Peter Lewin
Peter Lewin's family, like most South African Jews, traced their origins to Lithuania, with one grandmother coming from England and possibly Holland. His paternal grandfather ran a store in Oudtshoorn, the center of the ostrich feather trade, until a wartime depression forced the family into Johannesburg when Peter's father was three. His paternal grandfather was a revered self-taught Talmud scholar and cohen who became a mohel after settling in the city. His parents grew up speaking Afrikaans in small towns, met at a wartime military dance while his father served as an army paymaster, and married at the end of the Second World War. Peter was the oldest of three sons, all raised as secular Jews affiliated with orthodoxy and sent to Jewish day school.
Inspired by a family friend to study economics at about age fourteen, Peter pursued it throughout his education. He attended university in South Africa, majoring in economics and history, and completed an honours degree in economics before leaving for the University of Chicago in 1972 to earn his PhD. He married Beverly, his childhood sweetheart from King David school, in 1969. Their first child, Danny, was born prematurely in Chicago in 1974 and survived against long odds at Michael Reese Hospital. The family returned to South Africa in 1976, arriving around the time of the Soweto riots, before Peter accepted a position at the University of Texas at Dallas and moved to Dallas in January 1979.
In Dallas, Peter and Beverly became founding members of Solomon Schechter Academy, wanting a school that balanced Jewish and secular education, and their son Danny was in its first graduating class. Peter served as the first chairman of the education committee and became active at Congregation Shearith Israel. Professionally, after being denied tenure and working for several years in business at the company that became CompUSA, he returned to UT Dallas, where he continues teaching thousands of students as a clinical professor and pursues research in Austrian capital theory. He published Capitalism and Disequilibrium in 1999. He and Beverly raised four children, brought his parents to Dallas in 1994, and continue traditional family observances centered on Friday night gatherings.
Full Transcript
okay okay good afternoon this is June the 25th 2015 I'm interviewing dr. Peter Lewin for the Rickster boots project and we are here at the JCC in Dallas welcome dr. Lewin and I would like to ask you for me I call you Peter please do okay Peter the first thing I'd like to do is to ask you to please tell us a little bit about what you know about your history on both sides of your family prior to their entry into South Africa where did they come from prior to South Africa on both sides what do you know about that part of your family history okay my grandparents three of the four of my grandparents came from Lithuania as did the vast majority of Jews in South Africa came from Lithuania for reasons that are not
entirely clear but nevertheless that's the case so both my father's parents came from Lithuania my grandfather came from a small town called Varna or Vanya in Lithuanian I don't know where my grandmother came from my grandfather first visited the United States probably around 1880 and then returned to Europe when he got married then went to England or in route to America but his new wife will prefer to go to South Africa so they came to South Africa I'm estimating somewhere around the turn of the century on my mother's side my grandfather came from with you Amy I don't know where my grandmother came from England
and there was some talk in the family that prior to going to England her family had been in Holland so my own speculation my own imagination is that if they were in Holland maybe tracing it back even further they came from Portugal or Spain uh-huh which suggests to me that on my for my grandparents on one-quarter Safari uh-huh good speculation good speculation so what types of businesses were the grandparents in South Africa it's very interesting how the the Jews that came to South Africa in some ways Merida similar experience to the juicings in Texas and particularly South Texas and many of them located in small
towns where they weren't many other Jews in the one reason for that was they they wanted to establish a business in which there wasn't a whole lot of competition so my maternal grandfather opened up a little store in a South African town called Trump's burg had to think for a moment at the name trumps burg in the Orange Free State was one of the provinces of South Africa really little town that's not well known even in South Africa and he married my grandmother it must have been she doesn't an arranged marriage because they were from two different parts of the world and my mother remembers
living in a house above the store so they actually had their sort of apartment for a while at least above the concession store so my grandmother worked in at my grand father worked and that he wasn't very successful my paternal grandfather had a rather interesting business experience he settled first in a small town in the Cape called oats horn which was the center of the world ostrich feather business they produced ostrich feathers which were then in fashion my grandfather opened up I think also a concession store like a little convenience store and he did okay he had eight children my father was born in Auckland
but when he was three years old it was right on the eve of the First World War and there was a depression or recession worldwide and it hit South Africa ostrich feathers went out of business my grandfather went bankrupt and my father remembers sitting on the back of an ox wagon driving into town in Johannesburg because the Jews moved during that period and subsequently from the small towns into the big cities at that time my father could speak no English he could only speak Afrikaans he was the youngest of eight and my mother was I grew up speaking Afrikaans in those small towns so both
of them had a little bit of a small town experience and so when he moved into Johannesburg what age was your father three three years old and your mother at what point did she move into the big city uh I'm not entirely sure she lived in transferred most of her life she went her high school there she went every summer to dirt but that was the big city closest where the pet where her grandparents were so he would spend time with the grandparents so what point did your mother learn to speak English she learnt English from her mother who was English haha but her first
language was Afrikaans and her my mother's parents spoke English in depth in Durban was primarily english-speaking what type of a schooling experience did your mother have in the small town she was the only Jew in her grade and her brother older brother and sister were the only Jews in their grade so she she unfortunately I couldn't really find this out while she was alive in enough detail but I know and some of my children have told me that she had experienced anti-semitism in high school oh really yeah you know a sort of a you know how can you say common variety in the sense that
Jews were not they didn't know much about Jews they were not Christians so they were automatically sort of not saved you know and the typical prejudices associated with money and things like that and she was she was subject some of it was ugly but not violent and what about your father when he he moved into the big city at the age of three so what was his educational experience like well my father in a way was fortunate and being the youngest of eight he had three brothers and four sisters when my grandfather moved into the big city I mean he did have no means of
subsistence it was never very successful with money but my my grandfather on my father's side my Zelda was a incredibly exceptional man he was self educated he was he was a Holcomb he was a scholar of the Talmud they used to teach the Talmud we're also calling him so he was the he moved I don't know where they moved when they first came to Johannesburg but for all of my life they lived in a little house right next to the shul which was known as the bed - like that dog they'd how many thrush like a dog was the bigger the sort of high school
and he was the cohan like a doll we used to do fun we used to bless the congregation on the octave with my uncles and my cousins so he was highly respected so I can when he came to Johannesburg he began to integrate into the community he was he was not a young man even when he was already in his mid 40s when my father was born so he had some network and he became a much gift huh so he was able to recount a living by being a mush yes and I think he also worked in a matzo Factory mm-hmm and he actually got
his hand caught in a matzo machine and cut off three of his four fingers so on his right hand so as a as a grandson whenever I would see him he was extend his hand to me I would feel those stubby fingers it was at first a little scary but that was just him he was a short man but it had an incredible presence and he taught himself English and he used to teach Shakespeare I mean he used to teach Talmud by quoting Shakespeare he was a really remarkable man and I tell you this because my father must have picked up from him this love
of learning and of language because they sent my father too very good school public that it was a public school jeppie high and my father became a scholar Platon he really enjoyed learning Latin in English and so he got a really good education party facilitated by the fact that my oldest uncle his oldest brother left high school and went to work to saw that he could some help support the family and put the younger kids to school oh my goodness so the older floor dropped down a high school to support the younger four so that they could go through high school so what profession did
your father wanted of going into this uncle who left high school then went to night school completed his high school degree then went college and got an accounting degree and then opened his own accounting firm by the time my father finished high school went to college and got an accounting degree the firm was well established and my father went into that business where he worked for the next 62 years so he worked for a company called pollen and Lewin and the Lewin was my uncle uh-huh and my father was became the junior Park named there in that company and what about your mother what at
what point did she leave the small town and go to the big city my mother I think was in some ways a tragic case of underachievement because of the different opportunities available to women at the time she was very intelligent she wanted to be a doctor but it was just not on the court her family was very poor and so when she left high school there was it for her and so she went to live with some relatives in blue 13 which was the capital of that province blonde 14 was an Afrikaans town landlocked it was pretty insular in many ways but there was a
fairly large Jewish community there afrikaans-speaking town and so she lived with her relatives they were on her father's side yeah and so she graduated high school went to live there and around about that time was the war the Second World War and she met my father how did they meet my father was after he graduated and had started working he then volunteered for the army when the war broke out because he was short-sighted they didn't send him into active duty but he became a paymaster and he was a sergeant I think uniform and everything and he met and they stationed him in Bloomington and he
met my mom at one of those military dances you know we they're really kind of low we're entertaining the local community was entertaining in this case the Jewish soldiers mm-hmm and so they met and got engaged three weeks later and where did they get married they got married in Bloomington the wedding picture shows my father in uniform did your mother have siblings my mother had an older brother and an older sister yeah did they also live in the area I don't know I don't think so her brother's the oldest in the family was my aunt Sylvia who's still alive unfortunately she's not she has dementia
but she was a feisty woman very survivor she married a guy from East London which is in the Cape and I think she was already married and loving their older brother his name was Morris we used to call him Sonny he became an accountant but I don't think he ever graduated he was and he ultimately had a very successful business I moved to Johannesburg so he might have been in Johannesburg already so your parents were married during the war time and they lived in bluefin team for how many years and then and then what I think they lived in bluefin team for a very short
time so they got married I think at the end of war they waited that it was close to the end of the war when they mate and they got married at the end I think I remember something about that was agreed upon that they didn't want to get married during the war mm-hmm so soon as the war was over they got married and then I think very soon after that they moved into a spurt because that's where his work was hmm pollen and look yeah and I know where they lived they lived in a street where later generation later my wife and I moved in
roughly the same neighborhood and so how many children are there in your generation and the family and your parents family do you mean yeah no no how many parents how many children did your parents have oh they had three three boys I'm the oldest so my mom and dad had three points I'm the oldest and then I have a brother who's two years younger than I am and another brother who's five years younger than I and living in the big city did you go to a Jewish day school or to a public school yeah my parents okay so my father came from a strictly Orthodox
home because my grandfather was a really a very respected scholar pious Jew on my mother's side I don't think they kid at all my grandfather was not interested in any of them my both my grandmother's died before I was born so I don't know I know more about my mother's mother than my father's mother but not much about any of them so certainly my mother's house was not an orthodox house in any way yet and my father was also not Orthodox he he's sort of rebelled in a quiet way he never made it public but he wasn't convinced by the dogmas and so my outhouse
was not a kosher house we were secular Jews affiliated with orthodoxy mm-hmm but my parents were absolutely adamant that we've all had to go to Jewish day schools for reasons to this day they don't quite understand but we'll put it this way I do understand because I behaved the same way but I don't know what it is exactly that that makes us decide to do that but they a great sacrifice sent me and both my brothers to Jewish day school right from grade 1 through grade 12 and what about your social activities outside of the day school were you involved with any scientistic organizations yes
it's an interesting question so this only becomes relevant around the teenage years because South Africa was a very very strong Zionist community you know South African Jews and they maximum I suppose were about 120,000 of which maybe 80 to 90,000 looking to Harrisburg and the there were a number of Zionist youth movements there was a Zionist Federation which was very very strongly affiliated with Israel so that we can choose volunteered in every major Israeli you know struggle right from the war deliberations to the yom kippur war certainly in the war the six-day war my contemporaries did it was very very strongly Zionistic and as a
result there were all these youth movements so the most successful was hub or Nina which was a labor zionist movement and most of my friends were affiliated with company so I joined it at a fairly young age and did not like it at all I went a few years after that on and off and on and off but around about the age of 16 I made the decision I don't remember when I made the decision but somehow I made the decision that this was not for me looking back on it I think it had to do to some extent with their socialism with their labor
Zionism I didn't like the whole philosophy although at the time I wasn't ideologically mature enough to know what it was I just didn't like the idea that they was sort of you know interfering in private decisions for example I tell you the thing that got me most was when I heard that on the kibbutz him they were experimenting with having children raised community so they would take children away from the pen and I mean people were like arguing yes but you've got to understand why this is a good idea it goes against their instincts but you say it just was not convinced now that I
look back and then I'm sort of proud of that but my brother my middle brother became affiliated with Hibernia men and he loved it and he became the leader national leader of harmony when he was you know university age the muscular quality the same general secretary of the whole national movement and today we talk about it because you know he's now grown and he lives in Washington and he's also an economist and very much ideologically opposed to the sort of print of socialism that the head at the time but you know if you were alive at that time and you were in college and you
were somewhat of an intellectual you were socialist didn't matter where you were in the world and but when I got to university I became involved in this Jewish Student Union the South African Jewish Student Association and they had in the local chapter and I became the national chairman the second yells the national chairman of the South African Jewish Students Association which suited me much better is not ideological that was a Jewish Students Association we had ties to Israel we did with uniforms we went on trips to Israel seminar local seminars so it's very actively involved in that how old were you when your weight on
your first trip to Israel 16 I went in tenth grade mm-hmm our school I Tuesday school King David had a wolf fund exchange I went on the very first open exchange which was inaugurated by our headmaster and I went Israel for three months so did you become fluent in Hebrew I was completely fluent and it breaks my heart that now I have to struggle to remember the words because I visit Israel to lecture now and when I talk to the students you know their English is marginally better than my ebrill but I still I try instead I still have the language I just don't know
in the book Cabul so how many times have you been to Israel out all many times um maybe 10 times very good very good so how did you decide to study economics as it for a career what was that decision-making process that's also an interesting question excuse me I had a bap age of 14 or 15 I had a friend who became my closest friend whose mother was a politician she was actually ahead of her time in that she was a really successful woman she became the radiologist she was a doctor specialist and she was also a politician she was a very she was a
still alive I think a very high ego person so I their home and her husband was a very successful attorney and what they could say South African advocate which meant he was higher than an attorney and so I spent a lot of time in their house and I remember one day she was talking to us just sitting talking and she'd come from a city council meeting she was a member of the City Council later on she became representative over the province and she said something about the economists on the committee and my friend said what's an economist and she said Oh economics is very important
if you want to understand how the world works you have to study economics and from that conversation onwards I wanted to do economics and that's the only thing I ever wanted to do I just had I looked it up you know and I started looking and it just seemed to me I can do this and I'm interested in listen and every further step that I took after that sort of reinforced that conviction did you do both your undergraduate and your graduate studies in South Africa no I went to the University of the florists rod butts in 1969 in 1966 graduated high school 65 1966 and
I majored in economics and history I had a hard time because at that time there was obligatory military service for those who were unlucky enough to get picked in the lottery so I got picked and I didn't want to go and so my parents went to Pretoria and took a bottle of scotch to a lieutenant-colonel and told him I wanted to do teaching could I get an exemption to do teaching for some how it worked I don't know how it worked I was actually on the base when I got the message that I needed to go home mm-hmm and so I hitchhiked home and reported
the next week at the Teachers Training College so at that time South Africa needed teachers and I think if I hadn't if that hadn't happened I might have majored in political science or just economics or something but being enrolled in the Teachers Training College going to the University through them I had to pick a subject that looked like it was a teaching subject so I ended up picking economics and history they gave me a hard time about picking economics because they said you know not many schools teaching enough it's more doom now but back then anyway it worked out because after the first year the
unit that I was assigned to which was sort of were his teachers reserve unit we went to camps then they scrapped that unit after I'd done a short officer's course I was able to leave the Teachers Training College pay back they they gave us a loan so I'm paying back the loan and then I was at university free and clear anyway that was so I I majored in economics and history took a three year degree was it'll be paid and then I specialized one more year in economics so I did what's called an honours degree in economics that took us up to 1970 or 71
because I've took two years over that one-year extension at that time I was teaching as a junior lecturer in the business school in South Africa I'd gotten married in 1969 mm-hmm in 1972 I left for Chicago and went to the University of Chicago to do my PhD I think and there did you go back to South Africa after that yes for a 72 to 76 we lived in Chicago were you meaning you and your wife yes I went in September of 72 she was busy studying for her master's for her undergraduate degree in social work and how did you meet your how and when did
you meet your wife we were childhood sweethearts of a kind we were trying to remember exactly the year and I I think I was in 12th grade and she was in 10th grade mm-hmm at the same high school when we sort of started going out together it was on and off for about five years and then we got married how old were you when you got married I was three months short of my 22nd birthday she was one day short of her 19th birthday so you were quite young and then you came to America for education and at what point did you start having a
family in Chicago but we were much too young by the way I could say because I look at my kids now I think what business that we have to get married at that age is ridiculous all right and when I think back on we've been married now 45 years or something 19 46 years you know I don't have to tell you that it wasn't always easy but we grew up together well yes it sounds like so what we had our first child in Chicago my son he was born in August 1974 I was finishing my coursework in the ph.d program he was born six weeks
premature and was not expected to live his lungs were underdeveloped he was a boy boys boys survived at a rate of 20% compared to girls for every five girls that survived only one boy did and he was on in the intensive care the neonatal unit for at Michael Reese hospital for for two weeks before they put him on a respirator and when they put him on a respirator we expected him to die man he was on a respirator for two days and his lungs spontaneously resolved he came up to the respirator and went to home the next day Wow and today he's six foot one
he was a championship tennis player he became a carbide rabbi and he has six wild boys rabbi that's awesome where is where is he he lives in Dallas he lives at Alice yeah I know your son Dan Lewis Dan yes I know him well I see him every Shabbos all right oh I'll have to tell her Mike is my UNAMI sauce who his dad is oh yeah oh this is a small world he was a little shrimp when he was born he couldn't fit into a shoebox oh yeah okay so so you went back to South Africa yes we lived having a child under particular
under those circumstances my mother-in-law who was an absolute Saint lesson memory came to Dallas finally when he was about to come home and she stayed for six weeks I don't know how we would have made it through without it I also don't know how we just took for granted that our parents wouldn't just step in when we needed them no no and we became convinced of the virtues of the extended family when you're young and you just get married you think oh I'm out of here what if I want to declare my independence and then we really wouldn't wanted to go home and be embraced
by the family and we went back in June of 1976 writing time for the Soweto riots Wow great timing so I have had I was given a job at vets and I taught there for a year and then I transferred to the business school it was something of a promotion so I was teaching in the business school and our second child my eldest daughter was born in Johannesburg by the way my son if he had been born anywhere else in the world certainly in South Africa but probably anywhere else in the world may not have survived Michael Reese Hospital at the time had one of
the very few neonatal intensive care units in the world today it's more or less you know routine but my wife thinks is a miracle that we were there oh absolutely absolutely no timing this everything and that back in those days it was absolutely a miracle right well Hashem was looking after him right at the God link yeah and the doctors we still remember the doctor he was formed whales well I'm the doctor who really looked after us was from whales only in America so you went back and so went back to my daughter was born there and you know things in South Africa continued to
get worse it was the beginning of the unraveling of apartheid but we didn't know at the time we just knew that there was a lot of unrest with the Soweto riots people could be shot you know in the townships and people were leaving and I really looking back on and never intended to stay in South Africa even when I went back I I did my PhD dissertation on the economics of the poor taste so I spent I spent the time when I went back getting data and at least part of the time not enough at the time but part of the time and in 1977
I interviewed in America I got offered a job in Cleveland Ohio in maybe another job offer I'm not sure that service then or the year leading in in California outside of Los Angeles I don't remember the town exactly I decided I didn't want to go to Cleveland I almost accepted that job I just didn't want to live in that weather mm-hmm again I'd looked at Chicago I didn't want my kids to grow up in California so I turned down both those jobs interviewed the next year and then was offered the job in Dallas and we came here in January of 1979 so you've been here
a long time yeah January 79 how was it coming to Dallas I mean was it an easy transition did you have friends here at the time it was much easier for me than for my life but it wasn't easy no it was it was not at all easy it what does some extent did duplicate the lifestyle we'd had in south because and that's one of the reasons I chose Dallas because it was an you know laid-back city it was very accepting it was growing a lot of economic opportunity I had the job in a university that was growing so the hard part for our family
was that my wife I said that we were growing we grew up and one of the things we learned to do was to communicate better so she maintains that I hadn't really communicated to her properly that you know that we were going to Dallas or giving her the option and to this day she makes that claim but given all the blessings we'd been dealt I take that with a little bit of a pinch of salt so she'll see this I'm sure it was hot most hard for her because she didn't see Dallas's a really vibrant a Jewish Center at the time for example there was
one Jewish day school and that was a Qibla right and she looked at the key but we both looked at the kid we didn't want to say that kids safe was too doctrinaire it's not that we didn't mind the orthodoxy but South African orthodoxy was very different everybody in South Africa's Orthodox very small reformed everybody's affiliated Orthodox but basically they do what they like right there were very few Orthodox kids in my school whereas Akiba and I mean after we didn't realize this but outside of South Africa via Orthodox your Orthodox and if you behave inconsistently people call you on that sort of and it
just didn't appeal to us it was sort of more emphasis on the Jewish part and less on the education point so we wanted a school that was more like King David and we ended up being on the founding members of Solomon Schechter Canada I actually worked with Donsky and and the people back then to start a song Schechter did you do that immediately or did your children go to a kiwa for a while no no immediately immediately well it was within months of arriving here really we had yeah Jordan laughs I had a meeting mm-hmm and we opened the school at first it was down
south at Sheriff right and my child Danny mm-hmm was in the second clause and the first class actually failed the first the first first-grade failed some of the kids those kids left went to public school someone went to Kiba but Danny was in the first graduating class eighth grade graduating class of Solomon shelter so that was the one thing we didn't have the vibe and I mean over the years the enrichment the enhancement of the Jewish life in Dallas is just astounding oh yes so right now I mean it's it's phenomenal we live in North Dallas and we have like 10 tools I don't know
a tools within within one mile radius of where we live right where do you learn what Street Campbell and Coit uh-huh you know and there's Levine Academy and this tour a day in this Cuba and keep us a lot better as a result of Solomon Schechter having opened up because the competition made them pay more attention to their secular education so yeah a lot of things have happened but it was really tough I mean the the agony with the with Solomon Schechter was unbelievable we ended up having to fire our first administrator because she was sort of sabotaging me I mean it's a long story
but suffice it to say I was young very inexperienced I think I made some bad mistakes I was the first chairman of the education committee doesn't know what the heck I was doing and then I became you know well year after year they were challenges but gradually the school grew and eventually they moved north and booked the right the new building mitchell rozanski i wasn't really one way to get involved in the jewish community look like this oh yeah you jumped in really frightening in the fire so i know a lot of the community leaders from that time then nog levy on the whole man
mars watching and my neighbor oh really he lives right behind me was because i'm laura standing up one day in a in a board meeting and share it Israel where he taught me convinced sheriff Israel to back Solomon Schechter and his daughter Frannie who's a very good friend of mine later on became became the chairman of the board president of the board wonderful oh yeah it's a very small community when you really think about it everybody knows everybody there either related to their neighbors or their Marian or something oh yeah so aside from being involved in the school and the and the sheriff Israel have
you gotten involved in any other communal activities here in the in the city um well trying to think that was my most of my most of my involvement I'm not really a community person I did it for my children haha I don't like you know I I my lifestyle is one of the isolated scarlet if you like and I do my best work when when I'm on my own and I don't like meetings and I mean we meetings oh my goodness so when people approach me to to be members of the Thistle that organization like kind of resist it I mean I've been a member
of egg pack and I think I've been on one or two committees at cherith Israel but I've resisted taking a position of leadership in the community I think I could have done it if I wanted to but I didn't what's your most what do you feel is your most significant accomplishment from a professional standpoint oh my teaching but specific is there anything specific you meaning in professional in as an economist yeah I said the economist and it was there a particular piece of work that you did that stands out that you can speak about well my work as an economist is rather esoteric it's is
sort of specialized tell me about I'd like to know a little bit more about it okay in South Africa where I studied economics and history that my economics teacher was a man called Ludwig Huffman look McLaughlin was a German Jew who came to South African 1950 he left Berlin in 1939 he was a typical German Jew except that he was quite knowledgeable about Judaism and he could speak and read Hebrew and he was not observant but he would cancel classes during pesos and nuia at the University all of this I actually thought about only after the fact what I knew him was but what I
do of him was as a very intimidating or inspiring figure who spoke with the ludicrous German accent who would speak without notes and lecture on the most austere profound subjects that you can imagine most of which went entirely over the heads of his students but I was intrigued so from year two to my end of my honours I became I came under his spell so to speak he inspired the kind of economics that are ultimately ended up studying it turns out that he story was really very very pivotal he was very much involved in the center of the battle for ideas in Europe during and
after the Second World War this sort of struggles for the commanding heights of economic policy after the war what became economic orthodoxy was known in what became economic orthodoxy national public policy at the macro level that they call macroeconomic policy was policy that today we call Keynesian economic policy Lastman's teacher was a man called Friedrich Hayek who came from Austria like one was not an Austrian but he was a German speaker obviously and he encountered Hayek's mentor and colleague Ludwig von Mises who was an Austrian Jew whose grandfather was a rabbi Hasidic rabbi and Mises likewise had to leave Austria for the Second World War
came to the United States and he's he's some colleague his younger colleague Hayek went to London when my teacher Lachlan connected with him Hayek was the arch rival or the nemesis of Keynes at the time before these matters were decided it was high he was standing up for these sort of old orthodoxy the market system and Keynes who was attacking it and Luckman was right there and Luckman became a student of Hayek's at the London School of Economics and wrote a thesis and gradually picked up on highest teachings before he came to South Africa in 1950 Hayek and Mises and these guys are part of
what is known as the Austrian School of Economics so unbeknownst to me I became the only South African Austrian economist and I studied what Luckman brought to South Africa which was called capital theory and capital theory has to do with this whole question about the means of production right how do people is it decide in what people do and what people produce they two basic models one model is you can have it come down from on high from a central committee as in the Soviet Union or you can have it decided by from the bottom up so this becomes simplified but basically it can be
a spontaneous order or the designed order so there's a lot of stuff that packs into their contrast and Lessman studied one aspect of it and that is the question of how we form the means of production in a market economy it's called capital theory so in 1999 I published a book called capitalism and disequilibrium and I regard that as an achievement because it's it's thought of as something of a classic by some of my colleagues although it's it's a book that is cited much more than its read and it's not a book that will be write widely read it is the culmination of a 20-year
project to try and understand Cap and to put it down in a way that those who are interested in it can read it thank you I might try to read it if I'm capable I'll see I don't recommend but it's available very cheaply now in the second edition well I appreciate your explaining that to me I mean I really do appreciate your interest well I am interested and I think the fact that you've actually explained it will be helpful for your your legacy when your grandchildren listen to this tape I hope so yeah absolutely is there anything that you'd like to add in terms of
what you'd like to leave for your family about your life or what you'd like to tell them about life in general well you know um I I think we've been blessed incredibly difficult I left out one episode of my life oh please act that that I think was a formative one of the things that happened was when I came to the University of Texas at Dallas in 1979 I was at an assistant professor which is a junior professor on a tenure-track and I was incredibly naive politically speaking academics is very political and I didn't make the right kind of alliances my sponsor so to speak
who was senior to me ended up getting fired and had to move to another department and so I was denied tenure after five years unexpectedly I always had a guardian angel look hot to me somehow and I thought today you know it's not going to wouldn't happen you know I have a PhD from the University of Chicago I was naive and also but arrogant but then there I was you know without a job for the first time in my life and I had to I might do for two years I went on a visiting professorship to University of Texas at Arlington where I was happy
I had to commute you know three times a week in a manner that was much more difficult thing going to you TD but they were very nice but again I didn't play my cards right and after the two years was up you know they didn't offer me a permanent position so now I'm into my 30s and without any means of sup without the job and a friend of mine at the time Errol Jacobson our friends Errol and Esme Jacobson had moved to Dallas two years earlier my wife knew Errol from high school they were in the same class in Kent King David not many King
David graduates came to Dallas very few in fact those are the only other ones I know Martin Ackerman who died some years back he was in my class so actually one year a hit up we played rugby together he was the only other one that I can remember who was there King David but there may be something I'm forgetting anyway the Jacobson's came to Dallas and my wife befriended them and we became quite close friends went on vacation together he tried a few entrepreneurial businesses they didn't work out and had started this new business called software house so this he started in 84 when I
left University of Texas all Intendant was 86 1986 so his business had been going for two years and it had been doing very well and he came up on one night and he said why don't you come and work for me and I really didn't want to do it I mean I really just wanted to be an academic but I didn't have any alternative and my wife said I might move in that game for the promise of a tenure somewhere else you know to pick up at that states already we had three children to pick up a game and go somewhere else and I could
see her point so I started at CompUSA in 1986 and I worked there for five years as a founding shareholder you know it was first software right and then it was a comp USA right and I and I worked as a real businessman for five years it was very tough well though it was a wonderful opportunity I mean terminally grateful to Errol and Esme for giving me that opportunity they just showed faith could their faith in me and I didn't always do as well as I couldn't because it was it was tough made a lot of mistakes but I suppose anyone would make some mistakes
but the business grew rapidly benefited us all and so in 1991 I left the company was about to go public it had that's the Gulf War first Gulf War had had had broken out and so the company did not go public it it held a private offering cash and and got the money and they were four of us in the original group that founded it and by that I think I was number two to leave number three soon after that left and then eventually about a year later the fourth one so I I was let conk USA in 91 I did a few things didn't
know what I wanted to do until I made contact with somebody at utd where I had originally started teaching when I left you TD I thought I would never be able to back there because it's not usual for them to hire people that they don't give tenure to but this time I make contact with somebody who had been there only a short time colleague of mine Stan Leibovitz who's perhaps them the finest economist I've ever worked with really really sound economist and we made contact on email of all places email you know the digital economy was just coming of age and they he we met
and he said come and teach for me and I said can I do that he said why not and so I went back in a non tenured position and then that became a full-time position and and I've continued to stay there ever since don't you become known out of the way that that acted I'm not tenured to this day perhaps that's a regret that I have but on the other hand I get to do more teaching than otherwise would yeah and I've still been able to do my research and today non-tenured faculty are number tenured record oh really it's not a very good model the
tenure model because basically what brings in revenue is teaching mm-hmm although what the reputation is established by the researchers but the tenured researcher very researchers are very lazy because they think they don't have to do anything right all right so it's not a good model so I mean so I'm a clinical professor which means I'm a professor but I teach and if you ask me in terms of my real achievements oh yeah I like the research that I've done and I'm doing a lot of research now cuz I've teamed up with the young professor young enough to be my youngest child but he's really energized
me so I'm happy than I'm still able to do it I think what I value most is my ability to continue teaching because I've literally taught thousands of students in my years here does I mean thousands because I teach a few hundred every year and every now and again you know enric loss I have somebody telling me how much they appreciate what I'm doing and now they think about things in a different way and that is the ultimate reward for me well thank you so much for sharing your story with us it's been really a pleasure getting to know you I'm looking forward to seeing
your son Danny on Shabbos I see I usually seen him pretty regularly at chard - fela and getting to tell him I met his dad and you've been terrific to interview and getting to know you has really been a pleasure thank you so much for taking your time thank you for giving me the opportunity I enjoy tell us about your immediate was born in South Africa she was 2 years old just occurs to me people make connections across them so another family that came to Dallas with the Jacobson's family that we became friendly with them and after we had known them for some time we
discovered that my daughter Andy and their son Mark were born both in Johannesburg on the very same day and we saw the newspaper announcements in the paper and one under the other anyway so we had two children when we came back and two more daughters were born here in Dallas the my children are a widely spaced not deliberately so you know man proposes and God disposes it just turned out that that's the way that nature planned it and so there's sixteen years difference between Danny and my youngest child Gabby so Shirley was born so Danny was born in 1974 in Chicago and he was born
in 1976 in Johannesburg sherilee number three was born in 1984 in Dallas at men in the city and Gabby was born in 1990 in tell us whether all what we doing today so that Andy Dennis the rabbi and he's said living in Dallas I think I mentioned that before you married a young lady from France actually was born in Israel parents have made aliyah to Israel and then returned to France and she was she had to emigrate to France from Israel actually was quite traumatic as she tells it name's Vanessa and but the result is that she speaks fluently French English and Hebrew and pretty
good Spanish too she and Danny met on their journey to discover this married and they now have six children and they live in Dallas and he's a rabbi and he writes for a living when he can get a project he ego strikes for people and writes articles commercial articles and things like that as he's on center spiritual centers well that's a small organization Andy my oldest daughter you say a social worker like her mother she went to UT and she majored in psychology and business I think and then she did her Masters in Social Work at UT Arlington and she is the school counselor for
Levine Academy we previously saw a chapter the school that Billy and I have found and where she went to school and where she came to school exactly yeah I I can say as a proud father but I think without fear of contradiction that she's highly respected in her job and she's she's very happy she married a guy from Corpus Christi small Jewish community in Corpus Christi who's an attorney and he had immigrated to Dallas from Corpus Christi and he's a great kid Jonathan bloom is his name and he works for a he works for a medium size of author that does some nonprofit work which
is his interest doesn't pay the bills for the company sufficiently so he also has to do some three girls years old and the youngest one is Emily and she that the twins of Zoe and Mia and Emily is three and and there we see the very often and I don't say this too loudly in front of my kids but I think grandchildren are the rewards for being a grandparent and Shirley is our free spirit mm-hmm she was always a little different no one in our family is particularly fashion competent yeah gabby is better than the rest of us but Shirley is autistic and very fashion-conscious
and she went to Indiana University and studied fashion merchandising but she made it through and then she went to New York City where she lives now she's been in in and out of a few jobs but right now she's in her comfort zone managing a boutique change she's managing she's a manager in the corporation she works mainly out of one of the boutiques and she has a permanent significant other his name is Jeffrey and his father is Jewish and he's a musician together with two dogs he's a musician he's a classical saxophonist academic he's trying to get his ph.d he will get his ph.d hopefully
this year in classical saxophone so between the two of them they don't bring in a lot of money living in New York City but [Music] Gabby is the youngest and the most hyperactive or she's very much an overachiever or a high G maximizes her potential she's very socially gregarious and she works she she went to high school she went to youth academy my other kids went to high school to green but in retrospect in a way I I might have chosen young for them if I'd know more about it but Gabby really had a fantastic experience at Yale and that she's still friendly with all
of those kids and and that's really something achievement in Dallas when we first came you will remember the idea of a Jewish high school was so way out there and now we have this the oven Academy that's pretty much and sending kids to the best colleges and singular achievement so Gabby went from Governor to Israel for a year mm-hmm did a gap year in Israel during which time she spent three months in the Navy she spent three months teaching English at but young which Israel and three months in Jerusalem at the Institute studying so she came back to America to go NYU with already a
year's worth of credits so she was behind the freshman experience and she had to go straight into the dorms but she finished her BA in three years and then did a master's in one year so she did her be a masters in four years and then she graduated from NYU and went to the first job which she is now in Boston she works for a company called Gerson Lehrman group very big company headquartered in New York but I think most of their activities here in Austin Texas in Austin she likes living in Austin all right one other thing I you didn't look like appearance and
then coming to Dennis oh yeah that was an interesting development I don't think I had thought in detail about then coming here and might have crossed my mind that it might be a good idea but you know when your kid you go you go through that crossover point where you look at your parents as people looking after you and then you become the person looking after them and somewhere along the line across there that irritant yeah where it wasn't assisted living but they could have graduated to assisted living had they ever needed it but the thing is what they did my parents didn't have a
lot of money and if they had they would have taken this organization and they would have become completely beholden to them and sort of tied to that organization and and Beverly and I scrambled to try and avoid that happening to them and in the end for them and so we bought a house around the corner from us in that in this 1994 my father in my life after living a lifetime in Johannesburg before that other places came to Dallas Texas the dates wrong my father died eight years ago so it would be yes my father the twins were born in November 2007 and because they
were a little small we didn't have a celebration until January of the following year for their baby naming my son gave them the blessing he waited yeah and then my mom carried on a little but she didn't do so well without him and she lost another three years always somehow it was always one day she just but perhaps not to dwell on that to go on the on the 14 years for my dad and 17 years for my mom of life here in Dallas my father have already stopped driving but my mother drove everywhere right up until the time she died and they played bridge
and they connected with the small expatriate older South Africans and others here in Dallas all the way said that he had a good time a little bit financially challenging for them created some stress but they got to my brothers the London and then of course the first two great come on all right now you keep talking about your wife Beverly let's hear about her family starting from the beginning where they came from to South Africa what they did is it Rebecca okay so these grandparents were a little unusual in that I don't think any of them were from her mother's side Beverly's mother was marigold
green mr. Koerner a meg her parents was Sam and Andy green and they came from England somewhere well from Britain could have even been Scotland I'm not sure and they moved to No and Felix family father his parents were German Jews his father's name is Charles Charles Ginsberg he was a very Charles Shapiro excuse me he was a very well-known doctor in bonanni and he married a Hilda Ginsberg who was young beauty I think she was married and she was like 16 years old she married him so it may have been one of those she does but she worshipped him absolutely there was there was no lacking
of love and the relationship somewhat asymmetrical in other words he was a very gone man he was very well-respected doctor and he was also well respected as a scholar and I never met him so I'm reporting secondhand my father-in-law always felt the residual resentment judging negatively so they were from Germany and the greens were from England Hilda Hilda Ginsburg later Hilda Shapiro and maybe Charles also were first-generation South Africans if Charles was not born in South Africa he came as a young person I don't know anything about his father but Hilda's parents I don't know a better father but her mother was granny Ginsburg blanking
on her first name but she was alive during the time that Beverly was a lot so it was a great grandmother she had six beautiful girls and she was the matriarch of this Ginsburg family and Hilda was one of the youngest and married Charles Charles and he had one sister baby Berenice she married Joe Roth what became a well-known teacher primary school teacher and he studied architecture my father-in-law never finished dropped out of college College University lied about his age and volunteered had drafted I mean I went into the Army second world war and he served in the South African Defence Force and together with
the British and the other colonial troops and was in Italy for the liberation of Italy hmm he saw he saw Mussolini's body strung up in the marketplace yes stories had stories about his time in Italy and also about becoming aware of the concentration camps the gas chambers in the Holocaust which they had I think they got married after the war came back to South Africa and married Meg the marriage was disapproved off by his father his father thought that the greens were not sufficiently wealthy classy for him I'm sat in the back of the shoe so I suppose it's no wonder that my father-in-law had
bought some resentment to his father my mother-in-law never never spoke because my aunt by marriage Felix's sister loved her father in this as much as Felix presented in so the strange thing in the family is if you speak to her about childhood Bureau you get one picture because he was clearly a man of accomplishments but apparently had a huge amazing library such a Shapiro we left his mark upon the Shapiro family down to the generations the cousins one of whom is named Josh one of whom is nacho and I knew killed her it was a very elegant classy lady so I got my parents-in-law were
very much like my second parents it's in some senses in some ways I was closer to them than to my own parents because of their special qualities it's hard to describe you know people wax elephant about other people's virtues and so on and this is really known on the coin completely appreciated but just say for what it's worth they were very special people in a way that was not obvious because of their capacity to make space for other people I never really knew what I learned from the Shapiro family about generosity my family whatever their virtues was sort of not distinguished by the generosity of
that they were mean or anything but the fact is they were closer to the normal range where is the Shapiro's were were just spontaneously and naturally generous in material sense but in their ability as I say to make space if you would come into the house they would make me feel comfortable without making you feel without making it seem like once I was in the family and especially in the later years Felix was more than he was in some ways like an older friend in some ways they were more supportive of me they thought Victor would you know since they were trying to be whatever
particular mistakes I might have made don't worry about it you'll be fine they knew nothing about it but still they support brown children yeah they died too young but they were I mean we did get to see a lot of them when we immigrated it was a wrench for both sides of the family my parents eventually emigrated but by that stage make it already died and what was their reaction when you told him you were emigrating you've been really been here to study I've gone back and said we're going because I have been on the job market almost from the time that I went back
and so I actually got offered and this so they I had been interviewing for like two years and then when I got the job offer in Dallas they visited often even when we were in Chicago prior to that as often as they could we have to make cassette tapes it's in the background and tell us five baby siblings and where they are so she is the oldest of four the the she had she has two younger brothers and the under sister and she had three brothers one of them B which he got pneumonia I think he wouldn't have died today he would have been hospitalized
and they could have saved but was he a baby Howard was elusively he was like two and they interesting how they coped with that they took all the photographs and everything he put them in drawers and never spoke about it it was that difference in that generation so the three siblings are born in South Africa still they are in South Africa her two brothers Charles and David are attorneys david has his own business successful business Charles works for a big law firm called blacksmith girl Robin she was born quite late in makes life there were complications and she challenges in her life she was also
married before it her husband died and she has two three children three children now she lives in Johannesburg she's a teacher anything else we haven't talked about that you have to talk about what about the Jewish community in dentists how did you find that compared to South Africa I know you had talked about the school and the importance of the Jewish education talked about that previously yeah so that's how you've been involved in the devastation manatee yeah it's very interesting I mean one of our journeys in coming to Dallas has been which I suppose it taps into the changing demographics of America so elated in
one way yes and certainly nothing that came close to the idea of two states with education we've been through there so first coming to Dallas we encountered that which is not very much that was familiar it was different when we lived in Chicago because the conservative movement there was similar to some of the orthodoxy that we had in South Africa and they were also Modern Orthodox as you call them the South African Jewish identity south african jewish animal is somewhat unique right a little bit like maybe mexican jews and some others but but it unique in some respects in that we were all orthodox and
yet most of us were not observed and we never cared about inconsistency about inconsistency between the Orthodox teachings and our own particular practices we just saw being Jewish and Orthodox as a way of belonging that was never a choice it just happened so I never thought about it rebellious young student I was very critical religion was critical of everything right everything that was organized but when you emigrate it gets your attention because then you start up and you say well Who am I how do i define myself what what group am i comfortable comfort zone what am i what happens on Friday night what happens
on on the holidays even you living in south africaís you don't have to believe a dog thing but your family does it for you and you could and you're connected when you immigrate you have to make that choice you're not going to be connected unless you make the connections so you now have to define these things when they went undefined that was my experience so I had to now say well what do I believe what does I like the South African Orthodox Jewish experience for their statics just for the aesthetics I like the the beautiful jewels I like the music the cantorial music the music
I wasn't interested in the theology and there was nothing like that yet there's nothing like that where you sort of just join them for the aesthetics the conservative movement is a very intellectual about set out what is worthy of being conserved or what is what is consistent with the tradition in its revealed form but it can be adapted to the modern world and that appealed to me the sort of intellectual approach appealed to me so I changed my way of belonging to a fool from being about aesthetics to being about just belonging to the community in a way that I could feel comfortable and so
I became quite comfortable in the conservative movement Oh at least in conservative congregation they believed did not for her it was much more more of the theology as well as those fittings I mean she really feels like Orthodox Judaism is authentic in a way that conservative judaism is not so we are lifelong members of sheriff Israel and we feel tremendous loyalty on kids were Barbra its were there but she doesn't really resonate but the liturgy and stuff doesn't really resonate with her and today we have like II live in different shoes best choices in Madison yeah and what what South African Jewish cultural cultural traditions
have you maintained yeah thank God for my wife in that regard Friday night is family night right doesn't matter what we in the family believe in terms of the sacredness we'll do anything else but Friday night is separate in the sense that that we do it with a family always and my son the red light was a green hill and he was the adolescent rebel and he wanted to go to Friday night football games I said no me the agnostic atheists if Friday night is for family and if anything just do it for your mother and you're not going to try that with both that's
the least the minimum and so we've got engaged we have a little celebration but then he's the rabbi he tells the story yeah I mean we do we the equivalent of the Thanksgiving gatherings within the Jewish tradition right so we do the case of Saders we do Rosh Hashanah and we do support and those are all traditional cultural kids even born in America they have received these particular practices anything you miss about life in South Africa tell us well the South African some of the South African foods I've become accustomed American food so when I go back to South Africa now they seem a little
strange to me but some of the things like and the workers the meats I miss the the wildlife parks the break beaches I don't miss the racial tensions yeah so I miss things I took me in a while so this is true of many of the people you've interviewed it took me a while until I actually felt that homeboys in Dallas but once I felt I was in Dallas and I go to South Africa after a while I'm ready to come