NOTE: The interviewer s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in brackets.

Transcription

1 CHARLOTTE SMOKLER. Born TRANSCRIPT of OH 1828V This interview was recorded on January 14, 2013, for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. The interviewer is Avi Master. The interview also is available in video format, filmed by Anne Marie Pois. The interview was transcribed by Joan Nagel. ABSTRACT: Charlotte Smokler s interview starts with her account of her family s immigration from Poland when she was a young girl. She describes her childhood in New York City and her move to Boulder with her husband in She talks about her jobs and community involvement in Boulder such as her job managing the Daily Camera s clipping library, writing book reviews for the Camera, running a Jewish film series for Congregation Bonai Shalom, and helping to catalog book donations for the Boulder Public Library. The heart of the interview centers around an exploration of Jewish identity as she encountered it during her childhood and in later years, including ways in which Boulder and its Jewish congregations have grown and changed. NOTE: The interviewer s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in brackets. [A]. 00:00 (Today is January 4th, 2013, and my name is Avi Master. I m interviewing Charlotte Smokler, who has lived in Boulder since 1971.) No, since 68. (Oh, since 68 in this house since 71.) Right. (Okay. The interview is being recorded for Maria Rogers Oral History Program and for the Jewish Oral History Project whose mission is to document what Jewish life and the life of Jews were like in the mid-20th century in Boulder, a time when an influx of Jews created Boulder s first sustained Jewish community, which resulted in the thriving Jewish institutions we have today. And thank you very much for doing this interview.) You re very welcome. (All right. I m going to begin with a very simple question. When and where were you born?) Page 1; OH 1828, Charlotte Smokler

2 I was born in Lwow, Poland, in And that s spelled L-W-O-W except it is now in Ukraine and it s spelled L-V-I-V. And it was originally called Lemberg, which is a name that many people know it by when it was part of the Austrian Hungarian Empire. (You were born there, and then when did you come over to the United States?) We came to America I think in January 39. I m not absolutely positive, but around then. So it was a very good time to leave Poland. [small laugh.] A very good time. (You got out as Hitler was marching in?) No. The war started September of that year. We got out because that was when we happened to get our visas and our documents to come. And my father had his family here his parents and a brother and two brothers and he wanted to come to America. (I see. They were already here.) Yes. (And you came over to New York?) To New York to the Lower East Side. Yeah. (And did you grow up on the Lower East Side?) I grew up in the Lower East Side on 5th Street between Avenue C and D. We lived in maybe three or four different buildings on that one block, yeah. (Can you just share a bit about what you remember of that growing-up experience?) Well, you know, it was the Lower East Side after its great period, maybe, but it was still mostly Jewish and my parents had a food store on 5th Street fruit and vegetable store on 5th Street that they started, I think, with $25 and it was still in the Depression and that s how we survived. My parents worked all the time. I mean, that s what I remember best. My father would go in the middle of the night to Washington Street Market, which was then in Manhattan and, you know, after working all day, he d get up at 1 a.m. and go to this market. He took me there once. And it was very interesting because in the middle of the night it was like Les Halles in Paris. It was absolutely bright. It was lively. It was just like the middle of the day. (Do you remember how old you were when he took you there?) Page 2; OH 1828, Charlotte Smokler

3 Well, I was probably, you know, who knows, eight, nine something like that. And my mother, again, worked, you know, they worked so hard. At first we lived in back of the store and then we lived in different apartments in that street. The thing I remember best is that when I was I went to Public School 15, which is right across the street, and they were bugging me to get a notice from a dentist. And my parents were so busy. So down the street, at the end of the street there was a dentist. I walked over there and I was seven years old I walked over there and I went up and I still remember him he was obviously some kind of a character out of a novel he was a failure. He had gotten this degree, but he wasn t doing well. And he did treat me. I don t remember if he sent my parents how it was what I do remember is I m sitting on this sack of potatoes in one of the back rooms and my mother says to me, Where have you been? And I said, I ve been to the dentist. [laughs]. I remember that story very well. So that s an excerpt from my childhood. (Would you say that that kind of independence and resourcefulness was indicative of you as a little girl?) Not at all. Not at all. I was I think I ve always been rather passive as a matter of fact not terribly resourceful. (So that was an instance.) That was an instance. [laughs] (An independent and resourceful Charlotte. And what about brothers and sisters?) I have a brother well, he died four years ago my brother Emanuel Sternberg, Mendy we called him. I was always Shaindel at home. Yes, we were always close throughout our lives. He was my older brother by five years. (And how were you referred to at home?) Shaindel which is a very ordinary Yiddish name. It s a name like Mary or Jane or something. Shaindel, Shaindele, and that was my name at home. I didn t have any other name until, you know, I was in college on my own and this and that. I was always Shaindel. 5:08 (Shaindel. So all the way elementary school, high school--) I was no, I was Charlotte. (Oh, in school you were Charlotte.) Page 3; OH 1828, Charlotte Smokler

4 Yeah, yeah I was Charlotte, but at home I was always Shaindel. But my birth certificate is S-Z-A-R-L-O-T-A Charlotta and that s my name. That s the Polish version of Charlotte. (That s interesting. Can you just describe a little bit about how Judaism was practiced in your home? And being Jewish then, what was that experience?) Well, my mother came from a very religious family. If you look up there, my grandfather, you can see, is an Orthodox Jew, a Hasidic Jew, in fact. But my mother was not my mother was a thorough-going atheist as far as I know. My father but anyway, they went to High Holiday services. That s one thing they did, which were usually conducted in some like an auditorium, a dance hall. It was not a synagogue. We never belonged to a synagogue. My parents always closed the store on Saturday. They would never keep the store and the one thing my father did was that he would he smoked two packs of Camels a day. He stopped smoking on Saturday always stopped smoking on Shabbos, which maybe added some years to his life. I don t know. But those we did everything we shopped on Shabbos and we did everything. It was not a religious upbringing at all. But my parents spoke Yiddish. I was nothing but Jewish in a way, religious context or any other context. That s what we were. We were refugees from Hitler really. (But you wouldn t describe it as a religious upbringing?) No, absolutely not. No, I wouldn t. (And have you maintained that kind of relationship to Judaism?) No, I maintained a different one, actually. I belong to a synagogue and I used to go every Shabbos for years to Bonai Shalom. Now I tend to go to the Thursday minyan, Thursday mornings at 7 a.m. I always go to the I ve been to the Talmud class there as long as it s been I think I m the oldest surviving member of Bonai Shalom Talmud class. So I ve done that. And I don t keep Shabbos, but I don t not keep it. I mean, I don t go shopping on the Sabbath. I drive the car. So I would say that I m more practicing than my parents, and I also have studied much more than my parents. So it s quite different. (And can you there s no simple explanation, I m sure, but can you give some kind of explanation about how you moved from how your parents connected to their Judaism and how you shifted your practice of Judaism?) Well, they connected to Judaism because Jews in Poland, if they are not in the upper class, they were Jews and nothing but Jews. I mean, it was a terribly anti-semitic country. They suffered a lot in Poland, and they saw themselves as Jewish. They ran the whole store in Yiddish and in Polish. They didn t need any English for that store. So that was their connection. It was just part of their whole lives. For me, I had to in a way do Jewish things because you come to Boulder, and you can be anything. And, I didn t Page 4; OH 1828, Charlotte Smokler

5 speak Yiddish at home or anything here. So I had to make my own decisions about what kind of Jew I wanted to be. (But those choices were primarily after you moved to Boulder?) Absolutely. In New York, at that time it s not true now because, but in New York so much of the population was Jewish that and I think even today to some extent people didn t feel the need to do anything else but exist, and they were Jews. They were surrounded by Jews. It s like being French or something. You don t have to be Catholic to be French. My father read the Forwards every day of his life that s the Yiddish paper. (So how old were you when you moved to Boulder?) Let s see that was in 68 and I was born in 33 so that s I was about 35, I guess or what s 3 from 8 36, yeah. (And what was it that brought you to Boulder?) My husband had a job teaching philosophy at CU. So that s why we came to Boulder. (And was your husband also Jewish?) Oh, yes, he was. But not practicing at all. And his family was more American, so they had less they lived a more American life than my parents did. (How did you and your husband meet?) 10:00 We met at the home of a friend. As a matter of fact his I had a friend and actually her husband was an interesting man he was a Belgian Jew whose family had they were traditionally the sellers of church goods. He had a store on the in the Wall Street area of Catholic church goods, Maurice deleeuw, and his wife, my friend, Toby, became his wife and that s how, at their home I met Howard. (How old were you when you met?) Twenty-seven and that s when I married also. We married within six months of after I met him. (I see. So what did you do professionally?) I was a welfare worker and then a probation officer to teenage girls in New York. Those were the two jobs I had. When I married, I was a probation officer in Brooklyn Girls Term Court. It was a court that has since been abolished and was probably totally unconstitutional. I wouldn t even want to tell you what we did to you know, 16, you Page 5; OH 1828, Charlotte Smokler

6 could be put away someplace for crossing your eyes at your parents. But anyway, it s gone. (I see. And how did you feel about moving to Boulder?) Well, I ll tell you. We lived in Europe for a year and then we lived in California near Palo Alto. But we were in Long Island and my husband was teaching at Long Island University not a good school. But I have to tell you this story. So that summer we were going to Boulder. And we were at a party, a gathering of some kind. And this man was there who had taught here or his wife had taught here, and now they were living someplace else and he obviously hated Boulder. And he said to me, oh, he said, It s awful, he said, The second year the wives always take up painting. And I ve always wanted to tell when I was in Boulder, and I loved Boulder I didn t have a phone number or an address for him. I always wanted to call him up and tell him that I had never taken up painting. [laughs] (So how did you occupy yourself when you moved to Boulder? If you weren t painting, what were you doing?) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well at first I used to go to the library, CU library, and the one thing I m grateful for there was that I read Boswell s Life of Dr. Johnson, the complete and that s like my favorite book and to take time to read was wonderful. But then what I did is I went to library school in Denver. That library school I think has closed. It s at University of Denver. I think it s closed since then. But I went there, and I got my degree in 71. And after that I worked for said WICHE and then, let s see, I had my son in 72 and I was home for a few years. Then I worked part time at WICHE, Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, as a librarian. (Say that again.) Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. You can call it WICHE, W-I-C-H- E. And then in, and then they were losing all their money, and I was laid off, and I got the job at the Camera. I think that was in 1981, I m not sure. And I was there for 15 years or something like that. I don t remember dates very well. (When you first arrived, you arrived in 68?) Yes. (And it s a broad kind of question, but when you think about Boulder being Jewish in Boulder then ) It didn t mean anything to me. (It didn t mean anything to you.) Page 6; OH 1828, Charlotte Smokler

7 Well because we had never belonged I still remember President Kennedy was assassinated when was that? 63? And we were in Boston then cause my husband was then at a research place in Boston. And we went to a synagogue just to pay our respects, to whatever and it was an absolutely strange experience both we didn t know what these people were doing [laughs] so (I know how that feels.) So anyway I still remember that because since then I ve become much better acquainted, but I still remember that. Yeah, so (So when you first came, there was no sort of sense of, you didn t experience I m a Jew in Boulder. ) No, no. We met some people that we liked. Some of them I m still friends I still go to a fitness class twice a week with someone else who went to library school, not Jewish, a a woman named Lynn Dyba who I met then cause she was going to library we met and anyway she also was going to library school. But I m just saying, we just had friends. 15:00 We had friends, you know, people from the university and so on and people we had dinner parties. We smoked pot. We did what people did in the 70 s in Boulder. (Yeah.) Not particularly Jewish. (Well I m going to get back to your fifteen-year tenure at the Camera. But I want to ask again about one of the things you said is when you re in New York, you re Jewish, it s just like, so what?) Right. (Coming to Boulder, then, somehow changed your relationship to being Jewish.) Yeah, at some point we joined Har HaShem and Rabbi Steinberg was the rabbi there. I liked him very much. And I think we went there mostly for holiday service again, but I think sometimes I would even go Friday nights. And since I had no experience, that service was fine to me, but you know now, it s not what I would go to now. But anyway I went there and so we were members there for some years. In fact once I was on the Board there. I still can t believe how that happened, but I remember being on the Board at Har HaShem. You ll have to check this out with your records, but I do remember that. And what happened then is that there was this kind of problem with the rabbi, and it was a mess and anyway some people left Har HaShem and they started Bonai Shalom. I Page 7; OH 1828, Charlotte Smokler

8 meanwhile just dropped out of I think everything I think. As I said, I was unchurched for a few years, and then I did join Bonai Shalom, maybe starting in all my dates are terrible, maybe around 1950 [1970?] or so I started and I had my son then. Maybe that was another reason to when we went to Har HaShem we did not have Henry. We just joined a congregation. (But you did raise your son in a to be a practicing Jew?) No. (No?) Well, I mean (Did you attempt?) Yeah, we made some attempt but you know, in fact one thing he told me was that in classes those days, this is twenty years ago well, he s 40 now so this was thirty years ago or something whenever it came to a Jewish holiday, they would always call him and ask him and he hated that because maybe he didn t know anything. He s learned a lot. He actually is quite interested in Judaism. I mean he s not what I would call practicing but for example, this book How to Read the Bible by I forget the guy s name, but here in Boulder and we read that together and discussed it. He has some interesting Judaism. (Did you have your son Bar Mitzvahed?) No, that was the point. He was the youngest kid ever in the Har HaShem school. I was very eager for him to get so he went there every year and he was 12 or 13, whatever it was, and he just refused to have a Bar Mitzvah. Not for any ideological reasons because he was too wonderful, it wasn t too no he just was not interested. He didn t want to do it. I was furious with him. But of course the point is that by that time my husband and I had separated, and I had hardly any Jewish family because you know my parents were not around, were dead, and I had no uncles. I didn t know how I was going to do a Bar Mitzvah. I didn t know how. So years later when he was about 19, I confessed to him that he had saved my life by refusing to have a Bar Mitzvah. But at the time I was furious, and in fact I called his, what s that wonderful man s name? It was his sixth grade teacher. He was absolutely wonderful. And we met to have coffee downtown. And he said, What is it? Henry was always a good student, a very wellbehaved boy. And I said, well you know, I told him, I said, I was so furious I think I was tearing his clothes off or something. (You were furious.) Page 8; OH 1828, Charlotte Smokler

9 Yeah I was furious with him. And he said, I thought he was into drugs, he was this or that. He kind of reassured me. And Henry wanted to go to this tennis camp, and that s what he went to instead. So he never had a Bar Mitzvah, but I would say he s probably. He s married a Jewish girl so I m just saying he s probably somewhat more interested in Judaism from an intellectual point of view than a lot of kids that had Bar Mitzvahs. But I did confess to him when he was 19, he saved my life. I don t know how I could have handled that Bar Mitzvah. 20:04 (Your husband his dad didn t care about him being Bar Mitzvahed?) Well, he did care. But I was the one that got so crazy about it. But, you know, the face that he saw was me tearing up his clothes, but it was years that I had to tell him that he saved my life. So that s the true story of Henry s Bar Mitzvah. [laughter] (Of Henry s non-bar Mitzvah.) Of his non-bar Mitzvah, yeah. (Good. So let s get back just a little bit and find out about your tenure at the Camera.) I was there for 15 years, and it was basically, at least in the beginning, a job that a smart junior high school student could do. I was clipping the paper and filing it in the right places. Later on we became computerized, and they sent me east to take the class and for a year or two it was a nightmare. Just trying to get it organized not my fault but just the way the Camera had done nothing, and I used to come every Saturday, every Sunday just to try to get but actually, it worked. But the thing there was that from about 19 after maybe a year or two there, I started writing monthly book reviews at the Camera. And that really satisfied my soul. I guess I never realized that s what I always wanted to do, but as soon as I did it, I realized this was really what I d always wanted to do, and I just had fallen into it just because I lost my other job. It was strictly luck. And after I was there some months I saw everybody at their computers, which I didn t know how to use at that point and I just went to the at that time they had a Sunday magazine, and I said to the I want to do book reviews. She said, Okay. And that was our entire discussion. And I just sat down, learned a little bit on how to use the and then I did it and as I wrote these reviews and I could write any reviews I wanted. I mean, if the book was 20 years old and interested me, I would review it. So it was wonderful. But anyway, as I got into it, my reviews got better. I will say that. And I wrote some good reviews, and I had Page 9; OH 1828, Charlotte Smokler

10 gotten some really good letters from people whose books I had reviewed, and I sent them a copy and things that I d gotten back. So I did that for maybe 12, 13 years. I forget how and then eventually I got tired. (That was your whole job what a fantastic--) No, no. That s not my job. My job was clipping the paper that was my real job. This I did on the side. (Ohhh.) This I did on the side. Nobody there really cared, you know, to tell you the truth. (What was your real job?) Well at the start it was clipping the paper and filing the clips in the for example, suppose there s a murder. That had to be clipped under murder, under crime I mean filed and under the names of the people involved. You might do five clippings in that paper and file them in each of those five categories. But, as I say, towards the end of the time I was there, we were computerized and that didn t happen anymore. But at the start, that s what I was doing. And I was also people would come up. At that time we were very free about that. People would come up, or on the phone, I d answer questions all day or people would come up, and I met some interesting people that way, too. The woman I went to Turkey with after I was retired was someone who came in because she was doing some research, and we became friends. So that was the other part of the job talking, answering questions, answering the phone. One time at that time they had a wonderful receptionist downstairs named Terry. I don t know if you remember her, but anyway. And she was from Brooklyn. So this guy so at first someone calls, and they always get the receptionist, and she refers him to me. So when I answer the phone, he says, Where am I calling? Terry with her Brooklyn accent, me with my New York accent. He says, Where am I calling exactly? [laughter] So that was that. So that was the Camera. (So your passion was writing the book reviews?) Absolutely. (But your job was really filing and chronicling the events of Boulder). Right. Right. Page 10; OH 1828, Charlotte Smokler

11 (And then meeting interesting people if they happened along.) And answering questions and just the public. I was meeting the public and on the phone and that was part of the job as the Camera saw it then. I think it s different now. (So, do you remember interesting things that you filed?) Well (Interesting events?) Oh yeah. There were a lot of interesting events, but you know right now I d have to, I really would have to think about it. But there were a lot of files one of the things you d find out is that if there s been a mistake made in the file, every, every like for example a holiday, say a Mexican holiday every year when that holiday comes up, the same mistake will appear in the newspaper because the reporter goes to the file, looks up you know, they re not going to start researching whatever the holiday looks at the story and writes the same story. So the same mistakes can appear for 20 years. 20:18 [laughs] That s one of the things I found out. (Before and after the computer age there s no different ) Well after the computer age, I really don t know. But probably it s the same. I mean if there s a mistake, if you look up in the computer and there s a mistake, that also would reporters don t have that much time. When I came to the Camera I got my idea of reporters from drinking and this and that. These were the shyest people I ever met in my life. But I liked them a lot. There was not a reporter that I didn t like. I had a wonderful time with a lot of the reporters. I enjoyed their company and they enjoyed my company and that was a nice aside from writing the reviews, that was the nicest thing about the Camera just the reporters, dealing with them and so on. They were great. (And since your retirement, how have you found fulfillment?) Well, you know, people always ask me, Are you keeping busy? and I always say, No. But actually (I say the same thing.) But actually not fulfillment. I like doing nothing, but one thing I did do. I, for four years at Bonai Shalom I did a see I m a movie freak, that s what I really am. So I showed six movies of Jewish interest every winter for four years. I still have all the leaflets from that so I could look at all the movies that I showed all these years. And I don t regret a movie I showed. None of them were bagels and lox movies. They all had to be movies that were Jewish. But also sometimes entertaining, sometimes sad, Page 11; OH 1828, Charlotte Smokler

12 whatever they were. But I did that for four years. And that was my other fulfillment doing what I d always dreamed about doing showing people movies that I loved or that I liked or that I appreciated. So, really between the Camera with my book reviews and Bonai with the movies, I really fulfilled a lot of the things that I had always wanted to do. (What were some of the movies? Do you remember?) Well, I have a but I d have to go to another room so that s not good but I have a list of all these movies all kinds. I just can t you know titles I can t remember. I should have brought it in here, but I won t do that now. But I showed some and then afterwards we would have like a discussion downstairs and refreshments, and it worked very well. It was very successful. Another thing I did after I retired is that they have all these books that are donated to the library and Sue Hough who was then working but also a volunteer, she would there would be a whole shelf of books, non-fiction, and I would go through each one of them, put all the information in the computer, so that we could then decide whether we would add the books to the library collection or sell them or whatever. And that was good because, you know, you came across a lot of garbage and you came across a lot of interesting books. And they were books that a famous writer or philosopher or something and one his most important books is not in the library. Well, now you can put it in. So I did that for a few years on Fridays. I loved doing that, and I would always take a few books home. And I would return them except for a few copies [laughs]. There were a few, but anyway I was basically honest. But anyway, then there was a new administration in the library and Sue lost her job. I lost from now on they were no longer going to put any [donated] books on the shelves. They were going to sell everything I guess, or whatever. But anyway, that job was gone. So that s the job that I miss the most since I ve been retired because I really enjoyed doing that. And I got to read a lot of good books. (You re a book-lover and a movie freak?) Yeah. I don t know about the book-lover, because I don t read as much now. I find it hard to I m really scrounging around trying to find books these days. But I read, I read some. One thing that has happened that s very nice is that, well this is not Jewish, but it s run out of St. Aidan s. There s a book club run out of St. Aidan s, the Episcopal Church. It s right near the university, and that s a book club that we meet once a week. There s no cookies, there s no chatter. We discuss, we have a book, and we read it for four or six weeks, you know a certain amount every week, and that s almost the most fun I have all week. It s a wonderful group, wonderful people. Most of them members of St. Aidan s, but not all, and I certainly am not. And that s a great thing I really enjoy doing. (How many years have you been in that same book club?) 30:01 Page 12; OH 1828, Charlotte Smokler

13 Only about I have to say that here I was reviewing books all these years and everything, I never belonged to a book club. Not that I didn t want to, but nobody ever asked me, and if I occasionally hinted to a friend that, you know, you re in a book club, it was always like, No, this is just for mothers with small children or this is. I was never invited. I could never get into a book club. A few years ago, my friend Emily Rudd told me, had been invited into this St. Aidan s book club and she said, You might like to go. Anyone can go in. So I went there and it was just wonderful, perfect for me. But it s only been maybe, I d say, two years? Three years? I don t know how long, but not a long period of time, though. But I totally appreciate it. (What did you study in college?) Well, I majored in English, which I think it s a real dumb thing to do, because you can read on your own. I think you should study something harder in college, but I didn t. There was no one around to tell me. My parents didn t really didn t know what I should take or anything like that. (Where did you go to college?) Brooklyn College, one of the city colleges of New York. So I commuted everyday to Brooklyn. (And your brother also?) My brother went to City College [of New York], because he got an engineering degree which he hated. Not hated, when he got out of the army, he went back and got a teaching certificate or degree, I don t know what, and he taught ever since. And he spent maybe one year as an engineer and I don t know how many years many, many years as a teacher. (Were your parents really proud of you?) I guess so. Yes, I think they were. It s not something that they would say day and night. But sure, they were, they did, they tried very hard for us. They had a very hard life in America, believe me. (Yeah, you ve come a long way.) Yeah, yeah, yeah. (From what was it? Avenue 5?) Between 5th Street between Avenue C and D. Page 13; OH 1828, Charlotte Smokler

14 (5th Street between Avenue C and D. And what would you say, and you re really a humble woman, but what would you say is your greatest accomplishment?) Well, you know, people always say their child, and I m very close to Henry, but I feel that s kind of a cop-out. You know, children are a different kettle of fish. I think the thing well I think the point is that at a certain my husband and I, we separated, we divorced in the 80s, but we always remain on good terms, but I think what I m proud of is that I. You know, I m not a very energetic person. I m not very aggressive. I managed to keep my job, maintain the home, raise my kid by myself for a number of years. I think that s what I m proud of. I did it. (Like you got that visit to the dentist.) [laughter] I should mention always the visit to the dentist, yeah. (Sort of similar.) Yeah. So that s about it. Being Jewish in Boulder, that s changed a lot. Because there are so many more Jews and they seem to be all over the place. I just found out, you know, it s funny, our senator, Senator Bennet, he does not I get the Forward, the English version of the Forward every week it also comes on the computer. So they say there are six Jewish senators, and then there s Senator Bennet who says that his mother is Jewish. So I don t know what that makes him. But that s the way he s described. Obviously it s not his version. [laughter] Senator Bennet, who says his mother is Jewish. So there s lots of Jews in town. And there s loads of things. I mean, if you get the JCC bulletin, there must be like 30 or 40 different organizations, none of which I belong to except Bonai, and I belong to the Sisterhood, but I don t go. But I m very attached to the congregation even though I don t go on Saturdays anymore the way I used to. Oh and I also, I now go to a Bible group at Har HaShem because a friend of mine goes there, and I know all the people from other areas and I like them, so I go to that Bible group at Har HaShem. So I m getting a little less vinegary about their service. Because I like them, and I guess it s a good congregation, but it s not my cup of tea. (Great. Well thank you so much. Is there anything else that you would want to share?) I can t think of anything. (No? Okay, great.) Can you? Page 14; OH 1828, Charlotte Smokler

15 (No. I appreciate your time, and I do want to say that although you have played down your in Jewish life in your accomplishments here, there really were a lot of people who wanted to hear what you had to say.) Well, that s good to know. Someday I hope to meet them. [laughter]. (Maybe you already have. Thank you very much.) You re very welcome. 35:24 [End of interview] Page 15; OH 1828, Charlotte Smokler