Roy Einhorn:  These are just some visual aids. [Editor’s Note: Cantor Einhorn is sharing photographs with the interviewers.] Just being in people’s apartments, singing

Gabriel Weinstein:  How many times did you go?

RE:  Something like this, where we’re stuffed into an apartment with 60, 70 people.  I would sing four or five pieces, and the rabbi would do a little text study or stories.  It was very powerful meeting with folks and just offering them some hope.  We couldn’t change their world.  We couldn’t promise anyone we could get them out.  But they just felt – I think they felt a connection that there were people outside of the Soviet Union that cared about them and were trying to do something to help them.  There were they were more immediate cases of folks where there was a father who was imprisoned, and they had lost all income opportunities.  So for those families – and Judy Patkin here at – it was called Action for Soviet Jewry at the time.  When we went over, there were five or six families were identified with the greatest financial needs.  So we had six Nikon cameras that we gave to those families, and they could go on the black market and get the equivalent of six months’ rent or a year’s rent from selling those cameras, things like that.  So we weren’t saving anyone’s lives, but we were trying to make some of their lives a little bit easier.  For the general population – when seventy people are stuffed into an apartment, [inaudible] sense of here are these American Jews that are singing to them, studying with them, and bringing them some prayer books and some medicine.

GW:  How big were these apartments?

RE:  Two bedrooms, two and a half bedrooms – not large.  Not large.  So a living room was converted into a bedroom at night.  If there were two kids in the house, that living room had some kind of sofa bed.  They’d maximize.  Also, they didn’t have washing machines.  They were washing on boards and hanging their laundry outside the window.

Tamar Shachaf Schneider:  I see that you perform weddings.

RE:  That was here.  So this is a couple that this family was in Moscow or Leningrad –

TSS:  The Gilbos?

RE:  No.

TSS:  The Charnys? 

RE:  No.  The Charnys are right there.  That’s been sitting there for twenty years.

Aaron Hersh:  Because we also talked to Anna Charny.

RE:  Yes.  You can pull that up and show the others that picture of Ben (Yadviga?). 

GW:  Is that Anna?

RE:  Yes.

GW:  What year did you go to the Soviet Union?

RE:  I think ’86 and ’88.  I don’t have the exact dates, tell you the truth.

TSS:  Maybe it says on the photos maybe.

RE:  Possible.

GW:  I’m just going to say something.  We have this script. 

RE:  Sure. 

GW:  So I’m just going to say it for administrative purposes.  All right.  Ready, team? 

TSS:  Yes. 

GW:  So this is Gabriel Weinstein.  I’m here with –

TSS:  Tamar Shachaf Schneider.

AH:  Aaron Hersch. 

GW:  We are here with Cantor Roy Einhorn to record his history as part of the Soviet Jewry Oral History Project of the Jewish Women’s Archive.  Today is November 10, 2016.  We are at Temple Israel, 477 Longwood Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts.  Cantor Einhorn, do we have your permission to record this interview with you?

RE:  You do have my permission. 

GW:  All right.

TSS:  Thank you.

AH:  Thank you.

GW:  Thank you very much.  It’s been a good conversation so far.  I look forward to it continuing to be good.  So you went in, in let’s say ’86 and 1988? 

RE:  Yes. 

GW:  Two points in the mid to late ’80s.

RE:  Yes.

GW:  When did you start becoming involved in the Soviet Jewry Movement?

RE:  Rabbi Mehlman and Rabbi Friedman – Bernard Mehlman and Ronne Friedman – got involved.  They were rabbis in the area that were involved.  I think [Rabbi] Ron Weiss from Wellesley made a trip.  This was a human rights issue that became the important issue for synagogues in that time.  So Ben Charny’s name percolated to the top of the list of someone who had cancer who was struggling.  Bernard had connections with – is he on your list? 

TSS:  We met him.

AH:  We met with Bernard Mehlman.

RE:  So a Swedish diplomat –

TSS:  Yes. 

RE:  – I think, who had connections to the Soviet Union.  That was a channel of communication and of negotiation.  I think Ted Kennedy’s office – you must have gotten this information from him.  Bernard was working through politicians to gain some access to folks, individuals.  Then, Judy Patkin became a part of this, and she was working through her office.  Ronne and Bernard went first.  They took with them eight congregants or ten congregants.  But before that happened, there were meetings, house meetings.  When people brought all the stuff that we were going to take to the Soviet Union, it looked like a CVS warehouse stockroom; there were piles of this and piles of medications that the Russian Jews didn’t have access to.  They couldn’t afford – they couldn’t get them.  We took jeans.  We took all of these materials that we thought could be helpful.  So that was the first trip.  They took a heart valve.  I’m sure he told you that, which is amazing.  So I went on the next trip.  I don’t remember if it was first with Ronne, because Ronne and I went, and then Bernard and I went for my two trips.  IT was the same process of collecting materials and then having Judy Patkin in the office here identifying who were the individuals that we needed to make contact with.  Rabbi Larry Milder, who was in the area, came on one of those trips; that was with Ronne.  I was nervous.  I was a young father.  If it was ’88, my first child was born in ’84.  So I had concerns about what if I got detained and those types of concerns.

GW:  Where and how did you get most of the materials that you guys brought to the Soviet Union for the people that needed them?

RE:  [From] our congregants.  We had people connected to pharmaceutical companies.  We had people connected to – one of our members – Don and Sandy Perrin – he owned an audiovisual company.  So the cameras came through him.  Someone donated this and that, and we were carrying books, jeans, medications.  It was a nerve-wracking moment going through customs with the customs officers looking at our stuff  – “Why do you have diapers?  You don’t have any babies with you?  Why do you have baby formula?”  It was a pretty corrupt system.  I don’t know it intimately, but just from the outside looking in, I think those folks saw it as helpful to their economy because the monies would eventually move through the system.

AH:  So when the customs officials asked, “What are you doing with this baby formula, diapers,” what was your response?

RE:  It’s thirty years ago.  It’s a long time ago.

AH:  Do you remember at all how you answered or what you were told to answer?

RE:  We had a script.  “We’re meeting with a particular family, and we thought it would be helpful if we brought this baby formula.”

TSS:  Did it help?  Did they take –? 

RE:  Yes, sure.  For the families that received these items, of course, it helped.

TSS:  No, I mean in customs.  Did it help with customs?  Did they take the things from you?

RE:  I don’t think they took anything away from us.  They might have taken something away that didn’t make sense.  I don’t remember clearly.  If I opened my bag and there were seven pairs of brand-new blue jeans, it certainly raises a flag –  “Why do you have seven?  Do you need to wear seven pairs of brand-new blue jeans on your trip here?”  But they didn’t take it away from us.  They may have taken some prayer books away.  Most of it went through.

GW:  How did you prepare for your first trip to the USSR?

RE:  Well, we got profiles of who we were going to see.  So we had a sense of who we were going to visit.  My preparations were kind of generic musically, to bring some Israeli folk songs, to bring some musical settings of liturgy that I use here at Temple Israel.  I didn’t bring a guitar with me.  At the time, guitar wasn’t such a large part of what I did here in the building.  So, I had a music book with me.  I left whatever I brought there with someone who might be able to use that music.  We left our clothes.  You probably heard this from Bernard or Ronne.  I had big coats; I was wearing a monster coat.  Some of that stuff stayed there – a real warm ski hat, not that Russians didn’t have warm clothing because they had to be – but these were American items that looked different, and perhaps the refuseniks would sell them.

GW:  Did you learn any Russian music before you went?

RE:  Not Russian music, but we did study the Cyrillic alphabet so that we could read the signs in the subway because we were taking the subway.

GW:  Who were some of the other people you went with on the trip who you sang with at the apartments?

RE:  We were lucky; in one of the trips, there was an ophthalmologist, and he was doing eye examinations and prescribing some generic type medications for minor eyes situations. 

TSS:  Was that Donald Putnoi?

RE:  It was John Loewenstein.  But Don Putnoi did the same.

TSS:  He’s also my doctor.

RE:  Yes.  Those were the two doctors that were on the trips.  I wasn’t with John, but I was with Don Putnoi.  Mike Grossman was on one of the trips.  Now you guys are – you may not remember Grossman’s Hardware Store. 

GW:  I’m not originally from Boston.

TSS:  We’re not from here.

AH:  None of us are originally from Boston.

RE:  Well, this was a New England, certainly a Boston, almost like a Home Depot-size warehouse of garden items and tools and home items.  Mike donated stuff.  This is an anecdotal story. 

TSS: [inaudible]

RE:  Unless you’ve heard it – stop me if Bernard mentioned it or Ronne.  Have you spoken with Ronne?

AH:  Not yet.  Next week.

TSS:  Next Tuesday.

RE:  He’ll say, “Did Roy tell you this?”  And you’ll say, “Yeah.”  We were in the Kremlin.  We were in the square.  Mike was the president and owner of this monstrous store here and stores in the region.  He unfurled, along with Mark Yesley, who’s now deceased, this sign that went from that wall to that wall and was probably six or eight feet in height that said, “Coming soon, another Grossman store” right in front of Lenin’s tomb.  It was an act of miscalculation and misjudgment [laughter] because the KGB guys who were all there – it’s Lenin’s tomb.  They see – they jumped on Mike and Mark so quickly and grab that sign and scrunched it up and took them away.  They were seized, and Ron and I were –we were all in the general area, and we saw what was happening.  They thought it was a funny moment to – “Look at this.  It’s great.”  But the pictures that were taken – the cameras were opened up, the film was ripped out, and we didn’t know whether they were going to be held.  It was an hour, whatever it was, and they were released.  But that was one of those moments of the contrast of societies, where here we’re advertising whatever we want to advertise, and you can buy a billboard and put up pretty much whatever you want.  You just can’t do that there in a closed society, not a democratic society.  It brought home to us how fortunate we were to live where we did and where we do.

GW:  Did you tell the Russian Jews you guys met with about that experience?

RE:  I don’t think so.  I don’t think so.  One of the other things that we did out of concern [for] security – we think we were put on a specific floor in the hotels where we stayed, where there were extra people sitting in the hallways and extra cleaning women who seemed to be around a lot.  So we limited our conversation in our hotel rooms to no names, no mentions of anything that we were carrying, and we tried not to say – we said, “Let’s meet outside at seven o’clock,” instead of saying, “We’re going to the Charnys at eight o’clock, and we’re going to be bringing all of the medicine.”  So it was a little bit clandestine in that way.  We were just trying not to – if we were being listened to, and we thought we were, not to be giving specific information.  Although they were following us, they could just as easily know watching us where we were going and where we stopped.  But we were trying to be as careful of the identities of folks so that they didn’t get into more trouble.  We actually wrote with ink that disappeared. [laughter]

AH:  Bernard was talking about how you guys had to keep conversations to a minimum inside the hotel rooms.

RE:  Exactly, exactly.  Then, some of the folks on the trip – they lost track of that, the instruction that had been given.  Someone walked into – Ronne and I were sharing – and said, “So, are we going to the Charnys now with all the medicine?”

TSS:  “No, we don’t.  No, we don’t.”

RE:  “Quick, turn on the TV.  Turn on the radio.  Make noise.”  I doubt that we –anything that the KGB wanted to find out, we weren’t going to be able to keep from them because they could follow us; they could see us.  But we were trying to not be obvious about names and materials while we were in the rooms, in the hotel rooms.

GW:  What did you guys talk about with the families you met me with during your visits to their apartments?

TE:  Their hopes, their concerns, what we could do for them in the moment, what we could do for them when we returned to the United States, who we could contact on their behalf.  They might have given us names of – they might have been in contact with the senator from Louisiana that we didn’t know about.  So any information that they could provide to us that might be helpful to them, we took that back with us.

GW:  Many of these families that you guys met with, had Temple Israel already been in contact with them somehow?

RE:  The Gilbos, yes.  Mary Yesley, either on a previous trip, or – I don’t remember the connection he had, but he knew the Gilbos.  So when we went to Leningrad to see them embrace, because they had been in this correspondence relationship, it was remarkable to see the Gilbos, knowing that this person that had been communicating with from the United States, that here he was, and making this big effort to – we’re in solidarity.  We’re trying to help you.  The Gilbos are one of our big success stories. 

TSS:  Are they still here?

RE:  They’re still here.  They’re still members of Temple Israel.  We’re friends.  (Genya?) is his nickname; Evgeny is his full name.  (Genya?) and I put a mattress on top of the station wagon that someone had donated to him.  We strapped it on.  We went all the way down Beacon Street – I don’t know what season it was –  holding on to that mattress, getting it from one point to another.  There were moments like that that enriched my life.  When you go to help somebody, you’re helping somebody, but you’re also –

TSS:  Helping yourself.

RE:  You’re helping yourself.  It’s a big reward, a big payback when you can do something and make a connection.  You know you’re helping them, but it feels good when you’re doing something good for somebody else.

TSS:  There is no pure altruism.

RE:  Right.  You’re not thinking, “Oh, this is good for me,” but you realize, “What a wonderful moment.”  I’m trying to think.  We settled the whole family – and I’m blanking on their name.  I may not get their name right now.  Three generations.

TSS:  Charnys?

RE:  It wasn’t the Charnys.

AH:  I feel like I know what you’re talking about.

RE:  They moved into Dorchester somewhere. 

TSS:  I remember mentioning Dorchester, but I don’t remember who mentioned it.  Maybe Rabbi Morrison.

RE:  He was there.

AH:  It was Morrison’s family that’s four generations.

TSS:  No, but he said something about someone in Dorchester.  I don’t know what.

GW:  When you got on the flights back from the Soviet Union, back to the United States, after these trips in the USSR, what were you thinking about as you guys took off from the USSR, back to wherever you were going, to get back to Boston?

RE:  It was definitely an emotional feeling of thank goodness we successfully got out.  We weren’t retained and held in some way against our will.  So there was a relief in that.  I also felt a sense of not wanting to feel like I had done such a great thing.  Because the reality was, I didn’t change their lives.  In a moment, I might have given them a little pleasure, a little entertainment, a little opportunity to be together and to share.  But really, I was going back to my comfortable apartment in Boston, and they were still stuck in a place where they weren’t wanted, that they were discriminated against, that they had been thrown out of their jobs.  What did I do?  I didn’t do that much.  I didn’t feel like a hero.  I didn’t feel like I had done anything that was heroic.  I felt like I did something that was a good thing to do and powerful, but the long-lasting effects of it – when they have to get up the next day, and these wizard, masterful scientists and scholars who were thrown out of their academic jobs – they were doing tutoring just to get enough money to buy food.  They’re taking seventy-five percent pay cuts because they weren’t allowed.  Once they got that refusal status, they lost all their privileges.  They were in such compromised financial positions – and socially.  They didn’t only have Jewish friends, but I think their social circles certainly narrowed because of a refusenik status. 

TSS:  Only to refuseniks?

RE:  Yes.  Part of their society – what they had access to was reduced.  They were saying they didn’t want to stay there anymore.  There were non-Jewish Soviet citizens who didn’t feel good about that.

AH:  So, given the fact that they were refuseniks, how much did these families know about Judaism, and did your visits or your contributions add to this?

RE:  I think very few people had much information about the religion of Judaism.  There’s no religion in the Soviet Union.  Most Jews knew that they could go to the synagogue on Simchat Torah and be outside – outside, not inside, but outside – and to gather.  Of course, KGB people were identifying who was outside, but the most committed Jews who didn’t have much Jewish knowledge were willing to reveal themselves in that way to be a part of a Simchat Torah celebration outside and being a part of that community.  But their knowledge was very limited.  There were a handful of people within this population that were studying, who had received books from how they – maybe it came from Israel; maybe it came from the United States.  Some of them were studying, and they were learning.  But their parents didn’t know anything; it was all oral.  Maybe some people lit candles.  Maybe they knew the melody that their grandparents had chanted on a Friday night.  But it was – what? – two generations of nothing.  So it’s all oral history, and it was really watered down by the ’80s.  I think there was more of a nationalistic feeling of Israel and in great pride that the Israelis had won in 1967 – more of a sense of peoplehood than learning prayers and studying Torah.

GW:  What about American Judaism?  What did they know about American Judaism?

RE:  I don’t think much at all.  I don’t think there was much that – they didn’t have access to anything.  These books were just starting to be brought in by folks who were making the trips.

GW:  You mentioned the economic condition of the refuseniks and how a lot of them lost their jobs.  What were the visible signs of their economic situation?

RE:  What they served us in their apartments – a lot of starches. [Tape paused] There was no meat that we were being served in their apartments.  Actually, there was very little – when we ate in hotel restaurants, we were being given menus that had seven entrees, and there was only one thing that they were serving.  So it wasn’t only the refuseniks, the Jews, that didn’t have a lot.  They had less, and it was harder for them because they had less money, but there just wasn’t a lot available at the time when we were there.  The waiter opened up his jacket, and he had tins of caviar that he would sell us. 

TSS:  I think Fran and Donald Putnoi told this story.

RE:  Yes, because I was with [them].  Yes, exactly.

TSS:  They lived on tuna cans.

RE:  There was a whole black market that was thriving.  The official state stores – there wasn’t much there.  So the refuseniks would – it was an added burden because their income levels had dropped significantly.  So they must have been very careful on what they were buying and what they could provide.  So to make meals for us was an additional financial burden – to cook for other people.  But they were the best meals in the world. [laughter] They really were. 

Q:  What made them the best meals?

RE:  What made them?  Oh, it was the love.  There was just such a sense of sweetness and connection to be in their apartments and for them to be doing the best they could, serving us whatever they could put together.  It was a really very powerful – that was very powerful.  Very powerful.

GW:  In general, what were your impressions of the Soviet Union?

RE:  Well, Moscow was so drab, and these institutional apartment buildings that they built were so ridiculously large.  There was no character to them.  They were cinderblock buildings that went up ten stories, and they went out a city block.  People are hanging their clothes out the windows.  There weren’t lights at night in a lot of the hallways.  Some of them, you could click a button, but some of them, you clicked the button, and nothing went on.  The Kremlin was incredible.  The contrast between these ugly buildings that were built post World War Two, and to see the beautiful – the onion –

TSS:  Shape?

RE:  – shapes on top of the – fantastic.  Leningrad is beautiful, and some of the buildings in Leningrad and the big art museum.  I’m blanking on the name right now.  What’s it called? 

TSS:  We’ll find it.

RE:  Yes, you’ll find it.  But Fran Putnoi was commenting on these world-renowned pieces of art that were without humidity controls with very poor lighting, nothing like going to the museums in the United States or in Paris.  They just weren’t maintained properly.  They didn’t have the money to do it. 

TSS:  Yes, she mentioned that, I think.

RE:  The subways were incredible.  I’d never seen anything like that.  Some of the subways went down five stories underground, and they were impeccably clean.  There were lots of state workers, just menial jobs.  They were cleaning with small brooms and brushes, but they were all working, and you couldn’t lean on the handrails.  You’re going down and down and down, and some of these workers slapped us if we were leaning like this.  You needed to be very respectful of the property.  There were murals.  There were pieces of art in these stations that were just incredible.  That is a very clear memory for me.

AH:  What were the pieces of art, do you remember?

RE:  No, but some of them might have been celebrating war victories, heroes of the government, pictures of nobility, Russian history.

GW:  The families you met with, what did they say about the Soviet government, if anything?

RE:  Well, on the one hand, this was their home.  This was their government.  This was their life.  So, I think no one was publicly trashing their homeland.  They were angry with the lack of freedom.  But it’s very hard to leave your home.  This is what they were – they were on the stage of doing.  They had placed themselves on the stage of the next step in their life.  I think for a lot of the refuseniks, this wasn’t as much for them as it was for their children, the next generation, the generation after that, to have the freedoms that they didn’t have.  Some of them would have – I think some of them if they didn’t have children, they were staying.  “I’m going to deal with it the way it is because it’s my home; it’s my country.  There are problems with it, but where would I go?  Where am I going to go?  To Israel?  I don’t know Israel.  United States?  I don’t know.  Maybe have some relatives there.”  I think that must have been a struggle that they were dealing with.  But once they were committed refuseniks, they burned the bridge.  So the internal struggle, I’m sure, continued, but they had made it a public demonstration that they wanted out.  I’m sure many of them weren’t so happy arriving in Israel or arriving here.  Some went to Europe.  Europe looked more like the Soviet Union than Israel and the United States.  I know that some of the refuseniks who came here vacationed in Europe because it was more of a reminder of their home.  I don’t think that – my guess is that it’s still their home in a way that if they could go back to St. Petersburg now, without any concerns of being retained for any reason, they would and have because it’s where they were born, where their parents were, where their whole history was.

TSS:  Interesting.

AH:  Returning to the topic of the families, what did you guys do with the families during your visit?  We read an article that talked about how you guys were singing with the family, singing Jewish songs.

RE:  Well, we did that in the large group meetings.  In Tashkent, we actually went to a public house.  It wasn’t someone’s private apartment.  It was a meeting hall – town hall.  I don’t remember how they got permission to do that.  But I remember singing in a more formal setting there.  Otherwise, crowding into a space like this room with sixty people.  There’s a doorway there, a hallway, and so you could see ten heads leaning over from there and ten heads leaning over from that hallway, just wanting to be a part of hearing Israeli folk songs.  I might have sang some Russian folk tunes.

GW:  Roughly, how big is this room, just to put in perspective how big those rooms you were in?

RE:  I’m not good with dimensions.  What is this room?  Thirty feet?  Twenty-five feet? 

GW:  Twenty-five by thirty or something? 

RE:  Yes, something like that.  Not large. [Tape paused.]

GW:  How was the Jewish community in Moscow different than in St. Petersburg than in Tashkent?

RE:  This is a long time ago.  I don’t know that I recognized the difference between St. Petersburg and Moscow.  I was aware that there was a beauty, the beauty of the city of St. Petersburg, but I don’t know that that made any difference in the attitudes of those two Jewish communities.  Tashkent is more Oriental.  It’s in a different part of the world.  That was the first time that I got on this monstrous airplane, and it was just a shell.  There was nothing dividing anything from the bow of the plane to the stern of the plane.  It was just open, and there were soldiers, and we were there, and there were people there – and completely full.  Tashkent had this – it was wintertime, but it was warmer there.  It was more of a different society and skin color.  It was just a little bit different.

TSS:  I wanted to go a little bit forward, back to the United States.  What was it like for you to meet the families?

RE:  When they came over?

TSS:  When they came over.

RE:  Remarkably emotional and so joyous.  So joyous to see the Gilbos here.  When the Charnys came, I wasn’t at the airport.  There was a reason why I couldn’t – I don’t remember.  But when we first got to hug, it was just – it’s like not seeing your child for, I don’t know, ten years or something.  To reunite like that here, knowing that their lives were going to change dramatically, was a high emotional point, certainly, of my cantorial career.  This is in my thirty-fourth year at Temple Israel.  Those two trips, and the relationships, and what we try to do to help them is a high point of what I’ve done being the cantor at Temple Israel, or in my life, as a person.  I don’t know that I would have done it on my own.  I was in the right place at the right time with the right rabbis, who wanted to include me, who gave me the opportunity to help.  Because not many of my cantorial colleagues went, it was mostly a rabbinic thing that was happening in the Reform movement.  There were some cantors that went, but not a lot.  So I was just lucky to be where I was with the rabbis, who I had very close relationships with, not just professional but personal.  So when they came here, it was just an unbelievably great moment to meet, to hug, to kiss, and then to help them establish their lives, to get apartments.  I’m talking to this guy now, who helped get us an apartment for the Gilbos.  He’s helping me get an apartment for this Syrian refugee family.  So the connections they never – that’s not true.  Some of them disappeared; they moved to other cities and moved away from the synagogue.

AH:  From your knowledge, what was the most difficult part for them adjusting to the United States?

RE:  Professionally, having to get integrated into new systems, language, especially for spouses, especially for women – they had less knowledge of the English language.  That’s hard.  That was hard. 

TSS:  Rabbi Mehlman said that you gave classes and courses to introduce them to American society.

RE:  That’s right.  That’s right.  We were teaching.  Yes, we had them in our building on first floor.

TSS:  Basics like how to brush your teeth and how to dress, and how to get an interview. 

RE:  We hired Russian-English linguists to help them get basic vocabulary.  Emily Mehlman – the poster up there – took families shopping.  There’s a Robin Williams movie, where he’s a Russian immigrant, and they had one can of corn in Moscow, and they had one cereal.  When you walk into one of our supermarkets, you see forty cereal choices – a hundred of them.

TSS:  Even for Israelis, it amazes me every day, amazes me all the time.

RE:  Right.  For them, where there was nothing, to come – the adjustments were just phenomenal, what they had to go through.  And the kids being – I’m sure some kids made fun.  American kids made fun – they had accents.  They couldn’t speak properly.  Those were huge hurdles that the kids had to get over.

GW:  What about religiously?  What was the adjustment?  What was the adjustment like integrating to the Jewish community?

RE:  Combined, we put together a ceremony for maybe eight or ten boys.  So it was a joint b’nai mitzvah ceremony.  Then, we did a second one a couple of years later.  So they didn’t do a lot.  Some of them stayed in religious schools.  This is confirmation, and here are two brothers, Russians, who stayed through.  Not too many of them stayed through to tenth grade or beyond.  A lot of them drifted after that bar mitzvah ceremony.  I don’t know.  I don’t know how much the Jewish religion, of synagogue life, stayed with them beyond the connections we made in the trips and then as resettling them.  They didn’t grow up with it.  I think, after a while, it became less – it wasn’t the first – “Let’s go to Shabbat services.”  That wasn’t the first priority they had moving forward in life.  They were trying to get their jobs in order, getting the education of their kids in order, and there aren’t that many Russian families still on the Temple Israel roster.  I think that’s the case in most major cities across the United States,

TSS:  Maybe it’s a good sign because they assimilated and [inaudible].

RE:  Like Israelis, they don’t go to synagogue.

TSS:  The [inaudible] that will be like the mediator.  They were able to live here by themselves.

RE:  Right.  They could swim.  They could get into the stream and swim.

GW:  Are you still in touch with any of these families that you worked with through the Soviet Jewry?

RE:  The Gilbos.  Especially the Gilbos.  I lament the fact that we talk about having dinner.  It happens infrequently, but they were here for the holidays.  When I hug (Genya?), it’s one of the best hugs of the year.  It really is.  The love that I share for that family and the connection and how it how happened, it’s [inaudible].  It’s extra special, extra special.  And the Charnys, but they’re deceased now.  Anna is here, but the parents have died.  These guys, the (Kelbert?) Family, I see them in Israel; they live in Jerusalem, and I’ve seen them a couple of times when I’ve been in Jerusalem. 

AH:  These are the (Kelberts?).

RE:  Yes.  It’s the Shklyarovs, the Shklyarov Family – Diana Shklyarov.

TSS: [inaudible] after this interview.

RE:  It’s the couple that got divorced.

TSS:  We didn’t hear that story.

RE:  That’s the family that we were settling in Dorchester.  I just can’t get their name.  But I can’t remember the bat mitzvah from last week, either. [laughter] You get to a certain age – it all gets blurry. 

GW:  All right.  Do you guys have any other questions? 

TSS:  No.

AH:  I don’t think so.

GW:  Is there anything else you’d like to add, Cantor Einhorn?

RE:  I’m really pleased that you’re doing this and recording memories.  Keeping the history as clear as possible is good because we all know, as time passes, we lose track of what happened and who did what, and what was important.  So I congratulate you guys for taking it on.  I’m available to you at any point if there are any questions that you think of later on that you would like answered.  I’m here. 

TSS:  Thank you.

GW:  I actually have one final thing.  It’s just a clarification.  So who did you –?  You may have already said this, but I wanted to just double-check it.  Who did you go with on your first trip?  Who was part of that traveling party? 

TSS:  He doesn’t remember.

GW:  You don’t remember?

RE:  Dana Kur, Andy Snyder, Fran and Don Putnoi – that was one trip.  Mark Yesley and Mike Grossman, who are both deceased, I think were on the other trip that I was on, but I’d have to – on the lower level, there’s a picture of me, but it’s with Dana and Andy, who got married.  We actually did a little mock wedding ceremony.  We went to the synagogue in Leningrad, and there was a chuppah that was up.  We actually did a little something.  They were in high school; they got married later on.

TSS:  I heard that if you don’t – the last part, where you break the glass, then it’s okay. 

RE:  They didn’t break the glass. 

TSS:  So they weren’t married.

RE:  No, no, they weren’t married, but we did this – and David Mehlman, Bernard’s son, was on that trip as well.

GW:  Were you the only clergy person?

RE:  No, Rabbi Mehlman.  I think it was Rabbi Mehlman and I who were the two clergy on that trip.  The other trip, Ronne, Larry Milder – I was there – and Aaron-someone from Connecticut.  When you meet with Ronne –

AH:  Some rabbi?

RE:  Some rabbi from Connecticut who didn’t fly with us there, but I think we met him there.

TSS:  I think someone said something about someone from Connecticut.

RE:  Yeah, I think Aaron-somebody-or-other.

TSS:  My memory is also bad. 

GW:  Sounds familiar.

AH:  Yes, it does.

GW:  All right.  Well, thank you very much.

TSS:  Thank you so much.

RE:  Thank you.

GW:  This has been (inaudible).

RE:  Thanks for taking the time.

GW:  Good luck with the Syrian refugees.

[END OF INTERVIEW]