Jack Molad
Jack Molad's parents came from Eastern Europe, his mother from Minsk and his father from the Moldova region between Russia and Romania, arriving in Palestine in the Second Aliyah in 1906. They were among the early settlers who cultivated the land, enduring hardships such as malaria, and married in Jaffa near Tel Aviv. Jack was born in Tel Aviv with his brothers, growing up as a proud, secular, first-generation Israeli. His youth was filled with swimming, basketball, soccer, and time on the beach, alongside an intense focus on freeing Palestine from British rule. He served in the Haganah and later in the War of Independence, and recalled a motorcycle accident that broke his leg, sparing him from the front where a friend died. He vividly remembered the joy in Tel Aviv when the United Nations voted to recognize the State of Israel.
After finishing high school, Jack came to the United States to study aeronautical engineering at Parks Air College at Saint Louis University, one of the few fields Israel then permitted students to pursue abroad. During his first year both of his parents passed away, and he supported himself through many jobs. While working at a St. Louis congregation, Rabbi Bernard Lipnick recognized his gift for teaching and encouraged him to devote himself to Jewish education. Jack met his wife, Helen, at a dance in University City, and their children Miriam and Steve were born in St. Louis. He served as school and youth director there, then moved the family to Omaha, Nebraska, in 1964, where he also became director of the Midwest region of USY.
In the early 1970s Rabbi Nissim Wernick recruited Jack to Dallas, where he became school director at Shearith Israel. He proposed and launched the Dallas Teen Tour to Israel, leading more than 700 teenagers on six-week educational journeys over fifteen years, including hikes, climbs of Masada and Mount Sinai, and meaningful Shabbat experiences. After becoming ill in 1989, he retired from the tours but soon returned to work at Anshai Emet in Plano, where he served as principal and continued teaching religious school, famously rewarding students with chocolate bars. He earned a master's degree in education from North Texas and studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary. His children and grandchildren all made aliyah and settled in Jerusalem, bringing his family full circle to the land of his roots, where he hoped one day to live.
Full Transcript
i'm joe reingold and i'm interviewing jack malad today it is february 20th 2020. hello good afternoon jack first of all i want to thank you and the federation for doing that i'm honored and humbled by all the things you're doing wow it's our pleasure the more you do it you cut me down to size like a blade in a grass my parents came from russia my mother came from minsk western russia and my father came from ukraine moldova between russia and romania and they came to palestine in second aliyah very very early in 1906 at that time away from europe eastern europe and western europe came to palestine and these were the first people who settled on the land
and began to cultivate the land of course they got malaria because there were swamps all over the country my father also got malaria working there so it's a whole story about him getting to palestine and my wife my mother also came very early they got married in jaffa near tel aviv i was born with my brothers in tel aviv the city was very small first generation of suburbs of native israelis very proud to be and we were very busy thinking about the lane most of the time we were not religious we're secular most of our minds was free palestine from the british so it was
an intensive kind of living in in palestine as we grew up there was a whole story about the haganatha trying to push the british out i was in haganah and my brother was in the year ago they didn't get along very well but time went by and i think it was my brother the yergun underground that really was responsible to push out the british out of palestine so we're very proud of that one day came to an end and they left and we start growing out in palestine was very very nice in high school in the summers we went to the kibbutz where the haganath
taught us what to do and all that but it was beautiful years in a high school uh just before the war started one day i got i rented a motorcycle and picked my friend and went on the city in the mainstreet ben yehuda and i got in a terrible crash that crash broke my leg and my friend who injured behind me unlucky for him he was well and went to the front the beginning of the war and he died on the first in the first month of the war i my leg was in the case for six months so i didn't go to the front
i believe that this is one of the reason i'm still alive today because god spared me there growing in israel most of our time we were doing sport i was swimming competition uh basketball competition playing soccer all the time also born near the beach we were beach people all the time on the beach so growing up that was our life very happy on saturday night beach and mostly sport here in sport there and thinking about the british all the time of course the arabs were right on the other corner waiting for us they thought that the british will leave and they would come in and
take over so did the british thought so but the british left and you know the war of independence started after a few months i entered the army and served through the war of independence and baruch hashem with god help we slowly drove the british a little bit out finally came to a head when they hung three israelis and the ergun stopped three soldiers british orders and hung them in orchard that brought the whole confrontation into an end and britain the government said we hated enough and we're going to the u.n so that's how we drove the british out of palestine very proud of so there
was the u.n voted one one day and i'm sitting up in the balcony in my third floor and i hear downtown israel downtown tel aviv singing and dancing and i'm singing oh my god i can't go oh and they just voted for recognition of the state of israel the division of the country and we went bananas well friends came to me motorcycles and cars picked me up went downtown and god was one of the highlights and the life in in israel was beautiful now we finished high school and i told my parents i want to go to the united states to study some of my
friends out there and i like them suddenly okay send your high school diploma and see whatever we send a husband diploma three universities accepted us ucla southern california and st louis university now it so happened that they wouldn't let israelis leave the country in that early only if you study something that will help the security of the state of israel so i picked up aeronautical engineering because this was one of the profession that israel said they are going to need so that's why i picked up it and i went to century university because my friends were there so there's a jack come over and so
i went to little did i know what was california university like so i came to st louis east english ironic engineering parks air college in college the first year my parents both passed away so it was very tough in the first year and money stopped coming and i had to start working in a second and you name it and i did it i worked in everything you can think of gas station washing windows even pushing women on a on a dancing floor of a feather stair studio so all these things together two years into the college i went into singles and got a job in
the senegal for the first time yamuna congregation university city which is in st louis so i began to teach hebrew school and for one year a teacher at the end of the year rabbi bernard lipnic i love shalom called me in and said yeah how come the parents want their children to be in your classroom there's no room in your class and they all want to come what's going on i said to him remember i don't know sometimes i tell them stories about israel of course they do i mean they sit down and listen to you now the following year i proceeded to be you
director of banaya mona at the end of the study rabbi called me in and i said here's my diploma i'm going to work in relation in lambert field in saint louis wherever i said jack you are not going there we are ready to pay you whatever they pay you're going to hit work here one year and see how you feel i think that this is where you belong i said rabbi all right we tried one year after one year ty he and i both knew where i belong the rapper says this is it everybody here so i became school director and youth activities in 1960
for the first four years on on the professional life in st louis being director of school and youth activities after four years we got a job offer from several things with omar nebraska offered me a higher pay and i said where is the time we need to do some more money so we moved from saint louis to omaha nebraska who's the we the whole family oh okay moved from saint louis to omaha nebraska in 1964. obama was a small town and of course i enjoyed very much teaching the new director and all and i became very involved in the midwest region usy it so happened those conventions the regional and national conventions got me on the spot i mean i lit singing and they said where's joe rua bring here give him the microphone we're gonna hear blah blah blah so it was a big thing and the regional director said jack you are doing something on those conventions i'm very happy to do it one day they made me director of the midwest region for a couple of years so after eight years
i get a phone call from dallas texas rabbi nissim warning calls me up now i met rabbi wernick in esther k newman in omaha was a camp outside the city and everybody in the city was going to i was directly of activities in the camp so rebel warren came in there and he and i played basketball against the whole camera and then he watched me leaving the surface and leading the bearcat amazon thinking so he says jack you're doing a good job here i don't think so he knew me firsthand so on the phone this is jack you're coming to the rabbi i'm not looking
for a job now jack we sent you the tickets and next you next week you're coming in so we talked to my wife and my kids and and they all say well we're going to try so i came to dallas to share the israel congregation the committee the school committee sat down with me for an hour discussed the situation they asked me to leave the room i left the room 20 minutes i can pick this jack you're hired i'm going to stop you for a second you have to back up for just a minute because you skipped a chapter first of all where and when
did you meet your wife and when did your family grow and then jump back ahead to dallas i met my wife in saint louis in a dance houston university city a lot of jewish kids were there and we met there then she used to come and visit me in east saint louis we had a cinema there we went there and friends there and she came in a nod and we started dating and finally we got married a small synagogue in east saint louis okay so we got married the children were born in saint louis in university city and grew up there from a tiny room
where miriam was born and did staying all night with the environment born and then steve was born so they grew up in saint louis uh st louis was beautiful for us the weather was a recordings includes but that's where they grew up a little bit until they got to teenage also in omaha kids used to come to my house every saturday afternoon to study torah so it was a big thing we go to mr mulla's house you study tour then you go out and you play football so everybody studying playing was very so that's how the kids grew in omaha nebraska and they got a
lot of friends there and i don't think they were very happy about the move because the roots are already there and they have friends and teenagers and all those things i think it was hard on both of the kids of mine but we had to do the move synagogue was a small senator sherida israel had 1800 families 400 kids in the school so it something i wanted to go to a bigger school so we made a move and i was happy for that so we moved into dallas in dallas very interesting the second year in my school in dallas i went to the federation one
morning and i asked to talk i think it was mr donsky the head of the federation at that time and two more people who sat with me and i said listen guys i'm leading tours to israel for several years i think that we can do here a job taking teenagers to israel and they study for sixth week in israel i think it's one of the best educational programs you can see so they say okay let's bring all the people rabbis so all the rulers from the synagogue and educators all came to the federation with a big meeting at the beginning i laid down what i
do with the kids in israel and how it works how the education is conducting there and all the things we do the study there and i thought this is one of the best program that i can think they talked it over and they came to a meeting next week and they said jack the federation decided to do it very happy to do it so in 1974 the federation said a little card outside the dallastine tour is on for for that summer i got was very happy about it and uh we started with the first tour in 1973 every summer it was part of my life
six weeks in israel was very highlight of of educational programs so i was very happy doing all the time in israel as i said with the kids one evening it's at the hotel in a dining room in a corner very quietly i said to the teenagers kids listen tonight i'm not talking to you i'm not talking to 80 percent of you tonight i'm talking to 20 percent of you that only shows up from time to time they all stare up at me i could see the white of their eyes and they say jack we hear you from that time on somehow i felt that i'm
getting closer and deep into the kids involving in their growth and their thinking and their well-being they sat down and talked to me all kinds of things i could see they're growing maturing in the summer in services they wanted to do more they wanted to do they want to read the books they want to know what's this they want to know more about israel every morning on the bus i talked to the kids for the first 30 minutes in the morning it was all routing and singing and talking to them they said this is a great time every morning when jack on in the bus
going in the evening we used to have a program service and talking to them i realized there was a great impact that they have in israel and i kept on going the impact grew in with the years every year i do it a little bit better and finally toward the end i really thought that we are influencing the growth of the kids the tours went 15 years in a row there's only one year that the two split they said that perhaps i'm too orthodox so you know okay sort of reform doing there tour and we did our tour but the next we got back together
and uh and rented the rest of the year by the way the other two was led by offer more lot so there are two more lots leading the tours in that particular summer so we grew up very very interesting so at the end of the tours i got sickened in 1989 and i could not lead a tour anymore so the two came to an end i got some memorabilia from the kids from the summers that uh one album is just out of the world that i showed people around they wrote something about me it really was something very big for us and i don't know
if you have the alcohol or not but did you donate it to the archives here every one of the two wrote something for me so it was very touching so we we got out of charities i retired and after one year i think i'm going to start working i'm not going to sitting home so fern farkas told the people in chary and andre emmett in plano listen i know jack you ought to be bringing him over he's really sunburned over so i came over to andre emmett and they talked to me and i joined the cha anja emmett as the director of this school and
from then on i work in andre emmett later on i continue the entry torah so i work until 204 as a principal and later on i kept staying in the senate in anchito and teach the kids religious school and actually i'm teaching all the years and i'm still teaching today so basically this is a story i'm not sure if i skip things out but uh oh it's wonderful show us what you have your book i'm proud of this book this is my life in israel growing up in and all the details of the underground and the life there how life was difficult and things we
did there how we grew up we pushed the british out so i think this is my life story what's the name of it what's the title growing up in palestine very good thank you that's wonderful did you ever have any regrets about moving away no i think i like it because it was a bigger place and i was more involved of course the shared israel was almost 2 000 families also 400 kids i mean this the school was very large and i was very happy the big thing about story about me is i i enter classes when i was a principal and every time walking
up close with the kids if you answer this question you're going to chocolate bar so they jump out as i give a talk about anyone to answer my question so they all waited for me every day one is mr mullah coming in and one is coming in the junior congregation on saturday morning used to be like maybe 10 15 kids used to show up when i took over i told them kids anybody can read this line and sing you get a chocolate bar so next circuit chocolate bars on junior lo and behold their 40 kids saturday in junior congregation and guess who's giving me the
chocolate bar the parents did this is jack here it is you can give it to the kids so this is going on and on the store by the chocolate bars and i just kept it all the time i i feel really good about it the kids looking forward and by all means they don't get it so i do it all the way to today and what happened to your aeronautical engineering career it never never materialized huh when rabbi lipping said you belong here my degree went into a drawer and this was the end of my engineering career did you ever pursue a degree in education
or you just did it informally and then formally no yeah yeah what what what picture she said yes miriam said you did have a degree all right asked me to go to new york to the to the jewish theological seminary so i went there for two summers and studied in the seminary so and then every summer i studied with a seminary in in singles and in omaha all the time going all the time and of course i attended all the educators assembly in upstate new york was a big thing for us study there and all that i lecture a lot to teachers and kids and
principals and and seminars in judaism all the time i also made a master degree in education in north texas university yeah okay so these are my two degrees you're not good at masters in education wonderful it was definitely be shared right definitely so tell us how has your family grown since you've been here it was hard on them in the beginning yeah because they had to get along but we had a great time coming in in dallas uh it's a bigger community and uh more activities going to the gcc and going to share it all the time kept that busy the kids went through through
high school and then of course college miriam to college and steve winter college and the years went by quickly in dallas and the kids were wonderful here we enjoyed dallas so much and finally they graduate college and and left and they came back to live with us so they're called they both study in in texas university in austin anything else miriam yes got married how did how did their families grow grandchildren great grandchildren tell us about that mary had two beautiful girls and a little boy that took my whole heart with this starting with molly was born in one little room in university city and
that's where we lived there for the first year near the synagogue i could walk to the synagogue miriam had to stay half the night with molly shaking up the thing in the little for her crying all the time this was a little experience then we move out from the little little one-room apartment to canterbury garden where we had a bigger bigger place to live in and there steve was born a year and after here after a year and a half after miriam so now i i forgot to tell you now go back to her children okay after molly sophie was born beautiful girl also somewhere
and then after sophie arie the little boy so we grew up and i had a great time with my grandchildren miriam started her business in a small little apartment and she worked in framing so she got framing into the bathroom and hanging on the door and said hey miranda what's going on here she's dead we're beginning here so in a bathroom in the little room that's how she started to work on frames and pull their frames and then just like that's what they're going to do after this little tiny room in the bathroom they grew up a little a little more and lo and behold
it got to be a big business miriam and paul were working on framing and it was surface airlines employer the kids the kids grew up very beautiful and went to school to high school and to college and it's a beautiful life as the kids call up my grandchildren my great-grandchildren [Music] the story goes that time out of it where are your grandchildren and great grandchildren now that's why yeah i'm beginning to learn and because of my background and my roots my great my grandchildren took off on all my background where i was born and in one time in tel aviv they wanted to see where
i lived so we went in and zoned they got attached to the stories and they got attached to israel molly went to israel to work there come back and then went back there and i realized that my grandchildren are attracted into israel and when sophie told me one day grandpa papa we're going to are you he must couldn't be really yes grandpa we're going to israel too so there we go both of my granddaughters went to israel and settled down with their children sophie with the two kids she had kobe and moshe the two boys and molly has tali and dina just a year ago
dina dina is born the same day that i am today we held the birthday for me and for dinner at the same time it was a wonderful thing it was beautiful so dina is beautiful and molly is singing to me on the phone happy birthday papa beautiful then ari comes to me i thought he was going to stay here with others i said papa i got a job and he says no you too yes papa i want to be there with my family so he made aliyah too so all my grandchildren and my great dear my whole family now is in israel where my roots
were so it finally struck me that that's where the roots are they've made full circle they've come back around so do you have a hope of moving back there one day yes i do i helped i hope to go to island and maybe live the rest of my life there with my grandchildren and great-grandchildren hopefully so where do they live whatever they live in jerusalem all three of them okay and they talk to me almost every day on the phone every day papa how's it going my wife does not feel well she's a little ill so it's a little rough the kids are calling her
all the time see how she feels right right okay this is a tough question but see if you if you can answer this besides your family what else can you point to that you are the most proud of in your life tough question right i think that my 15 years leading the tour to isra's sixth was probably the highlight of my educational career i didn't realize how many over 700 teenagers went with me to israel and i think that if i had something to do with the life of 700 teenagers i think this is some kind of accomplishment and i'm very proud of it and
it's very touchy for me i can't read what i write because i choke up all the time but what they write about me just killing me you know when i read the things i can't i cuz i can't read it but i realized how influenced i in infants i had for so many over 700 so i think this is probably the highlight of my career my educational career anyway also i was happy to do well in high in the congregational high school i taught her kids came in high school grew up so it was also an in and the kids who came back from israel
stay in our high school and jewish high school i was also proud of that so there that's what it is can you put into words a little bit about the dallas that you came here what it looked like and what dallas looks like now the difference since you've gotten here well when i came here i was so busy going with the young children at home and seeing that they are happy all the time and doing the best i can in the small senegal on bethel synagogue and both of our kids were batman and bar mitzvah in that little synagogue so we had some very happy
life at uh in omaha and and then finally we move on to dallas dallas in the beginning few years were a little bit tough settled down and all that but little by little we got used to it and we grew up and life began better and better all the time how do you see the jewish population changing from when you came here till now do you see any changes in it i think that the jewish population moved north and i could see it and shared israel where the smoke the school got smaller and smaller they moved to plano and all movement and the days were
open and so my school getting smaller all the i realize that the jewish population is moving northward all the people i know are shared israel but their children are already in plana so many of the kids many of the people in planet the parents come to jack you taught our children and shared israel now are you treat our children here at ancient so it was an interesting thing well i want to tell you it's absolutely a pleasure to see you and be with you and interview you happy birthday many many many more slaves you did a great job you did wonderful and you've helped so
many children on their road to jewish education so thank you so much thank you so much for doing okay go ahead there are a few things in israel in the tournament that stands out on my mind first of all the kids were going hikes every day almost and they said jake where are we going today was a big thing to hike every morning we go and that somehow toughened them physically said jack where are you going to take her today what what mountain is coming next masada everybody was a big name now we went to sinai we slept in in bags you know and coked
there there were things we did in israel was phenomenal we also went to sinai and two summers we climbed mount sinai i want to know how many mothers can say in america that they have climbed mount sinai my wife did helen came with me all the way on top of manza i'm so proud of her she has a picture holding a goat in her hand with a bedway next to her with a phenomenal picture so there are few things there in israel another thing is in jerusalem we're sitting on temple mount and looking at the dome of the rock and they hear all about temple
mount and temple david jenekov raised his hand and said jack can't we destroy this dome of the rock and build our own temple here everyday well david i'm very sorry that we cannot do that so that is why jack well because we're jews jews don't do that we can't just erase it and and drive the people at the start we just cannot do that david so he said this is our temple mound jack very interesting i mean so you turned a bunch of teenage teenage jews into radicals is that what you're saying can we get the temple mount back right yeah well that's we wonder
that all the time don't we that's a great experience this is so great uh the dead sea was phenomenal you know we're going down the dead sea masada was ma we go down mount our belt people don't do it i do it that people of tours don't do it i do it because i learn how to do it so the kids sit on top of them mounted look down and the card is that small and they say jack look at that so the kids were going down mount their bed so they said are we using a parachute i mean we're not going down how are
you gonna fly down well we went down with the boys with the road and they've gone and finally and they lose a jack we can't believe we came down from mount our belt another thing in jerusalem in the lobby friday night was a beautiful hotel and we were there and there was another group from houston friday night i go down to the lobby all my kids are down and here comes the houston kids well my kids look like a friday night they were dressed in andy look the other two somehow did not look like it friday night and i was proud looking at my kids
and says boy this is friday night shabbat for my kids it's not like this everywhere so i was so proud of a moment like that my kids i'm proud not only that i got a note from the jewish agency in jerusalem dear jack we want to tell you that your tour the dallastine tour is one of the top performing tours in israel year in and year out and we want you to do it to know it i said menachem thank you so much i was proud of that too right well that's right it's your influence yeah a few things