In this interview Rabbi Lewis Aryeh Weintraub provides details of his personal history leading up to his arrival in Charleston, South Carolina. He was born in Uscilug, Wolin Gubernia, Poland, in 1918 and immigrated with his family to Montreal, Canada, when he was twelve years old. He graduated from Yeshiva College in New York in 1941 and from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1944, the same year he joined the Canadian Army Chaplaincy Service. After discharge from the army in 1946, he served as assistant rabbi to Rabbi C. E. H. Kauvar of Beth haMedrosh Hagadol Congregation in Denver, Colorado. In August 1947 Rabbi Weintraub became the first rabbi of a newly formed Conservative congregation in Charleston, South Carolina. The founders had just broken away from Brith Sholom, one of the city’s Orthodox synagogues. Weintraub discusses the dissension in the Jewish community surrounding the split and the decisions involved in the creation of a new congregation, such as choosing a name—Synagogue Emanu-El—acquiring property, and hiring Jacob Renzer as cantor. He mentions a number of the founders and explains how Dr. Matthew Steinberg came to be the congregation’s mohel. The rabbi provides dates and some details regarding the start of Hebrew and Sunday school classes, the first bar mitzvah, the first confirmation, and other “firsts” in the congregation. To enhance the adult education program begun in January 1948 and to aid in “molding the ideology of Conservative Judaism for the community,” he brought to Charleston as guest speakers Jewish scholars such as Arthur Hertzberg, Max Arzt, and Robert Gordis. Rabbi Weintraub credits his parents for his decision to enter the rabbinate. He discusses why he chose Conservatism, the aspects of Conservative Judaism that appeal to Jews, and how a break with certain traditions is not necessarily a renunciation of “other basic, central, ideological principles of Judaism.” He married Fannie Goldberg, a native Charlestonian, four years after arriving in the Holy City, as Charleston is called. “With great regrets” the rabbi resigned at the end of his seventh year at Emanu-El. He and Fannie left Charleston for the sake of their two young children—they wanted them to attend a Jewish day school, not available at that time in Charleston. Note: the transcript contains additions and corrections made by Rabbi Weintraub during proofing.
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.
In this interview Gordan Stine recalls that his maternal grandmother, Annie Gorse Pinosky, a widow of Polish descent with three children, moved to Charleston, South Carolina, circa 1911, from Fall River, Massachusetts. Sam Banov, a Charleston cousin, had arranged for her to marry King Street merchant Joseph Baron, an emigrant from Poland and widower with two children. In 1922 Annie’s daughter Helen Pinosky married Abraham Stein (Steinhauser), who was born in New York, a son of Austrian immigrants. Stein made his living designing advertisements and setting up displays for stores, and moved the family from Charleston to New Jersey when Gordan was twelve and his sister, Lenora, was eleven. Helen saw the move, which broke up her home, as bad luck, and, relying on numerology, changed the spelling of the family name to Stine. After a move to New York, and back to New Jersey, the Stines returned to Charleston in 1939. Gordan graduated from the College of Charleston in 1944, the same year he enlisted in the marines. He joined the reserves after he was released from active duty in 1945, and earned his dental degree from Emory University in 1950. Called again to active duty the following year, he and his new wife, Barbara Berlinsky, also from Charleston, were stationed for two years in their home town, where they stayed after discharge and raised their two sons, Steven and Robert. Gordan experienced no antisemitism directed at him personally while growing up in Charleston, but he discusses discrimination against Jews in general, touching on John Buhler’s tenure as dean of the dental school at the Medical University of South Carolina. Note: the transcript includes comments made by the interviewee during proofing.
Helene Ejbuszyc Diamant, born in Warsaw, Poland, immigrated to Paris, France, as an infant with her parents, grandparents, and brother. She was in high school when the Germans invaded France in May 1940. Her father fled with an uncle and was never heard from again. Helene describes how she and her mother were arrested by the local police and detained at the internment camp in Drancy, near Paris, and released once she showed her work papers. Her brother was also detained at Drancy; during the interview, Helene reads a postcard he sent from the camp to inform them that he was leaving soon “for an unknown destination.” Sometime in late 1943 or early 1944, Helene and her mother fled with her grandparents, an aunt and uncle, and two cousins to Aix-les-Bains in France’s so-called free zone, where they spent nearly a year before escaping to Lugano, Switzerland. She met and married her husband, Maurice Diamant, in Lugano, and they immigrated to the United States in 1948.
Rosa From Poliakoff was born in Union, South Carolina, in 1914, to Israel and Bertha From, who emigrated from Ponevezys, Lithuania, around the turn of the twentieth century. The Froms settled in Union in 1905 and, two years later, Israel, who initially was a peddler, opened I. From Dry Goods & Notions. Rosa reports that they were the only Jewish family in Union. The Froms acquired a Torah and hosted services in their home for Jews who lived in nearby towns. Eventually, they joined Spartanburg’s B’nai Israel and donated their Torah to that congregation. Rosa notes that her mother was very observant and both parents stressed the importance of education and their Jewish identity. Rosa graduated from Agnes Scott College in Atlanta and taught in that city for three years before marrying Myer Poliakoff. She recalls how she met her future husband at a Yudedum Club dance in Columbia. They raised their three children in Abbeville, South Carolina, where they ran the D. Poliakoff Department Store, established in 1900 by Myer’s father, David. Rosa describes a From family car trip to Worcester, Massachusetts, to visit Israel’s family, the effects of the Great Depression on local Jewish merchants, and how the Poliakoffs came to settle in Abbeville. The transcript includes comments inserted by the interviewee during proofreading.
Rudolf "Rudy" Herz shares his story of survival with students at the College of Charleston in a presentation for Professor Theodore Rosengarten's class, "History of the Holocaust." Growing up in Germany, Herz remembers being made to feel different from German Christians because he was Jewish. Just eight years old when Hitler came to power in 1933, Rudy found Nazi propaganda confusing. He notes that German society made "a totally seamless transition from religious hatred of the Jews to a racial hatred of the Jews." He describes the harassment and persecution Jews experienced at the hands of the storm troopers and the increasingly harsh restrictions placed on them, leading to loss of their rights as citizens, loss of jobs, and exclusion from society. His family was living in Cologne at the time of Kristallnacht in 1938. Rudy recounts the events of that night, the family's unsuccessful attempts to flee Germany, their transport in 1942 to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, and subsequent transfer to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Rudy was selected to work in Schwarzheide, Germany, rebuilding a factory that was routinely bombed by Allied Forces, and was later transferred to a labor camp in Lieberose, Germany, then to Sachsenhausen on the outskirts of Berlin, and finally, in February 1945, to Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria. Besides describing the details of what he and his fellow prisoners endured, he explains why Hitler's platform appealed to the German people and answers questions about his loss of faith in God and his sense of Jewish identity. He relates how he immigrated to the United States, where he found his brother, and recalls his post-war visits to Germany. For related information, see the Rudolf Herz papers (Mss 1065-050), Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston.
Rose Iseman Jacobs Webster begins this interview by reading excerpts from the Weinberg family history researched and written by Robert A. Weinberg. Rose’s mother, Edith Weinberg, was the daughter of Rosa Iseman and Abram Weinberg of Darlington, South Carolina. Edith and her siblings were raised Jewish. One of Abram’s brothers, Isaac, who also settled in Darlington, married a gentile, and they did not raise their children as Jews. Because Rosa did not approve of the intermarriage, the cousins were not close. Rose’s father, Theodore Cecil Jacobs, grew up in Kingstree, South Carolina, the eleventh of twelve children of German immigrants Mary Gewinner and Louis Jacobs. Louis, who arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1859, according to a short memoir he wrote, served in Bachman’s Battery, Hampton Legion, in the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War. Reading from his account, Rose relates how he ended up in Kingstree after the war and lists the various positions he held in local government and the businesses he ran in Kingstree and Charleston. Rose, born in 1926, describes growing up in Kingstree with her older brother Harold, noting that they had very little exposure to Judaism. Although she had two good friends who were Jewish, she spent a lot of time with her Christian friends, including attending church services. Her father and one of his brothers owned a grocery store and farms with black and white sharecroppers. Rose, who attended Winthrop College, recalls her first job as a home demonstration agent in Darlington and Conway, South Carolina. She married Joe Webster, a Christian, in 1950, and their three children, Neal, Roseanne, and Ted, were born in Dillon, South Carolina. After her youngest was born, Rose converted and joined the Baptist Church. “I told Joe I wanted the children raised in his faith. I had felt sort of like a fish out of water in Kingstree, and I wanted them to have a feeling of belonging.†Joe joins Rose for a portion of the interview and talks about what they did with the farms they inherited from Rose’s father in the early 1960s, as well as the changes that occurred in the farming industry by the 1970s. Also present is co-interviewer Sadie Bogoslow Want, who married Rose’s cousin, LeRoy Manuel Want. For related materials in Special Collections, College of Charleston, see the Weinberg family papers, Mss. 1002; the Solomons and Weinberg family papers, Mss 1134; and the Weinberg and Moses family papers, Mss. 1135. Note: photocopies of the documents that Rose reads from in her interview are available in the Jewish Heritage Collection Fieldwork Files, Special Collections, 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.
Libby Friedman Levinson, the youngest of seven children of Betty Alpern and Isadore Friedman, was born in Grajewo, Poland, in 1909. Isadore immigrated to the United States a month before Germany declared war on Russia in 1914. He settled in Charleston, South Carolina, home to a number of Betty’s relatives and landsmen from Trestina (Trzcianne), including the Karesh, Pearlstine, and Jacobs families. Betty and the children intended to follow as soon as they could sell their house and furniture, but World War I prevented their emigration until just after the fighting ended. Libby describes how her mother and siblings survived the war and their trip from Poland to Charleston afterward. She discusses family members, in particular, her sister Annie, who married Louis Lourie of St. George, and her sister Minnie, who married Jake Kalinsky of Holly Hill. Libby married Charles Levinson of Bishopville; after living briefly in Branchville and North, South Carolina, they moved to Barnwell, where they raised two children. The transcript includes comments inserted by the interviewee during proofreading.