Kellin, Samuel_1973/3/21, Oral History, March 21, 1973

Oral History – Sam Kellin March 21, 1973 Meeting of the Jewish Historical Society

My name is William Singer and this evening I will interview Samuel Kellin of West Hartford, at the Hartford Jewish Community Center, March 21, 1973. As all of you know, Sam has been identified with Bnai Brith and with Ararat Lodge, particularly. I am the President of Ararat Lodge, Bnai Brith, and we have in our audience tonight here Harry Kleinman who has also been President of Ararat Lodge, Bnai Brith. Just to give you briefly an overview, historically, of our Lodge, before we interview Sam, and in connection with the several exhibits which I have here.

Ararat Lodge #13 Bnai Brith was established by a handful of Jews on December 17, 1851 at the fashionable New England House on State Street, near Front Street in Hartford. At that time, there were approximately 100 Jewish families. The population of Hartford was only about 18,000. Its founder and first President was Alexander Rothchild, who was an operator of a business establishment on Asylum Street in Hartford. The Lodge itself was sponsored by Henry Jones, who was of New York and was the founder of Bnai Brith only eight years prior to that, in 1843. At the present time, Ararat Lodge is the oldest Lodge in continuous existence in Bnai Brith, and since Bnai Brith is the oldest Jewish organization in the world, Ararat Lodge in effect is the oldest Jewish organization in the world today.

The meetings were held on Sundays, and as the paper describes them, they were quite noisy. They were held at this New England House, and they could be heard, the noise was so heated, that they could be heard as far as Market Street. In fact, at the second meeting of the Lodge, the founder of G. Fox and Company, Gershon Fox, became a member, and as I’ve said before, we have the original application blanks of the members going back to 1852.

Just to give you a few other items: the first Jews in the city of Hartford were believed to be Spanish and Portuguese. German Jews followed, and in fact the minutes of the Lodge were in German originally, and they had to be translated due to the diligent work of Rabbi Silverman, which is all written up in his book. The Lodge meeting place was actually a schoolroom for the immigrants who came over here after that. Remember I said the German Jews came, then in 1882 the Jews living in Russia.

Now I’m going to start my interview because as I do the interview I’m sure that you’ll find many of the activities that Bnai Brith is involved in have been really exemplified by the work of Sam Kellin.

WS: Sam, can you tell us, where were you born?

SK: I was born in London, England.

WS: And when you came to the United States, where did you first live?

SK: I came here when I was six years old, and we lived as most refugees or immigrants did, on the East Side of New York, and then moved up to the more elegant section of Manhattan after my father made a few dollars.

WS: Approximately when was it that you came to Hartford?

SK: When I was 16 years old we moved to Hartford. My folks were here already at the time when I arrived at the railroad station. I walked down the street and noticed it was the middle of the day and the city was deserted. There wasn’t a soul on the streets anywhere and I was wondering what kind of a city I was visiting. I thought it was Shangri La. I walked up to Main Street and I found out why there were no people on the street – it was the day of the G. Fox and Co. fire, when the building burned down, and the whole city was there watching this conflagration of the building. That was in 1919.

WS: Now, when you first came to Hartford, can you tell us where you lived?

SK: Belleview Street. I think that most of the population of Jewish people at that time lived in the Belleview Street area, Norfolk Street area, Worcester Street area, Windsor Avenue, which at that time was a little bit more affluent, Front Street, Pleasant Street. Very, very few of them lived outside that area.

WS: Can you tell us something about the social life of the people at that time, in 1919?

SK: They weren’t affluent at that time, the Jewish people; the majority was not an affluent people at that time. They were busy making a living and bringing up their children. They had very little time for social activities. We had the Workmen’s Circle on Windsor Avenue at that time, where people met once in a while. There were a few synagogues around, small ones. They were so small that on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, all the Orthodox Jews had to hire a hall, where the services were held. There wasn’t anyplace big enough at that time, and it wasn’t until Rabbi Silverman bought the synagogue on Windsor Avenue that became the Emanuel Synagogue. As far as social life was concerned, you knew your neighbors, everybody was very closely knitted. Today, comparatively speaking, you can live on a street and not know your neighbor for years, just to say hello to him. But the situation back in those days, is everybody knew everybody else, everybody was helping everybody else. The men were hard workers. They were pushcart peddlers or vegetable wagons, or peddlers to go out to the outskirts of Hartford to sell their wares, little small shops, rabbis, melameds, and things of that nature.

WS: Were there any interesting neighbors that you had at that time on Belleview Street?

SK: They were all interesting neighbors; in fact, their offsprings are today the top people in the city of Hartford.

WS: Was there any particular interesting neighbor that you had?

SK: There’s one interesting neighbor – my wife, she lived next door.

WS: And what was her name?

SK: I met her when I first came. Sophie Boltock. Her father was a Hebrew teacher, and we met when I moved in there, and were married at the very early age of 17. If I had to do it over again, I’d probably be too tired. But the living then, I believe, was even nicer than the living today amongst the affluent people we are today. There was a warmness for neighbors; there was a warmness for each other. People did things for each other.

WS: Sam, speaking about warmness, does you remember how the people kept themselves warm?

SK: Yes. We all had coal stoves. There was no such thing as steam heat in the area, and the children would take their little carts that they played with, and when carloads on a freight yard would arrive with coal, they would all flock down there with their little wagons, and the coal that fell off as the cars were moving, the kids would pick up and put into their little wagons and bring them home so that they were able to heat the stoves. That was their way of heating the home. Everybody would congregate in the kitchen to keep warm, and then they would flock to the bedrooms in an awful hurry to get into bed. The probably didn’t take off their long underwear, it was so cold.

WS: How did they communicate? Did they speak English, or what?

SK: Yiddish was spoken much more than English at that time. The children would speak English of course, they went to school.

WS: Did they have any Talmud Torahs?

SK: Yes they did. My father-in-law was one of the founders of the Talmud Torah on Pleasant Street. But most of the teaching of the Jewish youth was by melameds. I remember my own father-in-law was poor as a church mouse, because they were getting I think 50 cents a week to teach a child. My father-in-law used to collect 50 cents from one house, and walk into the next house, and see that they didn’t have anything for Shabbos, so he’d put the 50 cents under their tablecloth and walk out, and come home without any money. The result was my mother-in-law owed the butcher, the baker and the grocery store.

WS: Tell me Sam, what kind of work did you do when you first came here? Were you a professional person?

SK: No.

WS: You were not a college graduate.

SK: No. There was a store by the name of J. Middleman and Sons. They had two stores, one on Asylum and one on Main Street, and I walked in and asked for a job as a salesman. I got it, and that’s the way I started my career.

WS: Did you continue in the same business?

SK: Ever since. Just like all Jewish people, I stayed and worked for somebody for a certain length of time, then I went into business for myself.

WS: What business did you go into by yourself?

SK: Same business, clothing business on Asylum Street.

WS: Now during that time of the 1920’s and 1930’s what was happening economically to our Yiddish business, small businesses?

SK: Up until 1928 it was pretty good, there were no problems. Everybody had money in the stock market, and they only owned 10% and the bank loaned them 90%, but then the crash came. A lot of little businessmen were caught at that time. The city bank had closed, and then the President closed all the other banks, and a lot of little businessmen were left without any funds to pay their help or pay their expenses. And I’m not bragging, but I took it upon myself to see if can help these little merchants through this bad time. And I went to some very wealthy people, affluent people, and I got moneys and spread it out amongst these little merchants. That helped them through the bad time until the banks opened up again.

WS: Now at that time, during this early period in your life, how many children did you have?

SK: Two, Mike and Shirley.

WS: Do you remember the time when you were spending time with Mike in Zionist affairs?

SK: Yes. I was on the Board of Directors of the Zionist organization. Of course we worked very, very hard here and elsewhere to see that Israel would become a Jewish state.

WS: The reason I was asking, Sam, do you remember the Chaverim trip?

SK: I was then a member of the Agudas Achim Synagogue, and I was asked by the Rabbi at that time, Rabbi Horowitz – he was the head Rabbi, Rabbi Weinberg was the acting Rabbi – to take charge of the boys 13 years or older, called the Habonim group. And I worked with those youngsters for about five or six years, in fact we had all kinds of experiences with them. I took them all down to New York with me, I think there were 45 of them at the time, to New York City, to show them different interesting spots, and I had two helpers, but the kids didn’t rely on the helpers. It was all on my shoulders. I took them to see the Daily News building, then took them to lunch at Horn and Hardart. How many of you remember Horn and Hardart in New York? And I gave each kid some nickels to buy their lunch. And one of the interesting things, we heard an awful crash. They had a tile floor, and one of the kids had bought seven pieces of pie, and one glass of milk. It was top heavy, and he lost the whole thing on the tile floor. And I took them to the Yeshiva uptown, where we held services, mincha and maariv, and amongst them was Mahumed ??? Who used to associate with these boys, he came along with us. And the sole Rabbi with a long beard, is walking around watching these kids, and walks over and takes his book and turns it around, he was reading it upside down.

WS: When did you become associated with Ararat Lodge, Bnai Brith?

SK: 1934.

WS: Was there any particular circumstance?

SK: It was a closed organization at that time. I don’t mean to be derogatory but it was composed entirely of German Jews. A Russian Jew didn’t have a chance to get into this organization. It was finally decided to change the format, and a few of us got together and we went to the Lodge and we asked them to take in the Russian Jews. They were very willing, because they were a sort of status quo at that time. At that time you had to be somebody without a record in order to get into the Lodge. There was a ballot machine, a ballot box, which today is in the archives in Washington, Bnai Brith building, and if you were blackballed, you couldn’t get in. But when I became President, I send in a resolution to Washington that we were abolishing the ballot box, and that all Jews were eligible to join Bnai Brith, which spread from Ararat Lodge throughout the entire country. They all eliminated the ballot box and it became the Bnai Brith of what it is today, from that point on. In 1938, at the time we started having trouble in Germany, I took over as membership chairman, and with the help of my vice chairman, I was able to write up 800 members for the Lodge.

WS: Was there also some work at that time with the Anti Defamation League?

SK: Well, the Anti Defamation League started coming to the surface at the time that Hitler started his going-ons in Germany. There were a number of anti-Semites that popped up in the United States. Until then it was pretty dormant, there was very little of that, but Gerald K. Smith, you probably remember his name, Father Coughlin, a number of anti-Semites came up. Some of them weren’t Jew haters, but they made money by selling paraphernalia about the Jews. Then ADL came to its stature and started fighting successfully all these bigots and eliminated many of them. In fact, Father Coughlin started out as a friend of the Jews and a friend of everybody. In fact the Jews were his greatest supporters, I remember sending him two dollars myself. He suddenly turned on the Jews and became very anti-Semitic. And it was the ADL that exposed him, talked to him and told him that they had enough evidence on him on trading on silver dollars at the time, to put him away for 20 years. And he stopped, he went off the air, and that was the end of Father Coughlin. The ADL has done tremendous work throughout the years on the anti defamation scene. Some of these anti-Semetic circles, they’ve had their own agents in those circles; men that didn’t look Jewish, some that weren’t Jewish, working with these and getting all the evidence to put them out of business.

WS: Do you remember anything about your efforts at the beginning for the Hillel Foundation?

SK: I was in my store one day and a Professor Banks at the University of Connecticut came to see me. We went out to lunch, and he said to me, Mr. Kellin, we’re having trouble at the University of Connecticut. They’re forming vigilant societies against the Jewish youth. We don’t know how to combat it. They have thrown a few of the youths into the pond, they have desecrated their rooms, they’re making life miserable for the Jewish youth. But I understand your organization has a foundation that could possibly send somebody up to eliminate what’s going on.

I called Chicago and got in touch with Dr. Abraham Sachar, who you all know later became President of Brandeis University. He was then National Director of Hillel. And two days later, Dr. Sachar met with me at the Astor Hotel in New York, we talked all day. He didn’t have enough funds to open a foundation at that time, but I was a pretty good salesman at that time and I sold him a bill of goods. I was pretty confident. I was a youngster and I was confident in myself enough to have the Hartford and state contingent waiting for us in New Haven at Bob Drazen’s house. Finally, he decided to go along with us and open a foundation. We took the 5:15 train back to New Haven, we met at Bob Drazen’s house, and at 4:30 in the morning we had formulated plans for a Hillel Foundation. Then he threw it in my lap and said, Sam, you got the Foundation, now it’s up to you to get the rabbi, and get the place.

I went up to UConn and spoke to the Protestant minister who had a church up there and asked if we could pay him rent and use the church for a synagogue Friday night and Saturday. He agreed, for $500 dollars a year, but he turned back that $500 every year back to Hillel, while we used it. Then I went to a member who had a lumber company, and I had an ark built on wheels, and Friday afternoon, the cross would come down off the window, the ark would be rolled into the church, they had their services Friday night and Saturday morning, late Saturday afternoon, the ark would be rolled out, the cross would go on, this went on for five years.

I couldn’t get a director right away, so I got Rabbi Silverman, who we paid, who went there to counsel with the youth twice a week, and he was the temporary Director. Then I heard of Rabbi Zigman, who some of you may have heard of, we call him Ziggy. He was a rabbi in Waterbury, and I heard that he loved youth. And I went there and talked to him about it and he said, if you can sell it to my Board of Directors to break my contract, I’d be glad to come up. I spoke to the Epstein brothers at time, who were the head men in Waterbury, and they finally agreed to break the contract with Rabbi Zigman, and he came up as Director of the Hillel Foundation at the University of Connecticut. Also, we opened up one temporary on at Yale, and he used to go up once a week to take care of the Yale boys.

Rabbi Zigman was there for six months when the picture changed entirely. The Christian children became very friendly with the Jewish youth, and there’s been shalom ever since. But then, five years later, we went out on a drive to raise funds for our own Hillel house, and we were able to raise $165,000. The state gave us the land and the utilities, and everything else, and they still do, and we built this beautiful building, I don’t know how many of you have seen it, at the University of Connecticut. The first Hillel Foundation, of course, was the University of Illinois. Then we went to University of Bridgeport, we have a Foundation at Central Connecticut, Quinnepiag, New Haven, of course, we have a big one down there, and today we have approximately 395 Hillel Foundations through the country.

WS: Sam, I was going to ask you about my alma mater, Trinity College. I know when I went to Trinity in 1945, I graduated in 1948, we didn’t have a Hillel.

SK: My son Mike went to Trinity and he found that the Jewish kids there were in trouble. They were ignored, there were very few of them, there was a quota system, and he tried to form then what they called the “mutual society” and he was not successful. He and young fellow named Stein, very unsuccessful. Things went on that way with the Jewish youth until I got a call one day from Reverend O’Grady, who became chaplain at Trinity College. Reverend O’Grady, an Episcopalian minister who had a wife and four children, had been at the University of Illinois and had make very close friends with the Director of Hillel there, and learned all about Hillel. He said to me over the phone, can I meet you and discuss a Hillel Foundation at Trinity? So we met, and he asked for a Foundation. I wrote a letter to every alumni and told them about this proposition, and we founded the Hillel Foundation at Trinity. From 20 or 25 boys, as Hillel progressed, it went to 150 Jewish boys, and the quota system was out. Reverend O’Grady sat in and counseled these boys for six months, until I was able to get a Director, and that was Rabbi William Cohen who served from then until this past year at Trinity. He had to leave there, and we now have Rabbi Rosenbaum, the Director and Principal of the Yeshiva is now their Director at Trinity.

But many things happened during that time. A few years ago, we presented the Concern, I think it is called, Judaic bibles to Trinity College. That’s a set of very valued books on Judaica. And Trinity made quite a big reception to accept these books. We had a tremendous turnout at Trinity College when these books were presented to them.

When I use the word “I”, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t mean to imply that I did all this. The only reason I did all the work in that period is, most everybody was away in the Army. Most of the young men were away in the army, and I was left pretty well on my own to do different things for different people. Of course, I didn’t get in the army on account of my religion – I was a devout coward.

I was collecting money one day. We furnished the deaf school with instruments for their little band, Bnai Brith did. We collected the money for that and we furnished them with all the instruments they needed for a band, for an orchestra. And they invited us to a dance, a very funny incident. It was a deaf and dumb school, you know where it is, and I was out there and I walked over to one young lady sitting there before the orchestra started again, and I went with my fingers, “Do you care to dance”. She shook her head “Yes”, and I waited for the orchestra to start. And a young fellow walks over to her and says, “How about the next dance?” and she says, “I promised it to this dummy here.” This really happened.

And then Avon Old Farms had a lot of these soldiers come back. They had quite a few musicians and they didn’t have any instruments. Bnai Brith went out to raise money, and I went down to Sidney Kaplan, he had promised me a check, and I was coming back with the check that Sid gave me towards this money when I heard that the circus was burning down, and my daughter, 18 years old and my nephew were there, and they never came home.

WS: Sam, do you remember receiving letters from your son at that time?

SK: Mike, before he was an actor, started off as a playwright. He was in the Pacific as commander of a ship in the US Navy. He couldn’t get home of course, right away, and he wrote a series of letters to his mother and myself. A Rabbi got a hold of most of them and published them into a book that has been spread around to bereaved families ever since.

WS: Despite your loss of Shirley during the circus fire did you continue with your work?

SK: I didn’t stop.

WS: Did you try to bring an addition in your life, so to speak?

SK: Two years later we adopted a little girl, a baby, who today is 26 years old, married. Her name is Judy. We didn’t have a chance to stop. There were soldiers in Bradley Field at that time that needed fishing tackle, they needed golf stuff. Bnai Brith went out and bought all this material for them and presented it to Bradley Field and put on shows for them.

WS: As a result of adopting Judy, did you become interested in bringing children to childless couples?

SK: Yes, there was no law at that time where an agency had to give a child to a person. And I had a few doctors in the state of Connecticut that I became very friendly with, and people came to me and asked me whether I could help them get children. In not too long a time, a few years, I had 37 godchildren in the area that I’d gotten for couples. These kids are now grown, and they turned out to be very wonderful kids. One of them was the top one in the Yeshiva, some of them are married.

And then, I was totally disturbed. I heard about bill being presented by Mrs. Cook from Hamden. She was in the legislature at the time. She wrote a bill on adoption because there was a lot of grey dealings going on by lawyers in the state, who were getting fantastic sums to get a job. She didn’t like that and neither did anybody else. And she wrote this bill. Well, I got a hold of the bill and I didn’t like it, because according to the bill, only the Diocesan Bureau, or the Catholic Bureau, was able to give out children for adoption. And it seemed that a very prominent lawyer in the city of Hartford helped to write a bill. I wrote a postcard to every member of the legislature in the state of Connecticut, objecting to this bill and its presenter. Mrs. Cook also got my card, and she inquired in Hartford of certain people to see if Sam Kellin was a crackpot, whether he was a nut. And she found out that I was not nutty – I was a little bit nutty, but not that much. She called me on the phone one night and said, “Mr. Kellin, what is there in the bill that you object to?” And I told her certain things that would leave Jewish Social Services out of the picture. She was a very wonderful person, a very warm person. She wasn’t Catholic, and I asked her if this certain lawyer hadn’t helped to write it, and she said, “How did you know?” And I told her, I could tell by the tone of the bill. She said, “Well, I tell you what you do. You sit down and see if you can write up a substitute bill.”

So I got a hold of Sam Google, who was then in the legislature from New Britain, and George Showalski was mixed up in that type of work, and we sat down and rewrote the bill. The Jewish Social Service Agency, the Protestant, the Catholic were all empowered to give out children for adoption. I brought it to Mrs. Cook and we sat down with her at the State Capital, she read it over, and she decided to present the substitute bill, which she did, and it was passed by the legislature. Then I was asked to join the Jewish Social Service adoption committee, which I did. And we had amongst us one of our saintly Jewish women, she was a wonderful, wonderful person. Her family had been working for Jewish people. But she was very pious, and she brought up a motion that we don’t accept any girls who are going to have babies unless they have Jewish background, which, ladies and gentlemen, was impossible because the Jewish girls were too smart to get pregnant without getting married. And I had a heck of a fight on my hands with that woman. Finally, I got a hold of Rabbi ?? who came down to our meeting and convinced this woman that it was a mitzvah to take a child of any denomination born and make it into a Jew or Jewess. So she finally condescended to do it and that’s the way this thing started and the Jewish Social Service has given out many, many children since that time.

WS: You remember that after the war, of course, we got involved with the McCarthy era, and there was a great deal of concern about people being associated with Communists.

SK: Yes, that’s an interesting story in itself, Bill. Being at that time a loner in Bnai Brith, because everybody was away, I’d get all the calls. People who were troubled on anti-defamation, they imagined that this neighbor was anti-Semitic and I had to straighten that out. I got a telephone call one day and they told me a very alarming story about a young fellow by the name of Glazer, who was at Annapolis graduating, and they refused to give him his diploma because some relative of his was in some way connected with the Communist Party. It seems that a great, great uncle of his used to belong to a Labor group, and that Labor group had a tinge on it, and they found that out. Well, this young fellow was ready to commit suicide. His mother, a widow, and his sister lived on Mansfield Street. I immediately went over there and discussed things with them. I told them I was going to do everything I can. They were afraid to talk because they thought their wires were being tapped. They were in terrible mental shape and they were worried about this boy. I went back, I did try to get a hold of Abe Ribicoff, who had sponsored this young man, and he was away. So I called a good friend of mine, I hate to mention which party he’s in on account of the leading Democrats sitting in the audience here. William Purrtell was a United States Senator. I told Bill the story. Bill was incensed. He said, “Sam, I’m getting a hold of Saltenstall” - who was also a Senator from Massachussetts who was head of the Naval Department - “and I’m going to bring it up on the floor – why would they let a boy pay his way through for four years and then refuse to give him on a vague technicality?” To make a long story short, we lived with that family for four days. We stayed at Mansfield Street, went there every hour that we could. My wife was there, I was there, consoling the mother, she was really worried stiff, and talking to the boy on the phone, telling him everything’s going to be all right.

Bill called me back that he went before the Naval Committee and also brought it up on the floor of the Senate. I left my little girl that we adopted in the care of a maid, and we went to a wedding at the Ambassador Hotel in New York. And I’m paged on the floor. Well, we were scared out of our wits, we thought something happened to Judy. When I got on the phone, it was Bill Purtell calling me from Washington. He had traced me though this girl, to the telephone in New York, and he said, “Sam, you can go to the family and tell them that Glazer is getting his diploma tomorrow at 11:30.” This young man made a career, and he’s one of the top brass in the United States Navy today, he’s a captain in the US Navy and got all kinds of honors.

WS: Do you remember the floods in 1955 in Torrington?

SK: You see, the problem with this is that I keep bragging about myself, it just doesn’t sound too kosher.

WS: At that time, were you the President of the Connecticut Valley Council?

SK: That’s right. Some of you remember the flood that we had in Windsted, Torrington, Newtown, Waterbury, in 1955. I got a telephone call from the head of the Lions group and he said, “We’d like to form a service club organization to help the victims of the flood, and I’d like your organization to join.” So I represented Bnai Brith. We had Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis, and Jim Bent was made chairman of this group, but Sam Kellin was the patsy. The other guys were too busy to do anything about it so it was thrown in my hands to contact these different people in these different towns and see what we could do for them. We ran a telethon, which my son Mike flew in on Arthur Godfrey’s plane, Arthur Godfrey helped him. We raised $365,000 in cash that night for the flood victims, and then we went to the Red Cross, who told us they had unlimited funds for us. I was in contact with the different people in the different communities that had lost their businesses, their homes, all kinds of things, and we got each one enough money from both funds, to go back into business, or build a new home. This little old lady, an Irish lady living in Farmington, her home was washed away and her daughter used to teach piano at home, and that was all washed away, that was the only way they made a living. So we built them a new home and we bought her a new piano. That’s just one case, but we spent the $365,000 plus 8 million dollars that was given to us by the Red Cross, which we put everybody back to their original state.

Also, I remember at Christmastime, there was nothing going on and Winsted was dark and dreary. We went up there, Bill Savitt and myself and the members of my group and we ran a tremendous Christmas party for all the youngsters in the city, with gifts and Santa Claus and all that.

WS: Sam, you’ve never been against women in the sense of being against women’s lib, and you’ve had some effort, have you, in connection with women’s organizations?

SK: When I became president of Bnai Brith, I felt that every organization, Jewish organization, was important to the Jewish people. There shouldn’t be any jealousy amongst the groups. The result was that I worked for Hadassah, raised money for them in different cities by speaking for them, ORT, ran affairs for them, and all the other Jewish organizations, a lot of Jewish women’s organizations especially, I spent a lot of time with them. In fact in our own bulletin, we used to tack their dates of their meetings.

WS: Were you instrumental in establishing the Bnai Brith women’s groups here?

SK: Yes, that was done 26 years ago at my home on Asylum Avenue. My wife got together a few women and we formed the first Ararat Group.

WS: Sam, what have you done in connection with the State of Israel, or bonds, Israel bonds?

SK: A few years ago we started what was called the Café Bnai Brith. I don’t know how many of you attended that, at the Emanuel Synagogue. I was the General Chairman, but I picked an individual each year who was unknown, he was a very wealthy man but unknown, we’d never given him any honors. I made him honorary Chairman, and for the five affairs that we had we picked five different men, and I don’t mind mentioning names. We’d never done anything before for Israel. The first year we raised 165,000 in bonds, which was a great amount at that time, and the first one I had was Lou ?? who never mixed into Jewish affairs until he became honorary chairman of Bnai Brith night, and he was so imbued with the whole thought that he became one of the biggest backers. He just gave a million dollars to the Federation, as you know. And there were others like Charlie Rubenstein, Dave Chase, individuals that we honored, and from Bnai Brith they became the big men at the Federation. Actually, Bnai Brith started them off.

WS: You have a particular interest and feeling for the Hebrew Home. Do you remember when you first started with the Hebrew Home?

SK: I started when they were on Washington Street. I was on the Board of Directors at that time. We had a small building on Washington Street that was called the Home for the Aged, and then of course the big one became here. But my tie to them to this day is more in the entertainment field. I entertain them about four times a year. I act as master of ceremonies and somewhat of a story teller, and bring in acts from the Insurance Entertainment Bureau, they give me 7 or 8 acts. They the greatest audience in the world when it comes to a Jewish story, or things of that nature, they’re wonderful.

WK: When you first started to entertain them on Castle Avenue, was it always in English?

SK: No, at that time it was in Yiddish.

WK: Can you give us a sample?

SK: In the old days, everybody understood Yiddish, but in later years, as I spoke before groups on humor, I would get this what did he say? What did he say? And it reminded me of the time that this Rabbi in a small community was suing the butcher for selling non-kosher food. And the day in court arrived, and the clerk rushes in to Judge Murphy, who’s presiding, and he says, “Your Honor, we have with us an old Jewish gentleman who refuses to come into the courtroom without wearing that little cap they wear.” And Judge Murphy says, “By all means, allow him to wear it, that’s their religion.” So in walks the Yid with the yarmulke and the long beard, and they sit him down on the witness chair when Judge Murphy suddenly realized he wouldn’t be able to understand him. So he says to the clerk, “Get me the interpreter.” The clerk says, “I’m sorry, we expected no foreign witnesses, he’s out to lunch.” “Well, get me somebody to understand his language.” So the clerk walked outside, and there’s a little fellow standing against the wall, and he says, “Pardon me, are you Jewish?” He says, “Look me over.” He says, “Would you act as interpreter?” The fellow says, “What’s that?” So he explains the theory of interpretation, takes him in the courtroom, introduces him to Judge Murphy, and Judge Murphy says to him, “Will you ask the old gentleman his age?” He turns around and says, “Tate, vie alt zeit dir?” And the old gentleman, in perfect Oxfordian English, answered, “I have reached my 84 birthday.” The fellow turns around to Judge Murphy and says, “Er zogt er iz fir and achtzig yor.”

The type of stories that Jewish folks like, that I usually tell when I’m entertaining before groups – incidentally I don’t get paid for this when I do it. There’s one story that the old Jewish folks at the home like very much, about this Jewish woman that called up an artist and said, “I’d like to have my picture painted.” So he paints her picture, calls her a month later and says, “Your picture is ready, Mrs. Goldberg.” She comes in, he undrapes it, she says, “It’s absolutely magnificent, so beautiful, it looks like me. But Mr. Painter, I want you should do me a special favor, I’ll pay you extra. On my little pinky finger, I want you to paint a ten carat diamond pinky ring, on my second finger a diamond wedding ring, and an eight carat canary stone. On my wrist, a diamond wristwatch and on my other wrist, an emerald bracelet. Around my neck the necklace should be pearls and diamonds, and on my head a tiara, it should be with emeralds, opals, and rubies.” He says, Mrs. Goldberg, you’re not being a phony, are you?” She says, “No, you don’t understand. I’m going to hang this picture over my mantelpiece. In case, God forbid a million times, something should happen to me, I want my husband’s second wife to go crazy looking for the jewelry.”

WS: I’d like to just read a short letter to you, ladies and gentleman, just to give you briefly, the wealth of history that these books contain, they are tremendous, really. Just to give you a letter that was written by Rabbi Morris Silverman, April 9, 1959. In fact, there are many records in the books that I have here that were made…

SK: One second, before you go any further. Most of Rabbi Silverman’s books, we furnished him with all the ledgers going back to 1851, from which he got a tremendous amount of material about Hartford Jewry, from Bnai Brith ledgers and minutes.

WS: Rabbi Morris Silverman wrote this to Judge Soloman Ellsner on April 9, 1959, and I think that it gives you the feeling of what this Society really represents, what you people have done, and Rabbi Silverman I’m sure was a moving spirit of your Society. I looked through some of these records and I tried to get the feeling myself, and I think this letter really portrays that feeling, so I’ll just read it to you.

“Dear Sol, Were it not for the fact that I am installing Rabbi Stanley Herman as the first permanent spiritual leader of the Congregation in East Hartford, I would be present Sunday night to congratulate you personally upon your fiftieth anniversary as a member of Bnai Brith. (In fact, Judge Ellsner was a lifetime member of Ararat Lodge, Bnai Brith, and this is the 50th anniversary he’s talking about, in 1959.) I find in my collection of historical records, for the writing of the history of the Jews in Hartford, your application for Ararat Lodge. It is dated January 31, 1909. You were 25 years old. Your signature, with an unusual “S” in Soloman and “E” in Ellsner is unique. The witnesses who signed their names are Ben Cashman and K. Nussbaum. There were 26 members who joined Ararat Lodge that year, and you were among the youngest. I thought you’d be interested in the enclosed list of 25 other members with their ages and occupations. Most of them have gone to their eternal reward. It must be God’s will that you are still with us so that you might continue to serve your community, your people and your fellow man. May God bless you and Carrie with continued good health. Sincerely yours, Rabbi Morris Silverman.”

SK: Some day we’ll come back and tell you a lot more. We haven’t covered one third of what Bnai Brith has done for this community and the world through the years. But when we speak about these old timers, it reminds me of what this old Jewish man, who had spilled over a specimen bottle at the Mount Sinai Hospital said: “Azoy gayt di yorn.”