Debra Polsky
Debra Polsky was born in New York in 1954 and moved with her family to Chattanooga, Tennessee, when she was two, so that her ailing father could be near his parents. Her father died of Hodgkin's disease when she was about two and a half, and she was raised by a single mother along with an older brother and sister. Her mother worked as a legal secretary for many years and made sure the family had what it needed. Debra remembers a happy childhood, playing outside, reading voraciously, and living in a close-knit community. She began grammar school in 1960 and, when integration came, was among the first children bused across town, an experience she loved even as she witnessed the racial tensions and turmoil of the era, including race riots and bomb threats during her high school years.
After high school, Debra attended college in Memphis and then transferred to Peabody, part of Vanderbilt, studying education. She returned to Chattanooga to teach elementary school in the inner city for about six years. During that time she began working part-time at the Jewish Community Center and realized that Jewish communal service was the career she was looking for. To advance in the field she moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where she served as adult and singles director at the JCC and later as director of the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization. She then became regional director for Northern California, based near San Francisco, before being asked to move to Dallas in 1989 to lead BBYO programming across North Texas and Oklahoma.
In Dallas, Debra was housed at the Jewish Community Center and quickly felt part of the community. Over more than two decades she watched the Dallas Jewish community grow and spread out, from five or six congregations to more than a dozen, and observed the expansion of the Orthodox community with new kosher grocery stores and greater openness at communal events. She left BBYO in 1996 and held several roles before finding her place as Executive Director of the Dallas Jewish Historical Society, where she has worked to broaden outreach beyond the oldest congregations and to convey that everyone is part of Jewish Dallas history. Reflecting on her life and career working with children and young people, she offers this advice for the next generation: hold on to who you are, and do not let anyone tell you any different.
Full Transcript
Deborah 1954 born in rosin New York family moved to Chattanooga when you were two what do you remember first remembrances when you were little when I was a little girl we lived in an apartment um above my father's aunt's house my father died when I was 2 and a half and so I had a single parent mom and my brother and sister and a very happy life I remember just having a good time now do you know why you guys moved from New York to Tennessee yes my grandparents lived in Tennessee my father's parents and my father was Ill already with hodkin disease and wanted
to be close to his parents and so they moved they had moved a number of times and they moved uh back to Chattanooga which was the second time they had lived there now you had two siblings and so your folks were preparing for your dad's illness to get worse I assume yes did your mom talk to you guys at all about it when you were little about about your Dad we did um in passing but quite honestly I was so young when he died that it was just always a fact of life my brother who was 9 years older than me was much more directly
affected because you know he was 12 he he had a different relationship and my sister who was five who's 5 years older as well um so it was always just a part of my life that my father was gone and you know we heard about it but we didn't talk so much about the details you remember your grandparents at all only my father's parents my mother's parents both died uh before I was born born or I think my grandmother died shortly after I was born and uh but my father's parents lived in Chattanooga um we did not see them a lot but um I do
remember them well my um I my grandmother was a lovely sweet woman and um one of eight cousins so occasionally I would see all her with all her contemporaries together right do you remember what your grandfather did for living my grandfather um originally was a um a carpenter he he of sorts um but he had not worked for many years when I knew him by the time they came to Chattanooga uh the last time uh my grandfather really I think my my uncle and my father kind of supported them MH now did your mom start a career in Chattanooga she remarried she did she uh
became a legal secretary she you know had to go to work and was a legal secretary for many many many years and um actually worked for the same person almost the entire time now did your mom ever remarry she remarried briefly okay and as I tell a class that I teach um on divorcing parents you remarried briefly and badly so right right fortunately it was brief okay now did your siblings they were older so did they talk about the adjustment they had to make from coming from New York to Chattanooga I mean that's that's May if you're older they really didn't we you know it
was just a fact of life and it really wasn't until we were older that we sort of wondered mostly why cuz all my mother's family was in the Northeast mostly in Pittsburgh and New York um and so we kind of wondered why she didn't pick up and move again and move us back near her family but we never they really never talked much about it right right they lived in Texas when my siblings were younger and they never really talked much about that either talk to me about grammar school where did you go to school I started grammar school in 1960 um with at the
elementary school up the street from my house Clara Carpenter and the teacher was so excited to have me because she'd had my sister 5 years earlier and 2 weeks later um the integration order came through and they closed that school and I was the first year of busing so I was bused across town to an elementary school um that was predominantly black um and was there for the next was there for 5 years and I I loved it I had great teachers and and did well in school I was definitely the you know see me my hands up girl now that was a turbulent time
in this country's history and you were affected by it yes you know um did you realize at the time all the tensions that were going on because I imagine there were some um yes but more a little more in retrospect than at the time I mean we were aware when I grew up in Tennessee there were separate drinking fountains and separate bathrooms and I remember um when the amusement park that had a big pool was integrated um and a lot of people got up and left and weren't didn't come back because the pool was integrated it was it was actually more difficult a little bit
later when I I was in high school we actually Chattanooga had race riots and my high school had bomb threats and we were actually out of school for 6 weeks um um of how stupid people were yeah I didn't grow up with that mentality my parents were that's not who my mother was she came from the Northeast she didn't really understand it why people were that way I certainly knew people who were Prejudiced and I knew a couple of people who didn't like me because I was Jewish but that was also pretty rare um I grew up in a pretty close-knit Community but um you
know when I got into high school and things were really bad you know we just marveled at how stupid people were right right now after high school college or career went to college uh went to college in Memphis at um roads and then transferred to Peabody which is part of Vanderbilt and went into education and after college I moved back to Chattanooga to teach elementary school for about six years taught in the inner city and um L teaching hated the parents loved teaching um and then after that um um I I started working part-time during that time at the Jewish Community Center and eventually decided
that that was the career that I was looking for you're now involved with the Jewish Community Center in Chattanooga right so are you planning on just making Chattanooga your home I was um but I realized that if I was going to really stay in the field of Jewish communal service that I was going to have to move because that's pretty much how it works um so I got hired and moved to Omaha Nebraska as the adult and singles director at the Jewish Community Center and uh ultimately became the director of benay brith Youth Organization there as well and I think I really found my Niche
there and was in Omaha for four years and then bbo hired me to uh be the regional director for Northern California oh so you left Omaha and went to California yeah where in California I my office was in San mono outside of San Francisco and I had um the whole Bay Area Sacramento you know everything in Northern California and loved living there especially after being in Omaha where it was you know lots of snow and 70 below windchill factors it was a pleasure to move to California but um and so I love that and then the job with bbo came open here in Dallas and
they asked me to move to Dallas and I said yes now why would you give up the west coast to come to Dallas what was it that convinced you to do that a couple of things um I had a good friend who lived here um who I a friend I had made through bbo and had moved back she had moved back to Dallas for her family business and also the cost of living in Northern California is just torturous I mean you know there was no hope of ever owning anything or you know really being able to to do any better financially than what I was
going to do as long as I stayed in nonprofit management now have you been had you been to Texas before um I visited a couple of times and well tell me about packing up and coming to Dallas I was a young kid I read a book by shalam MIM about um called the Great fair and in the great Fair one of the characters always said change your place change your luck and so I when given the opportunity to move I said is what's keeping me here more important than the opportunity to do something new and the answer was no so I packed up and moved
actually I was lucky they packed me up and I moved and I had a lovely two weeks um traveling throughout Northern California and into Canada and the Canadian Rockies and also you made a nice good I made a nice goodbye trip um spent two weeks getting here and uh what year was this now this was in 1989 1989 mhm all right talk to me about I'm now in Dallas so I came to Dallas and it was a different situation a little bit because I was for the um housed in The JCC again which was lovely because I felt definitely more part of the community than
in Northern California where I just had an office in a in an office building and I had an assistant and I had a secretary and a half and really lovely people and a uh a large bbo program um that covered North Texas and Oklahoma so I did a little bit of traveling while I was here so it's been a little bit over 20 years you've been here how has the JCC evolved in those 20 years The JCC has become more open I think when I first came um not that membership was not is not important now because cuz it certainly is but back then particularly
my relationship as a bbo director with the JCC was a little more what are these kids doing in our building making a mess you know who and they're not members most of them um it's much more open now when the building was redesigned uh during the capitol campaign about 8 or 10 years ago they designed it a place for bbo and even though I was long gone by then I could certainly see the difference and I can see the difference in how they respond to um the kids and how they respond to other groups coming in talk to me about the Jewish Community how it's
evolved in the Jewish Community Center in the time you've been here I think that the Jewish Community has had a tremendous evolution in the historical society's Outreach one of the things we're trying to do is reach beyond what I like to call the temple Emanuel shareth Israel taret triangle which are the three oldest congregations 100 years old that were really the center of Jewish life and at around the time that I moved here shortly before the Jewish Community began spreading out when I moved here I think there were five or six congregations now I think they're 13 um people really when I moved here and
lived and and got an apartment north of LBJ everybody I met said oh my goodness you live so far out there no Jews live that far away now you know Frisco Allen um Carolton Lewisville you know people live all over and they've really and even South to Duncanville and places like that I think that the other thing that's happened is that it took a really long time I think for the Jewish Community to recognize that it needed to make a place for adults who were not married with Children for young adults for older adults to really um uh help them find a spot in the
Jewish Community because they don't fit in the traditional molds and so I think the JCC has made that happen as well as some of the congregations I know Temple Emanuel really did a lot of Outreach and sherith has done some Outreach and some of the other congregations as well I think probably the biggest change has been the growth of the Orthodox Community um when you know for many years toered Israel was considered the Orthodox congregation but it was really a traditional congregation then Sharie teila came along and it was a modern Orthodox congregation now we have half a dozen varieties of what it means to
be Orthodox and as a result um it's drawn another group of imigra if you will to Dallas we have several Kosher grocery stores we have you know opportunities for people to live in the place they want to live in the way that they want to live and um it has made us in many ways a more open Community the difference between what was an acceptable meal at a community event in 1989 when I came here and what's acceptable now are very different because the community has come to understand the concept of um making a place where everyone can be comfortable and making a place where
everyone can eat and I think that there have been a lot of transitions through the years as well with um the Federation and the agencies associated with the Federation and they've become more open to different people and that's made a huge difference it's allowed people uh probably the next biggest group right now is the young adults now we not only have young adult programs at a lot of the congregations but at the Federation we have MOA house which is a a newer organization which is designed to connect Jewish young adults to each other in any way they can we have several kabad has one of
has an organization for young adults um one of the other Orthodox groups has an organization for young adults so in a way there's a very there there's more specific Outreach going on to different kinds of groups everybody is part of Jewish Dallas you don't have to have been here for a 100 years or 75 years or 50 years to be part of Dallas Jewish history you're it's getting made every day since you have this contact with the children all the time have you noticed a difference in how the kids are from basically a generation ago till now one of the things that I notice and
this is as much because I have God children who are high school age and I see their friends and what they're interested in and what they do I mean certainly the whole internet Revolution and the fact that these kids are um what they call born dig digital so it's all fresh and you know part of their wiring but they're very concerned about the world and I think one of the differences is that 20 years ago kids were concerned about the world but I don't think they felt quite as empowered to do something about it I look at my godchildren I look at the kids at
yava Academy I look at the kids at some of the other schools and and I see them really taking steps to make the world the kind of place they'd like it to be to really reach out to their friends to be there to be um to build their their own family groups in a way that perhaps kids didn't 20 and 30 and 40 years ago but what were the big inventions for you in your lifetime I'm a l ad doctor mhm when it comes to things like that um certainly I remember you know black and white TV so color TV was a pretty big deal
um you know the Walkman MH that was a great thing like all of a sudden you could listen to music and and be someplace else and walk and and do those kinds of things you didn't have 45 anymore so you know cassette tapes that was a big deal and all those you know those transitional things um and certainly things like a microwave you know my mother was the mother who worked all day and came home and made dinner every night and with you know none of the conveniences conveniences that we have now I'm a single person who works and I can barely get dinner together
and I have a microwave and all those things I'm not sure convenience has helped me all that much now in the office um you probably remember when you got the first fax machine oh absolutely you know and compared to what you have now you know how how is that evolved you know here at the JCC fori well one of the things I noticed and it was actually when I was working for bbo when we first got a fax machine that as soon as it went off I would jump up to see what was there and it you know was so amazing and um I guess
the same thing kind of happened with when we first got um email M and you know I would feel like I had to respond immediately that was so exciting um and now it's you know now it's just every day and and commonplace and now I have four email accounts that I'm checking during the day um it it's remarkable how much it's changed and how much easier things are just um in all the organizations that I've worked for you you know keeping information the whole information technology has been probably the biggest benefit right do you remember the Beatles when they first came you know to television
Ed Sullivan absolutely and as a matter of fact somewhere in my house is a cassette tape of John Lennon wishing my sister and me happy birthday and how did that happen my brother was in radio and television for all most of his life from about the age of 15 on and and he happened to be doing a radio show back in [Music] the 70s I guess I think I was still in high school and he was talking to interviewing John Lennon and he said my sisters have a birthday today would you say happy birthday because my sister and I have the same birthday was this
in Chattanooga um yes okay uh he was not in Chattanooga I think he was in Indiana or some place at the time okay and um so John Lennon said he happy birthday Sharon and dabah oh my gosh do you still happen to have that to I have it somewhere but I don't know where somewhere you need you need to find that that's when you were a kid who are some of your favorite singers well I have to admit because I my mother loved music that I was a Broadway musical fan so I loved you know Broadway music and that kind of stuff and I also
loved the the balance ear Frank Sinatra and um Steve Lawrence and Jack Jones people who are like you know people don't even know who they are anymore I remember watching the Perry Como show and actually driving by his house in in Cannonsburg PA one time with my aunt um so I love that kind of music but then yeah when I got into high school and got into certainly The Beatles I was a Beatles when my Elementary School it was you were either a Beatles fan or an Elvis fan so I was definitely a Beatles And um yeah then in high school it was you know
just everything I I was not I'm not that I I was a I like music but I can't say that I was you know a real you know radio head kind of person how's Dallas changed since you've been here since I've been here I think Dallas has has um been has also become more open and perhaps it it's um the influx of people Dallas has always had its own kind of weird demographic it's even though people think of it as Southern it's got a very Western demographic in that people come here and are TR transients come here come people come and go and um having
grown up in at a time where I remember Dallas as the place where Kennedy was killed um Dallas is a different city now I think not that there's not still some racial tension and um problems in that area but I think in general and certainly most recently the leadership is really about making Dallas a better place to live for everybody MH you know really reaching out into the community what was your favorite decade I have not had a bad decade I would say personally for me the hardest one um maybe late 90s early 2000s I had a lot of career changes and and some difficult
periods um so cuz I had quite a big I left bbo in 1996 and then had about six jobs at the same time that I was doing for a number of years and uh before I found my spot here at the Dallas Jewish Historical Society happiest time in your life I think probably when I was a kid when I was young I you know played outside and had best friends who lived up the street Street and read voraciously um you know I grew up in a family that didn't have a lot but I think that we were happy my mother made sure that we had
what we needed and um while I've always seen that the other half lives a little differently a little better I think um I I think my quality of life has been pretty good MH now in your lifetime there's been so many momentous occasions you know you talked about racial tensions when you were a kid at school MH President Kennedy assassination uh something good the moonlanding right of course 911 uh that tragedy was there something on the national scene that really affected your life affected you when I was in in college I was a camp counselor at the Girl Scout camp that I had gone to
as a as a kid and um this was during the Watergate hearings and for some reason when Nixon resigned I was the person who was designated as we pulled the whole camp together to to watch it to explain to this group of kids from second grade to high school um what had happened and um it's funny because at the time I was an International Studies major so I was like reading all the newspapers every day and and you know very kind of involved and had been involved in politics a little in high school and college and I remember feeling that um responsibility that weight of
trying to explain something that could have been very fearful and yet you know a president resigning and a president being accused of some pretty bad things and yet at the same time being reassuring that this is what our this is how our country does things and we go on and we you know that orderly transition of power is part of our strength and and that kind of thing so that and I think maybe that was when I began to realize that um I loved teaching that I loved being not just at the front of the room but being able to to make sense and explain
things now your whole career you've worked with children and young people um most a good part of my career what would you like to leave for the Next Generation what what advice do you have for them hold on to who you are regardless of what comes your way know in your heart who you are and what you want and don't let anybody tell you any different did a great job this is fantastic thank you