My Hebrew name is Zev. I think my Yiddish name is Velvol.

I was told I was named for an uncle but it was one that I never met.

How far back can you trace your family? I noticed you were able to trace your grandparents. Can you go further back than that? No.

We have heard that they came from Kiev. I know my maternal grandparents spent some time in England before they came to the states.

Well there is one legend. I know that my maternal grandfather came to Chicago and left his family behind in England so that he could get a start as a tailor and afford to bring them over. 1

The family legend is that they had steerage tickets on the Titanic but there were so many children that my grandmother couldn’t get them all together and get to the boat on time. They had to take passage on a later ship. Talk about luck. If it’s true.

My grandparents came over. I don’t think there was anyone else involved. Each family had a bunch of kids. I’ve done the best I can in recalling all their names.

Are any of them still alive? No.

My mother and father were both born here. My maternal grandfather was a tailor and ran a dry cleaning shop. I never knew my paternal grandfather. I don’t know the history there.

Yes, I have a brother who is 5 years younger than I am and lives in a Chicago suburb and a sister who is 2 years younger than that and lives near Palm Dessert in California.

Well, I grew up in a neighborhood that was mixed. The schools were mostly Jewish kids because the rest of the neighborhood was mostly Catholic and went to Parochial Schools.

No, the schools were essentially shut down for the Jewish Holidays. The teachers were there and a lot of the older kids would go back and spend some time with the teachers they had in the younger grades.

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I was a pretty bookish kid. I had to work early delivering and collecting for newspaper routes beginning about age 12. I didn’t have much time for extra curricular activities so was school and work.

It was a question of applying to several schools. Ohio State was the first one that both accepted me and offered financial support.

We met on a blind date for New Years Eve. I guess it was about a year and half before we came to Columbus.

Well, that was interesting. I don’t know that there was ever a decision or a proposal.

I was coming to Columbus to go to Graduate School and Rhoda was talking about how much she would miss me and I just suggested that she come with. It took a year to work out all the arrangements because, of course, her mother wouldn’t let her just come with, so the wedding took place the following summer. She did visit a couple of times during my first year here.

I was, I have to count up, 22.

In Chicago, at my home synagogue, B’nai Shalom which, the last I heard, had been converted to a Korean church.

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Well It was a hot Sunday on Labor Day weekend. We were getting the social hall of the synagogue ready for the reception when the Rabbi came by and told me he had an emergency funeral to conduct and not to worry. He would be back on time. Well he was about two hours late getting back so we had a little problem keeping all the guests quiet and relaxed and assuring them that there would be a wedding and it would take place. It was a hot day in the summer with no air conditioning in the synagogue. Other than that, the wedding went fine.

Oh I don’t remember. I would guess about 100. We filled up the social hall and the basement of the synagogue.

Did you go on a honeymoon? We came to Columbus the next day.

This was after a couple of nights in the ABC Motel on High Street, across from Graceland. The first place we lived in was on Chittenden (Avenue). I think the address was 105 Chittenden right up from the university because I was a graduate student.

It was pretty busy. I was in my second year of graduate school. Rhoda took a course or two. She had two years at the National College of Education in Evanston, Illinois. She also took a job because graduate student assistantships didn’t pay very much, I think it was about $200 a month. I also got a job carrying a Fuller Brush case, mostly in the summers to supplement that. By the time I finished my Masters Degree our son was born so that meant I took time off of school and went to work.

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That was interesting, the Fuller Brush experience. I had a rural route. It was mostly driving, visiting large estates and farms as well as a small walking area in what was the city of Gahanna at that time, a small community. When I got my Masters Degree the question was whether to use that degree and work or continue with Fuller Brush and the Fuller Brush income actually would have been greater but I decided I should probably use the education. That’s interesting because I never would have felt that.

Yes, it was actually before Beth Tikvah when it was still the Northside Jewish Community Association. The group had clearly established itself as a group that was interested in pursuing non-secular religious goals and was getting ready to move out of Hillel. They moved out of Hillel because they had identified themselves as not being secular. My mother-in-law who was visiting us because of the birth started calling around to see if there was a local group near where we lived, near the university. Of course she called the Hillel and they put her in touch with the leadership of what would become Beth Tikvah. She called them. On the appropriate day for the Pinyan a Ben about 20 or 30 people showed up at our little apartment bringing food and everything else that would go with the ceremony including a Kehane and we had a Pinyan a Ben.

Do you know was that the only one that ever happened at Beth Tikvah? Were there others? I don’t know of any others but there may well have been others.

That’s not really a Reform ceremony. Oh I know.

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Well, we had been living on the West Side of Columbus and we wanted to stay close to Beth Tikvah or be closer than we were on the West Side. It was the Worthington Schools that really attracted us to the Wortington community. We were also able to find an inexpensive place to rent for the first couple of years we lived in Worthington.

There was nothing really unusual. We didn’t feel out of place. There weren’t any real pressures from any of our neighbors. The school experiences for the kids were interesting. Rhoda was called a lot to come in to the Elementary schools to talk about the holidays. There was one time, I think, when Bennett was one of only three or four Jewish kids in an Elementary school. He was probably in 4^th or 5^th grade when the PTA scheduled their opening meeting to meet the teachers on Yom Kippur. One of the other Jewish families were the Creinins. Barbara Creinin was President of Beth Tikvah at the time so she called the school and complained about that. She was involved with the PTA also. She called the school and complained about it and the school Principal said there was nothing that could be done but they would be more aware of the calendar in future years. Then she called the President of the PTA who immediately changed the date.

Yes, I have a daughter Roberta who is living now in upstate New York and has given us a grandson 20 months ago.

Anything special…. I don’t know. Bennett was always interested in sports and music and he still is. 6

Does he play an instrument?

No, he thinks he can play a guitar, but he can’t. He goes to as many concerts as he can, mostly Blues, but also more modern kinds of music. Roberta was always a very bright, and of course we thought, a very special girl.

Well he’s just learning to tell stories and talk well and communicate. We like to play peek-a-boo and we like to play chase where he chases us around the kitchen island and catches us. He’s beginning now to build things with building blocks like big Lego blocks.

Well I was. I spent several years on the Worthington Community Relations Commission.

What was that like?

That was interesting because we got involved in disputes that would come up in the community especially between racial or cultural groups and trying to promote settlement of issues and resolution of conflicts. There were several conflicts around the Methodist Childrens Home which at one time was an orphanage but now is a residential facility for disturbed kids. Some of the neighbors had complaints about what the kids were doing.

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Yes, there are a lot of stories about it. There were really about three phases to what I had done. I spent about the first 10 years at the old Penitentiary on Spring and Neil in Columbus and then I went into the Central Office where I was the Chief Psychologist for all the prisons which grew from 7 prisons to over 20 in the time I was there. Toward the end, the last several years, the system had grown to such an extent that there were two of us sharing that job. The most vivid experiences that I remember were during a major prison riot in 1968 where there was fire and smoke and destruction and people were hurt and hostages taken. Several inmates, I forget how many, 3 or 5 ended up being killed in the final resolution of that. It happened in two parts, one early in the summer, one late in the summer.

I was in the building when it happened with several of my staff. I had just been at a training seminar so I had been gone for a week and came in early on a Monday morning and we had about a dozen inmates who worked for us as clerks and porters. One of them, the chief clerk, came up to me and said "you better get out of here." I said, "what are you talking about?" He said, "look outside your widow." We saw a lot of people running around the yard and some fires had already been started. I made sure everyone else got out of the buiding and we were on the second floor. I walked down the stairs myself and noticed one of my staff was not with us so I went back up to get him. He had stayed behind to make sure inmates were okay. They told us they were better off if we were not there so we went down the stairs again. This time the building we were in was on fire and there were inmates with shears from the tailor shop that had been broken in half to make very nice looking weapons that were about 20 inches long, tailoring shears.

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We were assured that as long as we kept walking out and were carrying nothing with us, we would be able to get to the front gate and find our way out of the inside of the prison, the two of us, which we did. Most of the non-security staff were just congregating in an office area waiting for something to happen, which didn’t happen for a couple days. I was a Supervisor so I went to the Warden’s office and told him that I needed to do something. I was his Supervisor. I wouldn’t just stand around. He gave me a movie camera and I went up on one of the watch towers and took movies that the Highway Patrol eventually got of what was going on inside the prison. I was able to take a movie of my office burning. Before I started to take the movies I went up in the tower, I called home and told Rhoda I was okay. She said "what do you mean?" Because things happened so quickly, it seemed to me that everyone in the world knew what was going on but of course no one knew. I told her to look out the window and from Worthington downtown to where the prison was is10 miles and she could see the smoke. Those are the experiences that stand out.

You don’t have copies of those movies at home? No, no, no, no.

I have had several over the years. I’m not doing anything in the way of hobby right now.

I did leather work until everyone in the family had two or three belts, bracelets and other things you could easily make out of leather and then I was done.

Well we have a grandchild and that’s a great deal of interest. They live in upstate New York. He’s 20 months old and we’ve made about 15 trips so we spend a lot of time doing that which cuts down on the other travel that we would otherwise do.

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We have been to Italy twice, Israel twice, Greece and China. That’s quite a bit.

China was probably the most interesting but the first trip to Israel was during a quiet time. It was in 1985. We were able see all of the West Bank and go up on the Golan and see all the sights, many of which are no longer accessible. We went in to the mosque, The Dome of the Rock, which I’m sure we would not be able to do today.

I don’t think so. When Bennett was born Rhoda’s sister was in town. His birthday is a day earlier than hers so she was in town hoping that it would be on the same day. We got Rhoda to the hospital and I stayed overnight in the waiting room, the old kind of waiting room where men were smoking cigarettes, pacing the floor and playing cards.

The doctor came in and sent me home. He said "come back." This was during the time when women were sedated and put to sleep and didn’t know anything about what was happening until they saw the baby when they woke up. Rhoda was asleep and her labor had slowed down. He sent us home and said "come back about 3:00. I got home about 9:00 a.m. and we did a little shopping for Rhoda and some food for the house. I called the hospital about 11:00 and they said "you had a baby girl." We rushed to get back down to the hospital about 1:00 and we still had 2 hours to wait. That was bad information. We ended up having a baby boy 2 hours later.

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Yes, we came in about the time when what had been a Northside Jewish Community Association at Hillel as a secular group was splitting into two groups: one that wanted to remain secular and based at Hillel and retain the name Northside Jewish Community Association for several years after this. This was in 1961 and 1962. We came in early in 1962 because our son was born in January, 1962. We joined what by then had become the Beth Tikvah split off from the Northside Jewish Community Association.

We joined in the fall of that year which was after the 42 members had moved out and formed a congregation. We were involved with helping to remodel the first home of Beth Tikvah on High Street and E. North Broadway, tearing down walls and rerouting electrical lines and making the building as fit as it could be for our needs. I lose track of the years so I guess you have to access the history to find the years. The first or second year after we moved from High Street to Indianola I was President of the congregation for one year, a very unusual time when the Rabbi we had had alienated several members. He and I didn’t talk for six months because my concern was keeping the congregation together and his concern was relying on the loyal members and ignoring the others.

That was Bennett Hermann. Bennett had come to us as a student rabbi two weekends a month from the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.

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He wanted to stay with us as a Rabbi and we had several rounds of negotiations.

We were all invited to his Ordination which was a very nice ceremony at the Hebrew Union College (and Plum Street Temple). We felt we were able to offer him a total compensation package of $10,000 fee his first year, and allow him to divide it up any way he wanted between salary, fringes and other kinds of allowances. That was more than our total budget had been the year before. In order to be sure that we met our responsibilities to him and his family there were 10 of us who met in a member’s home one night and each pledged a personal line of credit with the bank of $1,000 so that we were sure we would be covering his salary. That was a much more substantial commitment than it seems now because that was at a time when new cars were selling for $2,000 or $3,000.

He resigned and left the next year.

Marty Seltzer became Rabbi. You mean President. Marty became the new President.

I think that was the year that he brought in Rabbi (Alan) Ponn who stayed one year. The timing was off because of when Rabbi Hermann’s resignation came in. We could not get into the usual timing of searching and I don’t know how Marty came to know about Rabbi Ponn and that he was available. That’s my memory. Sometimes my memory shifts and I think about Marc Raphael. I’m not really sure about when Marc came in.

No, it wasn’t. I think it was the only one year presidency in the history of Beth Tikvah.

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No, well. Maybe not, but usually a President serves two years, two terms.

I served on the Building Committee. I chaired the Ritual Committee for several years.

In the early days of Beth Tikvah the committee chairs were not necessarily Board members. I was a Board member without having a committee chair for a few years.

It was interesting and exciting. In the early days everyone was active. There were very few, if any, inactive members. Members were involved in all aspects of doing things.

The members volunteered to teach the Religious School, to do secretarial duty. There was a lot of activity and a lot of involvement and people knew each other very well. As you grow those kinds of things slip away.

It was like one big family so to speak? To a great extent, yes.

Well when my son was in scouts for three or four years I got involved as an assistant troop leader for scouts just because of his involvement. I was President, for a couple of years, of the Columbus Hebrew School which at the time had branches in the various synagogues. The synagogues did not have their own Hebrew Schools. This was a centrally administered Hebrew School that served the entire community. That put me on the Board of the Federation for two years.

For three or four years I did, yes.

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Yes, I talked a little bit earlier about my home synagogue in Chicago. My mother, after I left, began to work there as a part-time and eventually full-time secretary and kind of administrator, the closest thing they had to an administrator. When they were closing the synagogue down the building was being sold. Most of the families had moved out of the community. They were not able to maintain the building or their congregation any more. They were getting rid of, finding ways to constructively reuse many of the artifacts. The Ner Tamid, the eternal light, that was in that building came to us and so did one of the Torah Scrolls. The second Torah Scroll that Beth Tikvah had was from that synagogue and it’s still in use. The eternal light we saved until we moved into our current building on Olentangy River Road. We had it replated and donated it as a part of that building fund.

Rhoda worked at Heritage House, the nursing home, for about 13 years until about 1980 I think, or 1990. During that time they had a call for volunteers and I did conduct several Seders at Heritage House and a couple at Heritage Tower. After she went on to work elsewhere we stayed as volunteers at Heritage Village. From that time until last year, we just did our last one and handed this over to someone else, we have been coordinating, with Rhoda doing most of the work, volunteers coming in on Christmas day to relieve some of the staff of their duty so that the staff could take the day off.

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I was only there a couple of days a year as a volunteer. There isn’t that much experience. Rhoda was there for 13 years as an employee so in her interview she may be giving more information about that. She got to know most of the established families in the community because of their involvement either as residents or supporters of Heritage House.

Oh yes, yes. We had our own Seder at home of course and then would do the second Seder at Heritage House or the Tower. The last couple of years I did it, it was for the whole village.

Were your children involved in any of these? No, our children were gone by then.

Well when we had our whole family here we did a lot of activity around Passover. We would have the first Seder, have the kids and sometimes some of their friends, or some of our non-Jewish friends and had a full regular Seder. Of course we had the usual activities for the kids around Chanukah with gifts every night.

It has. Lately we haven’t been as active as we had been. I don’t know if that will pick up again, or not.

That’s difficult. We were struggling when I was born. I remember that when we moved in to the building that I grew up in I must have been 3 or 4 years old and for the first several months my existence was hidden from the landlord because there were not supposed to be children in the building.

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I had to work to help support the family early which was an experience thankfully my brother and sister did not have to share. Values I guess would be hard work and allegiance to the family, contributing to the family.

No, that was a traditional Orthodox synagogue that was across the street from my Elementary school. It was the handiest place to go to Hebrew School. That was basically my involvement. My family were not members and occasionally would go with me to Friday night or Saturday morning services. Generally I participated in those services on my own during the time I was in Hebrew School and for a while afterwards.

You were Bar Mitzvahed there? Yes.

Yes, the High Holidays were difficult for many of us in Chicago because there were separate tickets for High Holiday services that got to be fairly expensive because it was one way that the congregations kept themselves solvent. I participated and went to the services for several years as a member of a junior choir and after that would spend most of the days with the other kids kind of walking around the neighborhood going from synagogue to synagogue. For some of the services we were able to get in, the afternoon services, but morning services were pretty much closed off unless you were participating in them.

Even if you were a member of a synagogue you still had to pay extra for the High Holidays? Yes. That’s interesting.

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The sanctuary probably would be able to seat two or three hundred people. It was small, but not that small. Yes.

On High Holiday services there were three simultaneous services, one in the main synagogue, one in a smaller area that was used for daily services and held about 50 people, and one for all the Hebrew School and youth that was in the basement. One way of accommodating as many people as possible was to have three separate services.

It was a walking neighborhood so it wasn’t hard to actually do it.

Did you feel community pressure to do it? No.

That would probably be my mother.

Not until we were grown, not until I was away from home and my brother and sister were older.

Most of his working life he worked in a factory. When the factory closed he got a job as an elevator operator in a hospital. After he retired he went back and continued as a volunteer in that hospital. He still considered it to be his job.

Most of the time it was a factory that made capacitors which were radio components before transistors. I actually worked in that factory for two summers and left when I was going to college and had to get a job that would last longer than a summer.

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In my immediate family, I had cousins who of course went to school, one who I never met, who was older than I am, was a physician and discovered the linkage between cigarette smoking and cancer I understand. His parents were proud of him and would show us his articles that were printed in the medical journals. I had aunts and uncles who were better educated than my parents were.

Mostly we did for ourselves. I do remember for summer camp I went to an Orthodox camp for a couple of weeks each summer for two years. I went to a member of my synagogue in the evening for an interview with him and one other person who I now understand were the Camp Scholarship Committee and I got a scholarship to go to the camp for those two years. There wasn’t much else. It was what we did for ourselves.

It was an Orthodox camp, a coed Orthodox camp, with prayers three times a day and all kosher food and observing all the rituals of Shabbat.

I have no idea. It was someplace outside the city of Chicago, possibly in Wisconsin.

Are there any stories that you’d like to tell that I haven’t asked about or that you can think of? I don’t think so. I’m trying to think of any stories. Maybe something more about Beth Tikvah, or…, For a while, we lost touch with a lot of people. As membership in Beth Tikvah turned over we had Beth Tikvah contacts scattered all around the country from California and Salt Lake City to the D.C. area and would keep in touch for a couple of years with some of those people that we kind of grew up in the congregation with as families. 18

Are you still in touch with anybody? No. You lost all touch with ….. We are still in touch with a couple of families thru Roberta. Roberta grew up as a kid in the congregation and went thru the whole…. I think our son Bennett was in the first class that started pre school and ended up thru confirmation in Beth Tikvah, that went all the way thru together. How many children were in his Confirmation class?

My memory is about 6 or 7. We have no pictures of that. That’s one of the Confirmation classes that we have no pictures of. Roberta keeps in touch with her friends whose parents were our friends so we keep in touch with the families that way.

There were four kids that were very close together.

Words of wisdom…. Cultivate friendships. Stay in touch with family members. We haven’t done a lot of that and that’s something that I think they should stay in touch with family and keep track of family.

She lives in upstate New York near Saratoga Springs or Schenectady, on 26 acres, with her husband and now one grandson. She’s able to work from home and her husband is partner in a business that he also has a home office. They are able to spend a lot of time with their son who also goes to day care to give her a chance and him a chance to do their work.

Bennett is in Sacramento, California. He was there for several years. The job petered out. 19

He came back to Columbus for a job which lasted about two months. He found a couple of other jobs and about a year and a half ago he went back to Sacramento for a job that he found on line. While he was here and between jobs, he went to school again for a Paralegal Certificate. In looking for jobs as a Paralegal, he came across a job as an Energy Manager for the California court system. Energy Management was his initial career. Jobs had gotten scarce. It was only thru the accident of looking for a Paralegal job that he found the job he has as an Energy Manager.

Does he like it there? Yes. He is not married? No he is not.

No, I think posterity knows enough.