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Athol Ofsowitz

This interview is part of the research for the Jewish Texan exhibits [of the Institute of Texan Cultures], and we're going to be talking about the Chevra Kadisha¹. Did I pronounce that correctly?

The is pronounced like a soft g. I know it's very difficult for you to say this. In America some of them say Hevrah. But it's actually Chevra.

Where were you born, Mr. Ofsowitz?

I was born in South Africa on July 12, 1943, in a very small town called Uitenhage, which is approximately twenty miles from Port Elizabeth, which is on the ocean.

And your parents, I assume, were Jewish.

My parents were born in South Africa. Yeah. They're Jewish. Both parents born in South Africa, which is a little bit unusual for that generation, because most of them would have come from Eastern Europe. My parents were both born in South Africa, so it's a bit different.

And were they Orthodox?

My father was raised in a very strict Orthodox² home. My mother lost her mother when my mother was fourteen; she was one of nine children that were raised, basically, by her eldest brother and her elder sister. I came from a traditional Jewish home, but not strictly Orthodox, if you understand what I'm saying. They are very different. There are different sects of Orthodox Judaism. They have this ultra-Orthodox, and then there is traditional Orthodox, and that's basically what we are, traditional Orthodox Jews. And that's my background, basically.

I'm curious. Were you very much in the minority when you were growing up?

When you say 'a minority', where my parents lived―my parents moved in small towns in South Africa. They owned a little, what you would probably call a small country inn; little hotel with maybe, thirty, forty rooms. Except one time we lived in a large city, but [mostly we] lived in small country homes, small country towns. Obviously, when we moved, we were very, very much a minority. [My] father died when I was fourteen years of age. There were four in my family―my parents, my sister and I. The Jewish population of that town diminished by twenty-five percent. We were the only four Jews in the town. That's just the way that it is.

So you weren't raised in Jewish schools?

No, in fact, when I was educated in South Africa, the only Jewish schools were probably in Johannesburg, which is the largest city, and Cape Town. I don't even think Durban had a Jewish day school. A boy has to have a bar mitzvah when he's thirteen years of age. In order to do that, you have to go for Hebrew lessons. My parents sent me away from home at the age of eleven, so that I could go to another town where a rabbi existed, where I could learn for my bar mitzvah³.

The bar mitzvah ceremonies induct Jewish youth into the Jewish faith.

Like a boarding school?

Well, it was a boarding school, but I had family in that town, so I went to live with my family. And they basically took care of me while I was going to Hebrew School and learning for my bar mitzvah.

So you would characterize your upbringing as traditional Orthodox as well?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Traditional Orthodox Jewish―very strong Jewish feeling. Although I've never lived in a home as such, my parents always had apartments attached to the hotels, or within the hotels. It wasn't like coming home and my mother had cooked for me or anything like that; my parents were busy running these hotels. So I would come home and have my meals in the hotel, in the dining room of the hotel. So that's where I was raised, basically.

You said that you grew up with strong Jewish feelings. And, obviously, that came from studying and from your bar mitzvah...

No, more from my parents and the environment I was raised in. And from my grandfather, my father's father, who was a very religious man. In fact, he started the Jewish community, or was instrumental in starting the synagogue, in Uitenhage, where he emigrated to from Russia. He started the synagogue there. My father then became involved with the synagogue. My family had very strong ties to the synagogue in Uitenhage. In fact, my sister got married out of that synagogue; I was bar mitzvahed in that synagogue, so I have strong ties.

I should have asked your parents’ names and also your grandfather's name.

My father's name was Samuel Ofsowitz, and my mother's name was Doreen Ofsowitz.

And your grandfather?

My grandfather, my father's father, was Louie Ofsowitz.

And he's the one that emigrated from Russia?

From Russia. Him and my grandmother. They both immigrated from Russia―from Lithuania―what is now Lithuania. They immigrated from Lithuania to Uitenhage of all places!

And were they running from pograms?⁴

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Jews were leaving Europe at that time, especially Russia. They were coming to the United States or to South Africa, and what have you not. So, my grandfather came to Uitenhage. His brother actually came to the United States.

Why did his brother go to the United States?

I don't know why my grandfather's brother came to the United States. I have no idea why he ever came here.

He didn't come through Galveston, did he?

No. I don't know where he entered. I would have imagined maybe through Ellis Island, because all that family is now in Baltimore. So I presume they would have come through Ellis Island, but I don't know. I could trace it easily because I'm in contact with the family constantly. I could find out how they―it would be my cousin's grandfather―he would be able to tell me, but I've never asked him.   Did you hear stories growing up about the conditions in Russia? No, because I was so young. As I said, I lost my father when I was fourteen. His father and his mother and his brother preceded him in death within an eighteen-month period. So we, unfortunately, lost a lot of our family. I wish I had that [time] over again because my grandfather spoke Yiddish⁵. Yiddish, as you know, is a dying language. I wish I could have learned Yiddish from him. My father could speak Yiddish, but my mother couldn't. So, they couldn't converse with each other. They knew the odd word. My mother knew the odd word, but because my mother's mother was from London, England, the need to speak Yiddish really wasn't there. Where the Yiddish came from—Eastern Europe—it was a common language that they all spoke. It's the language that evolved so that they could communicate with each other. Unfortunately, the language is dying. There are institutions, believe it or not, like the University of Texas in Austin that has a course in Yiddish. And there are other people that are trying to revive... keep it alive. It's a dying language, unfortunately. So, you know, at the age of twelve or whatever it is―you're not going to sit with your grandfather and say to him, "Tell me about," you know, "where you came from." My grandfather at that stage was ninety-four.

You said you grew up with strong feelings. Did you all have the Sabbath at home?

No. Funny enough, not, because we lived in the hotel and it was very difficult. We never kept kosher⁶ or anything like that. I don't know what instilled the Jewishness into me. I just think that my parents always made me aware that you were Jewish and you were different. I think that was important, because having lived in these towns where there were so few Jews, my parents wanted me to know that I was Jewish. For example, if it came a Jewish holiday, like the New Year or something like that, my parents wanted me to tell the schools that.

Those were the high holidays?

Absolutely, that's a Jewish holiday. I don't come to school―never mind that ninety-nine percent of the school went. I had a very interesting experience when I was very, very young, growing up. My father sent me to Catholic school. In fact, I elected to go to Catholic school. My father had a wonderful philosophy about religion, being that it didn't make any difference how you prayed, but there was a higher being. As long as you acknowledged that there was a higher being, it didn't make any difference whether you went to the synagogue, because there wasn't a synagogue available. There was a church available or whatever―as long as you prayed―as long as you understood that there was someone. That was his philosophy. I elected to go to Catholic school because my father was educated at a Catholic school. That was the best school for him in the town that he grew up in, in Uitenhage. And, believe it or not, I was all of eight years of age when I enrolled myself at a Catholic school. I actually went to school and enrolled myself. My father sent me to a government school, because he thought that was possibly the best school in the city. I was sent with a driver, because at the hotel we used to have a driver that used to go to the airport or whatever to pick up people. I said to the driver one day, "Don't take me to that school. I want you to take me to THAT school." And I went and enrolled. The principal, Brother Roberts,―I'll never forget―called my father. [He] said, "Do you have a son by the name of Athol?" My father said, "Yes." He said, "Well, your son has just enrolled himself at the school."

So you didn't consult with your parents when you did this?

No. No. I went to the Catholic school.

That's an amazing thing for an eight-year-old to do.

And my father was tickled pink that I did that, because he had a Catholic education. He felt that that was the best education. There was no Jewish education.

So he was really a model for you to think and make that decision?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

I said that one of the sections of the exhibit's going to be about respect. And obviously you exemplify [that]. Can you speak to that?

Well, my father was a very intelligent man, but he was one of six children. In those days you didn't have the benefit of deciding whether you wanted to go to college or not. More [schooling], never mind, you were lucky enough to be sent to school and to finish school. My father had a younger brother and a younger sister who were very, very bright people. His sister wanted to be an attorney, which is what my father wanted to be. And his brother wanted to be a doctor. And my grandparents said, "Well, someone needed to get out and work to help to send them to school." There were no student loans or anything like that. My father left school in what you would call the―I'm trying to work it out―twelfth grade, probably in about the eleventh grade to go and work so that he could help educate his sister and his brother.

Was he older?

He was older. He was older. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. He was older. He had another brother that was older, that only went to the fourth grade.

For the same reason?

Absolutely, so that he could go and help and work and help to educate his siblings. That's just the way that it was. The sister, unfortunately, died in childbirth, at the age of twenty-two, so she never graduated. The brother was a qualified doctor at the age of twenty and couldn't practice, because the law in South Africa said you had to be twenty-one to be a professional. But he was a qualified doctor at the age of twenty. He graduated high school at fourteen, which was unusual in those days, and went to college and got a wonderful education. So he became a doctor.

That's quite a sacrifice for a bright man to give up...

But you didn't think about it; I don't think you even thought about it. I never discussed it with him, but that was his obligation. His parents had given up so much, by emigrating from Russia, to bring him to safety and to raise him. He was actually born in South Africa, my father. He had one brother that came from Russia.

Did he have a bar mitzvah? Your father?

Absolutely.

Did your grandfather? In Russia?

Oh, absolutely.

Do you know anything about it?

No. I have an aunt that's still alive, but unfortunately she has Altzheimer's disease and knows nothing; cannot relate anything about my family. It's very sad. I wish that he would have been around longer so that we could have maybe discussed these things.

Was there much anti-Semitism when you were growing up?

There's anti-Semitism everywhere. Let me take you back to the story where I was telling you about the Catholic school, and this is quite interesting. I was the only Jew in the Catholic school. And one day a young boy—I'll never forget his name, Michael Westerman―came to me, and called me a ‘bloody Jew.’ My retaliation was very simple: I beat him up. He was bigger than me, but I went mad, and I beat him up. The fight was stopped by fellow students. We have a “prefect” system⁷ in South Africa; in other words, they're elected like student council members, but they have policing policies when on the campus. They will see that you had your uniform on, that you arrived at class on time, etc, etc. That was their job. And the prefects took us to Brother Roberts, and reported us for fighting, because you weren't allowed to fight. Michael Westerman's parents were called and asked to remove him from the school. And he was a Catholic.

Permanently?

Yes. He was a Catholic, and I was a Jew; they felt that I had as much right to be at that school as he did. It was an amazing thing to happen. Brother Roberts was an amazing man.

Were there any kind of outcries from the other parents?

Not at all. Not at all. Brother Roberts made it very clear. You must understand that we came from a very Calvinistic society where everything was very, very structured. You didn't question the principal; even the parents. Thank God we have the freedoms in the United States, but they can be abused! The way that we had it, I'm not saying was a perfect society; a long, long way from perfect, but we were very, very structured in our education. When the principal walked in―when a teacher walked into class―you stood up! If you didn't stand up, you were out of the class. And that's, "Yes, sir; no, sir." You never questioned the teacher. That's the way we were raised.

What happened when Christmas came around?

I was Jewish.

You weren't required to go to services or anything like that?

No, no, not at all. In fact, I have been to Catholic services; I used to go to mass. Had a very good friend that used to play rugby with me, and after rugby on a Saturday he would go to mass and to confession. I never went to confession, but I went with him. Whatever happened to him, I don't know. From that point of view, you know, I got exposed to a lot of things.

Who made the decision, then, that you would live with relatives and study?

Simple, you had relatives, and that's what family are for.

I mean, did you?

No, my father.

Were you sorry to leave the Catholic school?

Oh, I'd left the Catholic school long before that. I went into a private, state school, a government school.

What you would call...

Public. It just came time; there was no alternative; there was no question―you had to have a bar mitzvah, and so you had to go off to school to go and learn.

Was it a social event [with] too many gifts? Was there anything like that in your experience?

It was. It's a very big celebration. For a boy to become accepted in the synagogue, the most important thing is to have a circumcision, because until that time, you're not a Jew. The next best event in your life is to have a bar mitzvah, and the next best is to be married under the chuppah, which is the canopy. And there was no question that I was going to. My father was not a wealthy man. I know that he sacrificed a lot to give me a bar mitzvah, and my mother catered. My mother catered and transported the entire party a hundred and twenty miles, so that we could have a party in Uitenhage for our family and our friends. It has become an event. But there's all sides to the coin: there's the lavish bar mitzvahs, and then there's―I'm sure it's a matter of finances. That's all that it's all about.

Joshua Furman reading the Torah at his bar mitzvah, May 28, 1994.

I arrived in this country; my son was bar mitzvahed; we got his bar mitzvah thirteen months after I arrived here. And I arrived here as an immigrant. We made a bar mitzvah for him, the best that we could do based on what our financial capabilities were. Sure, you can go and put yourself in debt, but that's ridiculous. Like weddings―there's ridiculous weddings; they're not unique to Judaism. It's a religion. You have people that put on these lavish experiences.

I should have asked early on about your circumcision.⁸ I read an account, here in Galveston in 1852, where a father did that [himself] for his son.

The word mitzvah, the greatest blessing that you can have, is for a father to circumcise his son. Because Abraham circumcised Isaac, that was the very first circumcision. Actually, it was the second circumcision. Abraham circumcised himself.

I assumed that there was a specially trained person to do that.

A mohel,⁹ but if a father is capable of doing it―What happens if your father is a doctor? And he knows how to do it. If he can overcome the emotional thing, sure. Sure. But there are mohels. There's one in Houston, funny enough, that's a pediatrician, and he does it. He's also a very religious man. There are other rabbis that all they do are mohels; that's all they do.

Were there mohels when you were growing up?

I would imagine that the mohel came from Uitenhage. I never knew who did it. I never asked my parents who did it. But I'm sure, because Uitenhage had quite a strong Jewish community in those days. And Port Elizabeth is only twenty miles away. So a mohel would have come from wherever. I don't know.

And after a bar mitzvah?

The minute I bar mitzvahed, I came back to home to stay with my mother and my father. I was thirteen years old, obviously. My father died a year after my bar mitzvah―a year and two weeks after my bar mitzvah, and obviously I stayed with my mother. Then, at the age of eighteen, I left home to go to Johannesburg to do my final year at school. I did my final year in high school in Johannesburg and then went to college for a year and a half in Johannesburg. Then I decided I wanted to study medicine, so I left for Dublin, Ireland.

I went to try and get into medical school there. I spent eighteen months in Dublin, Ireland, by which time my mother had left the small town and had gone to live in a city called Pretoria, which is one of the capitals of South Africa. My sister had gotten married, in the meantime, and she had moved to Pretoria. My mother had sold her business, and she moved to Pretoria. I came back from Dublin, as I didn't luck into medical school and went to try to get into medical school in Pretoria and spent two years messing around. Then I went into business with my mother. I was in business with her physically for two years, and I always made a promise to myself. My mother had sacrificed a tremendous amount to raise two kids, my sister and myself. My sister was twenty-two months older than me. Then she had me to raise. And my father, contrary to all public opinion―not every Jew is born with a golden spoon in his mouth. My parents worked extremely hard for what they had. My mother was left in tremendous debt when my father died.

My father couldn't get life insurance, because he was a heart patient, so there was no money when he died. They'd just purchased this little hotel eighteen months earlier and made tremendous alterations, and there was no money to pay for it. My mother was left out there to raise two kids and not even knowing how to write a check, because her part of the marriage, or the union, was that she took care of the cooking and the daily running of the hotel. My father, because of his health, took care of the accounting and the bookkeeping and everything like that. It's an interesting story. My mother and I fought like cat and dog. Here I was, this twenty-one-year-old genius, coming into business with my mother that had not only managed to raise kids―and I think did a great job―and I'm not boasting about it, but it's a very tough thing to do. And I was going to teach my mother how to run a business. At the age of twenty-one, I knew it all. I knew it all.

We used to fight like cat and dog. I walked in, and she said to me, "There's only one way to solve the problem. It's very simple actually," she says. She has the experience, and I have the energy. If we could combine those two, we should succeed. We took a little business that she had purchased, and we'd paid all of forty-five thousand dollars for it. It doesn't make any difference whether you call it rand¹⁰ or dollars. The total annual sales of the business was forty-five thousand rand; that's how you bought that type of business. You bought it dollar for dollar. Two years later, we'd [made] $2,600,000 out of the same business. Two early buyers said, "Well, it's no use arguing about it, she knows it all; there's no shortcut to experience. It takes twenty years to get twenty years’ experience. You cannot learn it in eighteen months or ten years. You have to do it for twenty years." I had the energy, which she didn't have; she wasn't a well woman. And we turned it into, thank God, a good business. I said that if ever I could afford it, I would never want for her to do work again. Three years later she retired; she never ever worked again. It wasn't a good thing, but that's what happened.

What happened to your faith and your sense of duty, as you went through all of this?

Quite interesting. Dublin was an interesting experience. Dublin, as you know, is in Ireland, in the Republic of Ireland, which is ninety-nine point two percent Catholic. The rest is every other religion you can think of. There are Jews―there are Jews everywhere in the world. So you arrive in Dublin. What do you do? I was boarding with a lady who happened to be Jewish; my cousin went with me, and he was boarding with another lady, who was much younger and Jewish. So we met at the synagogue on a Friday night, and from there you met other Jews, and that's the way it went. So the religion actually became stronger. My exposure became stronger in Dublin, because those were what I had to cling on to; we were all Jews, and that was the catalyst that kept us all together. A lot of Jews were leaving Ireland, because Ireland's largest export is labor, believe it or not. They leave because there's not young girls for the guys to marry. They were going to England, which is just across the pond, as they say.

So you really formed a community?

[It] was a community, and you stayed together. It was an interesting experience―a very, very interesting experience. For example, contraception: I was twenty years of age. Contraception is outlawed in Ireland; it's against the law. Well, I had a mother that had taught me about sex and said you'd better prevent―well, she put it―"You should sow your wild oats while you're young, to pray for a crop failure." And it became a problem. So my mother, who was very, very liberal in her views, she used to send me condoms wrapped in a newspaper from South Africa. I told the Irish customs when they confiscated my newspaper. But it was an interesting experience, because, you know, I went to this country―I mean, it was totally different―that it was a Catholic country didn't make any difference to me, because I understood, and I knew what it was all about. My Judaism became more focused when I was there. I mixed with Jews.

Did you consciously become more involved in the rituals and the Sabbath and the kosher and...?

No, Sabbath was an outing, basically, I would say; to go to the synagogue, to hopefully get invited for a meal, because the South African government restricted the funds you could take out of the country. I had to live on fifty dollars a month; that's my board. So I learned to eat unwashed potatoes, bread, and canned salmon. For two years, that's what I lived on, other than when people invited me out for a Sabbath meal. To this day, I won't eat canned fish―nothing. That's what it was. It was an experience for me, and that's the way it was.

And when you went back to Pretoria; I assume that was a larger city.

Big Jewish population. [Pretoria] in fact, had an Orthodox synagogue, had a Reform synagogue¹¹. I obviously went to the Orthodox synagogue, because that's where I was brought up. My mother subsequently went to Reform because my sister married in the Orthodox synagogue, but her husband came from a Reform congregation. Now the Reform in South Africa is like Conservative here; it's not like Reform here. She married this man, and my mother then became Reform. But I'd started to date a girl who came from an Orthodox home, and obviously my roots, ties to the synagogue, and my involvement became stronger and stronger.

Was it important to you to date and marry a Jewish woman?

Absolutely. Absolutely. There was no question that I was going to marry a Jewish girl. It was easier there than here because the assimilation¹² here is incredible. Over fifty percent of Jews marry out of the faith in the United States.

My next question is about the whole fear of Judaism being diluted. Were you aware of that?

No. Not in South Africa, because if a boy would go marry out of the faith, everybody knew about it. It was like a talking point. Here it's almost an accepted thing. It's happened in my family, although the girl converted to Judaism. I've often thought about it, you know. My father came from a very Orthodox home. The brother that I told you about earlier that was a doctor, I mean an extremely eligible young man, married out of the faith. My grandfather nearly died when that happened. He could not believe that his child would marry out of the faith.

Did she convert?

No. Never ever; never accepted Judaism. My grandfather wouldn't speak to her for years. He'd given up a lot to educate this boy. And that's what happened. It's very sad; very sad in my father's family that that happened. It's just one of these things, you know. There's a prayer that you say for the dead called kaddish,¹³ which is a prayer recited for dead. Many Jews of my grandfather's age would have said kaddish for their son, would have never spoken to their son again. Their son would have been dead in their eyes. My grandfather never went that far, but I'm sure he thought about it.

Was he pretty much a role model for you?

No. He was an old man when I got to know my grandfather. I think in later years I appreciated what he had sacrificed, because, in my small way, I had done the same thing. Although with one major difference— my grandfather could never go back to Lithuania, to his roots, because it was still part of the Soviet Empire. He couldn't go back. Now he could go back. Where me, I've gone back to South Africa many times, but I can understand the emotions that he must have gone through. My father never experienced it, but I did. So, I could relate to him better now. I could understand what he must have gone through. For him it was harder because he could never go back.

So you're back in Pretoria and back with your Orthodox roots...

Right. Yeah, and getting involved. Well, I married the girl that I'd started to date. We dated about two years and then got married. She came from an Orthodox family, in fact, a kosher home. I had never been exposed to kosher cooking other than if I went out. Obviously, my parents didn't do it. My father was raised in a kosher home; my mother wasn't. Consequently, my mother never kept kosher, and, having lived with her, it was difficult. When I married Linda, there was no question that it was going to be a kosher home. That's all she knew. My father-in-law, God rest his soul, said to us, "If you don't keep kosher, I'm not coming to you for Friday night." Well, Friday night is a very important part in my life. Friday night was the night that you got together with your family. Linda, to this day, keeps kosher.

You know, it's interesting that your roots became strengthened in your early twenties and your Jewishness being strengthened in your early twenties. And you never thought about...

Right. Then you must understand also, I was now, physically, in a more Jewish place. I was in a city where there were twelve hundred Jewish families, which was a large amount. I had every Jewish institution available. There was no question that my children were going to go to Jewish day school. That's where they were going to go, because it was available. When I grew up, it wasn't available. Even my wife was not educated at a Jewish day school, because there wasn't a Jewish day school in Pretoria. Her youngest brother was educated at a Jewish day school because when he grew up―although there's only five years’ difference between them―there was a Jewish day school for him to go to. So there was no question that my children would not go to a Jewish day school.

Larry Boubanou holding the Torah, 1960

And did you come to America from...?
From Pretoria, [I] came to Houston fourteen years ago, whenever that might be. (laughter) 1982. I came to Houston in 1982. Yeah, with the two kids and obviously my wife.

Was your decision to come to the Jewish population here?

No, because Houston―in the scheme of the things―has a very small Jewish population in terms of the size of the city. Four million people―forty thousand Jews―one percent, very small by American standards. Absolutely, so, no, what brought me to Houston was I had a sister here, who'd immigrated before me, and the family's important; and I got a job offer. In those days, you needed a job offer to come and live here, and I had a job offer. From an Italian man, believe it or not.

Well, tell me about your extended family. You've been giving me examples all along, but I mean, could you put into words what that means to you?

Family? Family is my life. I'm blessed with healthy children, which money cannot buy that. They are, unfortunately, not blessed with a healthy father. But I have healthy children, thank God. I have one surviving aunt, on my mother's side. My mother is one of nine children; there's one sister left.

With Alzheimer's?

No, that's on my father's side, and he has that sister. My aunt, at the age of eighty-six, is now going to immigrate to Canada from South Africa. She has all of her faculties; she's a wonderful woman; we write to her at least twice a month. We speak with her on the phone, my wife and I. I have cousins, as you can well imagine. My mother, as I said, is one of nine; my father one of six; my mother-in-law one of six. I have thirty-seven first cousins―all over now―because they've gone all over. If my cousin picks up the phone and calls me, I will do whatever it takes for my family.

Do you think that the sense of family is stronger within the Jewish faith?

I think it is diluting, unfortunately.

Why would it have been strong and why is it diluting?

Because that's what bound you. That's what kept you together, was your family. I mean, how could I put it to you? I've just always been raised that the family is the most important thing. I mean, the rest is not really important. You need friends, but when the bottom line―when the chips are down―you have family. And I've always believed that.

But were you raised then around a big extended family?

No, only two children; my sister and I. Only two kids, but I had all these cousins, and we were a very close family. If there was a wedding, we were all at the wedding. I'll give you an example: My late mother, God rest her soul, her sister took ill and had what was called hardening of the arteries in the legs, going back to 1960, when there wasn't much known about it. There was a doctor in London, England, that was an authority on this condition, and the solution was to remove the artery and put in plastic arteries. My mother, as I said, she was one of nine, six of them were girls; all six went to London to take that sister for the surgery and stayed with her for a month in London. They went―and they were all married women―and they all had their own kids. In fact, at that time my father had died, [but] there was no question that she was going to go with her sisters, because that sister had raised them all. They went with her, and that was it! There was no question about it. And, as I say, came to weddings, we all went; came to funerals, God forbid, they were all there. That's the way I was raised. I've tried to instill that in my children. I've a cousin that is in South Africa. I probably speak to him― he lives in Baltimore―he commutes between Baltimore and Port Elizabeth. I speak with him, conservatively, twice a week.

How do you communicate the sense of family to your children?

I keep drumming it into their head. They see that I call my cousins, that I speak with my aunt. I have a sister here in the city; we don't get to see her that often, unfortunately; she's in business. But, whenever I get the opportunity, I go there and visit with her. She has married children, and those children are important to me, and their children now are important to me. Unfortunately, they're spilling all over the place. But by example; that's the only thing, you know. You cannot tell―my kids are almost twenty-six and almost twenty-four―but, like any siblings, there's friction or whatever it is. But I think we have this sort of a curve with my children―almost a Bell curve―where, when they were young, they were growing apart and fighting, and, now that they are adults, they seem to be getting stronger and stronger and stronger. As I keep telling them, that's the most important thing in the world.

We were talking about the dilution, and do you think that this geographical spread is contributing to the dilution of family?

Yes, especially since I've left South Africa. My cousins now live in Canada, in the United States, in Australia, in England―all over the world―in South Africa. When my first cousins―when their children came, they became my second cousins―they're already at the stage where they're having children; it's a problem. It's really, really a problem.

You came to Houston because of your sister, and I think that's often the way that people immigrate. It's interesting that you have this really strong sense of family, and I'm sure it's shared in your large extended family, but you didn't, kind of, make a colony here?

I mean, was it job opportunity, economics, that took you all over the world? Well, no. Let me tell you also what happened. Houston had a huge, large South African―ex-South African―population. I think it was the third largest in the world, other than Israel, was in Houston, Texas. Predominately, we're Jewish, but most of them were doctors because the state of Texas―well, the city of Houston decided, first of all―to promote the Texas Health Center. They looked for doctors, and they went along and gave South African doctors, very surprisingly, and said, "All you've got to do is arrive." Not only that, they gave them a guaranteed income, because they needed the doctors. The training in South Africa was probably one of the best in the world, so it's no question that they were capable. And they came. Jews, by nature, I think, are nomads. You tend to see the writing on the wall, and South Africa was not for me. I mean, my own personal reasons why I left [had to do with it not being] the place I wanted to raise my children.

And this was happening in the early '80s when you came here? Because I have read about a "brain drain" of sorts in Israel.

Phenomenal. In Israel? Jews leaving Israel?

Uh-huh.

Well, yes and no. Because now what is happening with all the Russians coming in? I think that's being replenished. Because you've got these Russians that were highly talented people, coming to Israel and from all aspects, whether they were musicians or doctors or physicians or scientists. And Jews are fortunate. Israelis have left Israel, but I don't think the "brain drain" as such is a problem in Israel; in South Africa, yes.

You said that Jews by nature are nomads.

Well, look, we went to the desert for forty years, didn't we? And that's where it all started. We've always―we've always gone―we've always colonized; we've always gone into another place and set down roots there. And thank God, successfully. Jews always seem to be successful. That may be the root cause of anti-Semitism, because that's all that it is―is jealousy. It's ignorance and jealousy. That's in my humble opinion. That's what it is. Any type of prejudice, be it anti-Semitism, be it whatever you want to call it, it's ignorance and jealousy, to a certain extent. So Jews have moved. Germany is a classic example. Unfortunately, many of them who lived off the fat of the land couldn't believe that this was happening to Jews. And the world knows what happened in Germany. Jews learned a lot from Germany: always make provisions; try to make provisions so that if they left a country, they wouldn't be with the clothing on their back. [That's] what happened to them before if you were in a position to do that. You always had this feeling at the back of your mind that possibly one day that would happen to you.

Do you think that that's maybe the heart of why there's such a strong family feeling? Because you don't have so much―or haven't historically―had a place?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

And speaking of place—tell me about Israel, why you chose not to go.

Sad, sad commentary, that's where I should have gone. Every Jew should go to Israel to live. If you really think about it, we have our own country, we have our own land, we are not ostracized, this is it for us. But we never went there. Never went there, and I don't know why. I've been once on vacation, which, unfortunately, my wife took ill at the time, so it wasn't a pleasant experience for me. I'm dying to go back! My daughter's been once; my son has been. My daughter says she's going back again now in three weeks’ time. I would love to go. I'm not sure. Once again it's a different culture to me. It's a Middle Eastern culture; things are different over there to what I've been raised. It's like me saying, "All Americans are not the same." All Jews are not the same.

One woman told me when she went she was disappointed [because] she seemed to expect there'd be this religious fervor. She was disappointed.

It's there if you want it. You can get the most ultra-Orthodox Jews in the world in Israel. And you can get the most liberal that will eat ham and cheese. You know, the strange thing to me when I went the one time was that―I was driving around in Tel Aviv, which is [near] where Jerusalem is, and the guy that was cleaning the street and the guy that greeted me at the hotel that carried my baggage, and the bus driver―were all Jews! It was a wonderful feeling. We were all the same. It didn't make any difference that he cleaned the streets and that he swept this and he did that, but we were all Jews. And that, to me, was the most important thing. It didn't make any difference what they did. It was a wonderful feeling. I don't know why.

But you're not going to go there to live?

I'd love to go back. No, I don't think I would go to live, especially at my stage in life now. It's very hard to come here to the U.S.A. and go and live somewhere else because of the freedoms here. Even having said to you earlier on that we came from a very restrictive society, and you have the opposite end over here. Once you've experienced the freedoms here―I don't care where you go in the world. I was in Australia two and a half years ago; I've obviously traveled all over Europe; there's nothing like this. Nothing like it. With all of the good and the bad―it's just the freedom that people unfortunately take for granted here, people have died for elsewhere in the world. I don't mean to be melodramatic about that; it's just that's the way that it is. What you take for granted here! My very first day in Houston, I'll give you an example. I came to work here for this company; I was a rep on the road. You can imagine fourteen years ago… My boss said to me, "Go out and do calls." I said, "Where am I going to go?" He said, "Get on the freeway and drive." And I went. And as I got to the Summit―I now know it was the Summit―I didn't know where I was then, there was a Ku Klux Klan¹⁴ rally at the Summit. Now I'm a Jew; this was abhorrent to me. I couldn't believe. What am I seeing? Why are they letting these people...? And I went back, and my boss actually happened to be Catholic―an Italian American―and I said to him, "You know, why do they let those people stand outside there?" And he said, "As long as they stand outside there, you, as a Jew, can go and stand across the road and carry a Star of David¹⁵ or protest." And, from that day on, I realized the freedom of speech that you have here is abused, but thank God you don't have the other side of the coin. You died of censorship where I came from.

Has the Klan been any kind of factor in your experience?

No, no, not at all. Never had experience with them, other than knowing that they do exist and they are here. But, as I said, in South Africa, they had organizations when my father was growing up. There were things during the war called "the Brown Shirts,"¹⁶ and [they'd] go out―this Nazi type―and beat on Jews. That was Saturday night fun. So it's anti-Semitism whether it's organized or not organized; or prejudice whether it's organized or not organized. Doesn't make any difference. It exists wherever you go! Wherever you go!

I have one other question on Israel before we completely leave that topic. Do you have a sense of being maybe more helpful to Israel because you live here?

That's a very interesting question you bring up. When I was in South Africa, you were a Jew first and then a South African. That's the way I was raised. In America, they are Americans first and then Jews. I cannot come to grips with that, because if there is no Israel, then Judaism would go by the boards. Now there is a place for us to go. The six million Jews had nowhere to go. They had to go and knock on doors―even to this great country that closed the doors to Jews; that turned the boats away in New York harbor. And those people were eventually executed. If there was an Israel, that would never have happened.

So how would you categorize yourself?

I'm a Jew first. There's no question about it. And I'm very proud to be an American. Don't ask me to choose because I am a Jew.

Well, it's a good thing you don't have to, I guess.

That's very important to me.

Are you very active in supporting Israel?

As best as I can; from a financial point of view, unfortunately not very much, because, when you come here, you give up bread, butter, and jam in South Africa―the crumbs. I don't care how wealthy you are. You've got to learn the system here, and things are more expensive. You don't have the luxuries that you gave up there.

Do you regret it?

Never, not for one minute. Those things are not important.

How have you found the Jewish community here? I mean, are you Orthodox?

Orthodox, yes. I belong to the United Orthodox Synagogue here in Houston. Funny enough, once again, where a lot of South Africans belong! (laughter) Because we speak the same language. Our roots are the same. I can go and discuss rugby¹⁷ with them. I can say that I went to church in Pretoria. Ninety percent of them would know which church in Pretoria where I came in such a late stage of my life. I cannot discuss that with Americans. Like football; I can now speak about American football, because I'm mad about sports. I can talk about football; I'm not interested in rugby anymore. I just use that as an example. But if someone wanted to talk to me about cricket,¹⁸ I would understand what they're talking about. Places, towns, names, faces―they would mean something to me. My children are American; they've forgotten about... There's another language we speak in South Africa called Afrikaans that you have to learn in school. It's changed now. You couldn't graduate high school without it. My daughter cannot understand one word.

Does that make you sad?

No, not at all. It's a useless language anyway. It's only spoken in South Africa. Both of them have been raised here, and this is their country now.

Is assimilation an issue for anyone in your family?

Absolutely, yes. I'm very conscious of assimilation. It's a sore topic, but I would want my children to marry Jews. I say that unashamedly. However, if they married out of the faith, I would not say kaddish for my children. They're just too important a part of my life. I could never give up my children. But as best as I could, I would insist that those people convert to Judaism, and not a token conversion—a conversion in my synagogue—[an] Orthodox conversion. I think I would make it very uncomfortable for my children if they married out of the faith and those people didn't convert.

Purposely, you mean? Or just because of your strong feelings?

No, I think because of my strong feelings. I'm not a vindictive person—not at all—but I'm really so conscious of that.

Your first association with [assimilation] was marriage. Is it an issue in other aspects of your life or your children's lives?

No, I don't think so. (pause) Yes. This time of the year would come along, and I would hope that my children don't get involved in Christmas. By the same token, Hanukkah¹⁹ is out of proportion in this country too. We never gave gifts in Hanukkah. We were never raised that way. Hanukkah was for lighting the candles, and my late father-in-law used to give all of us a quarter—which is Hanukkah Gelt²⁰—symbolic, on the first night of Hanukkah. And there's not every night a present. We saw that here when we came to live here. It's out of all—as Christmas is—proportion. That is the result of assimilation from us. Because if the non-Jewish kids are getting gifts, why aren't the Jewish kids getting gifts? So we give them the gifts to make them feel happier. Christmas is Christ Mass. It has nothing to with Jews, as Hanukkah has nothing to do with Christianity. I think it's become a big problem in this country that people try to appease their children, not showing them that you can be different without being obnoxious. I have a different religion to you. That doesn't make me a pariah²¹ or that I don't understand. I want my children to be exposed to other religions. I want them to understand and to tolerate, because if you don't know, you're ignorant, and you will become prejudiced. I don't understand the word "prejudice." I saw it in the country when I was growing up. I partook of the prejudiced society, and I made money out of the society, and that I'll regret for the rest of my life.

When you came here, you and your wife, your children were young.

Yes. Samuel was eleven, and Gabby, my daughter, was nine.

And did you put them into Jewish school or Catholic school?

(laughter) That's another interesting situation. They both started off in a Jewish day school in their first schooling experience. Samuel, then, after one year, we took him to a Jewish day school. There was Hebrew Academy, which was very Orthodox, and there's one called I. Weiner School, which was less Orthodox, but a traditional Orthodox. When I say more Orthodox, the only thing is that they would spend five hours a day studying Hebrew and the rest of it the secular things. The second school that we chose for him, Hebrew was part of the curriculum, and Judaism—Jewish faith—was part of the curriculum, but it didn't take up the entire day. And that's what we wanted for him. I went to apply for my son, and they made him do an entrance exam, which already upset me tremendously. Then they came back and told me, my child wasn't academically acceptable at the school. I said to them, "You have no right to play God. The only criteria that you need is whether my child is a Jew or not. That's all you need to know! And his mother is Jewish—that makes him a Jew. That I'm not a Jew is not important. His mother is Jewish; he is a Jew. And therefore he's entitled to a Jewish education." He was not accepted at the school, I must tell you.
However, eighteen months later I sent my daughter to the school because they changed the rules. The criteria then became you had to be a Jew. I'd never experienced that. I was angry. I felt, what the hell have I brought my kids to? This is not what I wanted for them. My son got a good education at the state school. My daughter went to the school, which only then went to middle school, and, when she had to go to high school, then she had to go back to state school, which is what she did.

Children receiving religious instruction at Agudas Achim Synagogue

They have to learn the values. School reinforces the values. You have to learn about it at home. You have to see it in your own home. It's no good me telling you that you have to light the Sabbath candles in school six days a week, and, when you come home to the Sabbath on the seventh day, and your mother doesn't light candles. Now, I've known that it does work the other way, that the kids then bring the Judaism back, but it has to be reinforced at home. That's the most important thing. Thank God, I married a woman that, as I say, came from a Jewish [background]—lights the Sabbath candles, makes a Friday night meal. Doesn't run to synagogue, but the other parts of the home; keeps all the holidays, does whatever has to be done.

It sounds like you're pretty open in your notion of what makes a Jew. It's inherited from the mother, but you can also convert. Is that an issue for you?

No, because I've accepted it. It's a way of life. We're not unlike the Catholics. The Catholics and the Jews are very similar in one aspect—it's all or nothing. When a Catholic child is born to a Catholic mother, irrespective of what the father is, that child has to be a Catholic. When a Catholic child is born to a Catholic father, that child has to be a Catholic. We take our religion from our mother. So if the mother is a Jew, the child will be a Jew. If the father is a Jew and the mother's not, unless the mother converts, that child is not a Jew.

It sounds like women play an incredibly strong role in perpetuating the faith.

Absolutely. In my religion, the wife is the pillar around which the house is built.

Do you think then the women's liberation movement and everything has contributed to your sense of dilution?

No, I don't think so. I think there's always been outspoken people. Even in my religion, there are people who live in the United States that don't recognize the state of Israel. Then you have the other extreme—the ultra right-wing Jews. How can a Jew be right wing? I don't understand that either, because, when they become militant like Meyer Cohanna [“Mickey” Cohen],²2 it doesn't make sense to me. We were the people that had been persecuted for five thousand years. You don't go out and do the same thing, you know. I don't know. It doesn't make sense to me.

Speaking of that background of persecution, just how does that play into your notion of race relations? Or has it at all? Has it been anything you've given thought to?

I've thought a lot about it in the United States. Where I came from, you must understand, South Africa was a racist community. I don't care who the hell you are, you're discriminated against. Let me backtrack and answer this for you this way: When I came to the United States, I saw discrimination. I saw it here in Houston, Texas, probably as bad as it was in South Africa, with one major difference. In South Africa discrimination was legislated; here it was out of choice. There it was the law. You discriminated [against] a man because he was black. Can't understand it. As a Jew, I cannot understand that.

How did you come to terms with that, growing up? Do you remember becoming aware of this?

But you misunderstand. What you've never had, you cannot miss. That's [how] I grew up. I thought that was the right society. That's the way it is all over the world ’til I started to travel, ’til I had kids of my own. We had servants, like everybody else had. We had two full-time servants and a third man that used to come and do the garden. All black. Absolutely. They were only too happy to have the job. The servants' children were raised by the grandmother; that's the way it worked in the African community. They would see their children during vacation time. The black servant was not allowed to live in your home. There was a separate [room] outside―or next door―built for them to live in. When their children came to visit, they stayed in that room with their mother. I had children, thank God, and I had a swimming pool in my home. While I was at work all day, those kids played with my kids, ate with my children, swam with my children, which I must tell you was illegal. When I came home at night, the mother would walk in and say, "You need to go to the room, because the boss is home." It got to a point where I hated to come to my own home, because I became a pariah in my own home to those children.

How come it was good enough for those kids to eat, sleep, drink, and play with my kids until I got home? 'Cause then the ogre [bad guy] arrived. She didn't mean that in a nasty fashion. That was the way it was perceived. The bosses come home; this is his home; you'd better move out; now you cannot mix with his children; you cannot watch television with his children; you go and sit over there. I said, "That's not for me." And that's what made me leave South Africa. I could not raise my children in that society.

And when you got here and saw many of the same...

Came to terms with it very simply: I had the freedom to have the black kids play with my kids―or the Christians―or whatever you want to call it, play with my children. That was my choice. Where I came from, it wasn't my choice. There's a big difference. There's a very, very big difference.

Are you involved, or aware of, the Jewish-African-American [alliance] that the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] has sponsored for many years?

I know about it. There's always been a very strong tie between the Jews and the blacks of the United States. I don't believe in the term "African American." I'm an African American. I'm white. I was born in Africa; I'm now an American. I'm more African American than anybody else out there.

That's what they call it.

Right, that's what the black people have decided to call themselves. That has caused a tremendous amount of prejudice in this country. Don't label yourself! I'm not a Jewish American. I'm an American. A very interesting article I've just read by Whoopi Goldberg; she's totally against the terminology "African American." She says she's an American; she is as American as apple pie and the flag [even if] she's from black heritage. Can you imagine if every segment of this great country decided to give themselves a label? There'd be no Americans. There are very few "natural Americans"―for want of a better term. The red men are maybe the only one left, but everyone else can trace their roots; South Africa the same. South Africa's the same melting pot as this place. But nobody said they were Polish-Jews or Polish-South Africans or German-South Africans; they were South Africans. I think that's the big problem in this country today. Don't label yourself! This is your country; this is where you're from.

What do you think about black-Jewish relations now? You know, with Farrakand²3 and...

Strained. It's very, very strained. Farrakand is abhorrent. But he has the right to speak. Despicable man. Absolutely despicable man, in my opinion.

Tell me about the Holocaust,²4 how you became aware of it, what it meant to you, has meant to you, does it mean to you?

I think, for a Jew not to know about the Holocaust, is akin to a Christian not knowing about the birth of Christ. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most important event in Jewish times since the birth of Abraham, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe, the establishment of the state of Israel is greater than that, but the greatest lesson we've ever learned is the Holocaust.

And those two things are tied together...

Absolutely. My biggest, biggest worry is that those survivors, who obviously are a dying breed, will not get to speak to the children to let them know that it happened, that it's true, that it's not a lie, and what happened. Now, miracles do happen! Steven Spielberg is a miracle, because what he did with Schindler's List and subsequently what he is doing, by recording every survivor that he can find, everywhere in the world, is an event of really miraculous proportions. On Sunday I spoke with a survivor, very famous survivor—I don't know if you're familiar with a lady called Gerta Wiseman Cline? At the Academy Awards, there was an award presented for a documentary called One Survivor Remembers. It was about a Holocaust survivor—Gerta Wiseman Cline. They won an academy award; that film was the documentary that was partly sponsored by the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and by Steven Spielberg. Gerta Wiseman Cline has now become a celebrity. Thank God! She has just come back from South Africa, a month there, and is going to Australia and New Zealand to talk there. To me, that's what it's all about. I questioned why they built a Holocaust Museum in Houston. I couldn't understand it ― a very small Jewish population.

Dallas and El Paso and now San Antonio.

Right, but now we have it here. I don't know whether you've been to the one here. I haven't been. I went for a meeting the other day, but I've never been through the museum. You might want to know why. I'm a coward. I don't think I could bring myself to see that. I've seen it. I saw it in Israel. I've never seen Schindler's List. I won't watch Schindler's List. It's too emotional for me to watch, especially the children.

Getting back to the Holocaust Museum: when I spoke with the people that were involved, and I said, "You know, why? Why is the Holocaust Museum here?" They turned around and said, "Not for you and not for the other Jews; for the non-Jews." A) for the Jews to remember; but B) for the non-Jews to be taught and to be shown that it existed. They are inundated with school kids going to that. You cannot book a tour, they are so busy. Thank God a million times! I wish they'd build another hundred of them.

Do your children feel as strongly about it as you? I mean, have you talked to them?

I don't know. I don't think so. Tragically, I try and make them aware of it. Why do you think they wouldn't? I don't know. I really don't. With me it's become stronger and stronger, the older I've gotten. It hasn't gotten any less. Maybe they will get to that; I hope so. I hope they would identify and involve themselves. My daughter, yes, but my son, no.

I think several people I've spoken with on this project talk about "that time." I mean, World War II and the Holocaust. And I'm curious about how it's become more and more real for you.

I've been more and more exposed to it.

Not by choice.

No, no, but read about it. And here in this great country that these people have had the freedom to speak out. And there are publications, and there are people that would put money behind museums. I mean, the National Holocaust. First of all, let me say something: the United States Government didn't pay for that; that was paid for by private donations. But the ground was donated in Washington, D.C., which to me is probably the most auspicious capitol I've ever been to in my life. If I'd [seen] "capitol" in the dictionary and looked at the picture, it would have to be Washington, D.C., and I've been to many. [For them] to go along and donate this prime piece of real estate and say, "All right, we, as a country, recognize that this happened." That has done more for the Holocaust victims than probably anything else that's been done in the world. In Israel it's expected because that's where we are; that's our roots, Jews; we do that. But to come here in this society where it's a melting pot, and for them to go along and say, "Here; here's this real estate. You put on your museum, and we'll put the best brains and the best people in the world to get it going for you." The most amazing thing. The most amazing thing.

Have you been to the Museum of Tolerance in L.A.? Or heard about it?

The last museum I went to was the Jewish Museum in Sidney, Australia, which has a section devoted [to the] Holocaust, [and it's] built on three floors. But the top floor is dedicated to the righteous. Do you know who the righteous are? The non-Jews [who] saved the Jews. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people. There was a Japanese diplomat that saved many, many Jews. Quite an interesting story, and by giving visas and papers. I never knew about him until I was in Australia, and I saw this, and I read about him, and subsequently I read some more things about him. His son actually lives in Israel. His son went into business and got into financial difficulties. He was bailed out by the Jews of the world. The Jews felt so strong for what his father had done; he's probably one of the few people in the world that only speaks two languages: Hebrew and Japanese. That's an interesting story.

We started this conversation with you saying, you know, it's not a lie. Have there been issues or manifestations of that notion—that it is a lie—here in Houston?

Yes, no, I don't know. Yes, I'm sure in Houston. I'm absolutely sure. You'd asked me about anti-Semitism. I've actually experienced anti-Semitism once here, working for this company, when I got to work one morning, and the back of the truck had swastikas spray-painted on the back of the truck. I called the ADL, and I called the television, and they came to take pictures. I feel very strongly that people need to see that; bigots like that should not exist.

Why were you a target, do you think?

Because we were Jewish, nothing else. Probably a disgruntled employee. No, I think my company, because they knew it was owned by Jewish people. Disgruntled employee. Who else could it be? He probably wasn't even sober, but then he had those thoughts, that he could go along and paint that on my vehicle!

Did anything else happen?

No. Nothing ever transpired from that again. I just wanted people to know. They put it on the news, thank God. You know.

Okay. Tell me about your work. And I don't think I can pronounce it from my throat, but with the Chevra Kadisha, [Holy Society].

In South Africa, when my father died, I knew he was buried, but I didn't realize that it was the Chevra Kadisha that did it. When I went to live in Pretoria, I became involved in the Jewish Day School and synagogue, and my best friend's father was the president of the Chevra Kadisha. The Chevra Kadisha works differently there to what it works here. There it's all volunteers, and the body's handled by the members of the Chevra Kadisha from the time of death and even buried in the ground. It's buried by the Chevra Kadisha. The only thing the Chevra Kadisha didn't do was physically dig the grave. But putting the earth back in the grave [was] all done by the Chevra Kadisha. There is not a private enterprise like here, you have these funeral homes; there it's not. The land is donated normally by the city for a Jewish cemetery. It's maintained by the community, but other than that, the Chevra Kadisha take care of everything. There's no payment for the funeral; it's only what you can donate. If you cannot make any donations, don't worry about it; you will be buried as Jew.

When you live in a big city, you start to know people unfortunately that die, and you go to the funeral, you see the Chevra Kadisha. As I said, my best friend's father was the president. He was getting on in years. What I couldn't understand was who was going to bury him? If he died, and the people that assisted him died, who would then help? I called him up one night and said, "I'd like to join. I know nothing about it, but I would like to join."

Jewish cemetery markers

And how old were you?

I think I must have been thirty, maybe a little bit younger―twenty-eight, twenty-nine—and I joined. They taught me. Purely hands-on. You go to the first one. They call you and say, "Come." And they'll tell you up front, "Obviously you're going to see a deceased person. If it turns your stomach, walk away. Then you cannot do the work. It's not a sin. You cannot do it. That's all there is to it." I saw the first one, and luckily the person that was teaching me said, "Do this and do this and do this" and would start to touch the body, which I did. It didn't upset me to the extent that I had to turn away, walk away.

I was going to say, the more times you do it, the easier it becomes. It never becomes easy, but you accept what you are doing. You look at the positive, as opposed to the negative. The positive being that every Jew, whether he's a multimillionaire or a pauper, gets buried in the same casket. In South Africa in the same casket, treated with the same dignity, dressed in exactly the same clothing, and buried. You come into this world with nothing; you'll go out with nothing. Everyone is treated exactly, irrespective of how wealthy they are. That, to me, was the positive about the whole thing. Money or stature in life never played a part. If you were the mayor, if you were the president, if you were a Jew―that's the way you got buried. That to me was wonderful. That was the very, very positive thing about it for me. And I continue doing it.

When I came here, I found there was a Chevra Kadisha, and I joined. It was different here, because here it's a business. When I say it's a business; we only get to the body once it's in a funeral home. The funeral home belongs to a private enterprise. So all those arrangements are made for monetary gain.

But they are primarily Jewish-owned?

No. There's no Jewish-owned funeral home in Houston anymore. Most of the funeral homes are owned by a company called SCI, Service Corporation International [which] happens to be based in Houston. The largest funeral undertakers in the world, and it's Houston-based. We work at a place called Levy's. It used to belong to the Levy Family, a Jewish name, [but] now belongs to SCI. So most of the Jews go [there]. The other thing that was different, every Jew was buried by the Chevra Kadisha; in Houston it's not like that. There are some synagogues that don't believe in what we do.
 
Why?

I don't know. Because they are Reformed. There are certain synagogues that don't wear the prayer shawl, that won't wear a covering on the head. That to me is ridiculous. I can't come to terms with that., but that's what they chose to do. Those synagogues will not tell their congregants. You know, the fish smells from the head down. Unless the rabbi tells the people that this exists, and you have to have a taharah,²5 and you have to be buried by the Chevra Kadisha, and why would they come to us? They don't even know about us; they don't even know we exist. It's not like we take billboards or we advertise in newspapers; we're not looking for customers. You know. Thank God, we're there to do it.

Is it mostly in Orthodox or traditional Orthodox?

We do it for every Jew. It doesn't make [any difference]. Orthodox, affiliated, non-affiliated. If he's a Jew and he dies, we will take care of the body. Most of the deceased that we get happen to come from a Conservative congregation, because they are the second largest congregation in Houston. The largest is the Reform congregation; they don't believe in what we do. It's Beth Israel. They're the biggest. And then Beth Yeshurun, which is a Conservative, is the second largest. Most of the people that we bury are from Beth Yeshurun, and then from the Orthodox synagogues. That's where we get them from; that's where most of the deceased come from.

And how many people are in your group? I mean, there are different groups for men and for women.

Absolutely. Ladies do ladies, and men do men. Under very rare circumstances, ladies can do a man, but a man can never do a lady. I don't know why. I don't know why it's like that.

How many men do you work with?

We have a nucleus of about twenty people, but realistically probably only about six or eight of us do the work, because it's voluntary work, and not everybody can come when you need them to be there. Normally, if someone dies, God forbid, during the day, we could do it. You know, we bury immediately. We don't believe in waiting. If you die today, we can do a taharah today and you'll be buried this afternoon; that's the way we do it.

Tell me about what you do. I mean the taharah.

We arrange it at a time that is convenient, that we can get enough people to help us. So if the person, God forbid, dies during the day, we will probably do it at night.

How many people do you need?

We would ideally like five. If we couldn't get five, we've done it with two, but five is an easy number to work with. If the deceased dies on a Friday, then we will not bury until the Sunday, because the Sabbath comes Friday night; we cannot work on the Sabbath. If he died, God forbid, early Friday morning, I'm talking two or three in the morning, we can get enough people at six o'clock in the morning to go and do the taharah; he will be buried that afternoon before the Sabbath. Our religion requires us to bury quickly. We would get a call from the funeral home, from Levy's or whoever it is; there are other funeral homes who work with us as well.

Not the family?

No. Sometimes. If it's a very Orthodox Jew and they know about us, they would call us. But even then, we don't get involved until the body actually arrives at a funeral home, where in South Africa we actually went to the home and removed the body and stayed with the body. Here it's different.

Is there a value judgment there? I mean, do you think it would be better if you could go to the home?

Absolutely.

If you had any kind of role, like funeral directors do here in providing comfort to the people...

That's the way it should be, but it's not here. Because that's the way it's been set up in this country. [In] South Africa, when you died or someone in your family died or somebody died, the first person you would call would be the president of the Chevra Kadisha. That's the very first person you would call. Or if you called your rabbi, the first call he would make would be to the president of the Chevra Kadisha, because the body has to be removed.

Is there the same kind of dynamics going on with the president? I mean, for example, what if you weren't a popular person in South Africa, could you be in that role as president?

In South Africa it wouldn't happen, because you have to have such a strong commitment to do what we do. I don't know how to put this to you. You make a sacrifice to do this. Do you know what the word mitzvah is? Mitzvah is a blessing. There is no greater mitzvah in the Jewish religion than to do what I do. I don't do it because of that mitzvah. I do it because that's what I want to do, because I feel so strongly about it. So, in other communities, the president of the Hevra—any member of the Hevra Kadisha—is almost revered, because it is such a religious thing that you are doing. If I go to my rabbi, if I go to any rabbi, and he happens to know what I do, that I work for the Chevra Kadisha, the first thing that he'll say to me, he will shower me with blessings! I'm blessed that I can do it, and yet, they know that it's the greatest mitzvah that a Jew can do.

Money is not an issue here. You do it because it's a Jew. You want to make sure that that Jews gets buried like a Jew. That's it. It doesn't happen here, unfortunately, because for us a casket has to be a plain pine box, with no metal in it. It should be held together by glue and dowel sticks. But if you go here in the United States, Levy's doesn't make its money out of selling pine boxes; it makes its money out of selling the Rolls Royce [of caskets]. We bury Jews in those caskets because we're in an invidious situation. Thank God, they have provided us with a space to do this; it's an accommodation; they do what they do. If you ask me, God forbid, how am I going to get buried? In a plain pine box. My family will know that.

Is there a place to buy one in Houston?

Levy's! Levy's. Absolutely. If you want a plain pine box, they'll give you [one], but they'll also give you a $10,000 casket, if that's what you want. We would go to the funeral home; the deceased would be there.

Is it your role as president to kind of find out who's available and...?

Absolutely, that's exactly what I'd do. I would then start to call. I have a daybook, as you can see. I updated it yesterday; that's my new list, and that's who I call. I go through that list, and I call people that I think can assist me. Then we go. We will do it at a time, as I said, either in the evening or very early in the morning. Sunday is not a problem, because you can always find time on a Sunday to do it. Sometimes, unfortunately, you have more than one to do. You go to the funeral home, and the deceased is there. The deceased is normally wrapped in a sheet or maybe in the hospital clothing or maybe whatever it is; it could be in his own clothing, that is, if he dropped dead or whatever it may be. We then proceed to undress the person, to remove all the clothing. Any garments that are soiled with any body fluid that occurred after death must be buried with the deceased. Sometimes it's difficult to determine whether the fluid was before or after death. You then presume it's after, and you buried that. I'll be as graphic as you want me to be!

Okay.

If, God forbid, the person dies on the operating table, and they've removed a lung, that lung must be buried with the person. Your body is the storing house of your soul; that body is on loan to you from God. It must go back to God, every part thereof―blood, hair, whatever it may be―that goes back. The soul will go where it has to go, and that's why that body's treated with such dignity and such respect. The Almighty put it there for a purpose, and the soul being the most important thing that you have, you take that body, and you give it back to God in exactly the condition in which you received it, as best as you can.

Do you wash it?

Absolutely. What you do then—and I'm talking from a male point of view because obviously, I've never seen a female being done. The first thing you would do, you would clean the fingernails and the toenails to make sure the body's―you know―that the hands are clean. You would then proceed to wash the body, and it's specifically stated [in the Torah²6] how you would wash it. You wash the head and the neck first.

Rabbis with sacred scrolls

The Torah?

In the Torah. Exactly how it must be done. There's a book. There are two sides to Judaism. There are six hundred and thirteen laws—commandments. [There are] different interpretations of what we do. This is the official guide; what's called the OU—the Orthodox Union of Synagogues in the United States. So we use this book. I happen to have spoken with this rabbi—lthere are many rabbis that have no authority on this― [and] I use him, because he made it very simple and very easy for us to understand.

Are there controversies then?

No, different rules; different ways of doing it. You know how the law states the body should actually be placed on a board, but it's very hard to pick up that board. Times have changed! You don't need the board; that was written five thousand years ago.

A cooling board?

Right. Now you can do it on a slab. You can do it on a stainless steel table. Absolutely acceptable, but, you know, that's interpretation.

The body's washed, the head first, then the right arm, the right side of the body, the private parts, the right leg, all the way down to the bottom of the foot. Then you start on the left side, and you repeat the performance. The body is then turned on the left side so that you can wash the right part of the back. And then vice versa—turned on the right side so you can wash the left part of the back. And you wash him with a hand-cloth or whatever it may be. If there are any bandages or dressings on the body, if by removing that dressing you will cause trauma or bleeding, you leave it; you don't remove it. If you can remove it and nothing happens, then you remove it. No makeup. No makeup. Strictly.

You're doing your work; the funeral director never has...

Cannot touch the body, other than to put it on the table. That's it. No adornments, no nothing! Then start; you wash the body. In the old days, they actually used to physically stand up the body and pour running water over the head—three buckets of water. There was a measurement called, I think, kavhim.²7 I don't know; there's a translation of how it works and how many, not fluid ounces, but how much water it is, but it's equivalent to three buckets of water. Pour it slowly over the head, one bucket, then before the first bucket is finished, the second bucket, and before the second bucket [is finished], the third, so that there is a continuous stream. I don't know what it is, but maybe symbolic in the old days when you put it in the river and the water flowed over the body and purified the body; it wasn't standing water.

You can understand that; I mean it's actually quite simple to understand. We do the same thing, but we do it differently. We raise the body off the table by putting it on wooden blocks, and we pour the water from the head all the way down with the first bucket, the second bucket [starting] prior to the first one [finishing], and the third one [starting] prior to the second one [finishing].

What are you thinking about when you're doing this?

You pray. At that point in time, you pray aloud. Also, while you start, there's someone praying, and, while he is praying, he's actually saying, "And now we wash the body. And we wash the head." And there's a prayer for that. That's why we like five people—one to read, two on the one side of the body, two on the other side. But if you can't get it, you can't get it. We then pour the water, and we let the water drain off the table. Then we dry the body; we physically dry it with towels. We remove the blocks from underneath the body, dry the table, put the body back on the table, cover the head. Would you like to see what we cover the head with?

Sure.

Okay. We buy these from a commercial place in New York. Traditionally, they were made by a woman, a postmenopausal woman; that's the way it was stated [and] made with a single thread; no knots in the thread. When you started one garment, you had to complete that garment. You couldn't start this one and then do another piece. You had to do that one and then finish it. So what they used to do in the old days, you would maybe make the pants; somebody else would make the shirt. I'll show you all these things. Somebody would make the other shirt, and somebody make the head covering, and then you'd get together the whole lot. But now here, the head is covered with that, placed over the head. I don't want to put it on. You then cover the legs; and the legs and the feet are one pair of trousers, like children's, you know; the foot pajamas, in other words. The legs are sewn closed. So that the feet are inside here. And there is a drawstring. That is tied around the waist; the two pieces of string are wound four times and the Hebrew letters A, B, C, D―aleph, beth, gimel, daleth―are said four times. Let me go backwards. A knot is made, a slipknot, to tie the two pieces together; one slipknot this side, one this side, and the knot faces the head. You then go to the ankles, and, for want of a better term, you tie off the ankles with two small pieces, like that. Always the right first, then the left. Once again, the same procedure is repeated―aleph, beth, gimel, daleth―and then the two knots are made. When we tie the knots, we say out loud.

I was just groping for the word - the tellifin,²8 the—you know...

Oh, the tefillin? I'm surprised you know about the tefillin. You then place this, almost like a shirt over the body. And it's important that it stretches, that the shirt, if possible, goes all the way down to cover the private parts. Once again, this is on a drawstring, and it's wound four times around the neck, and two knots are made again. Over that goes what symbolically must be called a jacket. This one has a collar, so it almost looks like a jacket. The strings do not draw, they just tie; same way still again, four times wound around and then the two slipknots. The last one—the last piece of this—I don't know what you want to call this, but...

It's almost ribbon, but it's of the same...

Yeah, exactly from the same material. It's now put around the waist, tied around, once again separating the private parts from the torso. Tied tight. Once again, the difference being here three slips are made.

Is it going to be a Hebrew letter?

Yes. The letter shin, which is symbolic of the Lord Almighty. And once again, if you do it like that—it faces toward the head—and it's the letter shin. At this point in time, the body is now ready to be placed in the casket. The casket must have, preferably, no lining―just a plain pine box. And what you put on the head, underneath the head of the deceased, is you take a little bag, and you fill it with straw.

A pillow of sorts.

Absolutely. And inside that bag with the straw, you put Israeli earth. Earth that we get from Israel, you put in there.

Which is, obviously, a recent addition?

Absolutely. Yeah.

What does it symbolize to you?

I think it symbolizes your roots with Israel, that every Jew wants to be buried in the Holy Land, and this may be the closest that he will ever get; that the Holy Land will come to him. That's my feeling about it. And that's put under the head. The casket is then draped with a sheet, a plain sheet exactly, of calico or whatever you call it.

Muslin, maybe?

Muslin, I think, is probably a better term. Correct. The deceased then has a tallith,²⁹ a prayer shawl. The religion wants you, basically, to have your own tallith. However, I don't know why, but very few men that we get come with their own tallith. I think the family wants to keep it as a memento. You don't argue with the family at times like this, so we provide them. We buy them; there are kosher talliths. If you will notice on the tallith, there are four corners; these parts of the corners are called the tzitzit. If this prayer shawl doesn't have this, then it's not a prayer shawl; it becomes unkosher. The Jewish term is porcil. It's not a holy garment anymore. We take that off; we remove one of them. It's the same way as I cannot just take the Holy Book, the bible, and go and bury it, because it has the Word of God, and this has it also. So we remove this, and it's made so that if I cut the stitching here, a little pocket forms; I put that in there. But now it's not a kosher tallith anymore. Then I put the tallith over the casket. I drape it over the casket, so that when I place the body in the casket, this is draped over the casket. You now put the body; it now covers his shoulders as a prayer shawl, like that. And then I drape his prayer shawl over him. I then take the sheets, and I fold them over so that the body almost looks like a mummy. His head is covered.

The last thing I do is I take some of that Israeli earth, pour a little bit over his eyes, little bit on his heart, and the part of him what we call the bris, the private parts. Oh, also I do that prior to closing the casket. There was always earth put on. Now, because of modern times, we can get Israeli earth. The eyes were always covered with a piece of porcelain, I don't know why. But now we don't do that; we just put earth on the eyes, and then the casket is closed. It's not customary for a Jew, for an Orthodox Jew, to view the deceased. We don't do that. So the casket is then closed, and the body is removed by the funeral home and taken for burial. In South Africa the burial would be done by the Chevra Kadisha. The body's also never left alone, from the minute the person is deceased. In South Africa a member of the Chevra Kadisha would have our own special place to do it.

The work that you do—it sounds, for a non-Jewish person, very much like a ritual. I mean, there's a certain order, certain words that you say. Do you feel when you're performing this mitzvah, is it more like a ritual or is it more like a prayer?

It's a prayer. It's a prayer. It's not a [ritual]. I can see why you say it sounds like it, because it is so structured, but then our religion is so structured. It's been like that for five thousand years. That's why you have Reform synagogues, because they say, "This is 1996; times have changed." Well, that may well be, and we have changed. The Orthodox synagogue has changed, maybe not as rapidly as people wanted, but for us it's part of the religion; it's a very integral part. Death is―I don't know how to put it to you―is not the end. Death is the beginning of the life hereafter, but those that are left behind must remember. It's very important that you remember the deceased. We have an anniversary called a yahrzeit³⁰. The Jewish, the Hebrew calendar is different to the Gregorian calendar. And the Hebrew anniversary is, you light the candle for twenty-four hours to commemorate the anniversary of the death.

Why is it important to remember?

How can you know where you're going if you don't know where you came from? That's what it's all about. Those people taught you values; I mean, that's life; they gave you life. I mean, what's to forget? You have to remember; you have to remember the good, and you have to remember the bad. Death plays a very important part.

Remembrance, let me clarify, plays a very important part in our religion. Even at a marriage ceremony, there's remembrance in a marriage ceremony. It's a critical part of our religion. You must never forget. And we take the Holocaust as a classic example. I mean, you've seen that slogan a million times ― "You must never forget." Well, why must we never forget that? Comes every year the world Jewry throughout the world has a special day to commemorate the Holocaust, I mean, to remember. And, once again, candles are lit throughout the world; it doesn't make any difference where you are. Very important part of our religion, you have to remember.

From a personal point of view, my mother's been dead eleven years; my father, oh, goodness gracious, twenty-nine years; there's not a day, there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about my mother, my father to a lesser extent. So it's very important; it's really, really critically important. And not just photographs, you know; you want to talk about it, you want to tell your children. Like you said, my grandfather, it's tragic that I never had the time to talk to my grandfather, that he couldn't tell me things about him, about Judaism and what it meant to him, you know.

What's your relationship with the men that you work with? In the group. I mean, do you see them socially?

No.

Or do you feel a bond to them?

Yeah, I feel a strong bond, because they do what I do. I have tremendous respect; I have love for them. I don't have to see them; I don't have to socialize with them; I just know that, when I make the phone call, they are there. For the most important phone call that I can ever make, and I make it, God forbid, once a week, twice a week. On Sunday I had two.

What happened?

Yeah, I had three in one day. It was a young man killed in an automobile accident on Saturday; a young married Jewish man on Thanksgiving day. Tragic, absolutely tragic. It's always tragic; but there are certain ones—young people, you know—children.

How do you deal with that? Seeing that over and over again.

Very difficult. Very difficult. And if you know someone, very difficult to do. But you do it―you have to do it―because, once again, you know that it's being done right; it's a blessing to be able go to that person and know that he's being buried and treated with respect as a Jew.

So it's a manifestation of your love?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think no bigger manifestation, not only for the person that I know, but for those that I don't know but are fellow Jews. I think that that's the best that I could put it. And there’s the other people that do it. I've called Rabbi Weiss on the telephone, and all I have to say to him, "Rabbi Weiss, I'm president of the Chevra Kadisha." He was wonderful to me. I mean, whatever I wanted to know, how I wanted to know. And it's universal. You understand what I'm saying to you? You can't possibly do it for the thanks you get, because there are no thanks. So you have to want to do it, and you have to be able to do it.

Do you have a preference in the role that you play during, you know, while you're treating the body? Does it matter to you whether you are doing the washing or saying, you know, the prayer aloud?

I like to do it all, [but] preferably not the prayers, because, unfortunately, my Hebrew is not that good, because I left Hebrew school when I was thirteen years of age. But it doesn't make any difference whether you say it in English or Hebrew as long as the prayers are said. I like to partake. I like to do it―physically do it, because to me it's a mitzvah³¹. That's what I do best. And I like to teach. My greatest joy is when I get a new person to come and I can teach him, because I know that he will be exposed. Then another one will come, and that for me is the most gratifying when a new person comes to help us.

How do you... I mean, if somebody approaches you and says, "I know you do this and..."

That's exactly how it happens!

How do you talk to them about that?

Come, come, come. I can't show you pictures; you have to physically see the deceased. People often say to me, "Who died?" It's not important to me who died; I never ask the funeral home who died. A Jew died! That's the most important thing. Then I'll go there and do what has to be done. The question I do ask is, "Is there any trauma to the body?" because if I bring a new person and they see a body that's traumatic―and you understand what I mean by "traumatic?”

Yes, yes.

You would not want to expose them to that. I had an incident a few months ago, where I actually brought a new person, and I was told that the deceased had decided to make a donation of his organs. That's not a problem, but what they didn't tell me was the deceased had also decided to make a donation of his skin. That was traumatic for someone new to see. It presents many problems. The accident victim that I had the other night, the gentleman was probably two hundred and sixty pounds, shot, scratched and scarred, but almost decapitated. You can't bring a new person to see that. I'm not saying that we get used to it, but certainly it's less traumatic for me. I've done children, God forbid. I've done old people; I've done young people; I've done murdered people. Interesting story: people seem to think that Jews are different; we're no different than anybody else. I did a man about three months ago that was a convicted murderer that was in Huntsville Prison; was a Jew! Now, the upside to that story is that it was wonderful for me to do it because he got treated like the wealthiest man that died in the city; there was no difference! He was a Jew. He was in jail; he'd paid his time; he'd done whatever he was supposed to do; he will have to answer to somebody else! Not to me! I do what I do and so do my fellow workers do what they do because he's a Jew.

Do you think you'll ever stop doing it?

I've thought about it. I've thought about it. It's getting harder to do because the longer I stay in the community, the more people I know. And yet, those are the people I want to do. But it's getting very hard. God forbid, if family of mine were ever to die; I would really want to do it, because I would know that it would be done. I'm not sure I'm capable of doing it. Even if I broke down, I would want to be there. I've done it to very close friends of mine. So, you know, from that point of view... But I've thought about it. I've thought about it a lot; about whether I would ever stop. I would hope not. I would hope not.

If you asked me what my biggest wish would [be], I would hope my son would do it. But I would understand if he couldn't do it. I would understand it. My nephew's done it. My wife's brother's kid, he's done it. But I would hope that my son would do it. Only for the fact that he would say to himself one day, "Who will bury my father?" Not that you're supposed to do your own family; if there's nobody else, then you can do it.

The other interesting thing, too, about it is on the side that that book, which is an authoritative book, I mean, it's written by Edmund Weiss, who has never seen a taharah in his life. We have in our religion the priests which are called the Cohenim³² and the Levis³³ and then the Plebes³⁴, like me. A Cohen cannot go where a body is because it's... just the way it is. And Rabbi Weiss is a Cohen. So he has never, ever seen a taharah being done.

I've read a lot about when Jewish people first came to this country, one of the very first things they do is set up a burial society. And get some grounds.

A burial ground. When you think about it, it's practical! That's the only certainty in this world. They say. taxes and death; no, death and death. Taxes are not a certainty. They'll ask you for the money; you may get away with not paying it, but death is a certainty. You, God forbid, and I, God forbid, will die. That's the only certainty in this world. We know our people will die.

So you think it's symbolic. I mean, when I read that, I was immediately struck by the fact that here's a people without a homeland and the first thing they do is assure themselves of knowing, kind of, where the ground is and putting a lot of emphasis on that ground. Is that just kind of expected in the Jewish community? Do you talk about it? Is it verbalized in that way?