Zichronotainu: Our Treasured Memories

By Judy Ganz, Tehila Oxenhandler and Benyamin Oxenhandler

"Do you think your grandchildren will be Jewish?
I was speechless when a friend asked me this question many years ago, when my own children were still quite young. How should I respond? After all, my husband and I maintained a kosher home, observed Erev Shabbat with lighting candles and eating dinner in the dining room every Friday evening, and lived our lives as Jews in many other ways. Our three children went to religious school, Hebrew school, to a Jewish camp in the summer and on trips to Israel when they were in high school. Of course our children knew they were Jewish. As for our grandchildren, I certainly expected that they would follow in the traditions their parents had been taught.
But theyor rather he, since I have only one grandchildwas not reared in the Jewish tradition because his father is not Jewish and didnt see the value of living Jewishly

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477117224

Book preview

Zichronotainu

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Our Treasured Memories

Judy Ganz

Tehila and Benyamin Oxenhandler

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Copyright © 2012 by Judy Ganz, Tehila and Benyamin Oxenhandler.

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4771-1791-0

                Softcover        978-1-4771-1721-7

                Ebook            978-1-4771-1722-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

116465

Contents

TABLE OF PICTURES AND MAPS

DEDICATED TO

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Bi-May Benyamin

MY FATHER AND YOUNG ISRAEL

MY FATHER AND THE MILITARY

CAMP WHITE LAKE

THE BRONX

GROSSINGER’S

UNCLE MANNIE AND AUNT ESTHER

VISITING GRANDMA CHANA

A KID IN THE BRONX

AUNT SARAH AND FAMILY

MY MOTHER’S FAMILY

YESHIVA D’BRONX AND TEACHERS’ INSTITUTE

1939-1947

MY MILITARY SERVICE

JAPANESE FAMILY

RETURNING HOME FROM JAPAN

CAMP MOSHAVA

HACHSHARAH

CLEVELAND

DALLAS

TRANSITION TO TULSA

ISRAEL, 1950

TULSA

SCRANTON

U. S. Y. ON WHEELS

DANNY SIEGAL

CHAIM POTOK

SMELLS THAT TRIGGER MEMORIES

WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF?

Toldot Tehila

KAMENETZ PODOLSK AND KHOTIN

THE CHOPPERS IN RUSSIA

COMING TO AMERICA

ZAYDE AND A SEPHARDIC SHUL

GITLER AND GITLES

THE BERENSTEINS COME TO CLEVELAND, OHIO

A MODERN COUPLE

THE BORROWED SKIRT AND BLOUSE

TANTE RAISEL IN CLEVELAND

THE DAY JUDY WAS BORN

JUDY’ S WALKING

MAIL NOT COMING FROM EUROPE

TEHILA’S TRIP TO CHICAGO

SHEM RAH

SCARLET FEVER

PNEUMONIA

DAVID CATCHES SCARLET FEVER

BERENSTEIN AND AMBER

TEACHERS FROM TELSHE

READ, READ, AND READ SOME MORE

THE CLEVELAND HEBREW SCHOOLS

HASHOMER HADATI AND HIGH SCHOOL

LEIBEL RABINOWITZ

HACHSHARA

CAN HE LEARN?

BACK HOME IN CLEVELAND

A PROPOSAL AND A PROPOSITION

CHANGE IS INEVITABLE

PA AND THE STORE

YOSEF IN THE STORE

WHEN PA RECORDED HIS SONGS

WHY DO YOU WANT TO TEACH?

I AM NOT A FOOL

66 VINE STREET

179 VINE STREET

FIRE!—A BIRTHDAY PRESENT

OUR COUSINS AND FRIENDS IN ISRAEL

NECHEH

TEHILA’S WORK AT THE LIBRARY

THE MIMOSA TREE

WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL PROUD?

Yom HaAtzma-ut

TABLE OF PICTURES AND MAPS

Translation of Russian Postcard

1: Bernard (Berel) Oxenhandler, Boy Chazzan.

2: Corporal Bernard Oxenhandler.

3: Camp White Lake.

4: Yitzchak Benyamin Oxenhandler.

5: Aunt Esther and Uncle Mannie Oxenhandler in Israel.

6: Visiting Grandma Sarah:

7: Raisel Kolbert and Menachem Mendel Kolbert.

9: Oxenhandler Children.

8: Grandma Chana Kolbert and Grandpa Shlomo Oxenhandler

10: Uncle Frank and Aunt Sarah Schwebel.

11: Grandma Sarah Feigeh Manestersky and Grandpa Yitzchak HaLevy Zalkind.

12: Ima’s Business Card.

13:The Zalkind Sisters and Their Husbands:

14: Shulamit Oxenhandler.

15: Berkman Family:

16: Ben in the Army

17: Joshua Ladell, Sol Gruber.

18:Shulamit Oxenhandler.

19: Tehila Unpacking the Chevy.

20:The Stove in Dallas.

21: Bertha Wearing the Bertha Hat.

22: Raising Funds for Israel Bonds:

23: Yemenite Village 1950.

24: Yoel Caspi, Sarah Caspi, Dov Caspi.

25:Zalkind Family

26: Bertha in Oklahoma City

27: Tehila, Ima, Shulamit with Babies

28: U.S.Y. On Wheels

29: Danny Siegal.

30: Avrom Oxenhandler.

31: Avraham Mapu.

32:Lerner Family:

33:Gavriel Family

34: Shaiva, Muni, Bassya

35: Riva and Muni.

36: Riva Berenstein.

37: George Berenstein in Cuba.

38: Jack Berenstein

39: Cantor Max Gitler.

40: Shaiva and Klugman Sisters

41: Meshullem Lerner, Miriam Lerner, Fruma Kleiman

42: Bertha and Sylvia Berenstein

43: Berenstein Family in Khotin

44: George and Shaiva’s Tenth Anniversary

45: Tehila and Ben With Bassya and Gavriel

46: Muni and Tehila

47: George Berenstein and Family.

48: Lerner Family, 1934

49: Necheh Litman and Family

50: Uncle Fischel Gitles.

51: Judy Berenstein, 1953.

52: Shmuel and Sarah Nesia Berenstein.

53: Dr. A. H. Friedland.

54: Rabinowitz Brothers and Sisters.

55: Leibel and Sisters

56: Hachshara

57: Tehila Berenstein

58: Tehila and Benyamin Oxenhandler.

59: Wedding Pictures

60: George Berenstein.

61: Shaiva Berenstein.

62: Berenstein Family

63: George and Jack in the Store

64: 9225 Adams Avenue,

65: Some Cousins

66: Four Generations

67: State of Israel Certificate

68: Jack Berenstein

69: Cousins on Chanukah

70: Four Generations of Violin Players

71: Suez Cannel, 1973.

72: The Kugelmass and Wartski Families

73: Dr. Samuel Wartski

74: Mirel Lerner and Family

75: Mimosa Tree.

76: Newspapers Announce the Birth of Israel

77: Chedva and Yacey Margalit

Map 1: Map: From Kamanets-Podolsky to Fergana

Map 2: Map of the Middle East.

Map 3: Map of British Mandate of Palestine

Map 4: Map of U N Partition Plan, 1947

DEDICATED TO

Our sisters and brothers,

   Our daughters and sons,

      Our grandchildren, and in good time

         Our great grandchildren.

Also, all our dear friends

whose lives have touched ours in so many ways.

Benyamin, Tehila, and Judy

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It’s a good thing that Tehila and I had no idea about what this project required when we began—way back in 2004! I expected that I would `tape-record Tehila and Ben’s stories, transcribe them, edit the transcriptions with Tehila’s help, and then print them out. Done.

We learned that the process was a little more involved, especially after Tehila suggested we add photos to our text. Fortunately, at each unexpected complication, we found wonderful people to help us. And we’d like to acknowledge them here. Without their help we would never have been able to accomplish what we set out to do: produce a family history that we’re proud of as a gift to share with our children, their children, and all who follow them.

I would especially like to thank Bruce Skelly and Rose Firestone. Bruce was always ready to help me with whatever computer problem I was having at the time, and over time there were many problems. Rose came to my home regularly, for weeks, to teach me the basics of Photoshop and to use her creative artistic talent and her computer skills to bring old photographs back to life.

In this age of instant communication with iPads, Skype, and cloud computing, Tehila found that the people at the West Hartford Public Library were still often the best resources for help and information. Susan Hansen taught Tehila how to scan photos and attach them to e-mail letters. Janet Murphy showed her how to access and use Hebrew fonts on the computer. And Martha Church offered her support and encouragement throughout this project.

Years ago, Dora Rytman brought her time and expertise in Classical Russian to translate the inscriptions on the back of 28 family pictures from the 1920s to the 1930s. She identified the people in these pictures so that we now know who they were and how they were related to us.

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As an eternal symbol to the never to be forgotten children of Shaiva and Grisha Berenstein. From the mother and sisters Rachel, Beila and Necha and friend Boris Urban. Adieu. (See page 220.)

Cobey Bartlett Smith, Tehila and Ben’s friend for many, many years, took home the original batch of blotchy, scanned photos and brought back beautifully reclaimed pictures. He gave us a major boost by showing us what could be done with the old, bent and tattered pictures. He recruited his friend, Tony Delibero, to work on the scan of a very badly torn wedding photograph of Bernard and Esther Oxenhandler—the only one we had—and Tony performed a computer miracle and returned to us a wonderfully restored picture.

My older son, Stuart Ganz, worked with Tehila long distance by phone—from Hawaii to Connecticut—teaching her how to e-mail her scanned pictures.

Our sister, Bertha Gold, and Yosef and David Oxenhandler and Sari London, Tehila and Ben’s three children, offered us the encouragement we needed by expressing their enthusiastic interest in our project.

To all these people, and others who also believed our work was valuable, we offer our heartfelt thanks.

INTRODUCTION

Do you think your grandchildren will be Jewish?

I was speechless when a friend asked me this question many years ago, when my own children were still quite young. How should I respond? After all, my husband and I maintained a kosher home, observed Erev Shabbat with lighting candles and eating dinner in the dining room every Friday evening, and lived our lives as Jews in many other ways. Our three children went to religious school, Hebrew school, to a Jewish camp in the summer and on trips to Israel when they were in high school. Of course our children knew they were Jewish. As for our grandchildren, I certainly expected that they would follow in the traditions their parents had been taught.

But they—or rather he, since I have only one grandchild—was not reared in the Jewish tradition because his father is not Jewish and didn’t see the value of living Jewishly.

As my grandson grew older, I realized I wanted him to know, if not the vast Jewish heritage, at least the history and stories of his own family, his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, since that’s all the history I had access to, and that only in the most meager outline. So I decided to ask my sister, Tehila Berenstein Oxenhandler, what stories she remembered about our family, how they lived in the old country, what made them decide to come to America, how they came, and what they faced when they arrived. I turned to Tehila because she is the oldest of our generation, heard more stories from the previous generation, and has lived during one of the most traumatic and one of the most amazing periods of Jewish history.

Tehila agreed to share her treasured memories of our family’s history and asked that I also record her husband’s memories of his family. So in the spring of 2004, I went to their home at 36 Hammick Drive, West Hartford, Connecticut, tape-recorded some of what they remembered, and then spent the next few years working with Tehila to put together these memories for the benefit of our children, their children, and future generations. These are the stories that tell how our real, flesh-and-blood predecessors led their lives and how they sometimes had to make difficult decisions. We are their beneficiaries.

This book, then, is my answer to my friend’s question.

The only way you achieve a deep sense of self is to know your own beginnings. Rabbi Chaim Potok, American novelist and scholar—and childhood friend of Benyamin Oxenhandler

Judy Berenstein Ganz

Castro Valley, California

July 2012

Bi-May Benyamin

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(In the Days of Benyamin)

MY FATHER AND YOUNG ISRAEL

Judy: Let’s start with your telling me about your family.

Ben: My father, Bernard Oxenhandler, was born on Broome Street on the east side of Manhattan. He was an American born, modern orthodox Jew who happened to have an outstanding, amazing singing voice. When my father was 11 or 12 years old, he was a boy chazzan (cantor). We have posters from all over the United States featuring him: Berel Oxenhandler, the wonder boy cantor.

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Picture 1: Bernard (Berel) Oxenhandler, Boy Chazzan.

In 1907 and 1908 my father and his brother, Max or Mannie, organized a teenage minyan (quorum of at least ten people). Why? Because in those days most of the Jews who congregated on the east side of New York had immigrated from Eastern Europe and followed mostly Eastern European customs. These were not necessarily universal Jewish customs, but the customs of the Eastern European Jews. To whit, according to their tradition, unless you are a married man, you cannot be a chazzan and daven far dem omed (lead the prayers from the lectern). You have to be married. Even the honor of having an aliyah (being called up to read from the Torah) was usually given to a married person because he was considered mature; he was responsible.

The only exception was being called to the Torah as a bar mitzvah (coming of age). The entire bar mitzvah celebration consisted of nothing more than the boy’s being called to the Torah on a Monday or a Thursday morning, the weekdays when the Torah is read in the synagogue, and then offering whoever attended the service a little herring, some rugelach (pastry), and a little schnapps (whiskey) at the end of the service. And that was the bar mitzvah. It was nothing like the elaborate, choreographed and expensive affairs we have today.

My father and Uncle Mannie and their friends were growing up in a new, free American society, not a European society. They took the bull by the horns and decided one day that they were going to form their own minyan (prayer quorum). These were teenagers, maybe some were a little bit older, some were younger. They rented, or they used, a store in downtown Manhattan where they had a minyan which included men and boys and girls. They had some kind of separation between the boys and the girls. It’s not clear to me whether they had a real mechitzah (separating curtain) or what. Whatever they did was according to what the minhag (custom) was. The significant point is that the young people could daven (lead the prayers), could read from the Torah, and could sing their own melodies, some of which they wrote themselves. Other melodies they learned and then popularized.

For example, now we sing, "Bey, bey ahnah rahcheetz," (a Shabbat morning prayer). My father wrote that melody. There are also a number of nigunim (melodies)—many that are part of the regular service today—that were either written by my father or my uncle or popularized by them and introduced into the service. Their services were so successful that it got to the point that the parents begged the children to come back.

"We’ll give you an aliyah in the regular shul." So the kids compromised and agreed that once a month they would go back. The parents realized that they couldn’t win and that the kids really had a point. As some of the older people in the congregation died, the parents needed the younger people to read from the Torah; they needed the younger people to daven and lead the prayers. And that’s what happened. This was in the early 1900s when a breakthrough for continuity was needed, and it happened. The kids called themselves Young Israel, which is what they were. They were young people. They were modern Israel. And that was the beginning of the Young Israel movement, which in the eastern part of the United States grew. There was, until very recently, even in Cleveland, a Young Israel.

Unfortunately, in recent years—I say it’s unfortunate because here in Hartford and in other places—the new members have put a stricter interpretation on the traditions so that the current practice is not as modern as it used to be when Young Israel was first started at the turn of the last century. If anything, I think the people in the Hartford Young Israel have reverted in terms of their attitude. They were going back to the old Eastern European style.

There was an article published recently about the early history of the Young Israel, which made note of the fact that Young Israel was founded and led by Bernard Oxenhandler and Mannie Oxenhandler, my father and my uncle.

MY FATHER AND THE MILITARY

My father continued singing until he joined the United States Army in 1917-18. When he was in the army, he served as a singer at Camp Upton, Long Island where Irving Berlin was also stationed. Some of the songs that Irving Berlin wrote my father sang because Irving Berlin couldn’t sing them worth a damn. But as everyone knows, Berlin could write beautiful music. One of the songs that comes to mind is Over There. If my father hadn’t sung Over There again and again at the army base, the song wouldn’t have become so popular. My father helped to make it a classic by singing it at the army base in those early years.

Sometime during his stay in the army, my father had some throat problems. A doctor operated on him, and as a result my father lost his singing voice. It was a bum operation. My father spent the rest of his life suing the government, to no avail. If the military had had the laws then that it has today, he would have been compensated, but in those days compensation was unheard of. The surgery wasn’t considered service related, which technically it wasn’t. But he was in the army, and losing his singing voice was a terrible blow to him. He would have had an excellent career as a cantor, as a chazzan. It’s interesting to me, when I remember, he never spoke about his experiences and I never prodded him to talk about them. I regret now that I didn’t because we would know more about that part of his life.

What he did tell us about those times was meeting Irving Berlin, sitting with him, composing with him, and then being able to sing the songs. My father collaborated, but he never got credit for his contribution. That’s also part of the ego trip typical of Irving Berlin and other celebrities like him.

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Picture 2: Corporal Bernard Oxenhandler.

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Picture 3: CAMP WHITE LAKE.

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CAMP WHITE LAKE

I mentioned that both my Uncle Mannie and my father Bernard helped to organize the Young Israel. Mannie had a very good voice, not as chazzanish (cantorial) as my father’s, I understand, but a beautiful voice. In the ‘20s, they joined together in a partnership up in the Catskills at a family resort called Camp White Lake, just a two-hour ride from New York City. It was one of the first kosher hotels in the mountains. It included a hotel, a lovely manor, and small cottages, according to the pictures I’ve seen. I lived there from the time I was born in Monticello for my first five years until they sold it during the Depression. At first, business was fantastic. Camp White Lake was one of the first and, as a matter of fact, the only hotel in its time that was modern orthodox, kosher, with a full athletic program including a sports counselor and entertainment. Nothing compared to the elaborate hotels of twenty years later, of course. For its time, it was really outstanding.

The hotel was a joint venture between my father and my uncle with financial backing from his brother-in-law, Aunt Sara’s husband Frank Schwebel. Frank helped them with the financing when they first bought the hotel and continued as a silent partner. My father and my uncle ran it. In those days, as I pointed out many years later, when it came to kashrut (Jewish dietary laws), there was no need for a mashgiach