Raphael, Minnie Kleinman_1976/7/12, Oral History, 1976 - 1976

Today is Monday, June 12, 1976. My name is Emma Cohen. I am about to interview Minnie Raphael, Mrs. Edward Raphael, for the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford. Minnie Raphael is a native of Hartford. EC: Now Minnie, would you, good morning Minnie MR: Hello Emma. EC: Nice to be able to talk with you. Would you tell us where you were born and when. MR: I was born May 23, 1904 on Avon Street. My father was Nathan Kleinman and my mother was Esther Mogadovich. My parents were married in Russia. My father felt that he was a Russian citizen. He was a cabinetmaker. One time his work took him about a dozen verst away from his town. He was with EC: Did you mention where he came from? MR: Gibitiv, Russia. EC: Where is that? MR: In the Ukraine. The bread basket of Russia. It was in the winter time. They had gone there by sleigh. My father said that the work would take another hour and a half to complete so he said to his foreman, “Let us stay here and finish it so we won’t have to go up and back another 25 verst tomorrow morning. EC: What is a verst? MR: A mile. Approximate American mile. The goyasha foreman said gidgayaheyn, because he had to be locked in the ________ because he was Jewish. EC: Meaning Jew go home? MR: Gid if the Russian word for Jew. Go home. My father was so hurt. Here he thought he was a Russian citizen because he had served for three years. When he got home he made up his mind immediately that was no place for him to live. So he made plans immediately to go to America. EC: In other words he had already served in the army MR: Had a wife and a little girl, two years old. EC: Oh, I see. MR: There’s a little girl, two years old. EC: You had an older sister. MR: Yes, you couldn’t take her along because he didn’t have money for himself. Got to London and worked in London. EC: Now wait a minute. The wife stayed back? MR: He left my mother there and the child and he worked in London to make passage money to get to America. EC: Did he work in London at his cabinet making? MR: Yes, at cabinet making because it’s big work in London. He got to America and because of his skill he got the job with EC: Merrill Margolis MR: He came here in 1902. And he worked there for a little while. EC: With Nathan Margolis? MR: With Nathan Margolis, the cabinetmaker. My father worked there for a little while. I don’t know the exact number of months or anything. He gave it up. Nathan Margolis said to my father, ________YIDDISH_______. My father’s name was Nathan. My father said, YIDDISH translated – I am not going to groval my ten fingers to make a living. Well anyhow, I do know that my father became a builder and I checked with the assessor’s office at Hartford when my father had built a house on Evergreen Avenue. In 1909, which meant that my father was only here 7 years and he already built a house to sell. EC: That was unusual. Let’s go back a bit. In other words your mother and your sister came over in what year? MR: My father came here in 1902. He sent for my mother, oh, the little girl died in Russia. Whenever they take a history, she had thee measles, they say it was pneumonia. So my mother came in 1903 and my father had the flat, tenement they called them, all furnished and that’s where they started out. EC: Where? MR: On Avon Street. EC: I see MR: They lived on Avon Street. I was born and my sister was born a year later and the year after that we bought property on Chestnut Street to live and being enterprising it was a ten family business, four apartments in the front and six in the back. And immediately he cut a store in the front building because a store used three times or four times as much rent as an $8 tenement so he put a store there. And we lived there until 1909 and then we moved to Williams Street. On Chestnut Street there were two Cohen families. One was Eileen Cohen’s family and the other Cohen, Mr. Cohen had a store on State Street whose children were Mort and Ciril and another sister he had. They became Cole. And also the Silverfobs lived there and also Rome, the Rome family lived there. EC: In other words it was a Jewish neighborhood by this time? MR: Not completely, not completely. There were a lot of Goyim. There were many tenements so the proportion wasn’t very great. EC: Were these one family houses? MR: No, no. They were blocks, several blocks and Mr. Rumbaker owned a great big long block across the street there and so EC: Where was your brother born? MR: He was born on Chestnut Street EC: Chestnut Street. So you’ve got a sister and her name is MR: Ethel Beatman EC: Who became Ethel Beatman MR: Who was married to Israel, Dr. Israel Beakman. EC: And your brother> MR: Is Harry H. Kleinman and he was reared here and went on and graduated from Hartford Pubic High School, oh, no, no, Weaver High School. Weaver High School and was elected class orator there at a time when all the Jewish there were very, very bright and was elected his class orator and went on to Harvard from where he graduate cum laude and then later from Yale Law School. He passed the bar in 1933. EC: He’s been active I politics ever since MR: Very active in Hartford and in the Jewish community he was a president of the Zionist Organization and of the B’nai Brith and Beth El Synagogue and he was an organizer and charter member of the Beth El Synagogue and anything Jewish he is interested in and generous and giving towards all Jewish organizations. I used to see him standing in front, as an attorney, standing in front of the bakery with a Jewish National Fund box, that’s how zealously Jewish Harry Kleinman is. EC: Well that we all know. And your sister Ethel married MR: She was a school teacher, taught Married Israel Beatman. Unfortunately he is gone. He died in 1960. EC: Well, now to go back. You were giving us an idea of the moves of your family. Now they moved to Wiggins Street and then what happened? MR: The Silver family lived there, Jenny Silver who became famous in Hadassah and the Silverman family who have nine children and lived across the street. On that’s where David Weinerman and Anna Weinerman lived on their honeymoon. EC: And then from there you went to where? MR: Oh, then my father built a house on Magnolia Street. He built three houses on Magnolia Street. So that is the evolution of our moves. EC: Now you did mention something about how after all we had to eat in those days, what was the situation of buying food, etc? MR: I remember distinctly every few days mother had a long want, I went along with her, we went to Windsor Street where there was a big delicatessen. One delicatessen in the city of Hartford and it was owned Mr. Dewinsky, and the Jewish bakery by the Baggish’s and we EC: You used to do your shopping down there? MR: All over. No not even the meat. The meat used to be delivered at the door and mother found it on the doorstep every morning and the same thing with the bread. There was a bread delivery. EC: Did you call in, telephone? MR: No, we didn’t have a telephone until we got to Williams Street. It was just the beginning of the week desires were made known and the food was left at the door. And there was also the vegetable man came with the horse and buggy, so that’s how we got fruits and vegetables. And mother was very practical. So the beginning of the fall potatoes and beets were all put in the cellar. EC: I see. Now, would you describe to us a little bit what your home life was like? MR: My father was very Yiddish minded and we used to belong to the synagogue on Market Street and EC: Which one? MR: Agudas Achim. And also mother was very zealous about going Yom Kippur, so she packed us a lunch as if we were going to make sure she could stay through the whole service and we used to go back in the synagogue on Yom Kippur even to have our lunch. EC: Well was shabbos observed? By the way was your father a sabbath observer? MR: Yes, in this way. He stopped smoking on Friday night. He was a habitual continuous chain smoker. But Friday evening when the sun went down he didn’t smoke until the next night. EC: What about working? MR: Working, no. He didn’t work on the sabbath. EC: How was your home for instance MR: Kosher. Observed. And another thing about the Jewishness was having the Molamed come to our house when I was seven years old and the Molamed kept coming until I was about 14 or 15 and I learned to read the Hebrew and to write the Yiddish script and the Yiddish newspaper and all that. All three children were like that. EC: Your brother too? MR: Yes, the three children and Harry was bar mitzvahed at a great big party at the Talmud Torah Hall. It was just like a wedding. Many of the Jewish affairs took place there EC: Where was that? MR: Talmud Torah Hall on Pleasant Street. It was a four-story building. EC: And you had a really big affair obviously? MR: A big affair. EC: After all he was the only boy in your family? MR: Ya, he was the baby and the only boy. EC: Now what kind of community involvement did your parents have? MR: My father belonged to the lodges. And he was very zealous about paying the dues. At that time solicitation was not by mail. It was done by door-to-door collector. For instance very, very emphatically I remember HIAS, The Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, today it is called the HIAS. They used to come to the door for the collections. And the receipts were in the house and I was sorry that the receipts were thrown out from my mother’s bureau when she died because I wanted to save some as a momento. Because the men used to come for that. Also, for the institutions, the hospitals out west there were several consumptor hospitals out west. They used to come to the door for the contributions. And every year my father, in fact, was very zealous about that, and my mother, she didn’t go out for the club work, she was very, she felt badly for people that were lonely and there were neighbors if they came from out of town and were alone my mother was always, she would send us over to babysit so the young woman could go out. So that EC: But she didn’t belong to, did she belong to organizations and pay dues. MR: Like the Hebrew Home the women used to come around to the house to collect the dues for the Hebrew Home. Oh, that time was not done through mail. EC: Really MR: They used to come to the door. You heard it said it was 5 cents a week and that way the women used to come to the door for the dues EC: Now that was also when you lived on Williams Street? MR: It started with Chestnut Street. EC: I see MR: That was the real horse and buggy day. Also if there was a wedding the hostess sent a horse and a half to bring the gifts to the wedding. EC: Oh, really. They supplied the transportation? MR: When the Goldenberg family got married they sent the horse and the hack EC: That’s interesting MR: Yes EC: Now your father, was he active in any organizations or just belonged? MR: He belonged to them because it tired a working man EC: Would you say he was interested for instance was he a sumpuous? MR: He was a definite Republican. EC: A Republican? MR: A definite Republican. Very and in fact when his only son got out of college and became a Democrat if my father did change from Republican to Democrat I’m almost certain that he must have felt that he was EC: But he did change because of your brother? NR: Oh yes, of course. EC: That’s very interesting. Now but he was interested enough, he became a citizen of course? MR: Right away he became a citizen immediately. EC: And became interested in party politics? MR: Well I knew he voted Republican. I don’t know whether he went out to solicit or anything like that. But I know that he was definitely a Republican. EC: I see. That’s interesting. Now how Zionist was your home? MR: Oh, always paid dues to the Zionists and my father was a member of the Jewish Publication Society and I remember Rabbi Feldman recently in some lecture said, “This was the organization that published all books on Jewish subjects and they were responsible for and my father’s name is right here as having been a contributor and look EC: Now why do you MR: This is a 1913 book. EC: 1913 MR: 1913 book EC: Now your father in American Jewish yearbook of 1913 and 14. Your father is listed. MR: There’s his name EC: What was his first name? MR: Nathan, 29 Chestnut Street. EC: Now it says here M MR: They made a mistake because it should have been N nor Nathan and also by belonging here they used to send books frequently that were published. We have a book by Goethel and one or two others down there. EC: In other words books were part of your home too? MR: Yes. EC: Do you recall, for instance, the newspapers that came? MR: Oh yes. The Targa Blochs. Every day all the time until he died. This was sent to the house. EC: So he was very much a part of the Zionist organization? MR: Very much so. And he always brought me the Jewish books the prayer book and all for me. I was the oldest child so I got one with an ivory cover upstairs and so forth. EC: That’s interesting. Now do you remember your own personal involvement as a child? First of all, tell us where you went to school? MR: I went to the Arsenal School. Oh, I started on Chestnut Street, I went to the Henry Barnard School an I had to cross the bridge to get there and in kindergarten was when J. P. Morgan died the school closed and my mother just let be go in shabbos clothes to witness the funeral. EC: In shabbos clothes. In other words you had different clothes? MR: Different clothes for school and for shabbos. Yup, J. P. Morgan and we walked up to Main Street near the tunnel to see the cortege. EC: By the way did your parents go to synagogue on shabbos? MR: They didn’t go on shabbos. But why went on all the high holidays and all holidays were observed and Simchat Torah EC: Whatever. Let’s continue MR: And they always believed in paying the dues for the synagogues, yes and all the Yiddish organizations. EC: On your own personal education and then your involvement in childrens’ activities? MR: Right from the beginning there was the ____ Girls Club, or the Jolly Juniors and we used to meet at the Talmud Torah. EC: What were the Jolly Juniors? MR: Just a social club with Yiddish girls and EC: Not a Zionist club? MR: No, it wasn’t Zionist. It was Franchon Title was the critic. EC: Was the leader MR: Was the leader of that club. And then the Rye did have the EC: Black and White NR: The Black and White Revue, I was in the Black and White Revue EC: But that was, you must have been least a teenager? MR: Yes, a teenager for that. EC: I see. MR: I went to the Arsenal School and graduated from there and then went to the Hartford Public High School and I graduated from Hartford Public High School at the end of 3-1/2 years. My sister went on to become a schoolteacher. Well Harry was much younger and he graduated at the top of his class. EC: Did you train for anything particular? MR: No, I just liked bookkeeping very much and I liked working at books. EC: So did you become a bookkeeper? MR: Yes I did. EC: Did you go to special school? MR: No. I studied at the high school. I had bookkeeping. At Hartford Public High School. They had bookkeeping courses there and shorthand course at Hartford Public High. EC: Did you go to the Broad Street building? MR: I went to the Broad Street building. And I must tell you a Jewish incident that happened at Hartford Public High. The year we graduated they were electing a class orator. A Jewish fellow by the name of Joe Freedman was running and also a black boy by the name of George Goodman. The last year I thought I was going to take a college course so I was already in the Hopkins Street building, but the black boy ___________ ________ And I always felt it had to do because it was a Jewish EC: Were you involved in any of the clubs at the high school. MR: No, no. EC: Anything else of importance that you remember during this period? By the way up til about this period do you remember any unusual incidents? MR: There were strikes for some reason. I don’t remember if it was the length of the hours that kids didn’t like to go to school for so long. EC: Oh, you mean strikes at the school? MR: Ya, it had to do with the length of hours. But it was before my time and after my time but not during my time. EC: And you graduated high school what year? MR: June 1922. After 3-1/2 years I was in high school. EC: I see. Well now let’s go back a little bit. You had been talking to us a little bit about family life. You had quite a large family and by the way why did your father, have you any idea, why did he come to Hartford? MR: Oh yes, that’s very important. I asked him that and he said he came here because his father was here and I said why did your father come here and he says because Sheka Gordon was here, that’s Judge Gordon’s father. I said so how’d that happen. Well we came from the same town and that’s the way it happened. So Bess Gordon explained, then I got in touch with Bess Gordon Schatz and then she told me that her father’s sister was a Mrs. Greenberg and Mr. and Mrs. Greenberg with five children in 1892 were given a grant and came to settle in Newington. EC: Oh. MR: And that Greenberg family, let me see, Leon Greenberg is a grandchild and Rose Rudin and Mrs. Hirshorn EC: Are they the people that have a farm in Farmington, I believe? MR: Farmington/Newington line. Bess Schatz said she used to get on the trolley car at _______ Street and go out there with Sarah Nemser. So it was through that family indirectly EC: In other words you all came with some lonslight. MR: The lonlights because somewhere in Russia my grandfather’s sister was married to Mr. Gordon’s brother or Mr. Gordon’s Sister was married to my grandfather EC: But you really didn’t have relatives here? MR: No, not relatives. It was just through the lonslight like that through the grants. EC: You did mention that you do have rather large family. MR: My father had several sisters and two sisters and a brother that came over. Ya. EC: And they all came to Hartford? MR: All settled in Hartford have remained here and all their offspring are all here. EC: That’s interesting. You have a picture here of a family picture and you have one interesting thing to tell a about this family. It was taken at your parent’s MR: My uncle and aunt, my father’s sister’s 25th wedding anniversary EC: Oh I see. MR: At Silverberg’s Restaurant were most all the Jewish people went to Silverberg’s because it was the kosher restaurant and they always had a nice dinner. My uncle had a nephew from Boston and my uncle’s nephew and his children came and one of the children is the Leonard Bernstein. The conductor, the famous conductor. EC: Well now that’s interesting. Do you have any memories of Leonard? MR: Yes, Leonard besides being a musician loved everything Jewish. I remember I went to Boston one time and I saw his father and he said I’m going with Leonard to Israel now because he is writing the symphony Jeremiah and he was very family-minded. He was very devoted to his parents and his father went with him. That was way back in the 1940s and then I had the good fortune to be in Israel for a month when I got off the plane I see Leonard Bernstein and he is going to conduct and all the tickets were sold out but I did find out where he was staying and I phoned and I left a message and when I phoned after he said Minnie no trouble and he left two tickets for my daughter and me to go to the symphony. But what was beautiful in the symphony hall the people were so beautiful, dressed elegantly, refined EC: It’s a beautiful hall. MR: The people are what made it. The elegance of the individual I am talking about. EC: Very lovely. Now you have a family picture here and Leonard is in this picture and he looks like a lovely looking boy. What was he like as a youngster? MR: As a youngster he used to come to Hartford to visit his aunt. His uncle, who was married to my aunt, to my aunt and uncle. And he liked family very, very much. I lived halfway between the Agudas Achim and their house and when he came with the little cousins he walked over to the Agudas Achim on the holidays like Shavuot or Sukkot and they stopped at the house. He was very Jewish minded all the time. And even when he was famous and my aunt was at Mt. Sinai Hospital he stopped by and immediately said I’d liked to see my aunt. I am passing through. They let him in. But he was not pompous. He never even said he was Leonard Bernstein or anything. He was just that modest. EC: And are there any other of your family that you feel that you had particularly wanted to mention? MR: I could say a brief thing. My father went to Ellis Island in 1921 and brought EC: Oh, that’s right. You did mention that. MR: Many of the refugees came here and they all settled in Hartford. All their offspring went on the higher education and are professionals in the City of Hartford. And married professionals. EC: Who are some of the names? MR: Right now I don’t want to omit anybody. Well, Herman Glassman is a proctologist. There are three Monasterskys and one of them now is an orthodontist in East Hartford and his sister is married to an orthodontist, Richman in New Britain and the sister graduated Barnard and went on and married an attorney in Boston. That’s one family and then there’s the Levines. Selma Kay, Selma Levine Kay, and her brother Benson who is the big business now. Benson Levine and his wife, Bobby and the two children, and his brother Kenneth in New York and the first group I mentioned were the children of David Monastersky who and Anna who had a very good business. The third one were the Levines and that was Vicki and Max Levine with their three children. Also, my mother came here in 1903, very soon after she sent for her little sister, Becky, who married Kalman Bercowetz, who then was a butcher, and he loved land and he loved cows and he bought a farm in Bloomfield, the first was just a house with a small farm and then a few years later he bought 56 acres of land and they are now the Copaco people. There five children are all my first cousins and very warm with us. The Bercowetz’, Irving, Max and Herman Bercowetz and Rhoda, Mrs. Israel Rosenthal. They all live in Bloomfield. EC: It’s interesting that so many of your family remained in Bloomfield. MR: And then we have the first cousins Josie Titelbaum, who now lives in East Hartford, her sister was Nan whose daughter is a social worker, Lois Freedman. EC: Now your father, did he help bring these people over whether he sent them tickets or what happened? MR: Yes, my father, his brother and his two sisters all chipped in and helped them come over. They were so appreciative they did pay back their passage. EC: Oh they did. MR: They did pay back their passage. They all went into business for themselves. EC: That’s interesting. MR: Every one of them. EC: Did they come over as trained people or had MR: Their families were in business so, in Europe. They came for very affluent families. Everything was demolished. I talked to one this morning. She says the whole town was demolished, Leshifka and Totia. And I forgot, Mrs. Kleinman is one of them. Weaver, who’s married to Abe Kleinman and her two children lived around here. He’s owns a pharmacy in East Hartford and the other one was connected with NASA and now lives in Cleveland with his wife who is the former Eleanor Chernoff. EC: Now did they come because it was right after the Russian Revolution MR: That’s when they came, in 1920, after the Russian Revolution when all things in their hometowns were plundered. Actually burned. And the cousin, Alice, who came to live at our house, her father first was killed, he owned a big business, so he was killed. The mother, she and her mother went to synagogue one Saturday morning and then they were besieged with the Russian murderers. EC: Was it pogroms? MR: Meanwhile, they came into the synagogue and they started killing off the people. EC: In the synagogue? MR: In the synagogue. They killed their mother right beside her and she could hear them say she’s dead, never mind hitting her. Don’t even, that’s for Alice. She was about eight years old. EC: And how did she get here? I mean who MR: Some man from Cleveland went to look for some of his relations and then he ascertained who some people were related to. And somebody said, oh she has cousins in Hartford. EC: There were no other children? She was an only child? MR: She’s one of four children. Everybody dispersed and ran away. One of her brothers did remain there, who was married. And he had to let her go. He felt that was the safest for her. So that’s how he got to know there was a relation in Hartford. And then we had to pay for the passage. Her passage was paid for from here in Hartford. EC: You said something about that she was really brought up like a foster child. MR: She was in our home all the time. And even to this day her children are considered our nieces. We call them nieces. EC: I see. MR: She has two children. Miriam Goldberg and Gloria Levin they both live in Simsbury. EC: Any other involvements that you want t0 tell us about this particular time in your life? MR: Just that we all felt, our family was very, very clanish and warm to each other and they were always seeing each other, all the aunts and the uncles. The Glassman clan was my mother’s, my father’s aunt was Mrs. Glassman, and many of these are her children. EC: By the way, is intermarriage, has that been a problem in your family? MR: So far not at all. So far they all married, the two nephews married girls of the Conservative synagogues and they married girls from Conservative synagogues and Harry’s two sons are both attorneys now. Andthey married one girl from Portland, Maine, who’s was on the Radcliffe Deans List and the other one from New Britain, whose grandfather was very, very Zionistic. She’s the granddaughter of Dr. Dunn of New Britain and she’s Phi Beta Kappa from Jackson College. William Kleinman’s wife. EC: And they are all MR: So far very good. EC: That’s a wonderful record, I think. Particularly in today’s world. Now you were telling me that you got interested in the YWHA. MR: YWHA, which started on Pleasant Street. Volunteers were required immediately for teaching the Sunday school. They needed volunteers and I volunteered and I taught and eventually became the superintendent of the Sunday school. It was purely volunteer. The children only paid about 50 cents the whole year in order to come. EC: Oh, about how many children were in this school? MR: Oh there were quite a few. There must have been about 70 or 80 children. In the different EC: All the age groups? MR: All the age groups. EC: From what class to what class did you teach? MR: Right through almost to confirmation. EC: About how many teachers did you have? MR: There were six of seven of them. EC: Who were some of the teachers? Do you remember any of the names? MR: In 1925, and the Sunday school resumed sessions with a registration of 150 children. I am reading it right from the item of that paper. EC: Then that’s MR: And I was a superintendent with the following staff of teachers: Anna Finkelstein, Mildred Elovich; Class 1; Lee Gersman, Class2; Emma Adelson, Anna Katz and Ruth Richman, Rosalyn Kaufman, May B. Cohen, Rose Gibstein, Rose Gabor, Mildred Cheffetz, secretary. That was as of October 1925. EC: And this picture that you are showing me is a picture of you and the students or the teachers MR: Students and the Chanukah party for the children. This was by the Jewish Veterans Auxiliary gave the Chanukah party for the children. EC: Oh, oh, I see. Where did you meet? MR: The school met in their new headquarters upstairs on Ann Street. Located across the street from St. Patrick’s School. EC: I see. MR: And that’s where many of the rehearsals took place for the Y, the Black and White Revue also. EC: Is this the period when they had the Black and White Revue? MR: Yes, yes. That was a very active thing. EC: What was the Black and White Revue? MR: An amateur performance and some of the very able, they are all amateurs, but everyone from Melvin Title, A.S. Bordan, Nimble Gordan and even I was a crew who was in the Black and White. EC: How long were you the principal of this school? MR: Three years. EC: You found it interesting? MR: Very, very interesting. And an incident, one night I was out Saturday night and I was very fatigued and I said oh if I weren’t a volunteer if I were a paid worked I’d call up the principal and tell her to get a substitute. I but because I am a volunteer I better turn in so I can get to work. EC: In other words the teachers was paid? MR: No, nobody was paid. EC: Oh, you mean all volunteers? MR: The whole thing was with volunteers. The children only paid 50 cents. EC: And what did that money go towards? MR: Just the materials, just for some of the materials because it was all supplied from the dues paid by adults who could afford to pay the dues you see. EC: Oh, I see. It was that kind of thing. What other involvements did you have at this particular time? MR: The Junior Hadassah. EC: Oh yes, you mentioned that. MR: Very strong. I always used to go out. That is when I learned about going out for soliciting for the United Jewish Appeal and the Jewish National Fund. EC: Now you also mentioned that there was another place, a Hebrew school was it, or a Hebrew Institute. MR: Way, way back when I was really little before the Talmud Torah was built on Pleasant Street, there was a Hebrew Institute. It was called Hebrew Institute. Located at Pleasant Street at the corner of Winthrop Street and events of Yiddish interest would go on. Like study groups, study discussions on Zionism and Judaism and so forth. EC: And who were some of the leaders of that? MR: I do remember the late Abe Klein, Jenny Silver’s brother. I don’t recall very clearly. EC: But you used to go to this place? MR: Yes. EC: You also mentioned that you saw something of Yiddish plays. Can you tell us how that happened? MR: We came periodically to Hartford, Maury Schwartz, and I saw the Water Carrier, he was in it. And Molly Picon, I don’t remember the names of the plays. The plays took place and some of the Adler family, they were performed at different places, it was the Hartford Opera House near Church, on Main Street near Church or at the Foot Guard Hall and also at Parsons. EC: How did you happen to get to these theaters? MR: We walked or the trolley car. We didn’t have a car until 1919. We didn’t have a telephone until about 1920. EC: You went by yourself? MR: My parents. Oh I went with my parents. My father took one child, one time. They alternated. Another time mother took another one. Ethel or me. EC: These plays, were they in Yiddish? MR: All Yiddish. EC: By the way, was Yiddish spoken in your home? MR: Always. Oh, I learned to speak Yiddish before I spoke English. Because I was born within a year after my mother came here. You see my father came in 1902. He sent for my mother in 1903 and I was born in 1904. My mother never had time to go out to take class or study English in classes so Yiddish, I learned Yiddish long before I learned English. EC: Your father, by the way, just to go back to that. Did you know whether he went to njght school or probably just learned MR: He said he did go to night school. Because he was here before my mother, he was alone so he did go to night school. Because he could write and he could carry on a business conversation. EC: Now also and apparently from what you told me before in your home, you had books and apparently your parents were interested in the theater as well? MR: Yes. They went to all the Yiddish plays that came in. EC: What about lectures? MR: I didn’t see them do that so much. My father might have. But if he did he went alone because they didn’t hire babysitters at that time. EC: Well that’s true. MR: That’s why one went to the play and then another went to the play. EC: That’s one way of getting there, right? Well let’s say your activities were at this point you had graduated high school, I take it? MR: Hartford Public High School. EC: And you were working. Where were you working? MR: I went to work, my first position was, I worked at Steiger’s office for about 6 months, but that wasn’t interesting enough for me. Later I got a job with Wakefield Morley Co. I worked there for 2-1/2 years. And there I specialized in the writing of the fire and theft insurance policies. That was very interesting. EC: But you were a bookkeeper, is that MR: But there I did the insurance policies but then I got another position and I went to work for the late Herman I. F. Stein, whose wife was one of the seven Siegel sisters. Many people identify with them and that way because his wife was later my mother-in-law’s sister and I met my fate there, I met Edward there. EC: Well tell us about that. MR: Edward had an office there. I was the bookkeeper and he showed me how to do the books and so forth. So I worked there about a year and 10 months. Until I got married. I got work the first week in January and by December I was engaged to Edward and the following October we were married. EC: You were married in October of MR: 1927 EC: 1927. Tell us a little bit about your husband. MR: Edward was born and reared in Hartford. His father came here in 1888, Aaron Raphael, and he apprenticed for tailoring and at that time it was long before clothes were manufactured so he had several people working for him and they always were ambitious for their children. They had a piano for Edward. I mean at that time it was supposed to be a status symbol if you had a piano at the beginning of the century because he was born in 1899 and he took piano lessons in 1908 or 09. They already lived in a two-family house. EC: Did they live in the usual what we call the North End? MR: They lived on Clark Street. Edward was born on Marsh Court, near State Street. Marsh Court near Village Street and then they moved to Clark Street and then from Clark Street to Homestead Avenue. Always lived in two-family houses. Edward graduated from NYU and he passed the CPA exams the April before he graduated from NYU and that was supposed to be quite a feat for a CPA in those days. His brother, he had Ruben, who became the controller for the City of Hartford and he has a sister Tania, Hilda, she’s known now as Tania Grande. She is a graphologist specialist. EC: What is MR: She reads handwriting. She is a specialist in handwriting. This week she is going to teach four lessons at the YWCA. EC: Your husband was an accountant, right? MR: CPA EC: CPA, and after your marriage, did you continue working? MR: No. I did like to help him so I brought work home once in a while for a few hours. I used to like to movies a great deal we went to almost every chance a movie and the State EC: Did you have particular interest when you were first married? MR: We took in all the lectures. At that time many lectures were being offered all over town. Not only the Yiddish lectures but also an American _____ like Mary Roberts Reinheart or Louis or Conrad Bruce Covesy. Those kinds of lectures, a series of five lectures. Yes, we always took those in and we loved going to the theater. In fact I have a whole stack of all the programs from 1920 from the time I met Edward on and it was a time when we budgeted so we sat in the balcony. And we knew the fifth row balcony was a dollar and 10 cents where the first few rows were $1.65, the orchestra might have been $2.50. Edward went right over and got the tickets for $1. EC: Where was that? MR: The Parsons Theater. We saw every musical comedy, every change of play that was performed at Parsons Theater. EC: That’s interesting. Also, you were interested in musicals or into legitimate plays? MR: Everything, everything. And then when the Bushnell opened he also came home with two tickets for the opera. A lot of people don’t realize that the Metropolitan Opera came to Hartford. The date was February 1933, Aida was performed. EC: And you were there? MR: Edward was there. He came home with two tickets. All he could afford was the second balcony at $4 each. EC: But you went? MR: We went. We heard. I recommend that to everybody. It was better to hear it from the balcony than not to go at all. We saw all the Metropolitan but thank G-d the next time an opera came he bought me tickets in the orchestra at $7 each. I already thought I was ___________________ over them. EC: I can imagine. MR: $14 for two tickets. EC: A lot of money. Was your husband also interested in Jewish affairs? MR: He paid dues to the Zionist Organization. He believed in belonging to the synagogue. He was described as being religious but non-observant. He went to synagogue three times a year. EC: You joined a synagogue? MR: Always. Yes he always joined. First Emanuel Synagogue and then when we moved here my brother was as charter member of Beth El and my daughter was still young enough and the offer was that all children could sit from 9 years old on could sit with their parents in the synagogue. That’s why we moved from the Emanuel to Beth El, so that we knew she’d be with us at least until she went to college. And she was 9 or 10 years old at the time. EC: What year was your daughter born? MR: 1944. EC: Oh. Quite a time after you were married. MR: 16 years after I was married. EC: What happened. You mentioned something rather unusual happened to you very shortly after you were married? MR: Shortly after I was married I contracted consumption and I was sent to a sanitarium and the, that was before 1943 when orimiacin had not been discovered because orimniacin kills the germ and so the patient goes in and just has to go to bed and just wait it out. And I waited it out. At the end of the year I got sick again there are three kinds of tuburculosis, one where the patient dies and the other where the patient stays in the sanitarium and gets better and the other where you are sick on and off all your life. So when I had the relapse the dear man in my life said to me if your are going to be one of those kind we’ll have to lead a regimented life in a sanitarium. I can always get a job as an accountant in the sanitarium and I could stay there with you in the sanitarium. This man loved his work and he had passed the CPA exams the April before he had graduated from NYU. It was just like _____ coming down to earth. Well I got over it by the next June. I left the sanitarium and thank G-d, because it was luck. The model faci8 g the entrance to the sanitarium comes from the first five books of the bible, Liviticus. “Lest the Lord build a house he labors in vane.” That’s the model at Gaylord Farm in Wallingford. EC: Which is where you were? MR: Where I spent almost two years. EC: Well, fortunately you got better and I know you very involved in the Jewish community with the Federation and other things, so tell us a little bit about that. MR: After the Jewish War Veterans came to Hartford and a Post and Auxiliary were formed and I was elected to be the first president of the Jewish War Veterans Auxiliary of the United States. EC: Really? And I also notice, it is very interesting, this is very much pre-womens’ lib, but all the women in this are mentioned by their first names and that I thought was rather unusual for that time. MR: Some of the work we did, we used to go to the Bradley’s Field was soldiers training Bradley Field. EC: That was during World War II? MR: During World War II. And we used to go out there. I have the card. I was the only one who had the card. We went out there and brought the boy’s gifts and talked to them. They were very pleased. And then after Bradley Field we used to go to the Veterans Hospital in Newington. We used to visit all the Jewish fellows in Newington. We used to go there before all the holidays and other frequent trips and bring them gifts and Christmas and sometimes go at night any play games like bingo and so forth. EC: Now, also I noticed all these citations that you have from the Federation, your campaigns. Tell us something about your work there? MR: Ever since I could walk around I always tried to help either with a pushka box or United Jewish Appeal. Even from high school days. And then came the evolution and the tie up of the Hartford Jewish Federation. And every year I worked for them and I was a captain which meant I was responsible for calling up about a dozen women and sent them cards, brought them cards. EC: And they in turn worked? MR: They worked. And I followed up and I also took over cards. Many girls, women, sometimes don’t complete their cards but just go to a house. They won’t follow them up and I did follow them up. So that was year after year and I continue it right until this year. EC: Well that’s very important and very good. You did mention, we will go back a little bit to your husband’s family, some of their involvement in this community and there was one particular person you mentioned who became active in politics. Would you tell us a little bit about that? MR: My father-in-law came to Hartford in 1888 and his little brother came shortly after that and that was William Raphael, who later became an Alderman in the City of Hartford. And while he was EC: In what party by the way? MR: Democratic EC: On he was a Democrat? MR: He was a Democrat, ya. And Albert Einstein came to visit in Hartford and EC: That was 1921. I think you have that in hear somewhere. MR: And when Albert Einstein was in Hartford in 1921 I’d like to read this it was published in the Hartford Times. EC: Go ahead read it. MR: Alderman William Raphael, charter member of the Emanuel Synagogue, introduced a resolution in the City Council giving the late Professor Einstein and Dr. Chiam Weitzman the Freedom of the City. The City Council designated William Raphael as “Acting Mayor” to make the formal presentation and welcome the Zionist guests on behalf of the City of Hartford. Acting Mayor Raphael arranged to have the Zionist flag placed beside the American flag on the municipal building at that time. picture of the resolution and that of Mr. Raphael appeared in the Hartford Times on Saturday, May 21, 1921. EC: That’s very interesting. Now this is the 50 years later business MR: That was repeated 50 years later in the Hartford Times. EC: I would think that that would be a very good idea if you could look into it and see if you could find this original thing so that we could have it for the Jewish Historical Society, the original article, and I think you can do that. Anything else that you wanted to say about some of these members of your husband’s family? MR: Well I might say he has one daughter who lives in New Haven her name is Mrs. Holda, Mrs. Samuel Frank. Her husband is a dentist there. He was one of seven children also Harold Lesso is his nephew. And there are some Cohen children. EC: Well let’s got back to your family. Your daughter was born 16 years later, tell us about her. MR: Well, she was also pretty good in school and she was National Honor Society EC: What’s her name? MR: Diane B. Raphael. She was National Honor Society in Conard High School and she was at the top about the forth highest, top 4 percent, she was about the 12th from the top of the class of 400. And she went on to study at Barnard College and now has her Masters degree as a social worked and is employed in New York City for the Salvation Army. One year she spent in Israel doing volunteer work for the Charoothmon. And she service to the people and she did, she worked there as a social worker in Oshdoit. She always liked helping people and even here in Hartford while she was still in high school she volunteered to teach the children English, the blacks, the newcomers to Hartford. And her generosity is this way, once her father gave her a check for Valentine’s Day, when the check came back her father said to me look what happened to the money. She had sent that check to the Biafra people. So you see she gets that giving because my parents were that way all the time. No one was every refused at my parents door because when we were little it was always pan handling no mail solicitations from organizations. EC: Not pan handling, you mean they came to the door? You don’t mean tramps? MR: I mean even the Jewish organized organizational door to door contributions. EC: As a matter of fact you did mention before that when your mother got her check, she did something I thought was interesting MR: Well when they went to the butcher market on Thursdays they picked out their own chicken and then there were the flicking ladies, they plucked the chicken and then mother came home and cut the chicken. They called it drawing the chicken. And when there was a depression all the people who had chickens slaughtered contributed, say a nickel for charity. EC: Now what would they do. Drop it in a box? MR: Somebody was standing out beside the ________ EC: Oh this is when she bought the chick? MR: When she bought the chicken. EC: Somebody’s standing there? MR: Right beside the _______ because they feel if you can afford to have the chicken for shabbos you can afford to share something. I think that was the philosophy beside that. EC: Well are there any, first of all do any events stand out in your life that you would like to tell us about? I mean special things that you remember? MR: Well it think it’s awfully nice when the family when for instance on my mother-in-law’s side my mother-in-law was one of seven children, and her baby brother was the second Jewish opthomologist in Hartford. EC: And what was his name? MR: His name was Dr. Harry A. Siegel. Unfortunately he died very young in 1945 and my mother-in-law’s EC: This is your mother’s family MR: My mother-in-law EC: Your mother-in-law MR: My mother-in-law, Siegel family. My mother-in-law came here in 1896 with her aunt Minnie Siegel. Minnie Siegel later became Mrs. Toboko who is the mother of Florence Toboko Berkman. Florence T. Berkman who is the Art Editor of the Hartford Times. And one of my mother-in-law’s sisters was the mother of the late Ruth Ribicoff who married Abe Ribicoff. And, of course, that was always very nice. He was married in the Governor’s Mansion so you go those simchas, the daughter’s wedding there and the son’s engagement and to Irving’s reception when he got married. So that was that relationship. So that was very, very nice and I was very interested in the childrens’ service. I started off just being the national secretary and eventually went on to become the president. The organization has about 2000 people and, well now maybe a few less, but what they do for Jewish children all over from the Jewish community their education and on to further college education and are for helping children if they are handicapped and can’t get the proper, not enough money to really help them. Whether it is speech, or they don’t get health policies and so forth. So we do help those children a great deal. What’s interesting was the founding of the childrens’ home. This story comes from Sara Halpern, Sara Gross Halpern, who is the mother of the late Anne Randall and the mother of George Halpern. She said that during 1917 there was a great big epidemic of the flu and many, many mothers died. There were many children left. And the children went to live with relations and after a while the relations balked, the kid were not happy, nobody was happy. Neither the family nor the children. So that’s when a childrens home was founded and the children were put into a so-called for a while thy5 called it an orphan asylum but it wasn’t and the ladies auxiliary to the Hebrew Womens Home for Children is the organization to which I became interested. There was this beautiful building built on Blue Hills Avenue, the corner of Tower EC: The original building was in the South End of the city wasn’t it? MR: There was one somewhere else and I don’t remember. Was it on Washington Street? EC: Somewhere. MR: Some other place. It was Fairfield Avenue. Then this one was built. Then a big national survey was made that children should live in a two-parent house and the survey was very intense and that’s where the foster homes were arrived at. And there are many, many parents who like to do that. There are couples who like to do that. So that’s why the childrens building was abandoned and the children were put into foster homes. Many children went to live in Colchester. There were some women who were very anxious to help the children. And there were many in Hartford too that have foster homes and that’s why the building when it was good enough was bought by Mt. Sinai Hospital. EC: And you were very active in that? MR: All the way, right through from the beginning. EC: Well tell us what are your activities today? MR: I am on the Board of many organizations and I was the recording secretary for Technion, I was always active in Brandeis, way back and my sisterhood at the Beth El Sisterhood. I am very fortunate that I could be a life member of about seven organizations and every time I fly an ocean I join another organization. And I pay a life membership every time I fly an ocean. The last one I joined as a life member was the American Jewish Congress. I mean I had been a member of it but I paid them life dues for that. EC: You better not forget that you were on the Board of Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford because it is very important. MR: At a certain point you have to write the words down that I should have said and include about the Hebrew Home and the children. EC: So you have included part of everything that you wanted to say. It’s been very nice talking to you and MR: I didn’t mention here that I did sell bonds for the United States government during the War. There was a hut set up in front of the Old State House and one observation came from that and that had to do with whenever a Yiddisha man bought a bond he always named his wife as co-beneficiary if he bought it for the child but not so with non-Jewish people. EC: That’s interesting. They always have different approaches to life. There’s no doubt about it. MR: One more thing. Please I have to remember. While we were selling the bonds an army tank was sent up for people to see what war was really like and they asked for a volunteer to ride in the tank and I got in the tank EC: You were the volunteer? MR: I got into the tank, the staircase was very, very narrow and the steps were very steep. I can’t begin to tell you how horrible these boys must take it. The vibrations of this very, very heavy item, machine. To sit there, the ride took me from State Street across Main down Morgan and through Market and again up Central Row. EC: Quite an experience. Minnie, I just want to say thank you very much. Minnie has been telling us about the life of the Kleinman family and also about the Raphael family which was her husband’s family. Today in July 12th, 1976.. This interview is for the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford. Emma Cohen signing off.