Marlene Finkelstein, June 23, 2014

Marlene Finkelstein, June 23, 2014

Marlene Finkelstein talks about growing up in New York City, attending Hunter College, and then coming to Allentown at the suggestion of her aunt and uncle to meet a nice young man, Arnan Finkelstein. After Marlene married Arnan and moved to Allentown she started a family and got immersed in the Jewish community. Marlene and her dear friend Maxine Tanenbaum (now Kline) started an evening Hadassah study session and later the Hakol (monthly Jewish newspaper published by the Jewish Federation). Marlene returned to school part-time to earn an MSW (Masters of Social Work). She then worked in the field of psychology/social work for more than twenty-five years. .

Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives

Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives

2014-06-23

Copyright remains with the interview subject and their heirs.

video

LVTNT-23

Susan Clemens-Bruder

Marlene Finkelstein

01:00:55

5.4 June 23, 2014 Marlene Finkelstein, June 23, 2014 LVTNT-23 1:00:56 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Marlene Finkelstein Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 FinkelsteinMarlene_20140623 1.0:|21(4)|36(6)|53(5)|68(15)|85(6)|100(7)|119(10)|136(2)|147(7)|162(2)|175(4)|188(17)|205(11)|224(3)|239(13)|256(8)|273(5)|294(3)|313(5)|326(15)|341(10)|360(16)|377(14)|396(3)|411(6)|430(10)|447(10)|468(2)|495(12)|520(7)|539(2)|560(3)|583(13)|600(16)|619(5)|642(11)|669(11)|694(14)|715(16)|732(15)|757(17)|774(8)|791(3)|804(3)|823(8)|844(10)|863(10)|884(4)|911(6)|928(19)|945(8)|960(17)|979(8)|1008(8)|1035(6)|1058(5)|1081(7)|1098(13)|1119(3)|1156(6)|1173(10) 0 https://youtu.be/_gD3b7chGqs YouTube video 0 Introduction - Marlene Finkelstein née Freedman SC: Today is Monday, June 23rd 2014 and interview with Marlene Finkelstein. So can you say your whole name, when you were born, where you were born to put yourself into context.&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: Sure, I'm Marlene, my middle name Barbara, that I never use, and my maiden name is Friedman and I was born on January 29, 1943. I believe in the Bronx in New York. 0 43 Family History—Mother's Childhood, 1914 to 1930 SC: So can we go back to your parents and grandparents and great grandparents? As far back as you know. Whatever you can do.&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: I don't know as much about my mother's family. My mother's name was Marilyn Friedman - actually, her real name I believe was Minnie, and she hated that name and eventually legally changed it to Marilyn. Her maiden name was Sobel, and she was the daughter of Molly and Joseph Sobel, both of whom I believe were born in the States. I never knew either one of them ; they both died before I was born. As a matter of fact my mother's mother died when my mother was 9 years old. Her father wasn't a nice man, so she told me. He had another woman he was keeping while he had his wife and six children to care for. Their life was not a good one and when my mother's mother, Molly died, my mother was nine, her father took my mother's three older siblings and went to Boston and married the woman that he had been seeing. And actually had a couple more children with her who I - I have relatives somewhere that I have no knowledge of. And my mother refused to go with him because she was very angry with him, and she had two younger brothers. They went to live with an aunt for a short period of time, and the aunt couldn't keep them, so they went into an orphanage. 0 305 Father's Family History MF: My father is Sydney Freidman. His real name was Joshua. And the Hebrew version of Joshua was Yahushua. The Yiddish diminutive version was Shia so they called him Shia. But when he started school, they told his mother that he needed a more English name, so they came up with Sydney. Joshua certainly would have been preferable, but that's what it was.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Do you know your mothers birth date? &#13 ; &#13 ; MF: Yes, it was June 15th, 1914.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: And how about your father’s?&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: And my father's was January 22nd, 1913. So they were close in age, and my father told the story that they lived around the comer, I guess that rumor got around that there was a very cute young woman living with Aunt Sarah, and so he had to go check it out for himself. And that's how my parents met. So that's kind of a nice story. 0 742 Guardians of Young Judaea Orphanage MF: And my cousin went to the orphanage, which is now like a community center or whatever, and asked if they might still have the records. And lo and behold, down in the basement, I have goosebumps, they still had the records. So I got together with all my cousins this past fall, and they brought the records which was amazing to read and learn about and get to see, even as a social worker, to get to see how- and everything was hand written notes, and they were really just focused on the physical health of the children. I mean there was no discussion in any of the notes about their mental health, which I found fascinating. They were concerned that Helen was wetting the bed, which would probably have been very normal reactions of young children whose family was, you know disrupted, and so on. But, I was a little appalled by this... I discovered they were doing vaginal exams on these young girls. I don't know why. I would love to find out why. But I found that very upsetting to read that. Whether they were looking for some kind of infection that might have been causing the bedwetting, you know use your head.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Do you know if it was a religiously connected orphanage or if it was a settlement house type.&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: It was called something like, the Guardians of Young Judea, it was definitely Jewish affiliated facility. 0 1125 Marlene Finkelstein's Childhood and Education SC: So, can you talk about your childhood, and your schooling, and any work that you've had from doing something really small when you were young all the way through.&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: I could try, I was born, as I said, I think it was Montefiore Hospital, in the Bronx, or it might have just been in Manhattan-- January 29, 1943. It was the war years, and soon after I was born, my father was drafted into the navy. And my mother who was pretty disconnected from her family, I mean she had no contact with her father or - she had one sister who she stayed close to, Elsie, and Artie. Otherwise, she really didn't have- she had taken my father's family. That really was her family. So when my father was drafted, my mother was in a panic, and she went and lived with Judith, my father's older sister, and her husband, Mike, who was, I guess was 4F, he had some back issues, whatever, so he didn't get drafted. You know, was absolved. And so we lived with them, and Judith and Mike had two sons, Elliot, who was three years older than me, and Robert, who was two months younger than I am. We lost Elliot two years ago to lung cancer. But, Robert and I are still close. 0 1765 College and Career SC: So you were in college, you went to college.&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: I did.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: And after college, or during college, can you go from that point on?&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: Sure, sure. By the way, I knew I wanted to be a psychologist, therapist, counselor, whatever, when I was about 6 years old. I didn't even know the name for it but I was sort of fascinated by that. And when I went to college, and I said I wanted to major in psychology, my mother was very disapproving. And she certainly didn't want me to be a social worker because, you know, what kind of job is that? 0 1810 Mother's Involvement in the Garment Industry MF: My mother considered herself a business woman. I should have mentioned this. But my mother worked. Which was unusual in those days, she worked because she wasn't satisfied that my father was making enough money. But she was very proud about the fact that she could work, and she never even graduated high school, I don't believe. And she was a bookkeeper. And she was a very good bookkeeper, and she had worked in the garment industry for a while. As a bookkeeper with my uncle Mike, Judith's husband, who was the controller in the same office where my mother was a bookkeeper.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Were they manufacturers? Do you know?&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: Yes, they were manufacturers. They were making... what were they making? It wasn't­ they might have been making... they were making clothes of some kind... because when my mother went back to work, she felt very guilty, and she came home at the end of the first week, or when she got paid, with a little outfit for me. 0 1961 Meeting Arnie Finkelstein MF: Hunter College meant commuting. And it was an all-girls school, but you know, I dated a lot and those were the days that we dated. In the meantime, my Uncle Mike, who had worked in the garment industry, he had a longing to own his own business, he wanted like a women's clothing store, dress shop, or whatever. And he bought a place called Dobnoffs, in downtown Allentown. And so they left New York, Aunt Judith and Uncle Mike, and moved to Allentown in 1960? About that.&#13 ; &#13 ; AF: Right around there.&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: Yeah, I graduated high school in ‘59 I guess, and I started college in ‘59 so it was ‘61. My aunt lived on Livingston Street, my aunt and uncle. And, she had a next door neighbor named Ruth Bloom, who saw my picture in my aunt's house and said she'd be nice for Mina's son. So Mina's son was in the air force in Oklahoma, at the time. And I got a call from my aunt, in June, I had just finished my final exams, and I wanted to go party, and she told my mother I had to come out, that she had a nice boy for me to meet. 0 2247 Israel "Ukie" Freedman and Kirkland Hall Suits MF: [M]y parents didn't have a lot of money, but my Uncle Ukie, that was my father's second younger brother.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Israel.&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: Right. He married very late, he never had children, and there was a period of time he lived with us, and he adored me. He was- I- you know the sun rose and set with me. And he was a salesman in the garment industry for a company called Kirkland Hall Suits. I think I still have a couple of his suits hanging in the closet because I can't bear to get rid of them. But he had the wherewithal to send me to camp. 0 2442 The '60s—Marriage, Children, Teaching, and Volunteer Work GE: February 63' is when you got married.&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: Yes February 24, 1963. So yeah there was no time to work then. I think I might have- I remember a little job working at a JCC with a group of girls, you know, briefly. But that was- it might have been in that period of time. And then I came out to Allentown as a new bride. And I was Mina Finkelstein's Daughter in law. Everybody knew my mother in law because she was this beautiful woman who really had a spell on the community. And she was president of the sisterhood, and she'd been president of Hadassah and was - and I was very open to her. She had great style, and she taught me lots of things and so I­ she made me a life member of Hadassah right away and the sisterhood, and I got involved in a lot of the organizations. But I also had a teaching degree, so- I mean you can't do much with a bachelors in psychology, and I thought about graduate school, but I wasn't clear yet where I wanted to go, or what I wanted. So my aunt Judith arranged for me to meet Judy Freeman, who ran the nursery school at the JCC. And Judy was thrilled and she hired me right away, and so I worked for two years at the JCC, Miss Marlene. And I still have some of my earliest students, my three and four year olds, still call me Miss Marlene when they see me today, which is hysterical. 0 2640 Inspiration for "Hakol"—Jewish Community Newspaper MF: Maxine and I met the first year as a new bride here. I was very lonely, and everyone said to me. Wait, Maxine Kivert is going to come back to town. When you meet her, you and Maxine are going to be great friends. And, Maxine knew about me because before Arnan met me, he had dated another girl in town who Maxine was friendly with, so Maxine knew about me, and I knew about her. And we met I think at an-- I remember at an ORT-- yeah, I was involved with the ORT also... event. And we knew each other. I mean we just immediately knew each other. And we became very fast friends. Both our husbands were in the textile business, so that was... And she went on to have three daughters, and we had three daughters ha-ha. So we had a lot of connections. And the first thing that Maxine and I did together was we started a Hadassah Study Group. There was a Woman's Study Group that my mother in law belonged to. And the older women belonged to. But we had children, and we were home during the day, it was harder to get babysitters. So we started an evening study group. That was just fabulous. And the first year we asked the rabbis to come and talk, and at the end of that we said, you know we're all college graduates, we can do a better job than they did. They sort of were winging it, so we would pick a topic. Hadassah would give us some ideas, and we would give out the assignments. 0 2965 Returning to School—Master's of Social Work and the Alliance for Creative Development MF: I was also still involved in study groups and I remember giving a paper. There were two in a row, one was on interestingly, the growing threat of radical Islam, and um, I remember I learned all about the Shiites, and the Sunni's and so on. And one was on Theodore Herzl. And I remember coming home and Arnan said, how did it go, and I said, it was an A paper. It's time for me to go back to school, and you know, do it for myself. So I knew I wanted psychology. I started looking around for a program, and, by the way, I was also on the board of Jewish Family Service. And, Amy Miller Cohen, who was a psychologist in Bethlehem, I had given the paper at her house. And I was talking with her about going back to school and getting a masters, and she said to me, “Marlene, go get an MSW.” and I said, “Really?” And she said, “It'll take you less time, you're not a little kid anymore,” I was about 37, 38, and she said, “and you'll do what you want to do. '' So Marywood had a program at DeSales. And so I went. It took me three years because it was a part time program, but I got my MSW, and I had interned at Quakertown Hospital in the Psychiatric unit as part of the program, and I stayed on there, and worked in patient psyche for another ten years. And it was with a group called the Alliance for Creative Development. We were psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers-- creative therapists. It was a wonderful program, it was before managed care and all that stuff. And where we really could work with patients as a team and see results. It was a very very exciting time. 0 3200 Involvement in Husband's Textile Business GE: What relationship or what connections did you have to the family business, if any?&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: Well, we tried for about two weeks for me to come keep some books for you. That didn't work. Ha-ha&#13 ; &#13 ; AM: She was our model. Every so often we would have an experimental- &#13 ; &#13 ; MF: Oh this is a very funny story.&#13 ; &#13 ; AF: Yeah,&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: I had, I've always had a dressmaker because of my size, whatever I would always buy always had to be fixed. So Arnan had this new experimental fabric that they were making.&#13 ; &#13 ; AF: Well we were just playing with it.&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: Yeah, so I took it to my dressmaker, this is before we were married, and she made me a bathing suit out of it for our honeymoon. 0 3337 Relationship with in-Laws MF: I had a pretty wonderful and loving relationship with my in-laws, especially with my mother-in-law. My father-in-law was a quiet man, he didn't talk very much. And most of the time he wanted to talk to Arnan about business things. But he would come over to see the grandchildren, I still joke about - he would look, he would see they were okay, and then he would say, “Okay Mina Finkelstein, it's time to go home!” And she would say, “George! We just got here!” &#13 ; &#13 ; GE: Where did they live?&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: They lived on Livingston and twenty . . . and Ott. On the corner of Livingston and Ott. And our prior home was on 26th and Highland. So we were always in close proximity. 0 3399 Marlene Finkelstein's Values and Creative Inspirations SC: What do you value most in life? &#13 ; &#13 ; MF: Well, probably my family, first and foremost, and the connections and the relationships. I would have to make that you know...&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Yes. And what has made you feel the most creative or artistic in the broadest sense, or completed in life.&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: Well, I think I have a great sense of accomplishment about the newspaper, not the fact that I helped to start it, and it's still an ongoing institution, I think feels very wonderful. 0 3542 The Hakol Today GE: [W]ith the Hakol, so you started, you were there for about four years, then it went on for another year, I know of it today, tell me did it lapse?&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: No it didn't lapse, it-&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: So it continued the whole-&#13 ; &#13 ; MF: But it wasn't until I'm trying to remember, did Ned Shulman do it? Maggie Levine was still here.&#13 ; &#13 ; AF: No.&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: I know Sharon Bernstein I think I think at one point maybe- &#13 ; &#13 ; MF: Yeah that was a while-&#13 ; &#13 ; AF: Somebody took it over after you know- &#13 ; &#13 ; MF: Whoever did it until they finally-&#13 ; &#13 ; AF: But then it became professional. 0 MovingImage Marlene Finkelstein talks about growing up in New York City, attending Hunter College, and then coming to Allentown at the suggestion of her aunt and uncle to meet a nice young man, Arnan Finkelstein. After Marlene married Arnan and moved to Allentown she started a family and got immersed in the Jewish community. Marlene and her dear friend Maxine Tanenbaum (now Kline) started an evening Hadassah study session and later the Hakol (monthly Jewish newspaper published by the Jewish Federation). Marlene returned to school part-time to earn an MSW (Masters of Social Work). She then worked in the field of psychology/social work for more than twenty-five years. .&#13 ; Interview with Marlene Finkelstein, June 23, 2014 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is Monday, June 23rd 2014 and interview with Marlene Finkelstein. So can you say your whole name, when you were born, where you were born to put yourself into context. MARLENE FINKELSTEIN: Sure, I'm Marlene, my middle name Barbara, that I never use, and my maiden name is Friedman and I was born on January 29, 1943. I believe in the Bronx in New York. SC: So can we go back to your parents and grandparents and great grandparents? As far back as you know. Whatever you can do. MF: I don't know as much about my mother's family. My mother's name was Marilyn Friedman - actually, her real name I believe was Minnie, and she hated that name and eventually legally changed it to Marilyn. Her maiden name was Sobel, and she was the daughter of Molly and Joseph Sobel, both of whom I believe were born in the States. I never knew either one of them ; they both died before I was born. As a matter of fact my mother's mother died when my mother was 9 years old. Her father wasn't a nice man, so she told me. He had another woman he was keeping while he had his wife and six children to care for. Their life was not a good one and when my mother's mother, Molly died, my mother was nine, her father took my mother's three older siblings and went to Boston and married the woman that he had been seeing. And actually had a couple more children with her who I - I have relatives somewhere that I have no knowledge of. And my mother refused to go with him because she was very angry with him, and she had two younger brothers. They went to live with an aunt for a short period of time, and the aunt couldn't keep them, so they went into an orphanage. And in the orphanage, her youngest- no her next brother, there were two brothers, Sammy and Artie. Sammy was closer in age to her, I guess. And he apparently ran out, and jumped on the back of a truck and was killed on her watch. So, I think that affected her deeply. But she always looked after Artie, her younger brother. And they went onto foster care, he with her. And that was a very negative experience for her, as well. She felt like she was kind of a Cinderella person, treated like a servant in the house, but they put on a good front. They were German Jews and historically, the German Jews weren't terribly uh, fond of uh, the Polish, Russian Jews. They thought they were beneath them and apparently treated my mother accordingly. My mother was always very vocal about not liking German Jews because of that. So when she turned sixteen, she went to the um, offices where they had... placed her and told them that she was sixteen, she knew she could get working papers, and she wanted to go get a job. And she was not going back to that house anymore. And there was a woman in the office who said, where will you go tonight, and she said, "I don't know, and I don't care, but I'm not going back there." And she said, "Well, my mother sometimes takes in borders. Why don't you come home with me?" And that turned out to be my father's cousins so that's how my mother met my father. My father is Sydney Freidman. His real name was Joshua. And the Hebrew version of Joshua was Yahushua. The Yiddish diminutive version was Shia so they called him Shia. But when he started school, they told his mother that he needed a more English name, so they came up with Sydney. Joshua certainly would have been preferable, but that's what it was. SC: Do you know your mothers birth date? MF: Yes, it was June 15th, 1914. SC: And how about your father's? MF: And my father's was January 22nd, 1913. So they were close in age, and my father told the story that they lived around the comer, I guess that rumor got around that there was a very cute young woman living with Aunt Sarah, and so he had to go check it out for himself. And that's how my parents met. So that's kind of a nice story. SC: It is. Do you know where in Poland/Russia they came from, what town? Each of the families. MF: No, I know my father's... grandparents came from somewhere in the Pale of Settlement, around . . . it could have been around Kiev. Arnan, do you know? They actually, it was an interesting story because the mother's-- this is my father's grandmother-- her name- I actually have a picture of them, it's amazing. Her name, I believe, was Yetta and her last name was Kleinman. She married a man named Fayvel Livinstein. ARNAN FINKELSTEIN: Levinstein. MF: Levinstein. But he took her family name to avoid the Russian draft. Which was very bad in those years. So that they were able to leave and get out of Russia and come to this country. They had four sons, and then Rebecca, my father's mother, and then one more son, Philip, who ultimately became a rabbi out in, first in Minneapolis, and then he went on to Portland, Oregon. And actually I'm still in touch with his granddaughter. But it was a very large family. And this Aunt Sarah, was the wife of one of Rebecca's brothers so they were all first cousins to my father. And they had, I don't know, about six daughters. That the family, my mother went to live with, was named Kleinman. And so I probably know more about the Kleinmen family. My understanding is that she met my father's father, whose name was Wolf Frieman, and he was from I believe Tarnogrod, which was - I'm not sure if that was Poland or . . . Arnan - pictures hanging downstairs, and it has the name and the date on it. It's to the left of the bookcase. . . I don't know much about my grandfather except- my father's father. Except that he was the only grandparent I knew. Rebecca also died very young. She was 38. Also a similar kind of story. My father's mother, Rebecca Klienman, died after- she also had six children. And my father was the second oldest, the oldest was Judith, who plays a role in how I met Arnie, and then there were two brothers, Heshie and Ukie. It was Hershel I guess and Yisrael, there. And then Helen and Ruthie. And when Rebecca died, at the age of 38, Ruthie the youngest, was about a year and a half, and my grandfather who was a sweet man, had no ability to earn a living, he could daven well, but that was pretty much it. And so he -I don't know, he sold Encyclopedia Judaica. No, Britannica. You know the encyclopedias door to door, or whatever he could. And he went to- uh, I guess orphanages were not uncommon then, and he kept Judith and my father with him, I believe to take care of him, and the next two, Heshie and Ukie, went to live with an Aunt. And the two youngest, Helen and Ruthie, went into an orphanage. Helen died this past spring. She was the last of the six. And my cousin went to the orphanage, which is now like a community center or whatever, and asked if they might still have the records. And lo and behold, down in the basement, I have goosebumps, they still had the records. So I got together with all my cousins this past fall, and they brought the records which was amazing to read and learn about and get to see, even as a social worker, to get to see how- and everything was hand written notes, and they were really just focused on the physical health of the children. I mean there was no discussion in any of the notes about their mental health, which I found fascinating. They were concerned that Helen was wetting the bed, which would probably have been very normal reactions of young children whose family was, you know disrupted, and so on. But, I was a little appalled by this... I discovered they were doing vaginal exams on these young girls. I don't know why. I would love to find out why. But I found that very upsetting to read that. Whether they were looking for some kind of infection that might have been causing the bedwetting, you know use your head. SC: Do you know if it was a religiously connected orphanage or if it was a settlement house type. MF: It was called something like, the Guardians of Young Judea, it was definitely Jewish affiliated facility. And my grandfather would have chosen that because he was quite Orthodox very ... he was always davening as I remember. Keeping Kosher was very important to him, and you know, I know my aunt who was three years older than my father, really kept a home for them, and when my father was dying at the age of ninety nine, he kept telling me that he saw Judith. So I know that he thought of her almost more like his mother, because his mother had died-- it was right after his bar mitzvah, that his mother died so he was 13 and she was 16. And the two boys, the two younger ones I guess, went out and got jobs as soon as they could, and Helen didn't go home until my father and his sister were both married so my grandfather had no way to take care of them anymore. So Helen must have been about 14 at the time. So she went home, and she left, and Ruthie was still in the orphanage, and I thought for sure there would be some notes about Ruthie's reaction to Helen leaving, but no, there wasn't. I was so surprised. And Helen had experienced the trauma, when she was a little younger at the orphanage, they had gone on an outing to the beach, and there was one of those waves that came in and took children out into the water. And she was rescued but a couple of the children died. And there were notes about the trip but nothing about the tragedy. And, again, I wondered about the psychological impact. She was determined to learn to swim after that, I'm told. So it is quite an amazing story of their lives. SC: Wow, was that in the Bronx? MF: It was in Brooklyn. SC: That makes sense, yes. MF: It was all in Brooklyn, and I know they moved around a lot. I also know from my father, that at one point, when his mother was still alive - so when he was a young boy - because she was the only female in her family, she took in her parents along with all these children and this sweet husband who couldn't earn a living. I can't imagine... I know that her brothers weren't thrilled with my grandfather. But they. . . and they met. Aunt Helen told me this more recently. I never knew how my grandparents met. They were living in the same tenement house I guess, and somebody said, you know, upstairs there's a nice man. So it was kind of a shidduch. And I know that my father and my aunts were very proud of the fact that their mother spoke perfect English and actually, she was a kind of teacher. As much as a teacher could be. This is my grandmother, I guess. SC: That's wonderful. Just a natural skill. MF: Yeah. I think it is. Because my aunt went on to be a teacher. My father was a teacher. SC: So, can you talk about your childhood, and your schooling, and any work that you've had from doing something really small when you were young all the way through. MF: I could try, I was born, as I said, I think it was Montefiore Hospital, in the Bronx, or it might have just been in Manhattan-- January 29, 1943. It was the war years, and soon after I was born, my father was drafted into the navy. And my mother who was pretty disconnected from her family, I mean she had no contact with her father or - she had one sister who she stayed close to, Elsie, and Artie. Otherwise, she really didn't have- she had taken my father's family. That really was her family. So when my father was drafted, my mother was in a panic, and she went and lived with Judith, my father's older sister, and her husband, Mike, who was, I guess was 4F, he had some back issues, whatever, so he didn't get drafted. You know, was absolved. And so we lived with them, and Judith and Mike had two sons, Elliot, who was three years older than me, and Robert, who was two months younger than I am. We lost Elliot two years ago to lung cancer. But, Robert and I are still close. SC: Do you know what ship your dad was on? Or what was it? MF: He never went on a ship. He got sent.. SC: Good, that's very good. MF: He ended up in Oakland, California, and he was the yeoman to the admiral. My father had gone to college. He went at nights for probably a total of fourteen years. He went to Brooklyn College and got a degree. First in economics, and when he graduated there weren't any jobs to be had, and he went back and he studied printing-- well he had worked for a printer all along then -- so he got some kind of degree or certification in printing as well. And when he was drafted, because he had a degree in economics they thought he would be a good statistician for the Navy, so he did work as the yeoman, and stayed in Oakland, stayed stateside. So my mother, who was a gutsy lady, took me, at eighteen months, and flew cross country with me. Getting bumped all along the way because you had to get. . . had to leave your seat for servicemen who were traveling. And we lived in Oakland, California. Until I was about three. So I guess it was about a year and a half. I know that my father wanted to stay out there, he loved it out there, but my mother wanted to come back and have whatever family she had. So we did come back. When we came back, we lived in Maspeth, Queens because that's where Judith and Mike had bought a home and were living there. And we lived in their basement. Like mother had made- this area was the living room, and this was the bedroom, and there were screens and so on. But they shared the kitchen of course, and I remember that as a fun time because I had two immediate playmates, my two cousins, and we lived there just for about a year I guess, and my father got a job at the [New York] World Telegram &amp ; Sun as a proofreader in New York. So we could afford an apartment. We moved to Elmhurst, Queens, which was like the next little town over. And that's really where I grew up, and in that house it was a two family house. And the people who lived upstairs-- their name was Marlow, which doesn't sound like a Jewish name but the name had been Asmilowsky--and Murray and Gussy Marlow were very gracious landlords. And Murray was an attorney, had never gone to law school, but he was an attorney. And they had two children. They had a son George who was two years older than me, and who I-- to this day-- I consider as a brother. I'm an old woman. I never had siblings, so you know, I was four, he was six and we're still very close. And we talk every week or couple of weeks, and our kids grew up together so it's very nice. But I lived in that house until I met Arnan. I went to elementary school and it was within walking distance... SC: What was its name? The elementary school. Do you remember? MF: It was PS102. SC: Oh great! New York, its PS. MF: And then and New York then had a program called the SP or the RA, rapid advance, or special progress, and you had to take an exam to pass, to get into it, and I did and I passed, and it allowed me to go from seventh grade to ninth grade. I skipped eighth grade. So - and that was junior high school '73, it was William Cowper, I believe it was, Junior High School. And so I was there for two years, I remember my aunt used to substitute teach there because sometimes I'd be very daring and put on some lipstick, and then be afraid she would see me in the halls with lipstick on. And when I graduated there I went to Newtown High School, which was in walking distance also from my home. And I was in the honors program for some classes. I was young, I was very young, the birth date . . . I graduated, I was still 16. So I wanted to go to college, there was no question about that, and I wanted -- I thought I wanted to go away to college. But I knew it would be a financial hardship for my parents, so I made a decision to go to one of the city colleges, and I went to Hunter College in Manhattan. And my first day there, I still think it's a funny story because it was a single office building on Park Avenue and 68th Street, right across the street from the Russian Embassy, and it housed an elementary school for exceptionally bright students, and Hunter High School, which was also a school you had to take an exam to get into. So, my first day, I went into the elevator and the elevator operator took me up to the seventh floor, which was the elementary school because I looked so young, and I was small, and I was very upset. And I came home, and I put on high heels, the four-inch spike kind, and I wore them for four years of college because in those days you couldn't wear-- especially in a city school, you had to wear a skirt. You couldn't wear pants, that was unheard of. So anyway that was kind of funny. SC: So, this is going to end, so I'm going to take this one out - SC: This is Tape two - DVD two - Marline Finkelstein and this is- you're talking about your grandmothers, on your mother's side maiden name was- MF: Goldstein. SC: Goldstein, yes. MF: This is the photograph. Is there a date? AF: I don't see one. GAIL EISENBERG: Do you want to just do it afterwards? SC: Yeah we can just do it afterwards. Oh that's gorgeous. Oh my gosh. So that's your great gran- MF: These are my great grandfolk, parents. And they're my father's grandparents. SC: Probably from about the 1870's or 80's? MF: I would think so. And she was the one that was Klineman and he was Levinstien and he took her family name. SC: Yeah, wow. That's so nice. MF: A nice story. SC: That's a great picture too. So you were in college, you went to college. MF: I did. SC: And after college, or during college, can you go from that point on? MF: Sure, sure. By the way, I knew I wanted to be a psychologist, therapist, counselor, whatever, when I was about 6 years old. I didn't even know the name for it but I was sort of fascinated by that. And when I went to college, and I said I wanted to major in psychology, my mother was very disapproving. And she certainly didn't want me to be a social worker because, you know, what kind of job is that? My mother considered herself a business woman. I should have mentioned this. But my mother worked. Which was unusual in those days, she worked because she wasn't satisfied that my father was making enough money. But she was very proud about the fact that she could work, and she never even graduated high school, I don't believe. And she was a bookkeeper. And she was a very good bookkeeper, and she had worked in the garment industry for a while. As a bookkeeper with my uncle Mike, Judith's husband, who was the controller in the same office where my mother was a bookkeeper. SC: Were they manufacturers? Do you know? MF: Yes, they were manufacturers. They were making... what were they making? It wasn't­ they might have been making... they were making clothes of some kind... because when my mother went back to work, she felt very guilty, and she came home at the end of the first week, or when she got paid, with a little outfit for me. And I was probably in third grade, I think. And she told me, and showed me, look what I can buy for you now that ... you know I'm working. Anyway, so my mother was interested in my . . . she thought I should at least be a teacher because if you're a teacher you can always get a job and god forbid you have to work, and so on. So I made a deal that I would still major in psychology, but I would minor in elementary education. And so I had a double major, minor or whatever. And I do have somewhere in New York, a teaching degree and when we were first married I actually taught nursery school here in Allentown. SC: What nursery school? MF: At the JCC. SC: At the JCC, okay. MF: Of course. SC: Yes, of course. MF: So I should back up, Hunter College meant commuting. And it was an all-girls school, but you know, I dated a lot and those were the days that we dated. In the meantime, my Uncle Mike, who had worked in the garment industry, he had a longing to own his own business, he wanted like a women's clothing store, dress shop, or whatever. And he bought a place called Dobnoffs, in downtown Allentown. And so they left New York, Aunt Judith and Uncle Mike, and moved to Allentown in 1960? About that. AF: Right around there. MF: Yeah, I graduated high school in '59 I guess, and I started college in '59 so it was '61. My aunt lived on Livingston Street, my aunt and uncle. And, she had a next door neighbor named Ruth Bloom, who saw my picture in my aunt's house and said she'd be nice for Mina's son. So Mina's son was in the air force in Oklahoma, at the time. And I got a call from my aunt, in June, I had just finished my final exams, and I wanted to go party, and she told my mother I had to come out, that she had a nice boy for me to meet. And I said I have a date Friday night, Saturday night, I'm you know . . . And my mother said, ah, you know what you have here, you don't know what you have there, go. So I took a bus out to Allentown, and my uncle picked me up at the bus stop, and came to their house. I wanted to go party that night. I was supposed to meet him Saturday night, but they announced we were going to a synagogue that night. Which was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. But I didn't have much choice, so we walked into the synagogue, and I picked a row, and I went in. and - I don't know if you know the word b'sherkt. Meant to be. I sat down next to him. So . . . SC: Ha-ha. MF: So we looked at each other, and I saw my aunt lean forward, and my soon to be mother-in-law lean forward, and they introduced us, and we started talking. We still joke about the fact that when the service started, and we stood up Arnan went, "Where'd she go? Ha-ha. But we met that night. SC: So the stars were all out, and there were fireworks. Ha-ha. GE: All in alignment. MF: All in the right alignment. Ha-ha. And so we drove around in his fancy car that night, and we hung out the next day, and so on. And when I went back to- AF: I didn't have a fancy car back then. MF: Well, was that your father's car? AF: Yeah. MF: It was a- it was a very pretty car. Anyway when I came home, my mother said, So? And I said, well if I don't marry him, I'm going to marry somebody just like him. So I guess I kind of knew. And I went to camp, he went back to the air force. Ha-ha. So I was very young, I was just, was I still seventeen? Or I was eighteen? AF: Sixteen- oh no, you were eighteen. MF: I was eighteen. AF: Eighteen and a half. MF: Oh, okay. So, we corresponded all summer, I was a counselor at camp, and he came home for the Jewish holidays, and I saw him. And he was discharged in November. AF: Actually in August, but I stayed on in school. MF: Okay. And- SC: What was the name of the camp? MF: Oh, it was the New Jersey Y Camps. Which was kind of akin to Pinemere here. But it was in Milford, Pennsylvania, and I had gone there for years. Actually, just a quick step back, my parents didn't have a lot of money, but my Uncle Ukie, that was my father's second younger brother. SC: Israel. MF: Right. He married very late, he never had children, and there was a period of time he lived with us, and he adored me. He was- I- you know the sun rose and set with me. And he was a salesman in the garment industry for a company called Kirkland Hall Suits. I think I still have a couple of his suits hanging in the closet because I can't bear to get rid of them. But he had the wherewithal to send me to camp. So I started going to camp at around the age of six. Which was a lifesaver for me, and helped me to grow and be more independent, and so on. So I went to New Jersey Y camps. First I went to a camp in Connecticut, for a few years, and my cousins went with me. And I started the New Jersey Y camps. I think I was about nine. And that was because my father had a fraternity brother from college, who was on, lived in Passaic, New Jersey, and he was on the Board of Directors, and he could get me into the camp. Because you were supposed to live in New Jersey. So I-- and his children were friends of mine--they were my age, I thought of them as cousins, and so on. So, even though I was young. I had a lot of people I knew already at camp. So I- and every summer I looked forward to. I still have one camp friend left. We email each other now. So that was kind of a good story. Anyway, help me, where did we leave off? SC: Okay so the two of you met, and you graduated from college then did you work between the time you graduated, and then you got married? MF: Um, no, what I did other than working camp that summer was the following summer, I went to summer-school. I took fifteen credits in summer school, so we could get married sooner, rather than waiting until the next June. So I- between NYU and Hunter college, I was able to get all my credits in, and I graduated in January of 63' and 1963, and so I was... SC: Twenty? MF: I wasn't even twenty yet. SC: Nineteen? MF: I was turning twenty, but I was still nineteen. And I still laugh about the fact that when we picked our wedding date that I said, well I need a month just to get my- you know. So I picked the end of February for us to get married, and my mother said, " February, It'll snow." And I said, "No! It won't snow." It snowed. But- GE: February 63' is when you got married. MF: Yes February 24, 1963. So yeah there was no time to work then. I think I might have- I remember a little job working at a JCC with a group of girls, you know, briefly. But that was- it might have been in that period of time. And then I came out to Allentown as a new bride. And I was Mina Finkelstein's Daughter in law. Everybody knew my mother in law because she was this beautiful woman who really had a spell on the community. And she was president of the sisterhood, and she'd been president of Hadassah and was - and I was very open to her. She had great style, and she taught me lots of things and so I­ she made me a life member of Hadassah right away and the sisterhood, and I got involved in a lot of the organizations. But I also had a teaching degree, so- I mean you can't do much with a bachelors in psychology, and I thought about graduate school, but I wasn't clear yet where I wanted to go, or what I wanted. So my aunt Judith arranged for me to meet Judy Freeman, who ran the nursery school at the JCC. And Judy was thrilled and she hired me right away, and so I worked for two years at the JCC, Miss Marlene. And I still have some of my earliest students, my three and four year olds, still call me Miss Marlene when they see me today, which is hysterical. And then I was pregnant with our first child, Sharon, who was born in 65' and then the sixties were having children. Our second was born, Ilana, in 68' and Abbey was born in 71' and so I certainly . . . The work I did in those years was really more organizational. I used to say I am a professional organizational person, or professional Jewish volunteer. Yeah, I was involved in all the Boards and I was program vice president of Hadassah and membership vice president and on the Sisterhood Board. And on the Federation Board. Maxine and I met the first year as a new bride here. I was very lonely, and everyone said to me. Wait, Maxine Kivert is going to come back to town. When you meet her, you and Maxine are going to be great friends. And, Maxine knew about me because before Arnan met me, he had dated another girl in town who Maxine was friendly with, so Maxine knew about me, and I knew about her. And we met I think at an-- I remember at an ORT-- yeah, I was involved with the ORT also... event. And we knew each other. I mean we just immediately knew each other. And we became very fast friends. Both our husbands were in the textile business, so that was... And she went on to have three daughters, and we had three daughters ha-ha. So we had a lot of connections. And the first thing that Maxine and I did together was we started a Hadassah Study Group. There was a Woman's Study Group that my mother in law belonged to. And the older women belonged to. But we had children, and we were home during the day, it was harder to get babysitters. So we started an evening study group. That was just fabulous. And the first year we asked the rabbis to come and talk, and at the end of that we said, you know we're all college graduates, we can do a better job than they did. They sort of were winging it, so we would pick a topic. Hadassah would give us some ideas, and we would give out the assignments. And every other Monday night I guess for- it was just fabulous. Even Arnan would tell me he was jealous because we were learning so much. And it was like doing a paper, and you were the presenter, and it was wonderful. It went on for many years. It drew in a lot of young Jewish women that were coming to town because they would hear about our study group, and it was a great thing. And then Maxine and I went on to do a few other things together. We started a speaker's bureau, and we just felt that all these Jewish organizations were having board meetings, having meetings, and so on, and they never had any real Jewish content, so we put together a group of people who would write. We limited it, we had five minute talks. Just a little capsule thing, that they would go in at the beginning of a board meeting, and give a little talk on something of Jewish content and interest, and it was kind of a fun thing. And from that, Les Gottlieb was the director of the Federation at that time, and he came to us and asked if we might be interested in starting a newspaper for the Jewish community. And we already had our writers from our speaker's bureau staff so we did it. We started Hakol. And it was a very, very exciting time for us. GE: And this was about what year? MF: Hakol I think we started in 1975? 76'? Something like that. Somewhere I have the original. But it was in that time period because when we moved... AF: How many years did you - MF: Do Hakol? About four. AF: Then you probably started earlier because I was president of the Federation when you came asking for a... MF: Yeah, after about four years, I- he was president, I said, I can't keep doing this on a volunteer basis. I went to Federation and-- Maxine had dropped out, she said she was done. She would help me with some editing stuff. But it was a big job, it really was. And I went to the Federation and I said, this is really a big job, and I asked them to pay me 4,000 dollars, and they said no they couldn't do that. If they started paying for all these jobs, it wouldn't be good for the Federation. So that ended my career. SC: Did it continue on a volunteer basis? MF: For another year or so. SC: Are they archived anywhere? MF: Yeah I think they are, probably at the Center, or the Federation office. AF: You didn't keep any did you? MF: Of course I did. They're downstairs somewhere. It was a very exciting time for us. But I knew I needed to move on, and I started thinking about. .. I was also still involved in study groups and I remember giving a paper. There were two in a row, one was on interestingly, the growing threat of radical Islam, and um, I remember I learned all about the Shiites, and the Sunni's and so on. And one was on Theodore Herzl. And I remember coming home and Arnan said, how did it go, and I said, it was an A paper. It's time for me to go back to school, and you know, do it for myself. So I knew I wanted psychology. I started looking around for a program, and, by the way, I was also on the board of Jewish Family Service. And, Amy Miller Cohen, who was a psychologist in Bethlehem, I had given the paper at her house. And I was talking with her about going back to school and getting a masters, and she said to me, "Marlene, go get an MSW." and I said, "Really?" And she said, "It'll take you less time, you're not a little kid anymore," I was about 37, 38, and she said, "and you'll do what you want to do. '' So Marywood had a program at DeSales. And so I went. It took me three years because it was a part time program, but I got my MSW, and I had interned at Quakertown Hospital in the Psychiatric unit as part of the program, and I stayed on there, and worked in patient psyche for another ten years. And it was with a group called the Alliance for Creative Development. We were psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers-- creative therapists. It was a wonderful program, it was before managed care and all that stuff. And where we really could work with patients as a team and see results. It was a very very exciting time. And the alliance for creative development had the hospital unit, and we had in patient offices as well so I started - AF: Outpatient. MF: Outpatient offices I mean, so I started a private practice with them also... and, twenty five years later, I retired. I left the hospital, after eight years at Quakertown hospital there, we moved to a hospital in Philadelphia, in Fort Washington. It was Northwestern Institute. After two years of doing the turnpike it was enough. So I just did the private practice from then on. And in between there, too, Arnan built the house and we moved here and... oh I was president of Jewish Family Service while I was in graduate school getting my MSW. SC: So you've talked about your community involvement, you've talked about your career, do you have any other questions about the business? GE: Yeah no I think it did- did you have, what relationship or what connections did you have to the family business, if any? MF: Well, we tried for about two weeks for me to come keep some books for you. That didn't work. Ha-ha AM: She was our model. Every so often we would have an experimental- MF: Oh this is a very funny story. AF: Yeah, MF: I had, I've always had a dressmaker because of my size, whatever I would always buy always had to be fixed. So Arnan had this new experimental fabric that they were making. AF: Well we were just playing with it. MF: Yeah, so I took it to my dressmaker, this is before we were married, and she made me a bathing suit out of it for our honeymoon. And it was very pretty with an orange scoop neck, and it had some of the knit fabric in a print that tied, went around the waist or the hip, anyway, I couldn't wait to use it for our honeymoon. Fortunately we went to Caneel Bay, and we had this little cottage on a very private beach, because I went into the water with this thing, and the weight of the water immediately pulled it right down. SC: Ha-ha. MF: So I came out of the water with it way down. GE: Fine for a honeymoon! MF: That's right. GE: Fine for a private beach. MF: Right! Ha-ha we got a good laugh out of that. But otherwise, I um, always had an interest. I never sewed, I'm not terribly domestic, Arnan's much more domestic than I am. But he would bring home fabrics, I did have um, I had a dress or a bathing suit made for Sharon, but I took it to a dressmaker, out of the fabric Arnan had shown you with Sharon Alyse's birthday on it. GE: But generally you were not- you were just his wife. MF: I was not- GE: Directly involved. MF: I was not directly involved. I had a pretty wonderful and loving relationship with my in-laws, especially with my mother-in-law. My father-in-law was a quiet man, he didn't talk very much. And most of the time he wanted to talk to Arnan about business things. But he would come over to see the grandchildren, I still joke about - he would look, he would see they were okay, and then he would say, "Okay Mina Finkelstein, it's time to go home!" And she would say, "George! We just got here!" GE: Where did they live? MF: They lived on Livingston and twenty . . . and Ott. On the corner of Livingston and Ott. And our prior home was on 26th and Highland. So we were always in close proximity. Yes. GE: I think that's good. SC: Yes oh and I have a couple of my creative questions. What do you value most in life? MF: Well, probably my family, first and foremost, and the connections and the relationships. I would have to make that you know... SC: Yes. And what has made you feel the most creative or artistic in the broadest sense, or completed in life. MF: Well, I think I have a great sense of accomplishment about the newspaper, not the fact that I helped to start it, and it's still an ongoing institution, I think feels very wonderful. But I think I feel that way about a few other things that we started in life. The Am Haskalah was, Arnan and I were very involved in getting that off the ground. As were Maxine and her first husband, Arnold. So starting some institutions that are still going has been a very creative process. And being a therapist. I love being a therapist. I do miss it. And I saw a friend of mine yesterday, we had worked together in-patient, and became therapists together, and so on and she's still working. And we were talking about that, and how what happens now is the tendency for me to use it with family and friends. Ha-ha thatskill, and you know, trying to decide when I should keep my mouth shut, and when I can just be a friend and not say anything more. And even when they ask me for advice, what do they really want? But the fact that I touched a lot of lives, I think, means a great deal to me. SC: That's beautiful. And this is going to end momentarily. MF: Okay. SC: That's perfect. GE: Quick question, with the Hakol, so you started, you were there for about four years, then it went on for another year, I know of it today, tell me did it lapse? MF: No it didn't lapse, it- GE: So it continued the whole- MF: But it wasn't until I'm trying to remember, did Ned Shulman do it? Maggie Levine was still here. AF: No. GE: I know Sharon Bernstein I think I think at one point maybe- MF: Yeah that was a while- AF: Somebody took it over after you know- MF: Whoever did it until they finally- AF: But then it became professional. MF: They finally realized they had to have someone to do this, but it has grown, and when um... not the current one... GE: Carolyn, Carolyn Katwan. MF: When Carolyn- I met her. And I complimented her genuinely, because I thought she had grown it and taken it to a new place, that was our vision. Part of our vision when we started it was to see it become a Lehigh Valley - and to bring the three communities - because they were very separate. And Maxine and I used to lament that. You know it didn't make sense that my New York sechel [Yiddish for common sense], and we would be better in larger numbers, and to pull it together. And they've really gone on to do that now, and the vision for it - we were too small, and inexperienced to make it an advertising newspaper, as well. But I'm happy to see the ads in it. GE: And that's quite recent. For a long time it was still- MF: Well it was just the past few years. Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=