Family

In interviews conducted on June 17 and June 21, 1999, Donna Joftis interviewed Naomi Cherny about her experiences growing up during the Depression and World War II, pursuing education and professional work despite gender expectations, building Jewish community institutions in Lexington and Arlington, working in counseling and equal employment at Hanscom Air Force Base, officiating interfaith marriages as a justice of the peace, and her reflections on family, volunteerism, nutrition, exercise, and social change.

On April 24, 1999, Susan Cooper interviewed Ruth Berkowitch Schneider for the Temple Sinai Oral History Project about her upbringing in Boston, her family’s Jewish and musical traditions, her work in public health and education, her involvement with Temple Israel and Temple Sinai, and the deaths of her husband and two sons.

Lorraine Baron reflects on her upbringing in a Jewish family in Massachusetts, tracing how her parents’ values of compassion, justice, and Jewish continuity shaped her lifelong commitments to family, religious practice, community leadership, feminism, civil rights, and intergenerational Jewish life.

In this oral history interview, Sylvia Schatz reflects on her upbringing in Philadelphia, her family’s immigrant history, education, religious life, experiences during World War II, marriage and motherhood, professional aspirations, and evolving views on gender, aging, family, and Jewish identity across generations.

Marion Arvedon recounts her family’s immigration from Eastern Europe, her upbringing in Malden, Massachusetts, her father’s entrepreneurial career, and her own experiences with education, marriage, wartime separation, community involvement, and reflections on social change and aging.

These interviews document Bess Arick’s life from her upbringing in a Russian Jewish immigrant family on a Massachusetts farm through experiences of antisemitism, limited educational opportunity, marriage, career as a medical journal editor, and family loss.

This interview with Kay Albert-Spector traces her life from her upbringing in Boston’s South End and Dorchester through her lifelong engagement with music, work in Jewish resort hotels, family experiences, and community involvement.

These two interviews trace Anita Winer’s life from her early-20th-century Jewish upbringing in Boston through marriage, family life, and mid-century social change, reflecting on identity, gender roles, religion, and the evolution of American Jewish and domestic life.

In this oral history interview, Ida Meshoulam recounts her childhood in a Jewish community in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, her family’s migration to Palestine in the 1930s, her marriage and life in Tel Aviv and the early years of Israel, and her decades of community service, family life, and cultural engagement before eventually returning to the United States after more than forty years in Israel.