Levenson, Yetta, July 29, 1976, tape 2, side 1

Speaker1: What about the when the Irene Kaufmann settlement was founded?

Speaker2: It was founded first, as it called, Columbia. Fancy Crombie a council.

Speaker1: Well, who was Irene Kaufman?

Speaker2: That was daughter of the. The young daughter of Henry Kaufman. She had died. I think she committed suicide in those days. It was a love affair or something. And you could find that in newspapers. It'll, it'll be written up. And they named the Irene Kaufman settlement after this girl.

Speaker1: She herself was not gone.

Speaker2: Oh, I thought she did.

Speaker1: Was something about cleaning up Pittsburgh or.

Speaker2: No, no, no, no.

Speaker1: Not her. I'm confused, then. Anna held.

Speaker2: Anna Hellman.

Speaker1: Anna Hellman?

Speaker2: Yes, Hellman. She was the city nurse. She was the city nurse who had charge of the milk program and the health program for the R-in through the Irene Kaufman Center. The downstairs as you come in the building, the what today would be an outpatient, you know, would be her office, her distributing point. And you came in every day for your milk. I see. And you came in and you didn't have to have any. You wanted three quarts of milk. You got three quarts of milk. Now, you foreign people went to her. She was not Jewish, but she knew enough. She learned in her years she never got married. So. So now her years of working there, she's learned a lot of Yiddish and how to and Italian and stuff the words. And people went to her for all their family problems. Your son got in trouble. You needed a paper filled out. You didn't know how to read a certain and you went to Ann Hellman. Anna Hellman did all these things. That was extracurricular activities. Hers was really not. Hers was only supposed to take care of the health of the of the neighborhood. But she did all this.

Speaker1: It was a mental health. Yes.

Speaker2: Well, you you didn't do anything. And if if you had any kind of a little worrying, you didn't know what to take it that you'd say, go see Ann Hellman. She'll tell you where to go or who to see, you know. And she had the patience, of course, of a saint to put up with.

Speaker1: Sort of a social work. What else thing, really? What else?

Speaker2: Today you need a a grant and you'd need for an office and for women to divide up the work. You don't touch my milk powder. There were no barriers between us. No lines between the whole person. Whatever it was she took care of. Now, whether she worked, she was a city nurse that I know, whether her money came from the city or her pay or from the income of the settlement, I don't know. How would I know? No one would tell me that. But we knew that she was part. That's the only place in all the years I knew of her. Saw her. She was there. So she lived there. She died there. And that street was named for her Hellman place.

Speaker1: Oh, yes.

Speaker2: That's right. The corner there that was named for her.

Speaker1: Well, she wasn't the founder of the settlement, though. No, no, no.

Speaker2: There was a group of people. Well, there was just a write up on that not long ago. I read it. I read everything. Don't retain it all, but I read everything I possibly could never retain all these nonsense things I read. Well, once in a while they. They pop up. But there has been it was some place I read here about Darren Coffman's settlement, and they told the beginning. Now, don't forget I was 13, 12, ten. What did I care about a beginning? What did I know? I thought it would never end in my day, you see. And the people that were there were good to me, good to us all. And Sidney, Helen Teller and his wife.

Speaker1: Now, they were, what, the caretakers or something?

Speaker2: They were the two social workers who were in charge of until the day she died. And he just died himself in Chicago. They had no children and this was their whole life. She was hard of hearing. He carried a hearing aid in those days, a little box, oh by hand, every place. And he was a handsome man and they were beloved. I don't think I have ever heard anybody say they didn't like the tellers. They were the epitome of social service work. See, there have been all kinds of honors have been given to them during the years. Oh, they're held up as examples for so many things in social service work. I know, but they were they ran the place and they ran it well because there was no friction. The people that came stayed for years and years and years. I mean. And, uh, there's this. Miriam Schoenfeld. I got these were all rich women, wealthy women. They didn't have to be there. They didn't have to do these things. But they did it really for love. And because none of them, they were all came from.

Speaker1: How great was this? Pretty much nonsectarian. Or was it the German Jews in this area?

Speaker2: Oh, yes. The Road of Shalom had quite an influence at that time. The don't forget the Orthodox schools that were around here. Miller Street had a little school and some other little street had a little school washing the street, had shul. There was a million little schools around the area which catered to the man, the old man. And and nothing is that we didn't have at that time a group of of we were over at the tree of life was over in North Side. Yet in the very beginning we're 100 and some years old. Really? Yeah. Have you belonged.

Speaker1: To Tree of Life all your life? Huh? Uh huh. Your parents? No, no, my mother.

Speaker2: And there was. They lived on the hill. They went to my mother very seldom went to school. Women and the men went When they had time, they went to one of the little schools.

They didn't, but.

Speaker2: When I moved to Oakland, I got married and when I moved to Oakland, I joined the Tree of Life.

Speaker1: This was after you were married?

Speaker2: Yes. Yes. So there's my.

Speaker1: Loyalty. Oh, yes. Certificate of Loyalty. The centennial year in tribute to Mrs. Ben Levinson. The Tree of Life Congregation in Worship assembled on Friday evening, October 30th, 1964. That's enough.

Speaker2: That's Herman Halpern's.

Speaker1: Oh, yes. They express their. I want to get it for the tape. Oh, see, I got the picture.

Speaker2: That's from Israel.

Speaker1: Miami expresses its great joy at the consistent loyalty of this family during the past 30 years. May the guardian of Israel, who neither slumbers nor sleeps, watch over this family and their dear ones for many years to come. Isn't that nice? Isn't that nice? That's very nice.

Speaker2: That's my aunt from Israel. Oh. Uh huh. She was here this summer. Last summer. She has. A year's gone already.

Speaker1: You have so many marvelous pictures around. I mean, sort of peeks at some of these handsome people around here.

Speaker2: That's my son and his wife on the marriage. I married about nine years already. Oh, my baby son. Uh huh.

Speaker1: And who's this handsome man over here?

Speaker2: My oldest son. The one is doing his master's here. Uh huh. And the, uh. I don't have a picture of my daughter at all. My sister paints in California.

Speaker1: She paints? Oh, yes, Paints all these.

Speaker2: Well, that's just a copy over there. That's hers over there. That's a watercolor.

Speaker1: That's very nice. Very nice. And the, uh.

Speaker2: She was a designer of clothes, but she's arthritic. She had to give that up, So she does paintings. Uh huh. I don't know if she does very much now, but she used up till last year, so she did it.

Speaker1: And so you've well, you've been at Tree of Life at least for 30 years.

Speaker2: At least 30 years. And the, uh, my children all come from the Tree of Life. Family, the mitzvah and educator.

Speaker1: And your. Your girl, too. Yes.

Speaker2: It wasn't my mitzvah. That's mitzvah. She would have been the first girl in the Tree of Life. But that was when the building was being built. They only get done. Didn't get it done in time. By the time they got done, she was already 15, so we quit the whole deal. But she was she got extra lovely honors when she was confirmed.

From the school and from the men's club. Uh huh, yeah.

Speaker2: Quite satisfied with them. You children of today. You know, I don't have to tell you. You have to. So much forcing him. Nobody had to coax me to go to learn whatever was there I wanted. I grabbed. We all did. We tried to get everything you could get in, and especially for nothing. All this education free. Oh. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I wasted all those years.

Speaker1: Well, it certainly isn't the same. You're quite right about that.

Speaker2: The same. And you know you can. Of course, you can't turn it back and you can't change it. But I think maybe the pendulum will swing a little more to the right. We'll say possibly.

Speaker1: Usually it does tend to do that.

Speaker2: Right, because it's a shame that so many so much is here for the taking and for the asking. And people don't use it. See, because you see, I read. I read everything. Go look at that. That's garbage all in there. But I read and I read good, bad and indifferent. And I'd sooner worry if I don't have a book to read today than if I didn't cook any dinner. See? So I run to the library up here, the squirrel. I'm there three times a week. You know, So I read a lot of stuff and then I have to filter out what what I don't want. But I remember some things, you know.

Speaker1: Well, well, let's read a little.

Speaker2: What can hurt? Whatever you read can't hurt you, right? It's something you never knew before.

Speaker1: You see. Tell me a little about your work experience. You said you work out of high school.

Speaker2: Yes. I was a bookkeeper. I didn't like typing, not typing shorthand. I was not good at shorthand. First semester I made an A, then I made an E. Good heavens.

Speaker1: And that's sort of a comedown. Yeah.

Speaker2: Oh, it scared me. I never had seen any scared that. So I had a talk. Well, you see the fact that you say liberal, we still had Rinearson, who was our principal, one of the best the city has ever had in any school. He's gone, Doctor Rinearson. I think he has a family of sons who have been in the field. But you could talk to him. You could. He wasn't a man behind the door and you could go in and discuss it. And I went down and I sold him a bill of goods. I said to him, I showed him my credits. I said, I'm an excellent bookkeeper and to be a bookkeeper. Good. You had to take it for four years, not just to one say. You had to go into a bookkeeping eight practically and do it almost like today. They do it in these specialized schools. And we I showed them that I could be a very good bookkeeper. And along a terrible. What's the name?

Speaker1: Shorthand.

Speaker2: Shorthand taker I could type see enough to to get by. I didn't have to have any time you know said so he let me take the extra bookkeeping and.

Speaker1: Drop and drop the shorthand.

Speaker2: Drop the shorthand which gave me extra, gave me the credits to graduate. So I was a bookkeeper. Now I used to summertime, Why waste the whole summer? Nobody wasted a summer. In fact, they had look how far ahead they were in education that they had a school of business. What did they call it? Department store work. You know, you worked in the store and out of school, Wednesdays and Saturdays working part time.

Speaker1: You go to school part time and you got part time.

Speaker2: I got $3 a day. That was fabulous. On Wednesdays, you're out of school and on Saturdays. And the I worked in every department store in town. In my day, I worked in every department, almost mail order wrapping, uh, billing. Stock wherever they put you. You never knew when you came in. They needed you. So you worked the whole thing. And then on. On the. On the summers I would have get job down on Fifth Avenue and I would do two weeks. And all those stores, these girls going on vacation, vacation. And my other friends would have other places down there and we would take the vacation shift. Two weeks here, two weeks there, you know, and we'd work all summer that way. And that's how I got you. Get your experience. Yes. And then when I come out of high school, I got a job in the produce yards for a union. Did you know Levy? No. Levy then? No. He was the business manager of the firm. I went, got a job I had, was wearing my hair yet down in curls in the back and he came over just how they do. And he pinned up my he took my hair and he said, You're in, you're in the business now and you're supposed to be. Lady. And tomorrow you come with a hairpin. Oh, no more curls. That's how you grew up. And I worked there for over a year. And then I worked for the next place. I worked till I got married. And. Lofsky and Brooks. I was in the what they call the potato house. They really had special. These men had different specialties.

Speaker1: Were sort of done in the produce yards. Most of the time, though, you're working.

Speaker2: And that's where, uh, where we spent until I get married. I worked about six months after I got married, and my husband was a traveling, traveling salesman on the road. And I went back to work. I stopped work. I went back to work because he was away all the time. That'd be difficult. And I didn't. Well, you you get used to it. You adjust your time this way. And I helped out. This one needed a girl for a while. This one needed a girl for a while. That's how you do it in the. And my boy wasn't born till four years after I was married, so I had all this time in between. But I always liked bookkeeping seemed to me to to balance a checkbook. It was a challenge. See, to some it's a it's a horror. A horror. Well, you know, I have friends. I still go to there and balance their checkbook for them. Uh huh. And they'd call up and they didn't do this good this month.

Speaker1: Do you ever do things like income tax, that kind of thing?

Speaker2: Well, we used to see in our day the tax structure was very simple. It wasn't like today I could do my boss's income tax in those days, see, without any trouble. But as the tax structure got worse and the different new laws started to come in, you had to just. You could only get the things ready for a tax man. Yes. See, that's how I can do. And then we did double entry. So you had to really balance. It wasn't just a single entry bookkeeping. You double entry, you have to balance. Almost like a Pac-Man, you know, both sides of the fence. So to me, it was fun. I love figures to this day. Now, I didn't work except for my husband, you know, in the house until he died. Then I had to go look for work.

Speaker1: And when was this?

Speaker2: My husband's 59. 57. You don't remember?

Speaker1: 15 years, 16 years, something like that.

Speaker2: And I had to go to work and I thought nobody I had an awful time convincing anybody that you're not stupid just because you didn't have a job all those years. Yes, I worked with figures. I ran my husband set of books, you see. But that didn't count. Oh, yes, I didn't get paid for it. And they work it. Okay, well, I had a very good girl at the unemployment one with a and she said to me my hair was just starting to go gray. Then first place she says, get rid of the gray hair and take off.

Speaker1: You've had trouble with your hair. When you have jobs. Don't you take.

Speaker2: Your take ten years off, Start figure, go home, she says. I'm figure back all the kids birthdays.

Speaker1: And change them back.

Speaker2: All school. Honest to God what I did.

Speaker1: Oh, really?

Speaker2: Yes, ma'am. Oh, she told me that. And I did. And when I came up to be interviewed at the at the next around Christmas time for Christmas job, the man there at the place interviewed me a little bit and he I said I was 55. I don't remember now. 45. Anyway, this was already the new day.

Speaker1: Yes, the new you.

Speaker2: And he was startled and I thought, Oh, God, I really put my foot into this time. Uh huh. And he said, Never would I have taken you for that age. He gave me a He.

Speaker1: Gave you another ten years. How nice.

Speaker2: Wasn't that lovely? Well, that that did it then. I was fine. And I got a job in Gimbels for Christmas. I worked for the Through Gimbels. You work for the people who made the. No. Isn't that awful? The structural games. What do you call them?

Speaker1: Game thing.

Speaker2: The steel that you build the builders.

Speaker1: I know what you mean. The erector sets. Yeah.

Speaker2: Rectors. The company name. They don't call the rectors a name, you know. I work for them. You work for them through Gimbels. Gimbels. Gimbels pays a salary. They pay you a commission. I used to make over $100 a week.

Speaker1: Are you selling them or.

Speaker2: I was selling them together. I had my own counter. I didn't sell anything else.

Speaker1: Just those things.

Speaker2: So I had a lovely time. Oh, I had a ball, you know.

Speaker1: You didn't get a job as a bookkeeper?

Speaker2: No, but then I. As I say, it sort of. I could use it as reference.

Speaker1: This was just a Christmas time thing. Yes.

Speaker2: Yes, I could use it as it helped. I had to get that through a friend. You don't get it, you know? Yeah, but it was a machine. And I had never worked a bookkeeping machine, ever. So this man paid me big. Oh, big. $10 a day. But I thought that's all right. I wasn't hurting for money. I had to go and learn. I had to get back into the field. It was only two days a week, you know, which is hard to get.

Speaker1: Yeah, all that kind of way.

Speaker2: So two days a week. I got it that way, see? And I learned the girls there were very kind. They had bookkeeper. She showed me how to use the machine. She taught me. I was there over five years or six years or so. Say. And when she took sick, I took care of her. It was mostly with money, you know. So she did all the work. I did the.

Speaker1: Now, this was with.

Speaker2: Uh, Joe Friedman. The insurance. The insurance business. I was there five, six years, I believe, with him. That's how I learned. He did the bookkeeping back again. And though it was machine bookkeeping, it was still.

Speaker1: Bookkeeping, so.

Speaker2: Bookkeeping. And then I had a coronary. Then I went to Israel. Oh, I was in Israel.

Speaker1: Were you living there? Just visiting? No, I.

Speaker2: Went on a trip. Was it? I was gone about three, about four weeks. And then the next year I had a coronary.

So. To quit.

Speaker2: And I was fine afterwards and I came back to go to work. I was gone about two months. Two months? I don't. Yes. Anyway, he said he had broken in all the girls to take my place and I was out. And I tell you, too, that at that time I didn't care, you know, But that was the end of my bookkeeping work. But I could still go out and do bookkeeping. I mean, you don't forget it. I'm sure you don't forget. I can't write anymore. See, I'm full of arthritis. Do you have.

Speaker1: Arthritis, too? So.

Speaker2: But I could if I had to.

You know, I still did my own writing here. I do plenty of it.

Speaker2: I don't know if that's the way it goes in the world.

Speaker1: Yes.

Speaker2: What shall I tell you?

Speaker1: Tell me about some of the different organizations you belong to. Well, I.

Speaker2: Belong to the Jewish Home for the aged. I don't do much there. I'm just what you call a paying member. I don't give any volunteer work. I'm a Hadassah girl for many years.

Speaker1: What does Hadassah mean? Are you in Tulsa for the tape here?

Speaker2: Wait, let me think. It means so many things to many people. To me, I think it's a the height of Jewish womanhood that take care of of the. Needs Israel. The medical needs the. Was physical needs the the moral the. Oh. You. To me, it's. It's part of me. Like I can't be there. So through hadassa, I have my links to Israel. Yes. Many women have links to other organizations that are Israel minded, too. And you cannot. Say this one is better than that. That isn't the way it works. There are many roads to Israel, say, and many roads to to being a Jew and helping. So when a woman says she belongs to Pioneer or she belongs to the Habonim, I mean, the.

Now if can.

Speaker2: One group right now anyway they have all have a specific goal. Hadassah has always been in my mind the hospital C goal. And though it stretches, it goes out. C But that was something I could understand when I first started. I was a young woman.

Speaker1: Do they work exclusively for Israel?

Speaker2: I believe they do. I don't think there's a local program for Hadassah now or you see works for all over its international.

Speaker1: C Do you belong to Ort? No, no.

Speaker2: You can't. I can't First place one can't give their time to all organizations. And financially I couldn't see. I would have liked to work. Especially because you see this woman, her son, when she came to Israel with a young son. He is now ahead of of one of the garages that takes care of buses of Israel. And he was taught by ort O as he was about 15. He was taken into their school, taught the trade and taught Hebrew and everything because he came from Russia. They had been running. She had him in Siberia. She had him every place, his two children. And she was running from so many enemies at that time. Didn't know who was your enemy.

Speaker1: This is about what time, what year he was in ort.

Speaker2: Well, he's a man I should think about. 40 some late 40s or something. Something like that. Yeah.

Speaker1: So this would be back about 1930, 40 or so.

Speaker2: So it was sort of a little warmed my heart a little more than just an organization. But I can't belong to all these. And Hadassah at that time served my needs. I wanted to be connected. I'm quite Israel minded, see?

Speaker1: And have you ever considered living there?

Speaker2: Oh, I would have. I've. I would have lived there then when I was there. It wouldn't take very much to make me live there. No, my dear, I was. I keep yelling at my children. Somebody moved Israel so he can come visit them. Go. My granddaughter is going to be the one that lives is going to live there. Yeah, but I would if I had money, I would go again. The only he ever kept me back. His money.

Speaker1: Do you speak Hebrew, too?

Speaker2: No. I went through Israel with Yiddish. Mm. See, all this group, this age group is my age group.

Speaker1: Now, this is what, your cousin or she's.

Speaker2: She's not. She's far, far related. But we call her aunt.

Speaker1: Sort of a cousin type.

Speaker2: I don't even know how far she is related to my parents, but I know of her. We write to each other. And when I was there, I visited with her. I have two other families. I visit her son, and they were here in America. And I have another family, Margalita and her husband, who came here to do her master's in Pitt, stayed with my girl, her aunt, my girlfriend over here in Whiteman Street, and I lived and Marguerite went back and did her service and got married. And she has four boys, oh, four lovely children. So and I visit with her when I'm there to see. And you have a you form a bond. And I used to get so emotionally upset when I would talk about Israel, I couldn't even control tears. I would just go to pieces. So they've always teased me about that. I should have been there. I said. I told my children if anything ever happened there to me there, don't ever dare bring me back. Just leave me there, you know? So Hadassah just was fine because when I came into Israel and got to the Hadassah Hospital and walked in the doorway, I felt I was home.

Speaker1: Well. So you belong to the Jewish home for the aged and the Hadassah. So that's all I know. I don't. And the Tree of Life Synagogue. That's right, sister. That's all. Have you ever been an officer in the Sisterhood? The president for a long time. No, no.

Speaker2: No, no, no president. But everyplace else I've been.

Speaker1: You've had all the other offices, huh? You're right.

Speaker2: I'm just giving up what I have for five years. Gift shop. Oh, the treasurer of the gift shop.

Speaker1: Oh, I see. You're probably always treasure. Yeah, always the treasure.

Speaker2: Always taking care of that. And the, uh. Uh, it's just got to get to the point where physically you can't do all these things, right?