Partisan Speakers at the Maleveh Malkel in Milwaukee
Transcript
- --over and over again about the stories--
- I don't know which stories, but the new stories,
- the old stories.
- I tried to capture some of these stories in the two volumes
- that I put together on the Jewish tradition.
- But he was a great raconteur, a great storyteller.
- How would my father respond to a situation
- whenever I have to face a business decision
- or an ethical decision?
- And since leaving the world of academia
- into the world of real estate, I have
- confronted with many, many difficult ethical decisions.
- And I've not always made the right decision, I think.
- But my father had a certain--
- I'm not sure my father made the right decision always,
- either, businesswise.
- But he was a very honest, and direct, and ethical person.
- And he had this way of making everybody feel comfortable.
- Any time that you came to his house, or at a party,
- or wherever, he was always in a wonderful mood.
- He never let the memories of the past bog him down.
- And sometimes, they got us through.
- I don't know.
- After interviewing him and after seeing this film,
- you will probably wonder how he was able to do it himself.
- He was more alive than anybody I ever knew who
- had not gone through the Shoah.
- And those are the memories that I remember most, is his jokes
- and his life force that passes on to us, and to Mrs. Adela,
- and to my brother Shloime, and to my mother's mother, and to--
- and then to Yehuda, who has been such a wonderful companion
- to my mother and to his family.
- Mr. Lautner.
- Yeah, and to Yehuda, et cetera.
- So I will introduce this-- this is not
- supposed to be a sad occasion because my father would not
- want it to be a maudlin, sad occasion.
- So maybe, I'll take a--
- A break.
- --a break.
- Let me take a break for a few minutes.
- Kept in your heart for a long time.
- Come up and say it, really.
- It's about time someone heard.
- I'd like it first from my mother to say a few words.
- [NON-ENGLISH], everybody.
- Dear friends, [NON-ENGLISH],, I like to--
- my children came to give honors to their father, who--
- 10 years-- he died 10 years ago, and they came--
- this occasion.
- And the Bible says, [HEBREW].
- Honor your father and mother.
- Why do you say first the father and then the mother?
- Because the children are close to the mother always.
- And the father is always not home.
- So that's why they mention first the father, then the mother.
- Now, I hope my children will keep up their Yahrzeit
- for their father and mother [INAUDIBLE]
- or before, whatever.
- What else should I tell you?
- Now, I can tell you one thing--
- Congregation Agudas Beth Jehudah is a special, special here
- in Milwaukee.
- It's like one family.
- We have a special dream, the rebbetzin Leah Twerski.
- And we have a princess and a prince,
- have the Michel Twerski and Feige Twerski.
- And all the soldiers, they're working together
- like one family.
- And we hope to stay.
- And the soldiers, they are real soldiers.
- Whatever Rabbi Michel says, and Feige,
- and the rebbetzin, they are doing very well.
- I want to tell you another story, a legend.
- There was a king.
- He had a lot of children.
- On the old age, when he got sick, old and sick,
- he call his children and said, children, go out
- and bring some branches.
- Everyone should bring a branch from a tree.
- So the bring the branches and put them together.
- And he says, break it.
- He said to oldest son, break it.
- He tried to break, couldn't he do this.
- So he take apart-- they took apart the branches.
- And he gave individual, and easier to break.
- You see.
- When we Jews, we stay together--
- congregations or families, then nobody can break us.
- And we hope to-- we should always stay together and come
- for simchas.
- Thank you very much.
- [APPLAUSE]
- OK.
- Now just my brother, Shlomo, and then Bella, and that's it.
- No, that's enough.
- I think it's appropriate to sing because my father would always
- sing.
- This is-- see, if you knew my father,
- you wouldn't believe he went through any of this.
- Because his whole life, he was b'simcha.
- Everything he did was b'simcha.
- And he used to say--
- there used to be some Jews who came to America,
- and they used to say, [YIDDISH]----
- it's hard to be a Jew.
- Well, the children of those Jews who kvetched,
- you don't see those children anymore.
- Those children are not in the shuls.
- They're not involved in Jewish affairs
- because if it's a problem for the parents,
- and the parents used to kvetch about being Jewish,
- the children left.
- My father would say, [YIDDISH],, that it's always
- good to be a Jew.
- And you should be--
- he always used to sing.
- Everything he did was that he was very happy
- that he was able to be alive, he was able to have children,
- and to have naches.
- I should rather.
- [SINGING IN HEBREW]
- I'll shorten it further.
- A little bit-- we came here--
- my older brother, Jack, and my sister, and myself--
- to do-- to come for both the koved of my father--
- zichrono livracha-- for his 10th Yahrzeit,
- and also to the honor of my mother and to her wonderful
- husband, Reb Yehuda, Zayde Yehuda to my children,
- that these are--
- that I think that are-- what our father left
- us was a very important message about what
- do you do with your life and the type of life
- that a person builds.
- We were brought up greener.
- We were [NON-ENGLISH].
- We came here-- some of our cousins are here tonight.
- And my father couldn't speak English.
- And he was, perhaps to some of them, uncivilized.
- And he didn't have good--
- and he came to America, and he brought something very unique
- to the whole family.
- And all our cousins--
- because I didn't have zaydes and--
- but I had cousins, a lot of cousins.
- And we used to get together.
- And my father would always be the center.
- My father would tell stories.
- And he would tell [NON-ENGLISH].
- In everything, he would be--
- he would always look to be able to make people happy.
- My father had a chance, in 1936, to leave.
- He didn't have to stay.
- My father saw the writing on the wall.
- His brothers left, Uncle Maurice left in 1921.
- Uncle Boris left in 1936.
- So why did my father stay?
- The reason my father stayed--
- and he explained to me-- we sat in the sukkah once,
- Hoshanah Rabbah, in 1976.
- And I don't know if my sister knows this story,
- but she wasn't married yet.
- And he says, [YIDDISH].
- He says, bocherim yeshiva, you have
- to sign a shidduch for your sister.
- All right?
- And he says, I'll tell you, what did I do from 1930 till 1940?
- You know why I stayed?
- That just-- I took--
- I stayed to take care of my parents
- and also to make shidduchim for my sisters.
- And he went around, he raised money, he made [? nadens, ?]
- he found-- he went to this city and that city in order
- to find a bocher in order to be able to marry off his sisters.
- That's what he said.
- He stayed for chesed.
- During the war years, his gevurah
- was an expression of-- also of his kindness.
- After the war, my brother was born in Równe in 1944.
- In Równe-- you couldn't live in the city of Równe
- unless you had a authorization.
- And there were people, refugees, that
- did not have authorization.
- My father, I think, my mother, how many people
- stayed in their house?
- It was 10 in one room.
- 10 in one room.
- There was a Sefer that my father came after the war with two
- Sefer Torahs on back.
- He left Równe.
- Because the Sefer as a gratitude for letting
- him live in his house-- and he had
- 10 people living in his house.
- How big was the house?
- It was--
- Two rooms or three rooms?
- Was one room only?
- The whole room-- the whole house was one room in Równe.
- And that means my father had anything,
- he shared it with 10 people.
- And when he came to Milwaukee, if anybody knew my house,
- it was a very interesting place.
- We had Michel Achim stayed in my house.
- And we had bums.
- We had different-- matters where you stayed.
- If you were a rabbi, you stayed on the first floor.
- If you were a bum, apparently, you stayed in the Basement
- We had different--
- but it was-- but my father would get up early in the morning
- to do a favor for somebody.
- He would run in fire and water to do a chesed for somebody.
- And everything-- we didn't miss anything.
- We didn't have too much.
- And we didn't-- but we didn't--
- I said-- did I have a bicycle?
- I don't think I had a bicycle.
- But I didn't even know that I missed a bicycle,
- just didn't know that I missed it.
- All right?
- And the-- whatever we had, there was a tremendous amount
- of love.
- And that type of--
- how to be able to give and how to give our lives, I think,
- has been passed down to us and children.
- And we hope to be able to pass it on to our children also.
- Oh, my god.
- [APPLAUSE]
- There are two-- first, I want to thank everyone
- for coming this evening and making
- it so special to commemorate the Yahrzeit of my father.
- Those of you who knew him or those of you
- who now get a taste of what he was
- like, this is very specially--
- this is a very special evening.
- There are two middos that we learned from the personalities
- in the Torah.
- One is chesed, and one is gevurah.
- Chesed is loving kindness that we learn especially
- from Abraham Avinu.
- And the other is gevurah, which is strength, physical strength,
- but also strength of character and integrity.
- And those are two characteristics
- that my father passed on to us.
- One was his strength of character, his integrity.
- We see what he lived through, how difficult it
- was for him to make a living when he came, and had
- to change jobs many times because he wouldn't
- work on Shabbos.
- And no matter what, he had tremendous integrity
- and strength of character.
- And the other, that my brother Shlomo alluded to,
- was the tremendous chesed we saw examples
- in our house of [HEBREW] and always making everyone
- feel good and feel comfortable.
- And these are things, caring about other people
- and integrity, that are important lessons
- that we learned.
- And it was important having living examples
- of that in our-- growing up in our family,
- from my mother and my father.
- And though this is-- on one hand, it's sad to remember,
- not having my father around anymore,
- this is also an evening of simcha.
- We're in the month of Adar.
- And we say, [HEBREW].
- And it's apropos that this should be in this month
- because Adar is a month of simcha, Purim,
- and also, it characterized perfectly my father,
- who did everything simcha.
- No matter what he went through, no matter what stories
- he told us about the war, it was always
- with a certain excitement and a certain joy.
- And he just loved life and loved everything so much.
- And my father told me that many times, that he said,
- you know, Bella, I was never better than anyone
- that I should survive, never better than any of my brothers
- and sisters that I should live and they should not.
- He said, but I realized that I survived for one reason only,
- and that's to pass on Torah and Yiddishkeit to my children.
- And I strive-- and I think you all
- know that my brothers and I were all zoykhe to have a son a year
- after my father died.
- And all of us named this son Yisroel after my father.
- And I hope that we are zoykhe to pass on to our Yisroels
- and to all of our other children the chesed, and the integrity,
- and the gevurah, and the simcha of doing
- mitzvahs that our father taught us to our own children.
- Thank you very much for coming.
- And I also wanted to thank them.
- And I've done this in my mind many times and never--
- you have good intentions, but unless you do them,
- it doesn't really count--
- the many people and the kindness that people
- showed when my father was ill and and to my mother
- afterwards-- and how I always wanted
- to thank you so much for it.
- [APPLAUSE]
- What am I preparing special--
- Oh, no problem.
- Don't worry.
- They wanted to speak.
- I am all [YIDDISH].
- That's it.
- I have nothing else.
- This man has done it.
- He probably should be in bed, I guess.
- This is not going well.
- I'll leave my coat.
- I forgive for the informality or the formality
- of the [INAUDIBLE] children.
- First of all, it's really a remarkable sight
- to be able to do this in the way in which we're doing this.
- I can't envision another circumstance
- in which this kind of celebration
- could be done in the way in which it
- is being done, without a great deal of discomfort.
- Sitting here in the room are Tante Faige
- and her husband, Yehuda.
- And we're talking about part of a very intense and very
- significant part of Tante Faygeh's life,
- namely, her first husband.
- It's not only a testimony to Reb Yehuda,
- but it is also a great testimony to the relationships
- that both Reb Yehuda and Tante Faige had
- before they met one another.
- They were longstanding relationships,
- 40 years and better, of integrity, and decency,
- and caring, and loving.
- And precisely because Srulik Porter.
- Was the kind of person that he was,
- there was able to be this cosmic match, which brought together,
- for the third portion of both of their lives,
- for the remaining 40 years that we wish them
- both, these two people who are able, without any sense
- of discomfort or guilt, to be kind to one
- another, caring, loving, sensitive companions.
- It is a beautiful sight to behold, the two of them
- together, whenever they are walking to shul
- or whenever they're together at some event.
- And that's because their respective companions and mates
- before they met one another enjoyed a relationship that
- was very special.
- It was real.
- It was authentic.
- And it was something that allowed for loving and caring
- to continue.
- So I want to begin my remarks by wishing
- Tante Faige and the very wonderful companion in life,
- her husband, Reb Yehuda, 40 years--
- 20 more years--
- 40 more years of good health and of caring for one
- another, companionship, and happiness,
- and naches, and strength, and all of the things that we
- so sincerely would like for people
- who have graced our community and have blessed us
- with such very wonderful gifts.
- Amen.
- The children have described Srulik.
- And I dare say that there's very little
- that one can say that can improve
- upon the picture and the description
- that they've already so wonderfully done.
- But I think that there are certain debts of gratitude
- that need to be set.
- Srulik was part of a new phase in Jewish American history
- with the immigration of the survivors of the Holocaust,
- who brought a whole new energy system with them--
- sometimes, very positive, sometimes, very negative.
- The American Jewish scene in the late '40s and in the early '50s
- struggled to integrate these new energies.
- We were clearly not capable of overcoming
- the awesome shattering, searing memory, which
- virtually everybody brought along
- with them with the little baggage
- that they carried when they came here.
- At the same time, they were all heroic.
- They all sought to create and to build.
- Unfortunately, few were as successful as was
- Srulik Porter.
- The children have identified chesed and gevurah
- amongst the ingredients of his success.
- And I'm confident that those are the magic of the chemistry that
- was so important.
- He was not only the center of interest
- when he threw a party for the relatives,
- he was the center of interest when
- he came in the morning to the davening or in the evening
- to the davening.
- He was capable of delighting our minyan to stories,
- to jokes, to lectures.
- He not infrequently lectured me about everything
- that I was doing wrong.
- He was-- he really was not at all embarrassed to do so.
- And I must tell you that to be criticized by Srulik
- was something that I was able to receive much,
- much better than I had been able to react
- to the majority of the criticism to which I am regularly
- subjected.
- And he did it with a great deal of sincerity.
- And he really cared.
- And there's absolutely no way--
- in no way in which someone can deny
- the efficacy or the power of criticism
- delivered in that mode.
- In the mid '60s, the American Jewish scene
- began a new transition.
- That transition carried us into this Renaissance
- in which young people who were totally estranged
- or who came from less traditional backgrounds
- suddenly found their way back to the synagogue.
- They came in to shul and they were total strangers.
- The Orthodox service has very little orchestration.
- Some people are standing and some people are sitting.
- And some people are ahead and some people are far behind.
- And some people are conversing.
- And some people are dreaming.
- There's all kinds of things that occur during an Orthodox,
- but it is certainly not the paragon of order
- and the kind of structure that one is wont to find elsewhere.
- Shlomo said that Mr. Porter spoke a broken English.
- That's true.
- Shlomo described him as a person who
- might have been viewed by others as something
- less than sophisticated.
- Maybe that's true.
- I certainly don't know many people who reacted that way.
- But the remarkable thing is that all of those new people who
- came in, who wandered into shul, and sat down, and trembled
- a little bit, and said to themselves, what
- am I doing here, I don't know what's happening suddenly
- found themselves surrounded by a very strong hand.
- Mr. Porter would walk up, he would embrace them,
- he would give them a warm sholem aleichem.
- And his warmth would immediately suffuse this person.
- He immediately felt at home.
- He would take the Siddur, which they were holding upside down,
- and he would point out what they're doing.
- And he would sit with the person until such time
- as they really felt comfortable.
- And he did this time after time, Shabbos after Shabbos.
- Nobody asked him.
- And nobody sought him out.
- That was his being an ambassador of the [INAUDIBLE]..
- He was an emissary of remarkable goodwill.
- And because of that warmth, if you
- ask today many of the young people who have traveled very,
- very far from their point of departure what
- made their journey through Yiddishkeit such a success,
- they will go back to their earliest memories,
- and they will talk about this character called
- Srulik Porter, who immediately surrounded them
- in a cocoon of warmth and helped them
- become a member of the congregational family.
- And the thing that transmitted itself
- was not his piety and not many of the other things
- that we were talking about in and of themselves.
- What transmitted itself was the fact that everything he did
- was magic.
- There was no put-on.
- This was not somebody who was wearing a uniform.
- This was something that flowed from the very essence
- of his being.
- He was genuinely religious.
- He was genuinely a happy, life-affirmative person.
- He was authentically a strong person.
- He was genuinely a very warm and embracing person all
- of these things were as natural as the sun coming up.
- And it was an undeniable power that few could fail to react to
- in the most positive way.
- So many of our what is today called baalei teshuva, those
- who have made the trip, who have returned to Yiddishkeit, are--
- trace their Yiddishkeit, trace their growth
- to the appearance--
- the unexpected appearance of someone
- who would probably be the least probable person to do hero
- work.
- Today, we have organizations of those people who
- are engaged in trying to attract young families
- and young singles back to their traditional roots.
- And we spend days and days trying
- to find ways of becoming more effective.
- And it's a very exciting thing to behold.
- If Mr. Porter would appear at one of those conventions,
- I suspect that he would have very
- little to say because what he did was not a product of having
- gone to the university and learned the skill,
- it was a product of every fiber of his being.
- And he would get up and he would make
- baalei teshuvas of everybody who was
- trying to make baalei teshuvas.
- And he would teach them a lesson,
- a lesson that we are all Talmidim of his,
- that we are most effective when we are real, that we can best
- touch people religiously when we care about them physically,
- and emotionally, and every other which way.
- So one of the pioneers of Milwaukee's movement
- is Srulik Porter, the man whose memory we treasure tonight.
- And it is a memory that continues
- to warm every heart of anybody who knew him.
- He lives in every corner, nook, and crevice of this shul.
- I don't know of many people whose visage
- is etched so indelibly and so brightly into my mind.
- I see him just as though he were right there.
- I see him with his little song.
- I see him with his joke, and with his stories,
- and his editorial comments, and his caring.
- And I believe that presence will live on
- in the portals of this shul and in the many memories
- of everyone who was privileged to know him as a person, who,
- amongst all of the people that we've known
- throughout our lifetimes, was an authentic, genuine, real person
- that we could respect without reservation.
- And for that reason, this Yahrzeit
- is a very just tribute.
- We salute the memory of Srulik Porter.
- And we are grateful for all that he has given us,
- a gift that continues to give.
- One time-- when I became frum, I stopped
- shaking hands with women.
- I wouldn't shake.
- So there are some people here that
- still don't understand that I don't shake hands with them.
- That's me.
- [? Tillah-- ?] 27 years, I've been telling her,
- I don't shake hands.
- It's me and my little Shloimele.
- I don't know.
- So one time, I think I was in the drugstore,
- sitting in your father's drugstore.
- And he had a goyishe partner.
- He was also a pharmacist.
- He had a part-- another pharmacist there?
- He had there another pharmacist.
- Had another pharmacist there.
- He had another pharmacist there.
- And we met him another place.
- And he says-- and I'm walking with my father with him.
- And his wife-- and he's saying hello.
- His wife is there.
- And I didn't know what to do exactly.
- So my father says, let me explain.
- My son does not shake hands with women.
- He is a very holy man.
- He sometimes doesn't even touch his wife.
- And he diffused the whole situation.
- And we did this once in Fish Creek.
- We went to a beach.
- And we finally found this little beach in Fish Creek
- where I could go swimming.
- And it was 10 feet of sand.
- And I went back to change.
- My father stayed there.
- He turned around.
- All of a sudden, there was a lady laying on the beach.
- He went up to the lady, says, from all the beaches
- in Wisconsin, you had to pick this beach.
- You can swim anyplace.
- But my son, he can't swim anyplace.
- You see, he needs a little private beach.
- And he says, but--
- and the woman get dressed, and she went to another beach.
- Thank you so much for coming here.
- Listen to me.
- I know what I'm doing.
- I wasn't thrown on a boat.
- I doubt it.
- [SINGING IN HEBREW]
- Yeah, take-- Sheila, take with this one.
- Show me how.
- Just press this one.
- It's already forwarded, just take it.
- We'll take it, we'll take it.
- [SINGING IN HEBREW]
- Just a minute.
- I don't even know where I'm looking.
- [SINGING IN HEBREW]
- You press this blue button.
- Oh, Sheila, you get in on the picture.
- Well, first, let's see with my father.
- Then I should get--
- Oh, all right.
- No, you come in.
- You're supposed to look right here.
- He's going.
- He's running.
- OK, hold on.
- Get ready, hold on.
- OK.
- All right.
- Hold on, wait a minute.
- Make two rows here.
- Here.
- Cheers, Mauricio.
- Sing, sing, sing.
- [SINGING IN HEBREW]
- Very good.
- Thank you.
- That's all?
- Right on time.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Maleveh Malkel
- Date
-
interview:
1989 March 26
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
1 videocassette (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..
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- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
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Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The video "Partisan Speakers at the Maleveh Malkel in Milwaukee" was produced on March 26, 1989 by the Holocaust Survivors Project of Newton, MA as part of a project to document the testimonies of Holocaust survivors in the Newton, MA area. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received a copy of the interview from Dr. Jack Porter.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:16:42
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