Carolee Rosen Fox, born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, relates some of her Charleston family history. Her maternal great-grandparents, Caroline Goldstein and Isaac Belitzer, lived at 344 East Bay Street in Charleston, South Carolina. Carolee describes the home, known as the John Falls Walker House. It was passed down in the family to her great-aunt Gertrude Belitzer who, in turn, left it to the interviewee’s mother, Selina Leidloff, daughter of Blanche Belitzer and photographer Herman Leidloff. The house, featured in the Historic American Building Survey collection in the Library of Congress, was torn down in 1961. Carolee briefly discusses how her mother, Selina, met her father, Abe Rosen, a New York dress manufacturer.
Louis Funkenstein of Athens, Georgia, married Caroline Geisberg, a native of Anderson, South Carolina, and the couple settled in Caroline’s hometown where Louis established a paper box company. The Funkensteins describe their family histories and discuss a variety of topics including religious practices and Jewish-gentile relations in Anderson.
Caroline, Irvin, and Raymond Rosenblum reminisce about growing-up in Anderson, South Carolina, recalling their older siblings, relatives, neighbors, and Jewish religious observance. Their parents, Nathan and Freida Rosenblum, Polish immigrants, lived in several small South Carolina towns and Miami, Florida, before settling in Anderson in 1933. Caroline recounts her work history, and Irvin describes his eleven months in the navy at the end of World War II. Raymond served in the Naval Reserves while he attended medical school. Under the Berry Plan, his active duty was deferred until he completed his residency in urology.
In this interview conducted by her sister-in-law Sandra Lee Kahn Rosenblum, Caroline Rosenblum talks about growing up in Anderson, South Carolina, one of five children of Freida Bain and Nahum Rosenblum. Polish immigrants who arrived in New York in 1919, the Rosenblums moved first to Orangeburg, South Carolina, where they joined Nahum's brother Sam. Later they spent time in Miami, Florida, then the small South Carolina towns of Blackville and Greenwood. By 1932, the family had settled in Anderson where they ran a dry goods store. Caroline discusses her first experience with antisemitism as a schoolgirl; the difficulty of keeping kosher in a small town; and her father's reaction to the Holocaust. She recalls that the news of what happened to the Jews of Europe during World War II stirred an interest in Judaism among some of Anderson's gentiles. There were about ten Jewish families living in Anderson while Caroline was growing up. She describes their High Holiday traditions and notes that her father was cantor for the congregation, Temple B'nai Israel. For a related interview, see Mss. 1035-324, featuring Caroline and her brothers Raymond and Irvin.
Hyman Lipsitz is joined in this interview by his wife, Helene Jacobson Lipsitz, and his cousin Edward "Mickey" Lipson and his wife, Celia Pinosky Lipson. Born in 1913, Hyman was raised with his sister, Ethel, and brother, Joseph, in Beaufort, South Carolina. They lived over their downtown store with their parents, Bertha Rubin and Max Saul Lipsitz, who were immigrants from Latvia and Lithuania, respectively. Max had relatives all over the South, but followed a brother to Beaufort when he was in his teens. Hyman remembers a Reverend Rubinstein acting at some point as the cantor for Beth Israel, Beaufort's Jewish congregation. He also recalls Rabbi Jacob Raisin, of Charleston's Reform congregation K. K. Beth Elohim, traveling to neighboring Parris Island to lead services for the marine recruits on some Sunday mornings, and then to Beaufort's Beth Israel for afternoon services. Mickey Lipson, one of eight children born to Helen Lipsitz and Moses Lipsitz (they were first cousins), was born in Beaufort in 1921. Moses died when Mickey was five years old, and the family moved to Detroit, Michigan, in 1929. Mickey joined his sister Freda and her husband, Sam Novit, in Walterboro, South Carolina, in 1936, and there he met Celia, a Charleston, South Carolina, native, at a wedding. They married in 1947 and lived in Walterboro a year before moving to Beaufort where they opened a shoe store. The Lipsons talk briefly about their shoe business, which was initially located downtown and later moved to Beaufort Plaza. The cousins discuss the Jewish merchants who were killed while working in their stores in rural areas around Beaufort, including Mickey's grandfather Aaron Lipsitz of Burton, South Carolina. The interviewees describe another tragedy: the death of Mickey's sister Rosalie Lipsitz Zalin of Belton, South Carolina, who was killed in 1937 when she was hit by a car. Note: Some members of the Lipsitz family went by the surnames Lipson or Lipton. For related oral histories, see interviews with Lucille and Joseph Lipsitz, Mss. 1035-093; Sandra and Morey Lipton, Mss. 1035-181; and Joseph Lipton, Mss. 1035-156 and -447; and the panel discussion "Growing Up Jewish in Beaufort," Mss 1035-204. For related collections, see Beth Israel congregation records, 1905-1961, Mss. 1076, and the Lipsitz family papers, 1876-1953, Mss. 1102, in Special Collections.
George Chaplin talks about growing up in Columbia, South Carolina, the son of Netty Brown (Bojarski) and Morris Chaplin (Tschaplinsky). Morris emigrated from Bialystok to the United States around 1906 and worked in shoe factories in Massachusetts. He followed his friend and landsman, Max Citron, to Columbia, South Carolina, where he peddled before running a retail, and later, a wholesale shoe business with his brother. Netty came to the United States from Lithuania, and worked in New York and then Boston, where she met Morris. The two were married in Columbia by Rabbi David Karesh. George names a number of Jewish residents who lived in Columbia during his childhood, and recalls that there wasn't much "mingling" between the Orthodox and the Reform Jews. When he was a sophomore in high school, the Chaplin family moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where Morris opened a pawnshop. George briefly outlines his career as a journalist, which included working alongside Charlestonian Earl Mazo in Greenville. He reflects on differences between American-born fathers and fathers like his, who were born in Europe, and he makes note of antisemitism he experienced in the South. About being Jewish, he says, "In the South, in those days, you were not permitted to forget it." George's wife, Esta Solomon Chaplin, a Charleston, South Carolina, native, joins him for a short time during the interview. They married in 1937 and raised two children. See Mss 1035-041 for a follow-up interview on October 3, 1995.
George Chaplin, in follow-up to his September 27, 1995, interview (Mss. 1035-040), recalls some of the other Jewish families that lived in his native city, Columbia, South Carolina, in particular his relatives, the Berkovitzes. He remembers sensing a separation between Columbia's German Jews and the more recent Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland. He describes incidences of antisemitism he experienced in school, noting he was "made to feel something of an outsider." When Chaplin was in high school, his family moved to Greenville, where his father opened Piedmont Pawnshop across the street from Zaglin's kosher meat market. The interviewee attended Clemson Agricultural College, at that time a military academy, and was responsible for ending compulsory church attendance each Sunday for the cadets. Chaplin, who comments on the necessary functions of newspapers and their editors, discusses his long career in newspaper journalism. First he worked for the conservative Greenville Piedmont in Greenville, South Carolina, right out of Clemson (he took a leave of absence from the Greenville Piedmont to accept the year-long Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, where he studied race relations and formed a discussion group consisting of Nieman fellows and black graduate students); then the Stars and Stripes Pacific during World War II; David Stern's Camden, New Jersey, papers, prior to and during a strike in 1947; the liberal San Diego Journal in the late 1940s, when the paper won a national award for investigative reporting; David Stern's "crusading paper," the New Orleans Item, which ultimately was sold to its competitor, the Times-Picayune; and finally the Honolulu Advertiser, from 1958 to retirement, during which time the paper won sixty national awards. Chaplin talks about his younger sister, Kay, and her family; his perception of race relations in Charleston in the late 1940s; his religious practices, and why he and his wife, Esta Solomon Chaplin, who both came from strict Orthodox families, chose to raise their two children in the Reform tradition. He is joined briefly during the interview by Esta. His daughter, Jerri, provided comments and corrections to the transcript during proofing.
Stanley Karesh grew up in the Hampton Park Terrace neighborhood of Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1920s and ’30s. His family kept kosher and attended Brith Sholom. Stanley describes the shoe store his grandfather Charles Karesh built at 545 King Street. Charles immigrated with his wife, Sarah Orlinsky Karesh, to Charleston, circa 1878, from their hometown of Trestina (Trzcianne), in Polish Russia. They operated a store in the small town of Greeleyville, South Carolina, for a few years before returning with their growing family to Charleston, eager to live in a larger Jewish community. Stanley refers to a number of Charleston families, including Rittenberg, Friedman, Bielsky, Barshay, Kaminski, Jacobs, Banov, Livingstain, and Pearlstine, many of whom are related to the Kareshes. He also mentions his maternal grandparents, Harry and Anna Smolensky Feinberg, and cousin Rabbi David Karesh of Columbia. Stanley attended dental school in Baltimore, where he met Charlot Marks. The couple married in 1945 in her hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina. They raised three daughters in Charleston, and they were one of the first families to move to South Windermere, a subdivision west of the Ashley River. Stanley discusses the changes over time in relations between members of the Orthodox and the Reform synagogues and between the two Orthodox congregations, Brith Sholom and Beth Israel. He and Charlot, the youngest charter members of Conservative Synagogue Emanu-El, which broke away from Brith Sholom in 1947, recount its origins and offer their view of how its members differed from the Orthodox congregants from whom they split.
Joseph Chase, Charleston, South Carolina, native and older son of Freda Lerner and Marty Chase, discusses his family history. Freda’s family immigrated to Charleston around 1920 from Biala, Poland. On a visit to her sister in Detroit, Freda met Marty Chase, who had emigrated from Vilna Gubernia, Poland, to New York City in 1912 with his mother. In 1930 Marty left his factory job in Detroit and moved to Charleston to marry Freda. The interviewee notes that his uncle Morris Sokol, a furniture salesman, helped Marty get his start peddling furniture. Eight years later Marty rented a building on King Street and opened a store. He purchased the building in the early 1940s and replaced it with a new one in 1946, still the location of Chase Furniture at the time of the interview. While Marty “was not an observant man”—he opened his store on the Sabbath—Freda adhered to the laws of kashrut and led the family in Sabbath and holiday rituals. Joseph and his brother, Philip, joined the business in the 1950s, a time when there were more than thirty furniture vendors on King Street, and offering credit was routine. Joseph reflects on the history of the business and how it changed over the years in regard to customer loyalty and demographics. He considers the future of the business, which, at the time of the interview, was in its third generation with Ben Chase, his nephew, at the helm.
Philip Chase grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, the younger son of Freda Lerner and Marty Chase. In this interview he describes how Freda, who emigrated with her family from Poland to Charleston in the early 1900s, met Marty, also a native of Poland, while working with her sister in Detroit. The couple married in Charleston and settled there. Marty peddled furniture initially and, by 1938, was selling furniture from a building on King Street, previously occupied by Carolina Furniture Company. Eight years later, he constructed a new building on the same site, still the location of Chase Furniture at the time of the interview. Philip recalls growing up in a small community where “everyone knew everybody else,” and most of the furniture dealers on King Street were “friendly” competitors who traded merchandise to help their fellow store owners make a sale. Philip and his brother, Joseph, joined the business in the 1950s and, later, Philip’s son Ben became a part of the enterprise. The interviewee discusses the history of the store, particularly its customer base and the effects of Hurricane Hugo.
In her second interview for the Jewish Heritage Collection, Leah Feinberg Chase describes how she was drawn to journalism. The Georgia native earned a certificate from the University of Georgia's Peabody School of Journalism after taking classes for one year as a special student. The abbreviated program accommodated her plan to marry Philip Chase of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1957. The couple raised their four children in Charleston. Leah provides details about her career at WCSC-TV in Charleston, including the various positions she filled from copy writing to producing and cohosting shows in the 1960s and '70s. She credits WCSC owner John Rivers, Sr., with fostering creativity and independence in the work environment, and that extended to the women working at the station. Leah never encountered sexual harassment there, nor did she feel as though she had to prove herself to the men with whom she worked. She experienced one antisemitic incident that Rivers responded to with a vehement threat to fire the culprit, in the event that person's identity was revealed. Otherwise, being Jewish did not pose any difficulties, for example, when Chase wanted to take time off for religious holidays. Around 1980, the interviewee was hired by John Rivers, Jr., to produce videos for a company called Custom Video. Leah discusses working for that outfit and for United Christian Broadcasting Company of Atlanta, for whom she produced video in Israel for the film "Where Jesus Walked." In the 1980s, she turned down an offer to produce Mike Hiott's WCSC TV program to become editor of Charleston Jewish Federation's newspaper, "Center Talk," later renamed "Charleston Jewish Journal." She briefly outlines her work as editor and the recognition the Journal received from the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and the Advertising Federation of Charleston. Leah revisits her involvement in the Foreign Affairs Forum, mentioned in her first interview, remarking that while she held the positions of secretary, treasurer, and vice president, she believes the male-dominated group would not have elected her president had she pursued the office. The transcript contains comments and corrections made by the interviewee during proofing. See Mss. 1035-563 for Chase's January 31, 2020, interview.
Leah Feinberg Chase was born in 1938 in West Point, Georgia, the eldest of three girls of Norma Beryl Goldstein and Morris Feinberg. In this interview, she talks about growing up in the small Georgia town bordering Alabama, roughly eighty miles southwest of Atlanta, then home to West Point Manufacturing Company. Her father opened a shoe repair business in West Point, later switching to ladies' and children's ready-to-wear clothing. Leah was the only Jewish student when she was attending the public schools in town. She says she "never experienced outright antisemitism in West Point," and she had many friends. "We were very cliquish." Yet, she notes "I always felt I was different," pointing out that she spent her weekends doing very different activities than her Christian friends. She and her sisters, Helen and Ina, attended Sunday school in Columbus, Georgia, where her paternal grandparents, Jake and Ida Feinberg, lived. Other weekends she traveled to youth group functions, such as Young Judaea conventions. Leah married Philip Chase of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1957. For a year before their marriage, she studied journalism at the University of Georgia, while Philip finished his last year in college at The Citadel. They raised four children?Stephen, David, Benjamin, and Freda?in Charleston. Leah describes her career in journalism at Channel 5, WCSC-TV; Custom Video; and Charleston Jewish Federation, where she edited the Federation's newspaper, Charleston Jewish Journal, which won national awards at the General Assembly of Council of Jewish Federations. The Journal also attracted unwanted attention during her tenure at the paper. She received death threats, including a bomb threat to Chase Furniture, the family business, prompting police protection. Leah gives an overview of the local civic organizations, Jewish and non-Jewish, that she has belonged to and served over the past decades, in particular the Foreign Affairs Forum. She makes note of her advocacy for and regular visits to Israel. Thirty years prior to the interview, Leah made a career change and became a travel agent. Other topics discussed include how observant Leah is of Jewish traditions compared with her parents, and an antisemitic incident that occurred when she applied for a job at the Evening Post/News and Courier in the late 1950s/early '60s. The transcript contains corrections made by the interviewee during proofing.
Claire Krawcheck Nussbaum, daughter of Polish immigrants Jack and Esther Bielsky Krawcheck, describes growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1930s and ’40s. Her parents were Orthodox Jews who observed the Sabbath and kept a kosher kitchen, with the help of Agnes Jenkins, who worked for the family for decades as housekeeper, cook, and third parent to Claire and her three siblings. The Krawchecks lived downtown on Colonial Street, many blocks from the uptown neighborhood, north of Calhoun Street, where the majority of immigrant Orthodox Jewish families lived at the time. Claire was close to a Catholic girl who lived on the same street, and she attended Ashley Hall, a private girls’ school. She had few Jewish friends, but became quite familiar with Catholic and Episcopalian traditions. Her father had men’s clothing stores both north and south of Calhoun Street—Jack’s on the corner of King and Vanderhorst Street, and Jack Krawcheck’s on King Street between George and Liberty Street. Claire discusses the buildings that housed the latter of the two stores, 311 King Street, which her father built, and 313 King Street, which he restored. Changes to the properties included gardens behind the buildings featuring iron work by Philip Simmons, and specially-designed, second-floor meeting rooms, used by local clubs, with paintings by William Halsey. Jack and Esther were members of Brith Sholom and they were active in a number of Charleston’s civic organizations, such as the Preservation Society and the Garden Club. Claire, who had difficulty relating to Judaism as a child—she couldn’t understand the Hebrew services and no one explained why they were following certain rules—convinced her parents to allow her to attend services and Sunday school at the Reform synagogue, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE). It was there that she became connected to the spiritual and religious aspects of Judaism. In 1950 Claire married Maurice Nussbaum of Ehrhardt, South Carolina, and they raised four children in Charleston. She discusses her siblings, children, and grandchildren, and her views on religion, antisemitism, and the changes in KKBE’s congregation since she began attending as a teen.
Claire Fund recounts how her Jewish parents survived World War II. Her father Charles Fund and his sister Esther were born in Yeremsha, Poland, in the early 1900s. Charles trained as an engineer in France, joined a branch of the French Army, and ended up in Glasgow, Scotland. There he met his wife, Aurelia Frenkel of Vienna, who had escaped Austria on foot in 1939. Esther, a dentist who had returned home to practice, hid in a farmers barn for more than a year to evade the Germans. Once it was safe for her to come out of hiding, she joined the Free Czechoslovakian Army, where she met her husband, Miroslav Kerner.
George Visanska Rosenberg is joined by his wife, Edith Cochran Rosenberg, in this interview that begins with George explaining how the Visanska, Winstock, and Rosenberg families on his father's side are related and how they came to settle in Abbeville, South Carolina, around the middle of the nineteenth century. George was born in Abbeville in 1916, the second of five children of Solomon Rosenberg and Octavia Harby Schwerin, a Sumter, South Carolina, native. George describes the family business in Abbeville. Rosenberg Mercantile Company, incorporated in 1872, occupied several connected buildings on Trinity Street and carried goods ranging from groceries to heavy farm equipment. The family also owned farm land in Abbeville and McCormick counties where sharecroppers grew cotton. George discusses his upbringing and the family's Jewish identity. Abbeville never had a congregation or visiting rabbis, but George's great-grandfather G. A. Visanska and his family "did maintain their Jewishness." They kept kosher and G. A. provided the kosher meat for his family, slaughtering the meat himself. George notes, however, "I was up in high school . . . at least, before I knew the difference in being Jewish and gentile." He became aware as an adult of having missed a close connection to his Jewish heritage and traditions by not having a synagogue in town. His parents observed the High Holidays, but not the Sabbath, and they celebrated Christmas, but not Hanukkah. He reports he never experienced any "anti-Jewish sentiment in Abbeville." George covers a number of topics, including forebears who fought for the Confederacy; the Eureka Hotel in Abbeville; his father's involvement with Abbeville County Memorial Hospital; the African Americans who worked for the Rosenbergs; the effects of the Great Depression on his family and their business; Rosenberg's Men's Store in Greenwood, South Carolina, run by his cousin Ernest Rosenberg; Uncle Julius Visanska, who ran Bentschner & Visanska in Charleston, South Carolina; and the Poliakoff and Savitz families of Abbeville. The Rosenbergs and interviewer, Dale Rosengarten, consider how certain expressions based on stereotypes can be offensive. The interviewees talk about white-black relations when they were growing up and at the time of the interview. George recalls how he ran his medical practice in the days before integration and contemplates the disadvantages that local African Americans face. Edith was born in 1922 in Due West, South Carolina, and grew up in Laurens, South Carolina. She and George married after he graduated from medical school in 1941. They recount his nearly four years in the service during World War II, followed by his residency in Wilmington, North Carolina. George describes how he established, in 1948, his OB/GYN and surgery practice in Abbeville and briefly discusses some of the changes in obstetrics over the decades. The couple adopted three children, Herbert, Patsy, and Grace. Edith, who was raised Presbyterian, relates how her parents and George's parents felt about their mixed marriage. She tells the story of their divorce after 27 years together and their remarriage ten years later. She converted to Judaism prior to reuniting with George, studying under Rabbi Magidovitch of Sumter's Temple Sinai.
Leonard Cohen grew up in Latta, South Carolina, the son of dry goods merchants, Isadore and Hannah Horowitz Cohen. Isadore emigrated circa 1910 from Lithuania and, after working briefly in Baltimore, followed his brother Harry’s advice and came south. His train ticket got him as far as Dillon, South Carolina. He peddled first, and then worked for Mr. Blum in his Latta store. Baltimore Bargain House extended credit to Isadore to start his own business, which prospered, enabling him to expand his store and, eventually, buy his own building. Two other Jewish families lived in Latta at that time, the Blums and the Kornbluts, and Leonard recalls being the only Jewish child in his classes at school. The Cohens attended services in Dillon, with Rabbi Jacob Raisin of Charleston officiating. Leonard remembers the Fass family, prominent members of the Dillon congregation. At Camp Osceola in Hendersonville, North Carolina, Leonard studied Hebrew with Rabbi Solomon and prepared for his bar mitzvah. He attended The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, from 1941 until 1943, when he was drafted into the army. He describes his experiences in the military, particularly the action he saw in Europe as a soldier serving in the 102nd Division. After the war, on a visit to Baltimore, he met Mildred Friedman, daughter of emigrants from Poland. Leonard and Mildred married in 1948 and settled in Latta, where he had already joined his father in business. They raised three children in Latta and were members of Temple Beth Israel in Florence, South Carolina. Faced with competition from discount chains, the Cohens closed their store in 1987. Other topics mentioned in the interview include: Baltimore Bargain House and changes in the wholesale industry, Charleston Jews Leonard met while attending The Citadel, Mildred’s mikvah experience before her wedding, and the first bat mitzvahs at Temple Beth Israel.
Morris Rosen is joined by his cousin Dorothy “Dutch” Idalin Gelson Cohen and her husband, Mordecai “Mortie” Cohen, in this interview. Morris’s son Robert is also present as interviewer and videographer. Morris, born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1919, was one of four children of Annie Blatt and Sol Rosen. Sol and his siblings, including Dutch’s parents, Zelda Rosen and Louis Gelson, emigrated from Russia in the first decade of the twentieth century, following their older sister Ida and her husband, David Goldberg, to Poughkeepsie, New York, where Dutch was born in 1919. The cousins talk about the Rosen (Rachelkin) and Gelson (Getchen) families of Poughkeepsie and their ancestors in Russia. Morris briefly mentions his maternal grandparents, Mamie Wildman and Morris Blatt, who ran a bakery in Columbia, South Carolina, before moving to Charleston. Morris and Dutch describe how the Rosens wound up in Charleston. Their uncle Sam Rosen moved to the area from Poughkeepsie for reasons unknown and opened a store in Awendaw, a small settlement about twenty-five miles north of Charleston. In about 1919, Sol Rosen and Zelda and Louis Gelson followed and bought an established country store from a member of the Geraty family in Yonges Island, nearly twenty miles south of Charleston. Louis died within a year, and Sol sold his interest in the store to Zelda, who moved the business and her three children to Meeting Street in Charleston after a few years. Sol was in the grocery business and later opened liquor stores. Morris traces his father’s moves from Yonges Island to King and Romney streets in Charleston, to the town of Meggett, and back to Charleston at King and Race streets. Morris and Dutch discuss growing up in Charleston in an area of the city where there were no other Jewish families. They did not experience antisemitism and Morris blended easily with the Catholic teens who lived nearby. The cousins did connect with other Jewish children when they frequented the neighborhoods around the synagogues and while attending religious school. They didn’t notice any friction between Charleston’s Reform and Orthodox Jews and played with children from both groups. Dutch was confirmed and Morris became a bar mitzvah at Brith Sholom on St. Philip Street. The two consider the degree to which their parents were observant Jews and speculate as to why their parents and others of their generation did or did not adhere to certain Jewish traditions. Mordecai “Mortie” Cohen was born in 1916 in St. Matthews, South Carolina, where his father, Isaac, ran a dry goods store and two farms. All the general merchandisers in St. Matthews while Mortie and his two brothers were growing up were Jewish. They met for High Holiday services in the town’s Masonic temple and were joined by families from Orangeburg, Ehrhardt, and Elloree. Most of Mortie’s friends were Christians; he doesn’t remember experiencing any antisemitism in St. Matthews. Mortie recalls how he came to know the Rosens, and he and Morris describe the role of the drummers, or sales reps, who visited retail storeowners when their fathers were in business. Morris talks about how he met his wife, Ida Tanenbaum. Her brother Lou Tanenbaum came to Charleston and opened a clothing store with his brother-in-law Louis Lesser. Morris, an ensign in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II, was assigned to a LST (Landing Ship, Tank) in the Pacific. The group discusses what they and other American Jews knew about what was happening to Jews in Europe under Hitler.
Isadore Cohen (b. 1918) and Samuel Rosen (b. 1929), Charleston natives and sons of immigrants from Russia and Poland, share their early memories of the Orthodox synagogues, Beth Israel and Brith Sholom, and discuss the relationship between the two congregations before and after their merger in the mid-1950s. They describe their Hebrew education, including their teachers—a number of rabbis plus a Mrs. Allen, daughter of Rabbi Gillman. Topics relating to the first half of the twentieth century covered in the interview include Jewish merchants, the Kalushiner Society, founded by immigrants from Kaluszyn, Poland, popular venues for Jewish functions, and the Cohen and Rosen family businesses, both small grocery stores. Interviewer Professor Jeffrey Gurock from Yeshiva University also provides information he discovered while conducting research for his book Orthodoxy in Charleston: Brith Sholom Beth Israel and American Jewish History.
Lisa Collis Cohen, born in 1958 in Kingstree, South Carolina, is the elder of two daughters of Jennie Goldberg and Moses Collis, both natives of Charleston, South Carolina. Lisa discusses her grandparents, Rebecca Leah Kirshtein and I. M. Goldberg, whose families migrated from Kaluszyn, Poland, to Charleston. Lena Schiawitz and Meyer Collis, who emigrated from Bialystok in the early 1900s, owned a Jewish bakery at 165 King Street in Charleston, and Lena ran a kosher catering business. Lisa describes the bakery, which closed, she believes, sometime during World War II. Her father, Moses, began working as a young boy for Charleston plumber W. K. Prause, whose shop was across the street from the bakery. Ultimately, Moses became "the state's youngest licensed journeyman plumber at age sixteen." His sister Becky married Harry Schreiberg. Harry's brothers Morris and Nathan had a store in Lane, South Carolina, and they lived in Kingstree. Morris encouraged Moses to come to Kingstree, where there were no plumbers. With help from his sister Sadie, Moses pursued the opportunity and, by 1947, he was in business in the small town about seventy-five miles north of Charleston. Later he became a licensed mechanical contractor. Lisa talks about growing up in Kingstree where she joined her Christian friends in their religious activities and went to their camps. The Collises observed the Sabbath on Friday nights with a family meal and services at Temple Beth Or in Kingstree. Lisa recalls the other Jewish families that lived in Kingstree and surrounding small towns, who were members of Beth Or, which was founded in 1945. The congregation relied on rabbis from Charleston's Conservative Synagogue Emanu-El to preside over bar mitzvahs and recruited students from Jewish Theological Seminary for the High Holidays. Lisa recounts how the family kept kosher, adding that every summer her father made large quantities of kosher dill pickles. Lisa went to Jewish camp in the summers and was involved in the Temple Youth Group that met in Sumter. "My Judaism, for me, was a very natural thing." When she was young, Lisa's mother, Jennie, tried to keep Lisa and her sister, Rhonda, "almost shomer Shabbat." Moses didn't agree with that degree of observance and encouraged assimilation. "My father didn't want me to feel different." Lisa, who attended public schools through sixth grade, discusses why her parents sent her to a private academy when integration was enforced in South Carolina. Among the topics covered in this interview are the Collis connection to the Mazo family of Charleston and Lisa's memories of her aunts and uncles, including Davy Collis, his band, Buddy Shaw, and his music company, Carolina Instrument, competitor of Fox Music House. Note: transcript includes comments and corrections made by interviewee during proofing. See Mss 1035-550 for part two of this interview. For a related collection, see also the Collis family papers, Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston.
Mordecai "Mortie" Cohen, born in 1916, the middle of three sons of Raye Needle and Isaac Cohen, was raised in St. Matthews, South Carolina. The Cohens had settled in the small town about forty miles southeast of Columbia, South Carolina, around 1912, and opened a general merchandise store. Isaac also owned two farms, raising corn, cotton, cows, and hogs. About St. Matthews, Mortie says, "It was a good life for a kid, growing up." He recalls five other Jewish families who lived in the town at one point: the Savitzes, Pearlstines, Bergers, Yelmans, and Goldiners. They held High Holiday services in the Masonic Hall over a store in St. Matthews and were joined by families who lived in neighboring towns. "My mother kept halfway [kosher] because you couldn't keep kosher in a small town." He and his brothers, Harold and Leroy, didn't have a Jewish education. "My parents were involved in the Christian community a good deal." Isaac played poker every Sunday in the back of his store with the prominent men in town, including the mayor. Growing up, Mortie socialized mostly with Christians and even attended church with them. "Never in all my growing up did I ever feel like I was different, that I was not wanted." Mortie, a pharmacist, describes how he met his wife, Dorothy "Dutch" Idalin Gelson, who joins him in this interview shortly after it starts. Dutch and Mortie settled in Walterboro, South Carolina, in 1941, after living briefly in St. George, South Carolina. Mortie, who ran one of seven drug stores in Walterboro, notes that they "were very active in the Christian and Jewish community there and I never felt out of place." He relates a story about his working relationship and friendship with a black doctor who settled in Walterboro in the mid-1940s. Mortie and Dutch traveled to Brith Sholom in Charleston to attend services until Walterboro's small Jewish community organized Temple Mt. Sinai in the late 1940s. In 1954, the couple moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where Dutch had grown up. Mortie opened South Windermere Drugs in South Windermere Shopping Center, part of a new suburban residential and commercial development across the Ashley River from the Charleston peninsula. Dutch remembers feeling happy about the move to Charleston because of the larger Jewish population: "I was happy to come back to a Jewish environment." Mortie and Dutch made connections with prominent Charlestonians?Mortie was on a bank board and a member of the Country Club of Charleston?and they were invited to high-profile social events, but they declined because they wanted to reserve time for involvement in Jewish organizations and activities. The interviewees discuss the effects of intermarriage on Jewish identity, citing examples in their family and others of "the vanishing American Jew," a reference to The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century, a book written by their son-in-law, Alan Dershowitz, and published in 1997. Mortie recounts an instance of antisemitism at the Country Club of Charleston when a Jewish person applying for membership was blackballed, but when the vote was re-cast openly at the insistence of Mortie's non-Jewish friend, the negative vote disappeared. When asked about "the relationship between the white community and the African-American community in St. Matthews," Mortie tells the story of a black man, a plumber, who was beaten and run out of town by white men for being "arrogant." The Cohens, who have two children, Marvin and Carolyn, talk briefly about daughter and son, Joyce and Stephen, they lost to illness while living in Walterboro.
