a rounded top and wrapped in very heavy blue paper And it had I guess the pastel stamp on it with a sort of a reddish sealing wax And I think I was grown before I found out that wasn't candy. There was a bob of sealing wax and as I look back now, I see, you know, that it was stamped. Well, when you wanted to make a cake, my mother did not have, some people had steis, you know, margarine pesto.
I had one, I had two. And you pounded the sugar, you made granulated sugar. But those who didn't have, and I spoke to someone the other night who also had the same experience in their home, you put it in a very heavy ducking stack and you pounded it with a hammer. And things were not very easy at that time, you know. Passover was really something, but I remember when we had Passover. I don't wonder now that women did not live to a ripe old age. I think that one day could have shortened a woman's life by 20 years, really, that they went through the chickens by hand, you know, five and six chickens.
and you couldn't do it beforehand because there was no freezing. There was just an ice chest and you tried to preserve that 50 pound or 75 pounds of ice if you had a very large refrigerator by wrapping it in newspaper. Everything had to be done that day or the day before, you know. and no one had several sets of silver so you consured that silver by taking it out in the yard and digging a hole and you heated flat iron such as I had sitting here in the hall as a door stop and then you put it down in the hole and covered and you beat that cake by hand There was nothing prepared but nothing There was no fire for them You can get anything you want now cake mixes or just anything you want And mozzas were not packed in individual boxes, you know, in town boxes or 12 ounce or whatever.
It came in a great big large box and also moths and you got it in a cloth sack. And if it was a 10 pound sack and you just wanted five, well you'd dump five into that sack and five in another sack for someone else who wanted it. And of course your fish, you did not even have it scaled. You had to scale it yourself because if you went to one of the two fish markets here, one was Adams and one was Doris. So they were, I think both across the street from the old Stangers down on the Mar. Well, you didn't let them touch it with their scaler because it wasn't the taste of it.
So you scaled the fish, you know, and you had to cut it off and so forth and so on. And I recall that when you wanted to reline your shelves, we used to go down to the Dispatch, which was a newspaper which is now defunct, and get newspapers, unprinted newspapers, in great big bundles and carry them from Patterson to where we lived down at that time at Beaumont and Gould. We didn't know any better. And because you didn't use print because that was comets. There is no comets in Pasadena. It's all the same. That's when you really knew it was Passover, and it smelled like Passover.
Did most of the people observe Passover? Oh, yes. Did you find any or very few? Did you say they didn't know? No, no. And we did not know of any young lived around us that didn't know. Perhaps the German Jews. Now I said the only place you could get matzes was through Mr. Byers. Well, Mr. Walstein, who was a sextant at the temple, had the franchise for the Goodman's matzes. And they were little round matzes. You know, they were not the square ones such as we know. were the little round ones no one that we did not you know and then you had to grate your horseradish there was no and believe you me my mother used to take it outside and grate it and it popped your nostrils open because I remember when I was a child I thought I put my I head down in the crock and took a whiff and it almost destroyed me.
I couldn't get my breath back then. And there was no vinegar or anything like that. You left your wine and you had to make your wine. You didn't go to the liquor store and buy a bottle of Passover Monashavix. You made your wine. in the fall, you know, when the Concord grapes were available and he made your Passover. Everybody had their Passover wine. Well, we're talking about that saying, It's hard to be a Jew. It was hard to be a Jew. Believe you me, it was. And when, you know, when we had the Seder, well, we used to have very large pillows, those European pillows, I remember at that time.
and my mother had them on the chair and my father really leaned, you know. But there is nothing like that anymore. Ginger it smelled Passover It smelled Passover Somehow or other it just you know I think we remember more as much by odors by having an odor come back to us I think that brings memories. And we did not have Milfik and Flashek passed over. We used Flashek all together. There was no coffee. We drank tea, you know. And you could not buy any sharpening or oil. You had to make your Pesach. And about Purim is when Mother started to, as she said, to climb schmaltz up Pesach to gather up her Passover schmaltz.
That was all that was available. And you had to make your chickens Passover, that that you used the schmaltz from. You cleared out your kitchen so you made Passover many times in a certain corner wherever schmaltz was prepared. What about the meats? Most of them, I don't think my mother ever used meat. people did but we used to use chicken and the shot would come and kill the chickens. I remember Mr. Fromm had a little buggy, a little horse-drawn buggy, and on Friday mornings he went around and he killed, you know, the chickens wherever he was called or where he knew, you know, and one of his daughters who have since passed away and I used to walk to school together up on Irby Street and here he would come.
He was a very lively, beautiful little Jewish man and wore a little derby and when she would see him coming down broader street you know and we were proud of our parents then you know and she said I love Tate and he would say I love and just bow you know so courtly and he was a wonderful little person he was just wonderful And then they started Friday night services, and I would go down to their house and go with them to services. And that was my first experience of Friday night services. and that's where I learned from those fine children to sing on Friday night, because I had had no opportunity to learn that, and I still remember it.
Who taught? You know, you talked about your brother having learned his bar mitzvah. Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein, that was, don't you know Sarah Greenstein? She was a music teacher. She was also my music teacher. Was he the only teacher in town as far as he was concerned? know of that is he came and taught my eldest brother. Now my youngest brother there were uh there was a succession of men who came here and they were malamads. I remember there's one that came to our house and that was after we moved to South Dallas and we called him the Hazel it to shirt. He had a very husky voice and if you miscalled a letter he always carried an umbrella with a dog handle and boy he would give you a rock with that handle.
And while my youngest brother who's five years younger than I was learning I learned right along with him and my husband's sister organized this hebrew school that we now have a sheriff Israel with Mr. Harry Siegel and she walked from door to door to collect money and they and she organized that And that where it was started I think down there on the corner I believe of the corner of a big white frame house of Oakland and Park Row where she was the organizer of that Mrs. Carmen, Mrs. Annie Carmen. Is it possible that you're talking about the Hebrew School of Dallas, Jacob Levine became a principal.
Yes, yes, yes. She organized that and that was soon after Ben and I married and we will be married 49 years this August. And I remember someone else that worked on it was a Kaufman girl who's a Miss Lichtenstein because I remember one night being over to my sister-in-law's and this Miss Lichtenstein called and I remember it so distinctly because my she was telling her about some problems she'd run into and my sister-in-law said oh Dyer did in the cup and she got insulted because she thought that was an affront to her My sister-in-law was a very wonderful person, Mrs. Carman, and she organized that school with Mr.
Segal, Mr. Harry Segal, both together. And she walked from door to door up and down East Elm, extracting a little money from those shopkeepers. Now speaking, this is sort of rambling on, but it comes to my mind and I want to say it as it comes to my mind or it will escape me. I told my husband the other day that you had a picture of Mr. Olivets and I think I told you that we had a Lodzadeckle, which he bought when my boy was born. And he was a very kindly old man. If he were a Christian, I'd say he was saintly. But he was really just an angel.
And I've forgotten what I wanted to say about him now. Oh, my husband said he, I told him he was a glazer. He later became a glazer, but he used to have a little shop up on East Elm. They arrested all those shopkeepers for keeping open on Sunday, but they did not arrest him because he closed on Saturday. He was that religious. When they found out that he had closed, that he closes on Saturday, they let him go. My husband told me that the other day. Was he the only one that closed on Saturday? As far as I know, I did not remember that. I was too young.
But my husband remembered, I remember him as a grazier, see, I remember him from the time my son was born, I guess, because he came to St. Paul Hospital and brought a Hershey bar to me and this life's a deco for him. And he would call, and I remember before that, when women had babies at home, when I was a little bit of a talk, and he would come and put some kind of a little Jewish papers, pin them on the curtains. Now, what it was, I do not know. But he would come to see, they called it the Kempitun, and pin those papers that was, you know, in Hebrew, a little thing.
about seven or eight inches long and probably five inches wide. I don't know what it was, but that I remember having seen that in different houses. Let's get back to the Hebrew School of Dallas for a minute if you may. Is it possible, I'm not sure, it was about the 19 or 20 hundred Blanca Parker, which would be near to St. Boulevard. It was on the corner of Edgewood. On the corner of Edgewood, it was a white flame house, and that's where they were for quite a long time. And then they got into that house that was originally the Landauer house. There were two Landauer brothers here who were associated with tightsgetters.
The Landauers, Mr. Baron bought the house from the Landauers, and then when he was through with it as a residence I think I am not sure but you probably know more about this He gave it to the Hebrew school presented it to the Hebrew school and that was it But that other one was the first one. It was a large residence and a white flame residence. My son went there. You were quite close to Mr. Levine. Well, we were not in accord with him. My son was not born in its very Sheriff Israel. Well, that later became a community school. I don't know whether it started as Sheriff Israel or as a part of Sheriff Israel.
I know it started as a sheriff Israel. I remember my mother died when my brother was 13. And he and Ben's three nephews who had lost their father, as she was the husband of this Miss Korman who organized, would go to Shul on Jackson Street every evening to say cottage. and there was an old man, Granzik, had a long beard, and they say children are very mischievous and mean then. Now, I think they were then, because they would walk behind him in a row. His three nephews, the oldest one was the age of mine. Everybody's got a beard then. It was just, you know, an alto form of your father and I blood.
I remember this Mr. Greenhorn, Mr. Greenberg, the remaining sheriff, you know, and he died first and then she died of cancer of the throat. And the whole time that she was afflicted with this, she would go to the cemetery and she had a mausoleum built out there But it was not a it was not sturdy it was more of stucco and it you know started to fall in and they made them take it down But my mother used to wonder, she'd go out there, and she was just delighted over that. And a woman who was dying and went out to see where her resting place was and those things, you know.
I remember. But there was quite a large family of those Greenberg children and they were all well-educated children. I remember one used to go to, went to dental school that was across from the City Park, which is now the City Park on Irby Street and it was upstairs. And he went and, Arthur, his name was, and he later went to Waco and became a very successful dentist. And then there were some that were musicians, and I think they were reared in Egypt. Well, you mentioned that a lot of the parents took their kids out of school after they were 13. Was that a breaking point in the education?
Well that was after they got out of, one did it and one did what the other one did. You know, they didn't know what, now Sanger Brothers was very good to these people. They could always go there and get a job, you know, these young kids, and some of them grew up in the store and went into responsible positions. Now, Joe Sewell had one job all of his life, and it was at Pitch Cuttinger's then. You know who Joe Sewell is. Well, he probably went to work at 13. And it was my mother's regret because she had a great deal of respect for education. And to her dying days, she said, why did she do it?
She said, the rest of the greener did it, so I did the same thing. My brother was a very brilliant boy and an avid reader, and I followed him in school. It was very hard on me because his teachers always let me know that I was not as smart as he However I did very well in school But they always let me know that he was just really something. In fact, when he went to work at Sanger Brothers at what they called a cash boy, it was a messenger boy. He used to be embarrassed because his teacher from Cumberland Hill, Miss Virgie Johnson, used to come there and see him and kiss him, and he would be very embarrassed about it.
Did any of the newer generation, the kids of the, you know, the new arrivals have a chance to go on to the university or to higher education? Was it a matter of money or was it a matter that they felt, you know, did they have that as they? I think that was the parents' social security. I don't know what else to say. Well, you know, there were not too many girls that went to college at that time. We knew, I knew of one and that was Newman Goldstein's daughter who was Estelle Goldstein who went to Texas and she later married a Coyne who changed his name to Shaw, that was the Shaw Jewelry Company.
His name was Coyne. Why did he change his name? His sister was Ms. Shaw, and I think the jewelry business belonged to him, but he went on and changed his name to Shaw because the jewelry here was Shaw's Jewelry. And they'd always want to call for Mr. Shaw, and he just changed his name to Shaw. Now, she has a daughter who lived here, she's in California now, Bernice Shaw, who is quite prominent in theatricals and production and so forth and so on. He didn't really change his identity as far as being Jewish, there was no question about his name? No, oh no, no. Now his father did not change his name.
I think one was Joe Cohen, and I forget what the other one's name was. One was a, his brother was a bachelor. You talked about Pesach before Passover. What about the other holidays, Jewish holidays? We knew nothing about them, really. There was no place to know about. In fact, across the street from us, you know, was a Christian woman after we moved to South Dallas. and she had an adored only child by the name of Paul and we were called in to see his Christmas tree. And my little brother and I, I know, used to wonder why do they call Jews the chosen people? How odd of God to choose the Jews.
They didn't have these lovely gifts and a Christmas tree with, there were candles burning on us. She didn't even have an electric light at that time. We did. We had, when gas was brought into Dallas, I think in 1980, we had the first gas stove on the street. And it was an oddity. And there were these candles. And we used to think that we were deprived. We were so envious and I often think of that. Why didn't that woman have a little five cent gift on the tree for us? We were just little children. No, we didn't know anything about Hanukkah. There were no gifts for Hanukkah.
This is just, you know, an offshoot of Christmas so Jewish children will not be so deprived. You know, there was a time when they called it a Hanukkah bush and so forth and so on. We didn't know Purim because of the foods, you know. That played a great, great part in religion. We knew that Purim, there was human passion, and my mother used to make crackleaf, you know, for the soup. But I don't recall any Hanukkah. And I think the people my age, if they would be frank, would say, well no they didn know anything about Hanukkah We didn have didn have a Hanukkah menorah My mother didn bring it from Europe You know you didn get it here And I don recall seeing any in anybody house What about lighting candles?
Oh, yes. Putting candles up instead of a menorah. Do anybody do that? No. No, you could put them on a brick. It seems to me I have a hazy remembrance of maybe my mother putting candles on a brick. I have a hazy remembrance of it, but to Ben Schlefft, oh yes, my mother did. I still have my, I have my mother-in-law's candles and my mother's candles. My mother-in-law had many candles. In fact, she kept her candles on this train. It has a Russian inscription on it. In fact, all of her children, there were candles for all of her children. She brought those, you know, from Europe.
Now I have a vessel of my mother's that they used to keep Passover schmaltz in Europe and it had a life limit. Because they had, most everybody had a servant, a shiksa there. You'd call it a shiksa, you know. My son gets very angry when I say that. I said, well, J.D., it's like some people, it's sort of a generic name for mage, you know, and I said, it's just like for years and years and years, I don't care what type of mechanical refrigerator you got, it was a Frigidaire. and it had oak on it so she could not contaminate it and I have that I will show it to you I thought that was what it was for Ben's sister the one that I told you is faced with this terrible surgery that Mirza said about gave it to me she said now you value those things and you will take care of them I also had which I will show you a copper pan that my mother baked 12 bulgies in every body depicting the 12 tribes of Israel Now she had it out in the yard.
The chickens were drinking out of it. We did not value those copper pots. I had some of my mother-in-laws that I just had in the garage. People bring them in there and they're priceless. But, and someone took them, you know. But, I have my mother's candlesticks and I since have acquired a very old Hanukkah menorah that came from some Turkish Jews they brought here. and I restored it. It's a very beautiful thing. I was going to give it, send it to a child in New York for a bar mitzvah present and I guess I am very selfish. I couldn't part, I couldn't part with it but that's when I bought it and I bought it from a Christian woman and it needed some restoring and I lovingly restored it and I said I'm going to send this to this child.
I want something special for him and I just couldn't part with it. What about where she showed on Yodkipa? Were the shops closed? Yes. What were the services like? We were so busy running outside as children and then running in and getting something to eat on Yom Kippur out of that shoebox. We were not hungry, but we grazed all day. My mother used to bring to Shul on Yom Kippur a honey cake, a great big box of honey cake and some strudel. and after the services the men had made a schnapps and they took a piece of cake and Mr. Kauffman would have a carriage there a horse carriage and he would take us home And his boys who were just youngsters then were just And I would have the best time.
We played outside all day, and everybody had ammonia, and you'd run and stick it in their nose, you know. and as I say, popped their nostrils open. And I can't tell you anything about it. I know in the old, it was not called the Anchesvard. The first one I went to was called the First Romanian-Austrian Congregation. and there was mosquito netting hung, you know, like the walls of Jericho in that picture of Clark Gable. And between the men and the women, as I say, I guess, to keep out carnal faults on this holy, holy day. and there was one man there who adored his wife.
Evidently it wasn't a shotgun affair. And he would pull that aside because he wanted to get a full view of his wife and then somebody else would pull it too. And that tug of war, I remember one particular young kipper went on all day long. And he came on the same ship with my, came from the same town with my mother. And his name, his first two names were Shmeal Hersh. And I always thought it was Shmelesh. Said it very fast. His name was Abrams, and I think very recently a daughter of his died at Golden Acres. She was a Mrs. Goldberg, and she has daughters.
There is one who lives in Fort Worth. They were twins. She had twins, and her name is Sandler. They were Netta and Yetta Goldberg. What was, what about the little Jewish Shops on East Elm, were they usually congregated or were they spread out? What about, you said about the East Dallas shop? I can't tell you anything about it because the only time I ever went there was to Mr. Sussman to get my half soles put on for 50 cents. and that was it. I would go to Jake the Schuster. See, my people did not say Schuster, they said Schuster because they were Austrian and we said Piem and you never hear anyone say Piem anymore, it's Purim.
And I myself say Purim, you know, when you, I think usage makes the word correct, constant usage. But the Kaufmans went to that shul and the Elis that I remember, the Abrams, there were some people here by the name of Zeinfeld and a granddaughter died recently, a Mrs. Becker, Becker did you know her young that was a granddaughter her father was a son there was a big family of children Mrs. Seinfeld did not spoke very little Jewish she spoke Romanian now Henry Eli said he was 16 before he spoke Jewish he evidently was a teenager when came from remaining years just like many Jewish children here don't speak Jewish my son doesn't speak Jewish my daughter-in-law doesn't speak Jewish and they lived on East Elm and I remember I used to go there because his sister was a friend he had a sister who was my contemporary and she was a friend of mine, Sadie, and he said when they were going to move from that little house on Elm Street, the mother had a choice of a house on Bryan Street or a house where the Majestic Theater is now standing and she chose the one on Bryan Street It was a nice residential section That was really foresight.
Yeah. Was that North Dallas at the time? Bryan Street? Bryan Street was not North Dallas as we knew it. A name for North Dallas, that is the slang name, was Goose Valley. Was that part of East Dallas? What was that considered? Bryan Street, was that part of the East Dallas area? Well, that was not the Jewish East Dallas of the shopkeepers. Do you know Ivy Rabinowitz? I know who you're talking about. Well, her in-laws lived on East Elm and lived in back of the store. Ben said when he came to Dallas as a teenager, that was the first place he went to. He put his suitcase down there.
When was that? What year? My husband came here in 1902, I think. The D. Fairs were there. And when a Jew came to Dallas, Mr. D. Fair closed his store and took him to Sheriff Israel to enroll him as a member. And if he didn't have the dollar to pay, Mr. Fair paid it for him, and he didn't have very much more than a dollar. What about the Jews that came in and maybe they had a trade or what did they do with people, the newcomers? Do you know? Some of them were tailors. You see there were no financially successful people that came from Europe, I don't think.
I don't think that any of them there at that time were financially successful. Just as there were no Germans that emigrated here who were successful until the Holocaust they had no reason to come here They were some of them were industrialists there and are lawyers like Renata Kahn parents It was Renata Kahn that put me on to you Mr. Kahn was a graduate of Heidelberg and Munich. He was a corporation lawyer. Mrs. Kahn had gone to finishing school in Belgium. She was a concert pianist. Well, those people did not come here. There was no need for them to come. They came to search for a better life for their children.
There was no family aid or federation. There were some German Jews here that came before and they were called the Society. And people were very loath to call on them. They helped each other. I am amazed when I think that from the time my mother came here until the time she died, 18 months had elapsed. and what she had accomplished and what she had learned and absorbed and the gracious life we led at home. I think it was just something that was within her. Well, I said to her once, I have always had a great affection for beautiful table settings, and I do have a very lovely collection of china and silver, and have always been particular about my table.
Well, I asked her. She her mother was widowed in Europe when she was a little child She didn't even remember her mother and I said Mama, what did your mother do to support you? She said she had a store and I said what kind of store Well a store from dishes and that was it Well some years ago I was in Chicago and was talking to my aunt who was married to my father's brother but was also a cousin of my mother and I had bought something at Marshall Fields and I speak Jewish fluently and people wonder how I do or why I do but it's just because I have remembered what I've learned at my mother's knee and I called my aunt Mima that's what they call them in Austria and I said Mima I don't understand why I have a hankering or such an affection for these things and she said well at your grandmother's table She said it in Jewish, the Kayser could have sat there.
And I said, why? She said, your grandmother, my mother's mother, had a shop of the finest crystal and china. I said, so you come by it honestly. Well, you see, I didn't learn that until after my mother had gone. And it's just too bad that children do not question their parents, you know. They do not know there'll be a time when they reflect and want to know these things and want to know their origins and what kind of, you know, life they lived and all. And I was, it was just, I think, shortly before my mother's death that I asked how did she communicate coming and being this dumb.
And she said she spoke to Ms. Borack that I knew she'd come in the bakery. She had married again and was a Mrs. Laura. She spoke, she said I spoke German to her and I spoke French to Ms. LaValle. Was there closeness in the Jewish community? The Deutschesche, oh yeah, the Deutschesche they kept to themselves and they were snobbish. You know, they kept to themselves and the people, you know, of our kind, they were very, very close and helpful to one another. For instance, Mrs. Sewell used to tell me that when my youngest brother was born, and they lived a few doors from us, my father came in and he said in Yiddish, and their name was Sivalski.
and they came, they were named from the town they came from which was Suffolk and he said Mrs. Savalski, my baby is bleeding from his navel, the bliped in the navel and my new dinner, that's how you called your wife, Favar McIncult, that is, she was faint, you know, please come in. So she said she came in and she tied, they used to wear belly bands, you know, around the navels. They evidently did not tie off the umbilical cord as they do now. It was, you know, women had children at home. So she tied over the nubble of the child that was blinking and she made a toddy and she gave it to my mother and she opened up her eyes and came to life Well you see there not that neighborliness now and we do not depend on people because women go to the hospital and have their baby and just as soon as they are delivered of that child before they had a shower in every room and they went down the hall to a shower.
They went down and took a shower. Well, it was not that way. You were in childbed for two weeks practically. I remember when my child was born and before the four weeks I was outside and my child was born in St. Paul Hospital and I had 24 hours special nursing duty. I was a plutocrat. Mrs. Glick, you know there are Glicks here, got after me that I should not go in the house because it was a Jewish law. You must not stand on pavement. I was standing on my front sidewalk before four weeks you were not to go out. That's why there was a low incidence of maternal deaths among Jewish people because they gave their new mothers, their lying-in mothers, extra special care.
And I remember they always had the bris in the house and and always there was pickled herring Mine near to herring and I remember as a little child well the kempaturin that is the lying mother they brought her a plate to the table and that was a week later and she very gingerly let her feet down on the side of the bed and partook of the repast that they brought her Times have changed everything. Now when my younger brother was born, and he is 65, a midwife delivered him at home, a Mrs. Zimmerman, and I think that if any of my contemporaries have the memory that I they will remember her.
I think it cost five dollars. I'm not sure. Did only Jewish women deliver at home or did they prefer home? I think they all did, honey. I think they all did. Now, I remember when my baby brother was a nursing mother, was a nursing, my mother had a very hot appendix. and the doctor I think a Dr Sam Friedman who died in the last few years his home was that home where Ms Saul Toplitz lived on the corner of ours That was his home that he built I think that was the first surgery that he did and he stood over my mother and said she got to go have that and I stood I sat there and I remember his words.
He said it is like a fire that's smoking and it's going to build up into a flame. So she very reluctantly did go in and it was in an ambulance because she was not able to walk. I guess she had a gangrenous appendix so it was about to rupture and it was a horse-drawn ambulance and all the dogs in the neighborhood and all the children ran after the ambulance. and I think he was just three months old then and neighbors took care of him. And when she went it was I think during the time that she was there it was young Kipper and she would not take any medicine and Dr.
Freeman scolded her very much and he said It depended on her health. She could even eat bacon and she would not, she could not take liquid medicine. She could only, she could smile with football but she had to have a drink of water with it and she would not take that drink of water that went through that capsule or whatever that she had to take. They were religious. They really practiced their religion. And as I said before, it was very hard to be a Jew at that time.