00:00:00Interview with Marlene Finkelstein, June 23, 2014
SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is Monday, June 23rd 2014 and interview with Marlene
Finkelstein. So can you say your whole name, when you were born, where you were
born to put yourself into context.
MARLENE FINKELSTEIN: Sure, I'm Marlene, my middle name Barbara, that I never
use, and my maiden name is Friedman and I was born on January 29, 1943. I
believe in the Bronx in New York.
SC: So can we go back to your parents and grandparents and great grandparents?
As far back as you know. Whatever you can do.
MF: I don't know as much about my mother's family. My mother's name was Marilyn
Friedman - actually, her real name I believe was Minnie, and she hated that name
00:01:00and eventually legally changed it to Marilyn. Her maiden name was Sobel, and she
was the daughter of Molly and Joseph Sobel, both of whom I believe were born in
the States. I never knew either one of them; they both died before I was born.
As a matter of fact my mother's mother died when my mother was 9 years old. Her
father wasn't a nice man, so she told me. He had another woman he was keeping
while he had his wife and six children to care for. Their life was not a good
one and when my mother's mother, Molly died, my mother was nine, her father took
00:02:00my mother's three older siblings and went to Boston and married the woman that
he had been seeing. And actually had a couple more children with her who I - I
have relatives somewhere that I have no knowledge of. And my mother refused to
go with him because she was very angry with him, and she had two younger
brothers. They went to live with an aunt for a short period of time, and the
aunt couldn't keep them, so they went into an orphanage.
And in the orphanage, her youngest- no her next brother, there were two
brothers, Sammy and Artie. Sammy was closer in age to her, I guess. And he
00:03:00apparently ran out, and jumped on the back of a truck and was killed on her
watch. So, I think that affected her deeply. But she always looked after Artie,
her younger brother. And they went onto foster care, he with her. And that was a
very negative experience for her, as well. She felt like she was kind of a
Cinderella person, treated like a servant in the house, but they put on a good
front. They were German Jews and historically, the German Jews weren't terribly
uh, fond of uh, the Polish, Russian Jews. They thought they were beneath them
and apparently treated my mother accordingly. My mother was always very vocal
00:04:00about not liking German Jews because of that. So when she turned sixteen, she
went to the um, offices where they had... placed her and told them that she was
sixteen, she knew she could get working papers, and she wanted to go get a job.
And she was not going back to that house anymore. And there was a woman in the
office who said, where will you go tonight, and she said, "I don't know, and I
don't care, but I'm not going back there." And she said, "Well, my mother
sometimes takes in borders. Why don't you come home with me?" And that turned
out to be my father's cousins so that's how my mother met my father.
00:05:00
My father is Sydney Freidman. His real name was Joshua. And the Hebrew version
of Joshua was Yahushua. The Yiddish diminutive version was Shia so they called
him Shia. But when he started school, they told his mother that he needed a more
English name, so they came up with Sydney. Joshua certainly would have been
preferable, but that's what it was.
SC: Do you know your mothers birth date?
MF: Yes, it was June 15th, 1914.
00:06:00
SC: And how about your father's?
MF: And my father's was January 22nd, 1913. So they were close in age, and my
father told the story that they lived around the comer, I guess that rumor got
around that there was a very cute young woman living with Aunt Sarah, and so he
had to go check it out for himself. And that's how my parents met. So that's
kind of a nice story.
SC: It is. Do you know where in Poland/Russia they came from, what town? Each of
the families.
MF: No, I know my father's... grandparents came from somewhere in the Pale of
00:07:00Settlement, around . . . it could have been around Kiev. Arnan, do you know?
They actually, it was an interesting story because the mother's-- this is my
father's grandmother-- her name- I actually have a picture of them, it's
amazing. Her name, I believe, was Yetta and her last name was Kleinman. She
married a man named Fayvel Livinstein.
ARNAN FINKELSTEIN: Levinstein.
MF: Levinstein. But he took her family name to avoid the Russian draft. Which
was very bad in those years. So that they were able to leave and get out of
00:08:00Russia and come to this country. They had four sons, and then Rebecca, my
father's mother, and then one more son, Philip, who ultimately became a rabbi
out in, first in Minneapolis, and then he went on to Portland, Oregon. And
actually I'm still in touch with his granddaughter. But it was a very large family.
And this Aunt Sarah, was the wife of one of Rebecca's brothers so they were all
00:09:00first cousins to my father. And they had, I don't know, about six daughters.
That the family, my mother went to live with, was named Kleinman. And so I
probably know more about the Kleinmen family. My understanding is that she met
my father's father, whose name was Wolf Frieman, and he was from I believe
Tarnogrod, which was - I'm not sure if that was Poland or . . . Arnan - pictures
hanging downstairs, and it has the name and the date on it. It's to the left of
the bookcase. . . I don't know much about my grandfather except- my father's
00:10:00father. Except that he was the only grandparent I knew. Rebecca also died very
young. She was 38. Also a similar kind of story. My father's mother, Rebecca
Klienman, died after- she also had six children. And my father was the second
oldest, the oldest was Judith, who plays a role in how I met Arnie, and then
there were two brothers, Heshie and Ukie. It was Hershel I guess and Yisrael,
there. And then Helen and Ruthie. And when Rebecca died, at the age of 38,
00:11:00Ruthie the youngest, was about a year and a half, and my grandfather who was a
sweet man, had no ability to earn a living, he could daven well, but that was
pretty much it. And so he -I don't know, he sold Encyclopedia Judaica. No,
Britannica. You know the encyclopedias door to door, or whatever he could. And
he went to- uh, I guess orphanages were not uncommon then, and he kept Judith
and my father with him, I believe to take care of him, and the next two, Heshie
00:12:00and Ukie, went to live with an Aunt. And the two youngest, Helen and Ruthie,
went into an orphanage. Helen died this past spring. She was the last of the six.
And my cousin went to the orphanage, which is now like a community center or
whatever, and asked if they might still have the records. And lo and behold,
down in the basement, I have goosebumps, they still had the records. So I got
together with all my cousins this past fall, and they brought the records which
was amazing to read and learn about and get to see, even as a social worker, to
get to see how- and everything was hand written notes, and they were really just
00:13:00focused on the physical health of the children. I mean there was no discussion
in any of the notes about their mental health, which I found fascinating. They
were concerned that Helen was wetting the bed, which would probably have been
very normal reactions of young children whose family was, you know disrupted,
and so on. But, I was a little appalled by this... I discovered they were doing
vaginal exams on these young girls. I don't know why. I would love to find out
why. But I found that very upsetting to read that. Whether they were looking for
some kind of infection that might have been causing the bedwetting, you know use
your head.
SC: Do you know if it was a religiously connected orphanage or if it was a
00:14:00settlement house type.
MF: It was called something like, the Guardians of Young Judea, it was
definitely Jewish affiliated facility. And my grandfather would have chosen that
because he was quite Orthodox very ... he was always davening as I remember.
Keeping Kosher was very important to him, and you know, I know myaunt who was
three years older than my father, really kept a home for them, and when my
father was dying at the age of ninety nine, he kept telling me that he saw
00:15:00Judith. So I know that he thought of her almost more like his mother, because
his mother had died-- it was right after his bar mitzvah, that his mother died
so he was 13 and she was 16. And the two boys, the two younger ones I guess,
went out and got jobs as soon as they could, and Helen didn't go home until my
father and his sister were both married so my grandfather had no way to take
care of them anymore. So Helen must have been about 14 at the time. So she went
home, and she left, and Ruthie was still in the orphanage, and I thought for
sure there would be some notes about Ruthie's reaction to Helen leaving, but no,
00:16:00there wasn't. I was so surprised. And Helen had experienced the trauma, when she
was a little younger at the orphanage, they had gone on an outing to the beach,
and there was one of those waves that came in and took children out into the
water. And she was rescued but a couple of the children died. And there were
notes about the trip but nothing about the tragedy. And, again, I wondered about
the psychological impact. She was determined to learn to swim after that, I'm
told. So it is quite an amazing story of their lives.
SC: Wow, was that in the Bronx?
00:17:00
MF: It was in Brooklyn.
SC: That makes sense, yes.
MF: It was all in Brooklyn, and I know they moved around a lot. I also know from
my father, that at one point, when his mother was still alive - so when he was a
young boy - because she was the only female in her family, she took in her
parents along with all these children and this sweet husband who couldn't earn a
living. I can't imagine... I know that her brothers weren't thrilled with my
grandfather. But they. . . and they met. Aunt Helen told me this more recently.
I never knew how my grandparents met. They were living in the same tenement
house I guess, and somebody said, you know, upstairs there's a nice man. So it
00:18:00was kind of a shidduch. And I know that my father and my aunts were very proud
of the fact that their mother spoke perfect English and actually, she was a kind
of teacher. As much as a teacher could be. This is my grandmother, I guess.
SC: That's wonderful. Just a natural skill.
MF: Yeah. I think it is. Because my aunt went on to be a teacher. My father was
a teacher.
SC: So, can you talk about your childhood, and your schooling, and any work that
you've had from doing something really small when you were young all the way through.
MF: I could try, I was born, as I said, I think it was Montefiore Hospital, in
00:19:00the Bronx, or it might have just been in Manhattan-- January 29, 1943. It was
the war years, and soon after I was born, my father was drafted into the navy.
And my mother who was pretty disconnected from her family, I mean she had no
contact with her father or - she had one sister who she stayed close to, Elsie,
and Artie. Otherwise, she really didn't have- she had taken my father's family.
That really was her family. So when my father was drafted, my mother was in a
00:20:00panic, and she went and lived with Judith, my father's older sister, and her
husband, Mike, who was, I guess was 4F, he had some back issues, whatever, so he
didn't get drafted. You know, was absolved. And so we lived with them, and
Judith and Mike had two sons, Elliot, who was three years older than me, and
Robert, who was two months younger than I am. We lost Elliot two years ago to
lung cancer. But, Robert and I are still close.
SC: Do you know what ship your dad was on? Or what was it?
00:21:00
MF: He never went on a ship. He got sent..
SC: Good, that's very good.
MF: He ended up in Oakland, California, and he was the yeoman to the admiral. My
father had gone to college. He went at nights for probably a total of fourteen
years. He went to Brooklyn College and got a degree. First in economics, and
when he graduated there weren't any jobs to be had, and he went back and he
studied printing-- well he had worked for a printer all along then -- so he got
some kind of degree or certification in printing as well. And when he was
drafted, because he had a degree in economics they thought he would be a good
statistician for the Navy, so he did work as the yeoman, and stayed in Oakland,
00:22:00stayed stateside. So my mother, who was a gutsy lady, took me, at eighteen
months, and flew cross country with me. Getting bumped all along the way because
you had to get. . . had to leave your seat for servicemen who were traveling.
And we lived in Oakland, California. Until I was about three. So I guess it was
about a year and a half. I know that my father wanted to stay out there, he
loved it out there, but my mother wanted to come back and have whatever family
she had. So we did come back. When we came back, we lived in Maspeth, Queens
because that's where Judith and Mike had bought a home and were living there.
00:23:00And we lived in their basement. Like mother had made- this area was the living
room, and this was the bedroom, and there were screens and so on. But they
shared the kitchen of course, and I remember that as a fun time because I had
two immediate playmates, my two cousins, and we lived there just for about a
year I guess, and my father got a job at the [New York] World Telegram & Sun as
a proofreader in New York. So we could afford an apartment. We moved to
Elmhurst, Queens, which was like the next little town over. And that's really
where I grew up, and in that house it was a two family house. And the people who
lived upstairs-- their name was Marlow, which doesn't sound like a Jewish name
00:24:00but the name had been Asmilowsky--and Murray and Gussy Marlow were very gracious
landlords. And Murray was an attorney, had never gone to law school, but he was
an attorney. And they had two children. They had a son George who was two years
older than me, and who I-- to this day-- I consider as a brother. I'm an old
woman. I never had siblings, so you know, I was four, he was six and we're still
very close. And we talk every week or couple of weeks, and our kids grew up
together so it's very nice. But I lived in that house until I met Arnan. I went
00:25:00to elementary school and it was within walking distance...
SC: What was its name? The elementary school. Do you remember?
MF: It was PS102.
SC: Oh great! New York, its PS.
MF: And then and New York then had a program called the SP or the RA, rapid
advance, or special progress, and you had to take an exam to pass, to get into
it, and I did and I passed, and it allowed me to go from seventh grade to ninth
grade. I skipped eighth grade. So - and that was junior high school '73, it was
William Cowper, I believe it was, Junior High School. And so I was there for two
00:26:00years, I remember my aunt used to substitute teach there because sometimes I'd
be very daring and put on some lipstick, and then be afraid she would see me in
the halls with lipstick on. And when I graduated there I went to Newtown High
School, which was in walking distance also from my home. And I was in the honors
program for some classes. I was young, I was very young, the birth date . . . I
graduated, I was still 16. So I wanted to go to college, there was no question
about that, and I wanted -- I thought I wanted to go away to college. But I knew
it would be a financial hardship for my parents, so I made a decision to go to
00:27:00one of the city colleges, and I went to Hunter College in Manhattan. And my
first day there, I still think it's a funny story because it was a single office
building on Park Avenue and 68th Street, right across the street from the
Russian Embassy, and it housed an elementary school for exceptionally bright
students, and Hunter High School, which was also a school you had to take an
exam to get into. So, my first day, I went into the elevator and the elevator
operator took me up to the seventh floor, which was the elementary school
because I looked so young, and I was small, and I was very upset. And I came
home, and I put on high heels, the four-inch spike kind, and I wore them for
four years of college because in those days you couldn't wear-- especially in a
00:28:00city school, you had to wear a skirt. You couldn't wear pants, that was unheard
of. So anyway that was kind of funny.
SC: So, this is going to end, so I'm going to take this one out -
SC: This is Tape two - DVD two - Marline Finkelstein and this is- you're talking
about your grandmothers, on your mother's side maiden name was-
MF: Goldstein.
SC: Goldstein, yes.
MF: This is the photograph. Is there a date?
AF: I don't see one.
GAIL EISENBERG: Do you want to just do it afterwards?
SC: Yeah we can just do it afterwards. Oh that's gorgeous. Oh my gosh. So that's
your great gran-
MF: These are my great grandfolk, parents. And they're my father's grandparents.
00:29:00
SC: Probably from about the 1870's or 80's?
MF: I would think so. And she was the one that was Klineman and he was
Levinstien and he took her family name.
SC: Yeah, wow. That's so nice.
MF: A nice story.
SC: That's a great picture too. So you were in college, you went to college.
MF: I did.
SC: And after college, or during college, can you go from that point on?
MF: Sure, sure. By the way, I knew I wanted to be a psychologist, therapist,
counselor, whatever, when I was about 6 years old. I didn't even know the name
for it but I was sort of fascinated by that. And when I went to college, and I
said I wanted to major in psychology, my mother was very disapproving. And she
00:30:00certainly didn't want me to be a social worker because, you know, what kind of
job is that? My mother considered herself a business woman. I should have
mentioned this. But my mother worked. Which was unusual in those days, she
worked because she wasn't satisfied that my father was making enough money. But
she was very proud about the fact that she could work, and she never even
graduated high school, I don't believe. And she was a bookkeeper. And she was a
very good bookkeeper, and she had worked in the garment industry for a while. As
a bookkeeper with my uncle Mike, Judith's husband, who was the controller in the
same office where my mother was a bookkeeper.
00:31:00
SC: Were they manufacturers? Do you know?
MF: Yes, they were manufacturers. They were making... what were they making? It
wasn't they might have been making... they were making clothes of some kind...
because when my mother went back to work, she felt very guilty, and she came
home at the end of the first week, or when she got paid, with a little outfit
for me. And I was probably in third grade, I think. And she told me, and showed
me, look what I can buy for you now that ... you know I'm working. Anyway, so my
mother was interested in my . . . she thought I should at least be a teacher
because if you're a teacher you can always get a job and god forbid you have to
work, and so on. So I made a deal that I would still major in psychology, but I
00:32:00would minor in elementary education. And so I had a double major, minor or
whatever. And I do have somewhere in New York, a teaching degree and when we
were first married I actually taught nursery school here in Allentown.
SC: What nursery school?
MF: At the JCC.
SC: At the JCC, okay.
MF: Of course.
SC: Yes, of course.
MF: So I should back up, Hunter College meant commuting. And it was an all-girls
school, but you know, I dated a lot and those were the days that we dated. In
the meantime, my Uncle Mike, who had worked in the garment industry, he had a
00:33:00longing to own his own business, he wanted like a women's clothing store, dress
shop, or whatever. And he bought a place called Dobnoffs, in downtown Allentown.
And so they left New York, Aunt Judith and Uncle Mike, and moved to Allentown in
1960? About that.
AF: Right around there.
MF: Yeah, I graduated high school in '59 I guess, and I started college in '59
so it was '61. My aunt lived on Livingston Street, my aunt and uncle. And, she
had a next door neighbor named Ruth Bloom, who saw my picture in my aunt's house
00:34:00and said she'd be nice for Mina's son. So Mina's son was in the air force in
Oklahoma, at the time. And I got a call from my aunt, in June, I had just
finished my final exams, and I wanted to go party, and she told my mother I had
to come out, that she had a nice boy for me to meet. And I said I have a date
Friday night, Saturday night, I'm you know . . . And my mother said, ah, you
know what you have here, you don't know what you have there, go. So I took a bus
out to Allentown, and my uncle picked me up at the bus stop, and came to their
house. I wanted to go party that night. I was supposed to meet him Saturday
night, but they announced we were going to a synagogue that night. Which was the
00:35:00last thing in the world I wanted to do. But I didn't have much choice, so we
walked into the synagogue, and I picked a row, and I went in. and - I don't know
if you know the word b'sherkt. Meant to be. I sat down next to him. So . . .
SC: Ha-ha.
MF: So we looked at each other, and I saw my aunt lean forward, and my soon to
be mother-in-law lean forward, and they introduced us, and we started talking.
We still joke about the fact that when the service started, and we stood up
Arnan went, "Where'd she go? Ha-ha. But we met that night.
SC: So the stars were all out, and there were fireworks. Ha-ha.
GE: All in alignment.
MF: All in the right alignment. Ha-ha. And so we drove around in his fancy car
00:36:00that night, and we hung out the next day, and so on. And when I went back to-
AF: I didn't have a fancy car back then.
MF: Well, was that your father's car?
AF: Yeah.
MF: It was a- it was a very pretty car. Anyway when I came home, my mother said,
So? And I said, well if I don't marry him, I'm going to marry somebody just like
him. So I guess I kind of knew. And I went to camp, he went back to the air
force. Ha-ha. So I was very young, I was just, was I still seventeen? Or I was eighteen?
AF: Sixteen- oh no, you were eighteen.
MF: I was eighteen.
AF: Eighteen and a half.
MF: Oh, okay. So, we corresponded all summer, I was a counselor at camp, and he
came home for the Jewish holidays, and I saw him. And he was discharged in November.
00:37:00
AF: Actually in August, but I stayed on in school.
MF: Okay. And-
SC: What was the name of the camp?
MF: Oh, it was the New Jersey Y Camps. Which was kind of akin to Pinemere here.
But it was in Milford, Pennsylvania, and I had gone there for years. Actually,
just a quick step back, my parents didn't have a lot of money, but my Uncle
Ukie, that was my father's second younger brother.
SC: Israel.
MF: Right. He married very late, he never had children, and there was a period
of time he lived with us, and he adored me. He was- I- you know the sun rose and
set with me. And he was a salesman in the garment industry for a company called
Kirkland Hall Suits. I think I still have a couple of his suits hanging in the
00:38:00closet because I can't bear to get rid of them. But he had the wherewithal to
send me to camp. So I started going to camp at around the age of six. Which was
a lifesaver for me, and helped me to grow and be more independent, and so on. So
I went to New Jersey Y camps. First I went to a camp in Connecticut, for a few
years, and my cousins went with me. And I started the New Jersey Y camps. I
think I was about nine. And that was because my father had a fraternity brother
from college, who was on, lived in Passaic, New Jersey, and he was on the Board
of Directors, and he could get me into the camp. Because you were supposed to
live in New Jersey. So I-- and his children were friends of mine--they were my
age, I thought of them as cousins, and so on. So, even though I was young. I had
00:39:00a lot of people I knew already at camp. So I- and every summer I looked forward
to. I still have one camp friend left. We email each other now. So that was kind
of a good story. Anyway, help me, where did we leave off?
SC: Okay so the two of you met, and you graduated from college then did you work
between the time you graduated, and then you got married?
MF: Um, no, what I did other than working camp that summer was the following
summer, I went to summer-school. I took fifteen credits in summer school, so we
could get married sooner, rather than waiting until the next June. o I- between
NYU and Hunter college, I was able to get all my credits in, and I graduated in
00:40:00January of 63' and 1963, and so I was...
SC: Twenty?
MF: I wasn't even twenty yet.
SC: Nineteen?
MF: I was turning twenty, but I was still nineteen. And I still laugh about the
fact that when we picked our wedding date that I said, well I need a month just
to get my- you know. So I picked the end of February for us to get married, and
my mother said, " February, It'll snow." And I said, "No! It won't snow." It
snowed. But-
GE: February 63' is when you got married.
MF: Yes February 24, 1963. So yeah there was no time to work then. I think I
might have- I remember a little job working at a JCC with a group of girls, you
00:41:00know, briefly. But that was- it might have been in that period of time. And then
I came out to Allentown as a new bride. And I was Mina Finkelstein's Daughter in
law. Everybody knew my mother in law because she was this beautiful woman who
really had a spell on the community. And she was president of the sisterhood,
and she'd been president of Hadassah and was - and I was very open to her. She
had great style, and she taught me lots of things and so I she made me a life
member of Hadassah right away and the sisterhood, and I got involved in a lot of
the organizations. But I also had a teaching degree, so- I mean you can't do
00:42:00much with a bachelors in psychology, and I thought about graduate school, but I
wasn't clear yet where I wanted to go, or what I wanted. So my aunt Judith
arranged for me to meet Judy Freeman, who ran the nursery school at the JCC. And
Judy was thrilled and she hired me right away, and so I worked for two years at
the JCC, Miss Marlene. And I still have some of my earliest students, my three
and four year olds, still call me Miss Marlene when they see me today, which is
hysterical. And then I was pregnant with our first child, Sharon, who was born
in 65' and then the sixties were having children. Our second was born, Ilana, in
00:43:0068' and Abbey was born in 71' and so I certainly . . . The work I did in those
years was really more organizational. I used to say I am a professional
organizational person, or professional Jewish volunteer. Yeah, I was involved in
all the Boards and I was program vice president of Hadassah and membership vice
president and on the Sisterhood Board. And on the Federation Board.
Maxine and I met the first year as a new bride here. I was very lonely, and
00:44:00everyone said to me. Wait, Maxine Kivert is going to come back to town. When you
meet her, you and Maxine are going to be great friends. And, Maxine knew about
me because before Arnan met me, he had dated another girl in town who Maxine was
friendly with, so Maxine knew about me, and I knew about her. And we met I think
at an-- I remember at an ORT-- yeah, I was involved with the ORT also... event.
And we knew each other. I mean we just immediately knew each other. And we
became very fast friends. Both our husbands were in the textile business, so
that was... And she went on to have three daughters, and we had three daughters
ha-ha. So we had a lot of connections. And the first thing that Maxine and I did
00:45:00together was we started a Hadassah Study Group. There was a Woman's Study Group
that my mother in law belonged to. And the older women belonged to. But we had
children, and we were home during the day, it was harder to get babysitters. So
we started an evening study group. That was just fabulous. And the first year we
asked the rabbis to come and talk, and at the end of that we said, you know
we're all college graduates, we can do a better job than they did. They sort of
were winging it, so we would pick a topic. Hadassah would give us some ideas,
and we would give out the assignments. And every other Monday night I guess for-
it was just fabulous. Even Arnan would tell me he was jealous because we were
learning so much. And it was like doing a paper, and you were the presenter, and
00:46:00it was wonderful. It went on for many years. It drew in a lot of young Jewish
women that were coming to town because they would hear about our study group,
and it was a great thing. And then Maxine and I went on to do a few other things
together. We started a speaker's bureau, and we just felt that all these Jewish
organizations were having board meetings, having meetings, and so on, and they
never had any real Jewish content, so we put together a group of people who
would write. We limited it, we had five minute talks. Just a little capsule
thing, that they would go in at the beginning of a board meeting, and give a
little talk on something of Jewish content and interest, and it was kind of a
00:47:00fun thing. And from that, Les Gottlieb was the director of the Federation at
that time, and he came to us and asked if we might be interested in starting a
newspaper for the Jewish community. And we already had our writers from our
speaker's bureau staff so we did it. We started Hakol. And it was a very, very
exciting time for us.
GE: And this was about what year?
MF: Hakol I think we started in 1975? 76'? Something like that. Somewhere I have
the original. But it was in that time period because when we moved...
AF: How many years did you -
MF: Do Hakol? About four.
00:48:00
AF: Then you probably started earlier because I was president of the Federation
when you came asking for a...
MF: Yeah, after about four years, I- he was president, I said, I can't keep
doing this on a volunteer basis. I went to Federation and-- Maxine had dropped
out, she said she was done. She would help me with some editing stuff. But it
was a big job, it really was. And I went to the Federation and I said, this is
really a big job, and I asked them to pay me 4,000 dollars, and they said no
they couldn't do that. If they started paying for all these jobs, it wouldn't be
good for the Federation. So that ended my career.
SC: Did it continue on a volunteer basis?
MF: For another year or so.
SC: Are they archived anywhere?
MF: Yeah I think they are, probably at the Center, or the Federation office.
00:49:00
AF: You didn't keep any did you?
MF: Of course I did. They're downstairs somewhere. It was a very exciting time
for us. But I knew I needed to move on, and I started thinking about. .. I was
also still involved in study groups and I remember giving a paper. There were
two in a row, one was on interestingly, the growing threat of radical Islam, and
um, I remember I learned all about the Shiites, and the Sunni's and so on. And
one was on Theodore Herzl. And I remember coming home and Arnan said, how did it
go, and I said, it was an A paper. It's time for me to go back to school, and
00:50:00you know, do it for myself. So I knew I wanted psychology. I started looking
around for a program, and, by the way, I was also on the board of Jewish Family
Service. And, Amy Miller Cohen, who was a psychologist in Bethlehem, I had given
the paper at her house. And I was talking with her about going back to school
and getting a masters, and she said to me, "Marlene, go get an MSW." and I said,
"Really?" And she said, "It'll take you less time, you're not a little kid
anymore," I was about 37, 38, and she said, "and you'll do what you want to do.
'' So Marywood had a program at DeSales. And so I went. It took me three years
00:51:00because it was a part time program, but I got my MSW, and I had interned at
Quakertown Hospital in the Psychiatric unit as part of the program, and I stayed
on there, and worked in patient psyche for another ten years. And it was with a
group called the Alliance for Creative Development. We were psychiatrists,
psychologists, social workers-- creative therapists. It was a wonderful program,
it was before managed care and all that stuff. And where we really could work
with patients as a team and see results. It was a very very exciting time. And
the alliance for creative development had the hospital unit, and we had in
00:52:00patient offices as well so I started -
AF: Outpatient.
MF: Outpatient offices I mean, so I started a private practice with them also...
and, twenty five years later, I retired. I left the hospital, after eight years
at Quakertown hospital there, we moved toa hospital in Philadelphia, in Fort
Washington. It was Northwestern Institute. After two years of doing the turnpike
it was enough. So I just did the private practice from then on. And in between
there, too, Arnan built the house and we moved here and... oh I was president of
Jewish Family Service while I was in graduate school getting my MSW.
00:53:00
SC: So you've talked about your community involvement, you've talked about your
career, do you have any other questions about the business?
GE: Yeah no I think it did- did you have, what relationship or what connections
did you have to the family business, if any?
MF: Well, we tried for about two weeks for me to come keep some books for you.
That didn't work. Ha-ha
AM: She was our model. Every so often we would have an experimental-
MF: Oh this is a very funny story.
AF: Yeah,
MF: I had, I've always had a dressmaker because of my size, whatever I would
always buy always had to be fixed. So Arnan had this new experimental fabric
that they were making.
AF: Well we were just playing with it.
MF: Yeah, so I took it to my dressmaker, this is before we were married, and she
00:54:00made me a bathing suit out of it for our honeymoon. And it was very pretty with
an orange scoop neck, and it had some of the knit fabric in a print that tied,
went around the waist or the hip, anyway, I couldn't wait to use it for our
honeymoon. Fortunately we went to Caneel Bay, and we had this little cottage on
a very private beach, because I went into the water with this thing, and the
weight of the water immediately pulled it right down.
SC: Ha-ha.
MF: So I came out of the water with it way down.
GE: Fine for a honeymoon!
MF: That's right.
GE: Fine for a private beach.
MF: Right! Ha-ha we got a good laugh out of that. But otherwise, I um, always
had an interest. I never sewed, I'm not terribly domestic, Arnan's much more
00:55:00domestic than I am. But he would bring home fabrics, I did have um, I had a
dress or a bathing suit made for Sharon, but I took it to a dressmaker, out of
the fabric Arnan had shown you with Sharon Alyse's birthday on it.
GE: But generally you were not- you were just his wife.
MF: I was not-
GE: Directly involved.
MF: I was not directly involved. I had a pretty wonderful and loving
relationship with my in-laws, especially with my mother-in-law. My father-in-law
was a quiet man, he didn't talk very much. And most of the time he wanted to
talk to Arnan about business things. But he would come over to see the
grandchildren, I still joke about - he would look, he would see they were okay,
00:56:00and then he would say, "Okay Mina Finkelstein, it's time to go home!" And she
would say, "George! We just got here!"
GE: Where did they live?
MF: They lived on Livingston and twenty . . . and Ott. On the corner of
Livingston and Ott. And our prior home was on 26th and Highland. So we were
always in close proximity. Yes.
GE: I think that's good.
SC: Yes oh and I have a couple of my creative questions. What do you value most
in life?
MF: Well, probably my family, first and foremost, and the connections and the
relationships. I would have to make that you know...
00:57:00
SC: Yes. And what has made you feel the most creative or artistic in the
broadest sense, or completed in life.
MF: Well, I think I have a great sense of accomplishment about the newspaper,
not the fact that I helped to start it, and it's still an ongoing institution, I
think feels very wonderful. But I think I feel that way about a few other things
that we started in life. The Am Haskalah was, Arnan and I were very involved in
getting that off the ground. As were Maxine and her first husband, Arnold. So
starting some institutions that are still going has been a very creative
process. And being a therapist. I love being a therapist. I do miss it. And I
00:58:00saw a friend of mine yesterday, we had worked together in-patient, and became
therapists together, and so on and she's still working. And we were talking
about that, and how what happens now is the tendency for me to use it with
family and friends. Ha-ha thatskill, and you know, trying to decide when I
should keep my mouth shut, and when I can just be a friend and not say anything
more. And even when they ask me for advice, what do they really want? But the
fact that I touched a lot of lives, I think, means a great deal to me.
SC: That's beautiful. And this is going to end momentarily.
MF: Okay.
SC: That's perfect.
00:59:00
GE: Quick question, with the Hakol, so you started, you were there for about
four years, then it went on for another year, I know of it today, tell me did it lapse?
MF: No it didn't lapse, it-
GE: So it continued the whole-
MF: But it wasn't until I'm trying to remember, did Ned Shulman do it? Maggie
Levine was still here.
AF: No.
GE: I know Sharon Bernstein I think I think at one point maybe-
MF: Yeah that was a while-
AF: Somebody took it over after you know-
MF: Whoever did it until they finally-
AF: But then it became professional.
MF: They finally realized they had to have someone to do this, but it has grown,
and when um... not the current one...
GE: Carolyn, Carolyn Katwan.
MF: When Carolyn- I met her. And I complimented her genuinely, because I thought
she had grown it and taken it to a new place, that was our vision. Part of our
vision when we started it was to see it become a Lehigh Valley - and to bring
01:00:00the three communities - because they were very separate. And Maxine and I used
to lament that. You know it didn't make sense that my New York sechel [Yiddish
for common sense], and we would be better in larger numbers, and to pull it
together. And they've really gone on to do that now, and the vision for it - we
were too small, and inexperienced to make it an advertising newspaper, as well.
But I'm happy to see the ads in it.
GE: And that's quite recent. For a long time it was still-
MF: Well it was just the past few years.