Kopelman, Ethel_1978/1/10, Oral History, January 10, 1978

Oral History – Ethel Kalishman Kopelman 1/10/1978

My name is Emma Cohen, and I’m about to interview Ethel Kopelman, Mrs. Joseph Kopelman, for the oral history archives of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford. This tape will be made available to people for purposes of research and study. Mrs. Kopelman, who has been a resident of Hartford since her marriage in 1920, has been an active member of the Hartford Jewish community.

Ethel, good morning to you. I’m so glad that we’re going to finally be able to talk.

EK: You’re very brave to come out this cold morning.

EC: When were you born, and where?

EK: I was born in a small town in the Ukraine, not far from the Black Sea, because I remember my parents talking of having gone to the Black Sea and bathing and swimming there. I was born on May 15, 1897.

EC: Did you live there for quite a while?

EK: No, I didn’t live there at all to speak of. My mother had been in America, in fact my parents were married in Colchester and had returned to Europe.

EC: How did that happen?

EK: My mother had come to America with her parents approximately 1889 or 1890. They had come here under the Baron de Hirsch plan which many immigrants used at that time. They were assigned to Colchester. My grandfather had a large family, and like many of the immigrants there at that time, he wanted to spare his sons the trauma of the czarist war, going into the army.

EC: Was your grandfather a farmer?

EK: No, my grandfather had dealt in lumber in the Ukraine, and apparently was comfortable, because they came on their own, they weren’t dependent on any organization other than the Baron de Hirsch. I don’t really know the details of it, just that they came with a large group of people at that time, supposedly to become farmers, and farm the country in Colchester. They stayed there a few years, but they weren’t good farmers, and they stayed there just long enough to move to New Haven, because when the farming didn’t go right, apparently the older children in my grandfather’s family worked in a rubber factory in Colchester. That closed up and moved to New Haven, therefore they followed the factory and I presume secured work there.

EC: What did your father do?

EK: My father had come a while after my grandparents.

EC: I meant your grandfather, what did he do?

EK: My grandfather moved his family to New Haven and he opened a little store, and the older children worked in the factory. It was the New Haven Rubber Works, I think it later became the Seamless Rubber Company. I’m not sure of the details on that.

EC: Are we talking about your mother’s father?

EK: Yes, my father’s parents never came here. In the meantime, while they were still in Colchester, my grandfather sent for my father, because my father and mother had been sweethearts in Europe. My father came, and he wasn’t happy here. He wasn’t a farmer, he really had no trade. He was perhaps, as I interpret it, perhaps a yeshiva bocher. So his parents were getting old, and he was the youngest of a large family, and a few months after they were married, he decided that he wanted his little family to go back to Russia and see his parents. At this time my mother was pregnant with my older brother, and of course they went back. They were very unhappy. There was nothing for my father to do, as far as I know, in Europe, and certainly my mother had enough years of living in America to know that it was a better life, and a different life, and she gave my sweet father an ultimatum: either come back to America, I want to go back home and raise my family there, because by this time, she was pregnant with me, and she had hoped that she’d be back in America by the time I was born. But somehow or other there was a slip somewhere and I was born May 15, 1897. Their entry into Ellis Island was August 1, 1897, and they came subsequently to New Haven, and my father did the same things that my mother’s brothers were doing. They were either peddling vegetables, or opened a little store. The first I remember of what my father did was when he opened a little store in New Haven, on Stevens Street. My mother worked with him, and he did well.

EC: Was it a grocery store?

EK: A small grocery store. In those days, the families would help each other, and they would give credit or help one another to borrow money.

EC: You mean to stay in business?

EK: To remain in business, to establish a business, yes.

EC: Families, or were there also like the Hebrew Benevolent Society>

EK: No, it was all family, because my grandfather apparently had been well-off in Europe. He owned his own home practically from the time he came to America, and then immediately in New Haven. I remember the house because we came there. It was a large house on Wallace Street. It had no plumbing, I remember the outdoor plumbing, and it was from there that we moved to Stevens Street, and we went to school. My sister was born about two years later, and then my youngest brother was born about two years later.

EC: Were your parents religiously observant?

EK: Yes, the store would close Friday night, and they’d open Saturday evening and were open on Sunday for a number of years. Then my father moved the little establishment to a larger store, and eventually they couldn’t observe the Sabbath in the same way, although our home was kosher and the Jewish butcher would bring our meat daily.

EC: Delivered to the house?

EK: Yes, delivered to the house, the meats and the chickens for Shabbos, and all that. Even when my father had the store open on Saturday, we observed the Sabbath, the lights. My father of course couldn’t go to synagogue services then, but he was always active in the little synagogue.

EC: They belonged to a synagogue?

EK: Always, always belonged to a little synagogue, even if it wasn’t a real business, a real building, he would organize a group of men and they would, I presume, get a Torah somewhere, and a hall, and they observed the holidays. I remember going to services as a child.

EC: As a child, what kind of Jewish education did you get?

EK: My brothers had a young rabbi come to the house every day, and the boys studied Hebrew and Jewish, and my sister and I would sit at the table while the boys were studying or being taught, and eventually my mother decided that we could have a Jewish education too, as much as they did. So we were taught to read and write Yiddish and we could read the Hebrew prayers, and it stayed with us.

EC: Did you ever go to a Talmud Torah?

EK: No, because we never lived in a Jewish area. We were always remote from the Jewish center. But I used to go to Oak Street in New Haven, there was a prominent little Jewish family there who raised a beautiful family – the Sachs. The boys became lawyers, the sister became a teacher, and they had an all-round store. Crockery, pots and pans, Jewish newspapers, and I remember as a youngster, my sister and I would go to Mr. Sachs’ store and they would receive us warmly, they knew us. We were only kids, I don’t know whether we were more than 7 years old. And it would be the Warheit on Montag, the Tag on Dienstag, and the other papers, the names escape me. The Forward, the Tag, the Warheit,.because this was their means of communication. My mother followed all the romances in the papers, and holidays they would meet at services, and it was a different type of assembly.

EC: Was the synagogue close enough that they could walk?

EK: They would walk regardless, you didn’t ride on the Sabbath, or Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur or any of the others.

EC: Were your friendships amongst Jewish children, or non-Jewish children?

EK: In our very early years they were non-Jewish, perhaps until we got to the fifth or sixth grade in school. We had gone to a four room school in the area, and a larger school was built and we met other Jewish boys and girls. It was the Scranton Street school, that was the elementary school that my brother and I graduated from. By this time my father had done quite well and we moved to a different area entirely. He built a larger store and we had a more spacious home, a nicer home, and my father had a horse and buggy then. Of course the grocery business in those days was far different than it is today. We had a telephone, but the customers didn’t. This was in the Winchester area, and Winchester Arms was the going industry at that time in New Haven, a very important industry.

I remember my father had this little horse and wagon, and he would make the rounds of his customers, take the orders, and because there was no refrigeration he’d have to get everything back there in time for noon, because everyone came home for dinner at noon. It was a very difficult life. The hours were long and the work was hard. My mother helped my father. But we always had help at home.

EC: Did the children help too?

EK: Yes, always, we all did. I don’t think we were ten years old when we’d weigh potatoes and coffee and tea, beans and sugar, because everything came in barrels and large kegs. It was a busy store, and we were all very busy. My brothers attended college at Yale and studied, graduated, and things were going fine, so my father bought another little house next door to us, he bought the buildings adjacent to our home, and in 1917 he retired from the grocery business and went into real estate, and did quite well.

EC: May I just go back a bit? You went to grammar school at the Scranton School?

EK: First was a little four room school, Oak Street School, which was nearby. Then the Scranton Street School had the eight grades, in fact I graduated from the Scranton Street School in 1910.

EC: Did you have any problems with anti-Semitism, with friends or area people?

EK: We weren’t too aware of it at the time. We were four children, close in ages, and we were busy. I wasn’t too much aware of it. But it was there, there was definitely anti-Semitism, as I think back to some of the incidents that occurred.

EC: Give us a for instance.

EK: I remember walking on the street near my father’s store and one of my father’s customers leaned down and said, “You go home, little Jew girl.” And this certainly made me feel different. And I knew in school we used to say prayers, and my mother said Jewish children don’t say these prayers, you can say Shema Yisroel.

EC: While the others were saying the prayers?

EK: Yes, so we would bow our heads, and the other kids would say the Our Father, which wasn’t too bad, because it was mostly a Catholic area. But we were taught to say Shema Yisroel. We played with some of the Catholic kids. The mother of one of our playmates, when a storm would come up, would go through her house with holy water, blessing each room, and so I was downstairs one day, it was storming, thundering and lightning, and I said, I must get some of Mrs. Ryan’s holy water, and my mother explained to me that we didn’t need holy water, we were special people.

EC: You really meant it?

EK: Yes, I thought that saved us, sure, because I even remember her showing us the book of heaven and hell, and all that, and I wondered about where are we going to go, but my mother cleared that up. And then we found out that there was a Hebrew Institute. It was a long walk, but we went to Sunday School at the Hebrew Institute on George Street in New Haven. It was in the area where the old Bnai Jacob synagogue was.

EC: Who ran it?

EK: The Jewish citizenry, at that time. Bnai Jacob had the Sunday School. The Hebrew Institute had other classes. Of course, we always had the rabbi come to the house to teach us, in addition, until my younger brother, who was the youngest in the family, was Bar Mitzvah. And then they didn’t keep it up. But they did lay tefillin every morning for a long time. I don’t know how long they did it, later on when they went out in the world whether they did it I don’t really know.

EC: Was your father interested in any clubs and groups, organizations?

EK: Well, he was a very busy man, worked very hard. Basically he was interested in the shul. Then they formed an atsia (?) and they had meetings at different homes, and my father was apparently one of the organizers of that. I don’t remember too much about it. I think we were busy with our own activities at that time, but we were the first in the neighborhood to have a horse and buggy, after the horse and wagon, and we were the first to have a Ford car, that was about 1914. Then I went off to Normal school in New Haven.

EC: But before that, for instance – was your father interested in Zionism at all?

EK: Yes, he was, because I remember them discussing the Dreyfus case, and Palestine.

EC: Did he belong to anything?

EK: I don’t know whether there were orgranizations formed at that time. I did, because I used to go to the Hebrew Institute on George and Crown Street in New Haven, and Henrietta Szold came to New Haven in 1912.

EC: Do you remember her? Can you describe her?

EK: Well, she was little, and very enthusiastic, and she was leaving for Palestine at that time, and the younger groups of girls became Flowers of Zion. I don’t know too much about what happened with the boys, I really don’t remember that part. But that stayed with me, that was a wonderful seed planted, because just 8 years later, when I came to Hartford, there was no Hadassah formed then. Joe, my husband, when I met him he was very active in Zionist work.

EC: It seems to me Hadassah was formed in 1912, and I think that it came to Hartford in 1916 from Rabbi Silverman’s book, but maybe it wasn’t very much. But in New Haven there wasn’t one?

EK: No, not that I knew of, I didn’t know of any Hadassah in New Haven.

EC: Just these Flower girls?

EK: Yes, the Flowers of Zion. I think there was a younger group, Buds of Zion. And the one family that were very Jewish minded and community minded with the Jewish people were the Levines who lived on York Street. They were a large family, I think one of the older daughters taught in the Hebrew Institute at that time.

EC: Did you belong to any other organizations before going away to Normal school?

EK: Normal school was in New Haven.

EC: Oh, you didn’t go away then.

EK: No, although both my sisters and I, our teachers used to stop by our store and talk to my parents, they felt we were college material but my mother couldn’t think of sending us. You didn’t send girls out of town then. Well, some did, but anyway they didn’t. Besides, my brother was at Yale and he was home, he didn’t live in the dormitory. He was one of the youngest graduates of Sheffield Scientific School.

EC: How many years did you go to Normal school?

EK: Just a two year course, and then I taught in North Haven. In those days you had to teach in a country school for one year before you could teach in New Haven. So I taught in North Haven in a two-room school for a year. I was 18 ½ years old, and I had pupils who were 15. And the following year I got an appointment to a school in New Haven. Then the flu epidemic came in 1918, and we lost our mother. She was just 43 years old, and it was very traumatic, terrible experience, because by then my father had sold off the grocery business, and she could be home and live a different kind of life than she had, certainly. She’d never been ill, and it was a very trying, sad period, because there were no antibiotics and within three days she was gone. My father was really father and mother to us both. He stayed in the real estate business and did quite well. He prospered reasonably well, for those days it was very good.

Then in 1920 – as a matter of fact, I met my husband at a Zionist conference in New Haven. He was one of the state officers, and I think Chaim Weitzman had come. There was a big rally in New Haven and he was one of the speakers, and I think we solicited funds from the audience in the theater. I’m trying to remember whether it was the old Hyperion or some other theater in New Haven. And I met him then, and I later met him, and of course he was ten years older than I, but he looked like God to me. He was really my man, and it went very quickly, the romance went very quickly. He had been in the service and it had broken up his – he had been at Yale but I didn’t know him then, I was just a little kid. He’d gone to Yale Law School.

EC: How old were you when you met him?

EK: Twenty-two.

EC: Let’s go back a little. I think we started to talk about your memories of Henrietta Szold.

EK: She made a terrific impression of me. I remember her sincerity. I can see the expression on her face, in her eyes and it remained with me all the years. I think she was starting to gray a little bit as I recall.

EC: What did she talk about?

EK: About Palestine, that it belonged to us, and that we had to bring good health and knowledge of farming, and that we must work here. And we used to get together and sew infant things. But as I say, we didn’t live in the Jewish area, and it was quite a trip, you didn’t have the facility of a car at that time. And then I was busy with Normal school and teaching and so on, and so our interest at that time was centered about the Foot Street Shul that my father had formed.

EC: Did it later become any other name?

EK: Yes the Kezer Israel. And later on I read that they had bought a church on Chapel Street in New Haven, and I think it’s consolidated with some other Conservative. At that time it was completely Orthodox. But they got together with another synagogue and formed the Kezer Israel synagogue and it became a Conservative synagogue.

EC: What was the social life of that period?

EK: As far as I know, we would go to my grandfather’s home. Everything was the family, and the young people, we had a group of young boys and girls, especially since my brothers were at Yale. They would come to our house. We had a pretty home, we had a front and back parlor and we could roll up the rugs and turn on the Victrola and dance. At Yale there used to be organ recitals every Sunday afternoon at 4 o’clock, and that was a must, because that was part of your social life. Many of our girl’s groups would go to Woolsey Hall for these organ recitals and then, before we knew it, we had a whole group of boys and girls who came back home with us. There was a nice supper because we lived upstairs and the store was downstairs and all we had to do was bring up cans of salmon and the fruits and vegetables, and the bread, butter, cheese, and the canned peaches, and my mother said, Well, I’m glad you left a few cans on the shelf. But this was a ritual, practically every Sunday for a number of years while we were growing up in our teens. Many of those men were very successful lawyers and doctors, and in the business world.

EC: Any other social affairs? Did you have dances, or lectures?

EK: The only lectures would be at the Hebrew Institute, we’d get a speaker and once in a while we would go. But my brother belonged to the KOJ Society – Knights of Judea – and they had social events, and my brother belonged and would invite us to dances.

EC: Tell us about meeting your husband.

EK: It was just after World War I, and he had been practicing law for a short time after his graduation from Yale Law School, but the war interrupted it. He was in the service less than a year, and came back and reestablished an office, and it was a little tough going, but I wasn’t too aware of finances then. My father had made it very pleasant and very easy. But when I became pregnant, when I found I was pregnant in 1921, my father helped us buy a house on Oakland Terrace.

EC: Can we go back? Did you continue to teach after marriage?

EK: No, I didn’t teach after marriage.

EC: And when you first came to Hartford where did you live?

EK: On Oakland Terrace. And that’s where our children were born. And my husband worked on the Zionist organizations. As a matter of fact he was state youth president at one time. Because I found some of his papers, he would go to different parts of the state, he would talk, he was a fine speaker, he was a dedicated speaker. We went to many of the meetings. The local Zionist organization had Abe Goldstein and we used to have beautiful parties at holiday time.

EC: This was in a synagogue?

EK: I think earlier ones were in the synagogue but then they bought a little house on Albany Avenue, that’s where the Zionist organization bought. And we would meet there, and Hadassah would meet there too. Meantime, I must tell you. Annie Zeaman was a very prominent clubwoman in the city. She was Dr. Zeaman’s wife and she was very active in all Jewish activities and civic activities, and they had many meetings in their home. She was a very close friend of my sister-in-law Sarah Kopelman, who was quite a personality herself. She later on went back to school at Emerson College and later made a career of it in Hollywood, but that’s another story.

EC: Did she marry too?

EK: No, that was her career. She was affiliated with many of the large studios, and she had many of the starlets.

EC: Do you have material on her?

EK: I have some material, newspaper items and clippings. But Annie Zeaman got me interested and took me to Charter Oak Avenue, the old temple, and she initiated me into some of her activities, and I joined the Council of Jewish Women there. And then there was Hadassah. I must tell you about how influential she was in forming Hadassah here. Sam Hoffenberg and my husband were instrumental in getting Annie Zeaman to open her home to a Mrs. Gottheil, who was forming the Hadassah. That’s why I think that it wasn’t formed until 1918 or 19, although you said it was before. But this I do know, because Annie Zeaman opened her home to Mrs. Gottheil, and she started the Hadassah organization in Hartford. So naturally I became a member there at that time. I was having babies in those years, but still, we would do sewing. In those days New York would send us large batches of cut garments, ready to be assembled and sewn and made up. And we would go from one house to another weekly. And I had a portable sewing machine and I would drag that machine around, because you needed an electric sewing machine. And I’ll tell you who was very active in that – Sophie Horowitz, Dr. Horowitz’s wife, and Rebecca Feldman, and Bessie Shechatoff, you know, the rabbi’s children. Ceil Hurwitz was in it. And later on we got other women in it. Dr. Tuch’s wife was a member. And we worked very hard. And in 1928 I was elected President of the Hartford chapter of Hadassah. Ann Goldstein was also very active. She was the secretary. Unfortunately, the minutes of that decade are lost, because I’ve spoken to Minnie Miller and told her about it, but I’ve never been recognized as an officer.

EC: There are no records? There must be some newspaper articles.

EK: Well, I don’t have them, if there are. But, Rebecca Feldman, there aren’t too many of us left.

EC: And you were president for how long?

EK: That in itself is a story, a biological story. I accepted the nomination and was elected president in April 1928. And then I had a peculiar cycle of my periods. I didn’t know I was pregnant. So by the time the fall came, I was quite heavy with child, and this was my third child, so I explained it at the board meeting, it was obvious, and it was too much to undertake the presidency and do justice to it. And we decided on Vic Rappoport being the president and I helped her, and she came to my house, and we reviewed the activities and procedures of the meetings, and she made a good president. I wish we had those minutes because there were different types of activities then we have today. Of course, I have terrific pride now when I hear the reports of what the activities are, and of course there’s no comparison, but that was the beginning, that was really the pioneering time. And that summer we were at Ocean Beach, we had a couple of bridge parties, we raised some money, if the weather wasn’t good we went around and collected money for Hadassah. But as I say, later in the year, because my third child was born in December, although I retained membership and was interested, something that stays with you for life, but I have resented a little bit the fact that they have no record at all of those years, because we worked very hard. We made pajamas for men and nightgowns for women, and nighties for the babies, and did so much.

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