Interview with ARTHUR GOLDBERG December 15, 1976 By Tina Isaacs Interview Tape 1 Side A Q. This is Tina Isaacs interviewing Dean Arthur Goldberg. 1 1 m in Dean Page 1 Goldberg 1 s office and it is December 15th, 1976. Okay, this seems to be working. Testing one, two, three, four. Okay. A. 1 1 11 try to talk into the mike. Q. Okay. A. Alright, go ahead. Q. Mr. Goldberg, could you please tell me where you were born and when, if you 1 i ke . . . if it 1 s not personal . A. I was born in the Bronx in New York City in 1933. Q. Okay. And when your family ... were both your parents American? A. Well, my mother was born in this country and my father was born in Russia; arrived here about age eight or nine, I guess. They both grew up here. Q. Do you know why he left Russia? (Laughter) That 1 s a silly question! A. (Laughter) The Ukraines, the Cossacks were coming; the pogroms were coming. The people decided it would be a good idea to leave. Q. And did they settle into New York? A. Oh, yes. They settled into New York and New Jersey, and New York again, and moved on. If you 1 d 1 ike, I can give you a sort of biographical, auto- biographical, rundown of myself, my family, and Judaism, which makes an exercise in itself. Q. Oh, fine! That 1 s much better than me asking silly questions. A. Alright. Both my sets of grandparents were Orthodox Jews from Russia. Russia ... Poland. Right in along that Russian Polish border. As I said, my mother was born in this country, but she is the youngest child. All of her sisters and brothers were born in Europe. Both sets of grand-
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Interview with ARTHUR GOLDBERG December 15, 1976 By Tina Isaacs
Interview Tape 1 Side A
Q. This is Tina Isaacs interviewing Dean Arthur Goldberg. 11 m in Dean
Page 1
Goldberg 1 s office and it is December 15th, 1976. Okay, this seems to be
working. Testing one, two, three, four. Okay.
A. 11 11 try to talk into the mike.
Q. Okay.
A. Alright, go ahead.
Q. Mr. Goldberg, could you please tell me where you were born and when, if
you 1 i ke . . . if it 1 s not personal .
A. I was born in the Bronx in New York City in 1933.
Q. Okay. And when your family ... were both your parents American?
A. Well, my mother was born in this country and my father was born in Russia;
arrived here about age eight or nine, I guess. They both grew up here.
Q. Do you know why he left Russia? (Laughter) That 1 s a silly question!
A. (Laughter) The Ukraines, the Cossacks were coming; the pogroms were
coming. The people decided it would be a good idea to leave.
Q. And did they settle into New York?
A. Oh, yes. They settled into New York and New Jersey, and New York again,
and moved on. If you 1 d 1 ike, I can give you a sort of biographical, auto-
biographical, rundown of myself, my family, and Judaism, which makes an
exercise in itself.
Q. Oh, fine! That 1 s much better than me asking silly questions.
A. Alright. Both my sets of grandparents were Orthodox Jews from Russia.
Russia ... Poland. Right in along that Russian Polish border. As I
said, my mother was born in this country, but she is the youngest child.
All of her sisters and brothers were born in Europe. Both sets of grand-
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 2
A. (Continued) parents were very active in their respective synagogues. My
mother's father was cantor of his synagogue and my father's parents were
very active leaders in their little synagogue, both of them very orthodox.
And my mother's ... my father's mother ran a sort of refugee center dur
ing the second World War and just before it, and brought a great many ortho
dox Jews over here, including rabbis, several of whom are today fairly big
wheels in New York City rabbinical.
Q. Excuse me if I interrupt you. Were these refugees mostly from Eastern
Europe or were they from Germany?
A. Mostly from Europe. Almost all of these people were Slavic Jews, Russian -
Polish Jews .. 11 licvacs11 (?) But during the war people weren't all that
fussy, and in fact, as you may know, the flow of Jews through Europe quickly
went from Poland to Germany and out. So there were some German Jews. But
mostly they were Slavic and mostly they were very orthodox. The rabbi whom
I remember and whom Rabbi Karp probably knows, is named Garelick. When I
first met Garelick, thought he was a very old man because he had a beard.
Garelick was probably thirty at the time. I was a very little boy at the
time. There is some interesting stories associated with that, which maybe
make sense in this context and that is the context of assimilation. A very
funny kind of problem that all of these people faced, in that they were
orthodox and strong about it, America .was a land of opportunity and it only
had a few requirements for making it economically in the city. And those
were: one, that you work on Saturday. That was really a very strong require
ment, particularly in those pre-union days. Second, was sort of that
uh, you not wear a yarmulke. If you wanted to, it depended on how strong
you were and how much pushing around you could take, nobody was going to kill
you.
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 3
A. (Continued) And then the kosher food question: the upshot of all of that is
that ... all of my father's brothers ... they're all pharmacists, except
for my father. Big value on education, everybody supposed to get an education.
My dad didn't go to college because he was the oldest and he had to work to
help the others; nevertheless, he had a great respect for education. My
father's father was a building contractor and he didn't work Saturdays. His
father was a carpenter. He held to it, but his sons were never able to do
that and yet they remained involved with his synagogue for many, many, many
years, into their forties ... well, one of them is still involved. They
kept their businesses open on Saturday, they kept kosher home, they ate out
at non-kosher restaurants, they didn't flaunt it in their parents face .•
a standard practice. A very close-knit family. Everybody got together on
Sunday, High Holidays, everybody stayed, nobody rode, all this kind of stuff.
There was even a fairly rich kind of intellectual overlay in all of that.
There were real arguments about ethics and values as they spun off from
talmudic learning and the trade off on practice. Interesting enough, my
parents generation were quite ambivalent about which way it wanted to go in
this world. A very revealing exercise, which would embarrass my parents
today, I'm sure, is that when I was very young, I wanted to go to yeshiva in
New York. I wanted to go to yeshiva not because I was strictly orthodox, but
because my good handball playing buddy went to the yeshiva, and we had to
break up our handball game when he went to school. Little kids in New York
in those days played handball and not basketball. There were walls all over
the place and you played handball, that's all. My grandfather, my father's
father thought it was a lovely idea. My mother's father died when I was very
young and that's why he didn't enter into this. My father's father thought
that this would be a terrific idea. My father didn't nor did my mother. They
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 4
A. (Continued) were really afraid that I would grow up orthodox, pious, and all
the things that would be frightening to people. And so, somewhat sadly,
continued to go to pub] ic school and 1 ive in a very Jewish neighborhood. For
a large part of my life, I assumed there were only two kinds of people in
this world: Jews and Italians. The Italians were fine. My father thought
the Italians were just like Jews except they ate pasta. You walk into an
Italian house, you walk into the kitchen, the mama is there and the whole
thing. We then moved when was about ten to Connecticut.
Q. Are you an only child?
A. No. have a younger brother. When we moved to Connecticut, my parents
became fearful. We were moving to the land of the Gentiles. And that was
really funny because in Hartford, Connectibut, there 1 s an enormous Jewish
community. But coming out of the Bronx, where in the course of five blocks
you'd pass four 1 ittle synagogues, these were all shtitel, they were orthodox
predicated on the notion that no one could drive on the Sabbath, you had to
walk, so they were all within walking distance. They come up to Hartford,
Connecticut which is the place to which we went, it was really a radical
change. It is a smaller community and it's a much more assimilated com
munity, with a big, strong German-Jewish base and a big Reform Temple that
predates the second World War and that was a whole new land for us. At that
point, they became very worried about us, I think. With only a 1 ittle
prompting from the leadership of the local yeshiva, enrolled me in the
yeshiva there.
going to pub! ic
was about age, guess was maybe eleven. had been
) you know, three times a week, whatever.
Terrible exercise in New York City, just absolutely terrible. The only
good thing about it ... it was terrible educationally, in terms of what you
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 5
A. (Continued) learned from the book. It was very good in terms of human
). A lot of human access back and forth. Anger, love, but it
was very genuine. Nobody ever heard of (unintelligible) anything and people
put there souls on the 1 ine for whatever they were worth, good or bad, they
laid it right out. And you got used to doing business 1 ike that and that's
probably a good thing in itself; but ih terms of how much Hebrew and Talmud
I learned, very little: which put me at an enormous disadvantage in this
little yeshiva, which was a very 1 ittle yeshiva. It was just beginning. It
was maybe five, six years old when I entered it. It was a beat-up old house
in the downtown, dilapitated part of Hartford, Connecticut. It had maybe a
hundred students, I don't know. I doubt it. I admit, I was way out-of-wack,
because was a second-grade (unintelligible) student in that school. made
many good friends on the faculty who are friends of mine even now. Even
though I was their worst discipline case in years. I'm gonna jump the story
some because that yeshiva today is a multi-million dollar enterprise. My
father was the treasurer of that yeshiva. My mother was the chairman of the
whatever-it-is.
Q. Your parents still 1 ive in Hartford then?
A. They still live in Hartford; they live in West Hartford. They're very active
leaders in what is the orthodox ways, but it's a peculiar kind of orthodox.
Almost all of the money for that yeshiva comes from people who are not
) It's a funny, classical syndrome. The
school probably enrolls now five hundred or so students. It's a big operation.
There's a lot of transition and assimilation involved in the (unintell igiblev
being eleven and being forty-three, and here I am now.
Q. So, you were raised orthodox then, are you still?
A. Well, I was raised a "funny, compromise orthodox". I was raised orthodox in the
home and assimilated outside, and not ashamed of being Jewish and without a
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 6
A. (Continued) chip on my shoulder. A very funny kind of mix, but I think
very common for New York Jews. don't think I've ever seriously had an
anti-Seminic experience of any great consequence. I did have a couple of
experiences which were relative to my being Jewish which were enlightening.
One was when I was a college student and working in a (unintelligible) and
doing a Jot of physically back-breaking work. It was a wall-to-wall Gentile
(unintelligible), mostly Irish, I think. It wasn't a bit of a problem, except
that I was a bit of an outsider. But it was hard to separate out whether I
was an outsider because I was Jewish or Lf I was an outsider because I was an
). These people didn't know what the hell to make of me. Why would
a guy with a college education be mucking around (unintelligible). Still, I
was somewhat on the outside of that group, that wasn't really hostile, they
were clearly friends of both (unintelligible). But there was a little boy
who lived nearby who used to come around and watch me work, and always had
to watch out for him unless he'd get caught up in the machinery. He was
really a little boy, maybe seven years old. We got sort of friendly. guess
I was about eighteen then, twenty, something I ike that. He said to me one day,
sitting there, you know little kids speak out straight forward, he said, 11 Gee,
ya know, I don't know what I'd do if I was a Jew. 11 I said you'd probably
wouldn't be doing much, you'd probably be sitting there, playing or running
or something. It wouldn't make that much difference. And, we sort of Jet it
go. It became obvious to me that I was the cause of some comment from people
in the area. It was somewhat of a shock to me that this wo~ld puzzle a young
boy like that, that Jews were alien to his world and it clearly, for him, being
a Jew meant to carry some kind of a burden, and I understood all that and it
never came to anything very much. The next experience I had of that sort was
rather different, actually, it was when I went down South. And, you know
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 7
A. (Continued) I had two different experiences. This is 1957, maybe. Around
there, 1 56, '57. I got tired of Southeners telling me after awhile how proud
they were of their Jewish community. I never encountered a hostile comment
well, I was an officer in the army so you can account for some hostile com
ments. But, as soon as people knew you were Jewish, they would ta~e pains to
tell you how proud they were of their Jewish community, and what a nice
Jewish community they had. Now, it took me awhile to Hgure all that out.
And, as near as I can tell, in the South, that's the peculiar thing, the
South never (unintelligible). In some ways it was much more honest (unin
telligible). So, they were aware of their differences and they sort people
out and they 1 ike people to stay in their 1 ittle boxes. And, they do have an
up and down but it's not always necessarily (unintelligible). B.ut, I
never did. On the other side of that I had a most interesting experience in
the South, in Colombus, Georgia. Walked into an army navy store with a Jew
to possibly buy my uniforms there instead of the PX, I was wearing civies.
I hadn't noticed the name of the store, if I had it wouldn't have made any
difference, because I'm still thinking like a New Yorker. walked in and
talked to the fellow about the price of his uniforms and the quality, and they
were considerably better than the ones at the PX, and the price was only a
little higher. thought I wanted to buy it there, which actually I did, but
said, look, I have a problem, I have no money and I won't have any until payday.
Can you extend me credit? And he looked at me with a smile from ear to ear
and he said, "Sonny, for you there is credit in this store anytime you want. 11
(Uses a Yiddish accent) Now, I brought the accent in at that point because he'd
been speaking with that accent all along, I never thought one thing of it. I'm
obviously very Jewish looking. I never think anything about that. Where
grew up, you walk into the store and the guy gives you nothing for being
Jewish because everybody's Jewish. (Laughter) It doesn't mean anything!
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 8
A. (Continued) And it never occurred to me that it would. Clearly, the community
party situation is always such that for him the old notion of (unintelligible)
is real. And, I found that thr,oughout the South. The Jews are really much
more of a community of Jews and that as a Jew you can exercise claims that
I hadn 1 t seen done since the immigrants. The immigrants used to come and if
a) you were Jewish and, b) you were from ) then anyone within twenty
miles of ( who was Jewish in this country, owed you for at least a
night 1 s lodging. And, you could claim it. And, people would. I hadn 1 t seen
that in year 1 s, but it 1 s still true. At least it was twenty years ago.
don 1 t know how much of a picture that gives you of where l 1 m at, but (unintel-
1 igible) but I think not all that uncommon for New York Jews who weren 1 t knocked
.and beaten around, who feel pretty secure in being Jewish, not tense about it.
Q. Do you think this has something to do with being a second generation?
A. Yes, no question about it. My father fought his way through the streets of
New York. I never fought anybody, on the basis that I was Jewish. I fought
some people mostly they were Jews.
Q. Now your brother. What does your brother do?
A. My brother 1 s in Hartford because he works in my dad 1 s business, he 1 s a plant
controller. And, I can 1 t speak for his rel igous views; I really don• t know.
My own are funny.
straight emotion.
have a strong emotional bonding to orthodox Jews. lt 1 s
never heard a Reformed sermon that could bring tears to
my eyes. They 1 re all sociology lessons.; l 1 m not against sociology, there 1 s
a nice department here. But, ritual is something l 1 ve moved away from for
years and years and years.
Q. Are you affiliated with the temple here?
A. Yes, I am. l 1 m with the (unintelligible) Beth El. l 1m mainly affiliated with
(unintelligible) very complicated setting. I can 1 t really say l 1 m more (unin-
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 9
A. (Continued) -telligible) part of the concern about just supporting the tradi
tion, which I think it has. Very profound human values. I can't sort out
what part of those human values owe their existence to European shtitel and
all the persecution that surrounded that shtitel. In many ways the shtitel
had some of the values of the (unintelligible) Society. For one thing,
(unintelligible). Another thing, people pulled the wrong way. Those indi-
viduals were called ( ) and treated with some contempt but not thrown out.
It was just too dangerous to throw anybody out. The people understood about
working together, but there's a concept that comes out of all orthodox Jews,
and that appeals to me the most, it's a concept called ) . It
has to do with human dignity and it has to do with stiff-neck pride, it has to
do with the notion of humanity being in God's image and you don't desecrate
people or humiliate people, deface people ... you might (unintelligible)
... you wouldn't mutilate a corpse. A whole series of things I think tend
to make people treat other people with a certain amount of respect. It's one
(unintelligible) profound value. The other is ) ... the notion
of charity is really an actually antithesis of the (unintelligible) notion.
And the third is a respect for money. There are other values, but those
really central values and I can't really quite figure out to what extent they
owe there continuance to the conditions of the shtetil, to what extent they
come out of talmudic learning, to what extent the ritual has sustained them
over the years. In most cultures, my own guess is that in most cultures, the
intellectual rationality of behavion :of the culture is maybe rooted in some
thing like talmud or some oth~r theological base are not which sustain people
from day to day. They may be important to have there as a reference in the
dynamics of the society, but my guess is that what sustains people from day
to day is ritual.
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page JO
Q. Now, do you think that American assimilation has ... well, put a damper
on these sorts of values today, or are they still there?
A. Oh, no. Well, American assimi Jation has put an enormous damper on the
ritual. That's clear. My grandfather used to say America ( ) . And yet he had great success in this country, he loved t~is country, but
he saw what was happening. He saw that the assimilation was pulling away
the children from the traditional modes of behavior. :lit didn't effect the
first generation very much in its committment to the ethical principle~
They understood about ) and all those things and believed
it, and felt it. I'm not sure if the assimilation brought the (unintell igi
ble), if the assimilation in the long term, if you really do it, the thing
is I don't you would do it. If the thing actually ran with no feedback and
with no (unintelligible), the thing ran in this extensive melting pot thing,
you'd get one homogeneous mess; it might even be a nice mess, but it would
certainly be homogeneous. And I think in the conflicts between, for example
the Jewish values ( and the Calvanists views for charity, the Cal-
vanists would win. Just given the nature of the country; we tossed every
body out if they were disallusioned. The Jewish culture doesn't do that.
It sorts people out very differently and it starts in the old shtetil from
a very interesting position. (Unintelligible) has written on this, and I
don't want to plagiarize his stuff, a lot of my insights come from (unintel-
1 igible) and then (unintelligible) also wrote (unintelligible). There's
another (unintelligible) aspect of Judaism. There's Yorn Kippur and there's
fasting but that's a little differenFthing, it's a symbolic self-denial
to remind one. In general, there's no big thing being placed on the (unin
telligible) pain and on debasing oneself. One is gluttony, drunkeness is one,
but good food, pleasant drink; these are not considered bad sins. That's one
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 11
A. (Continued) (unintelligible) It's not easy, it's not a bad thing if you
have (unintelligible) sex, okay. Check for one thing. In the old culture,
the perfect person, the (unintell i~ible), is one who obeys all 637 injunc-
tions. It's impossible to obey all 637 injunctions and get rich. There's
no time. mean, the amount of time you dedicate to studies makes it im-
possible to become rich that way. So you find a funny sort (unintelligible)
in the old shtetil. You found a talmud scholar (unintelligible) They were
almost all the poorest churchmen. They made their money tutoring children
and things I ike that, •bhe~ just barely existed, but people fed them (unin-
telligible). Very few communites had (unintelligible) you had to pay them.
(unintelligible) The problem with scholars was really a highly (unintelli-
gible) There's no macho treatment between the Jews. The really high
status people were the talmud (unintelligible). They had no money. There
were people in the community who had money. They were the merchants. The
butcher, the baker, the clothing merchant. They really had money. They had (
some status, not as much status as a talmudic scholar. Now the manifest
uh ... truth of this could be observed on the High Holidays when it came to
). Now, I never saw this in Europe, I'm not sure it was their
practice though I gather it was, as I said before here, the (unknown)
would be auctioned off for money. Now of course the money did not pay them
on High Holidays but (unintelligible) were made. These were I ittle congre-
gations, they were so nice and 1 ittle nobody had to write it down, and there
were no little slips. Of course, everybody knew everybody, and if Mr. Swartz
said "ten dollars", then that's ten dollars. Incidentally, youowed the money
whether you got the ... you know ... the bidding was funny. Whatever you
bid, you pay even if you didn't come out at the top. It was a way of con-
tributing money. Now, these auctions were always won by the richest people.
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 12
A. (Continued) Of course, the money was used to pay up the mortgage, to pay
the coal bill, to pay everything. It was considered the height of gross
behavior to the people who won those Alleahs to take them for themselves.
I have never seen any one of those people except the Alleahs, and go up and
read from the Talmud. They actually do get called up to read from the
Talmud during the year .. free. But never would they take one of those
Alleahs for themselves. They 1 d give them away (unintelligible). That was
a very widespread factor~in orthodox congregations. And I think really
explains this trade-off, It's okay to get rich, but you must have done
something a little not right because you couldn 1 t posstbly be emphatic and
be all that rich. So, maybe you should do a little something to the Talmud
for that, and help those who really did lead a truly wonderful, pure 1 ife
and give them the (unintelligible). That ambivalence is clear, it 1 s a trade
off to see how much can I give him. The point is: there was no assumption
that because you were rich, God loved you, which is a Calvinist 1 s assumption.
Q. Although, I think a Calvinist might argue with you on that.
A. No. In pure Calvinist theology that 1 s nonsense. There 1 s a very interesting
study that I read a paper on. True Calvinists believe in preordination. It
doesn 1 t matter what your material situation is. It's absolutely irrelevant.
What 1 s done is done, right? Very interesting dynamics about what happens in
the human population having to live with and cope with the ideas of preordina
tion. How do you deal with a thing like that? And, really it's all done
before you start. I think in the preaches and the mores that developed under
Calvinism, you got the notion of the elect and the manifest evidence of
being among the elect, which I am sure is a corruption, you know, without any
question, but think the broad soct~l practice was the social practice of the
corruption.
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 13
Q. Oh, I see. Well, I certainly agree with that. (Laughter)
A. (Laughter) I really ought to be careful between the theological Calvinism
and what happens in practice. Uh . what else?
Q. vell, anyway, one of the values that you stressed was the respect for learn
ing, and I'd like to go on that, just for awhile. Now, you obviously went
to co~Jege, where did you go?
Q. That's a whole interesting thing by itself, about learning. think a funny
happened to the Jews in regard to learning. And I' II tell you where went
in the course of this, in the next example. Uh ... people valued learning.
I'm not sure they completely understood why they valued learning, but they
most certainly did value learning. And, you could see it, I mean, again, if
you talk about the ritual the question (unintelligible) to the Talmudic
scholars were the status of people and a lot of the people couldn't have
their children become talmudic scholars because they needed them to work and
bring money in. In Europe there was always desire to get the children educa
ted which was very hard to do in Europe there was massive discrimination
against Jews. In this country it was possible, most particularly in New
York City. In New York City by the time I was a little child, and my parents
really missed that, you know, and my older cousins did not, when CCNY (unin
telligible). The only thing you had to be to go to CCNY was smart. And
smart, there was plenty of smart. Not only was there natural smart, but all
the smart was nurtured. That is that people saw it and they valued it. They
trained it in the same way that some coaches notice a youngster with terrific
reflexes and they nurture that, you know, and they become great ath1etes.
If they saw a kid that was smart, then they dedicated all kinds of stuff.
But what happened was with Jewish version of the Protestant ethic in a funny
way. Uh ... it's a matter of capital acquisition. They had momma-poppa
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 14
A. (Continued) stores, orthodox Jews. They would open up early in the morning
and close late at night .and on Sabbaths, they didn't work. And they didn't
spend money either. What, you'd get a lot of money 1 ike that after awhile.
What do you do with the money? Send the kid to college, that's what. So,
you have in one generation: we go from the momma-poppa candy :store to my
son the doctor, my son the neuro-surgeon, my daughter the concert violinist.
In one generation. And I could take you through the Bronx today and show
you they're no longer owned by Jews, but I could show you the candy stores
and the butcher shops, and the fruit markets from which there came in one
generation doctors, lawyers, not college professors, not then, later.
College professors didn't make any sense. They didn't know about them.
Nobody knew how to get there. All professions, almost none of these people
wanted their children to go into thelr business. They were back-breaking
(unintelligible), but they sacrificed, they saved all their money and they
sent their kids. And mostly their kids could carry them. Most of those
people, if they're still living, have nice condominiums in Miami. When it
gets cold in the winter, they go. They didn't all make it. Some of them
are still 1 iving in the Bronx, and they get mugged. The third generation
is the problem generation. The father whose the lawyer, lives in Long
Island, whose kids were born in Long Island, who never saw the store. If they
go to visit grandma in the condominium in Miami, doesn't understand what the
hell this is all about. They have no idea in the world. And maybe (unintel
ligible) They don't understand their father. They don't understand what's
eatin' him, and they never lived on top of the candy store and had to worry
whether there was mice. So, it's fast (unknown). But that generation out on
Long Island now, has a real problem. And it is that the father's temple, which
is conservatively reformed, doesn't seem to say anything to them, and they're
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 15
A. (Continued) looking for something. And some of those kids are studying
(unknown) and some of those kids are becoming orthodox Jews. And I don't
really understand that whole (unintelligible), but someplace along the line
we forgot what we were looking for with that education. Bill Green is the
guy who told me what we were looking for. Bill Green, right over here,
(unintelligible) He told me what all that scholarship was aboutLthat the
Talmud scholars were studying. And, we forgot what it was about. The
reason you study Talmud was to discover how to live a life such that God
would live in your house. It's 1 iterally true, and you gotta speak to Bill
about this, if you go back to early stages in the beginning, when the
temples stood, there's no evidence that Jews are .aoy:.:m0Ee:1people in book
than anyone else. The priests were the people who spoke with God. For
anybody else, you want to talk to God, you go up to the priest, the priest
talks to God, that was it. There wasn't even books. With the destruction
of temple, the rabbis came into the foreplay. They had the sort of the spin
off from the prophets. The prophets had argued the High Priests for some
time because priests had real power, and the prophets were sort of the critics,
the social critics. And the rabbis spun out of that, and the temples were
destroyed the second time. The rabbis really came to the fourth time. Said:
look, we believe that you can make the temple in your own home if, if you
perform the rituals properly. And there were no records of the rituals.
So, one has to think through what would God want you to do, if God is as we
be! ieve God to be. And that would establ~sh the ritual. Speak the value of
clean! iness, purity of mind, the various values that have generated.
(Unintelligible) wasn't really expected to be written down, studied, anal
ized, and that's what people would study: how to live a life, as an ethical
human being in relation to God and one's fellow, such that it would be a
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 16
A. (Continued) domicile for God to 1 ive in. It became in America this whole
knowledge was quite by accident, if the scholarship studies became a rode to
upward social mobility and income. I think in the first generation, there was
no big cleavage. My father took his social values from his childhood (unin
telligible) ... learning ..• uh ... useful point. These things came,
he didn't take them completely out of Talmud, they were just part of the
chicken soup (unintelligible). Which may well have had this at the base -
Talmud. But it wasn't so much his preoccupation with the stock out of which
the chicken soup was made (unintelligible). But I'm not sure by the time
I went off to college that those things were really so clear and anybody
could really say what it was he was studying to become, in fact what came to
be the case, was that if you weren't going to become a doctor or a lawyer or
some kind of professional, why were you going? There wasn't much money.
My parents were not poor, but they were not rich either. They're still not.
So, when I went off to college, I went off to have a profession. I didn't
want to be a doctor or a lawyer, or a dentist. So, what was I gonna do?
Well, Three of my uncles are pharmacists so I went to pharmacist school, where
I was bored out of my sku 11. I went to pharmacist schoo 1 at Fordam Uni ver-
s i ty.
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A, INTERVIEW 1
Interview with ARTHUR GOLDBERG December 15, 1976
Page 17
By Tina Isaacs
Interview Tape 1 Side B
A. (Continued) The history of Fordam's Pharmacy School ... for must
have been forty years, maybe more .. very nice. Introduced me to Jesuits.
Had a lot of fun with Jesuits .. good arguments. Learned a 1 ot about
1 ife and relationships. In fact, learned about the neophytes. The neo-
phytes would grant you your premises, and they would finish right away. You
could see which ones would make it as Jesuits. (Laughter) A very interesting
group. At any rate, was bored out of my head, so I proceeded to leave
that program trying to leave with flying colors, which I did, I got all A's
and got out of there. So, my parents says, well they couldn't really hol-
Jar because got all A's, but people did raise their eyebrows, what's a mat-
ter with him? What's the matter with being a pharmacist? Your uncles are
making a nice living, etc. All of that. Well, I went to be an engineer.
People didn't think it was such a bad idea, they didn't really know what it
was, except for my father who had wanted to be a civil engineer, but he never
went to do it, because he couldn't, he just had to work. Well, I was no good
at engineering, but I went to the University of Connecticut and that's a whole
long story which would take a lot of tapes. But eventually I •d left engine-
ering at the University of Connecticut, stayed at that school, though, and
went back to become apolitical science major. By then, my family sort of
given me up for a lost sheep, although my dad, somewhat puzzled and bemused
said, well, look, I'll pay this much, I'll pay the rest ... finish. He got
a sense while I was doing the political science major that I was having a
really good time. Ny dad and I weren't all that close until later. And, in
fact it started about then. I was in an honor's program and I guess when I'd
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 18
A. {Continued) come home, which wasn 1 t all that often, I would talk with some
pleasure about ohe of my faculties, it was my honor 1 s supervisor. We were
coming up to commencement and my dad asked, well, before we went to commence
ment, my dad asked if he could meet this fellow named Max Fascher. And, I
said, yea, I guess so and I asked Max if he had some time to see my dad after
the ceremonies and he said sure. So, we met and we strolled around the cam
pus. Max was walking with my dad, and I was with my mother, my brother and
I don 1 t know who else was around, somethings. On the way back my dad asked
if I wanted to go to graduate school. I was then going to work in his store
for six months, and then I was going in the army. So, I said, well, 11 11
look, I don 1 t know, why don 1 t we, I don 1 t know. Let me ... I want to give
the store a good shot, you need the help, let 1 s put it aside. And we did,
and I did put it aside. worked in the store; I don 1 t think was very
good at it. went into the army. And when
I wanted to go back to graduate school. And
was in the army, I decided
did, I went back to Connect i-
cut, took a master 1 s there because that 1 s what you (unintelligible) under
graduates record. Did a pretty clean job with that master 1 s and went to
Yale graduate school. took a Ph.d and then I came up here. think my dad
is the only person in my family who really understands what I did. And when
I say what I did, I ... is what did as a scholar. He also understands
what I do as a dean. That 1 s Jess interesting to him. think his greatest
disappointment is that I never wrote a book. I got into the dean business for
my own interests and in some w~ys too soon. And, I have a few articles out,
and he likes articles, but he would have liked a book. From the old guy.
Q. Now, why did you come up to Rochester?
A. Now, that 1 s idiosyncratic. Well, no, it 1 s important. lt 1 s important I think
Jess in the perspective of Jews than the history of the university. was at
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 19
A. (Continued) Yale. The job market was moving. No baloney, I was one of
their better graduate students, and I knew that perfectly well. Still, I
had a wife, two children and $5,000 worth of debts and I was very concerned
a5out a job. didn't want to go out to the coast, because both sets of
grandparents live in Hartford, we had the two children, was very close with
tne children, my wife's an only child. The back and forth transportation to
the coast would have been brutal. Neither set of grandparents has a lot of
money, indeed, not much money at all on my wife's side. It would have been
actuaUy prohibitive for them to spend the money to fly to the coast even
once, let alone ... So, that, I had a··couple of opportunities at the coast
that were very attractive, Berkley being one of them, but, it really was not
a thing I wanted to do. In the East I was getting offers from places that
wanted to have a behaviorist course. I didn't want to be their pet behav
iorist, in those days that was the big thing in political science. (Unintel-
ligible comment) And, uh .. faculties like that weren't very attractive
to me. was in a bit of a quandary when I got a call from this guy Bill
Wrightman in Rochester, and I went to see my mentor at Yale, Bob Lane, and
said, where the hell is Rochester and what is that all about? He said, well,
I don't know what's with Rochester but I know Bill Wrightman, he's a bril-
1 iant guy, he's a (unintelligible), if you're going up to Rochester, try and
do some really terrific thing, I don't know if you'll suceed or not, but I
think you should look look at it. So, came up to look at it. Bill Wright-
man had only been here, at that point, a year. The department was planning.
Two people were close to retirement, clearly not of the new school, but
clearly very gracious gentlemen who were not (unintelligible) Glen Wilksy and
Bill Leets who were really interested in where political science was going.
And, uh ... there was not a great aura of resentment, then, you know .. ·
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 20
A. (Continued) here's the new people coming to throw out the old. I expected
to find that kind of thing. I did not find it. found a very (unintelli-
gible) Dick Fenno, Ted Blue and Peter Rettestry of the present faculty were
then also here, each of whom was an interesting person. And Bill seemed to
have some terrifically interesting ideas .. And, uh. I was really
learning, even sitting around shooting the breeze In his office. And the
fact is, (unintelligible) I understood all of their (unintelligible) and
not that I would think of everything that everyone of them thought of, but
had no (unknown) coming out of there. But they had a whole new (unknown)
(unintelligible) which made a lot of sense out of funny corners :in the kind
of modeling (unintelligible) sociological mode. It really seemed like an
attractive offer. But, again, who the hell knew if this thing was gonna fly
or not. And the school had no particular rep from where I came from. So,
again I spoke to Lane, and he said, look, think you oughta give it a try.
He said, given the restraints you've put on yourself on the west coast, he
says where the real problems are, go out there, keep your nose clean, and do
your work. And, if you don't 1 ike, I' 11 get you another job. And the market
in those days was such that you could really say that. I mean, it was not
foolish, and it was true, had five job offers in five years. I had job
offers before I published anything; it was an absolutely incredible market Ln
those days. (Unintelligible) I mean people did. (Unintelligible) the baby
boom, the Second World War was coming to school. Everybody get ready. So,
that's what that was. Well, I came up here and here and it was a ball. It was
a ball. Bill was coming to the department, in on the ground floor, all young
people. No big age gaps from youngest to oldest, with the exception of the
two people who were retiring and they were very nice and lively and I really
regretted when each of them retired, I mean they were really fun to be with
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 21
A. (Continued) they weren't hostile, they asked intelligent, sharp questions.
The distance from the chairman to me was very small. Bill's about 15 years
older than am, and is sort of like an older cousin, and there's no sort of
father and son business, no intimidation. We were gonna make the discipline
different. And we did. Political science is really different because of
what Bill Wrightman did here in ten years. And if you pick up the American
Political Science (unknown) and go through the journals, I could . Oh,
took them down and put them away to make room for something else
can look through his series ~h there, and for a five-year period, pull
them out randomly and every one of them will have something by a UR faculty
member or a UR graduate. Now, consider the program was. scarcely ten years
old in terms of the outflow, and it's a tiny program, so it was fun. I was
delighted to come here. I was delighted to stay here. Stayed here against
offers from other schools that were very attractive places (inLntel 1 igible)
Uh . because it was a tremendous learning experience, tremendous vitality
at the graduate student level, at the undergraduate level, at the faculty
level, brown-bag lunches in the department, everybody mixed together. Very
little formality. Very little gossip, all of it was really sort of business,
good business. Now, what I found was that that characterized this place in
general. Joe Wilson going back just before, well, one of the reasons that
they brought Bill Wrightman, that they brought Kenneth Clark and actual Jy
they brought people like myself, was because Joe Wi Ison persuaded the Board
of Trustees that this place should stop sitting on all its money and ios.tead
should become a national institution which wanranted have that kind of money.
That it should make a contribution to the nation and put together a faculty
and be open to students very broadly and produce graduate students and do
what you're supposed to do if you have those kind of resources. He persuaded
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 22
A. (Continued) the board to do that; he persuaded them in a way that very few
places suceeded in doing. He persuaded them without losing anyone. What you
say moves to the same thing, took the same route, significant friends of
the Board of Trustees said, well, that 1 s where you 1 re going? Good luck.
You go without me, that 1 s not my school. take my wallet, and my friends
and I go someplace else. My wife graduated from here, my cousin graduated
from there, because it 1 s not the kind of school I want. Joe Wilson, one of
the great miracles he did was to persuade a very conservative local Board
of Trustees, of very rich people, to continue to support financially and
emotionally to the extent that they even went and fought with their friends
and argued with their friends in the communities in the 1 60s that this was
a good place. And the fact is, it was a very different place from the place
that they grew up in when they were in school. And that had to do with Jews,
and everything else. As soon as you stop the 60% in Monroe County, and you
to downstate, that means that your gonna have an enormous influx in Jews.
And, whether anybody is worried about that or not, I don 1 t know, but the fact
is they didn 1 t let it stop them and there have been allegations made to me
at one time or another that this place is anti-semitic; lord knows at one time
or another everything was. But when I opened up my class roster the first day
I was here, I really gasped. Really. I thought could ... I couldn 1 t believe
i.t! Garfinkle, Goldstein, Finklestein, Anderson, any ... you know, there
was no end to it. I had not had the slightest sense of anti-semitism in any
corner of this university. And I 1 ve been in a lot of corners of this univer
sity. You know, departmental students, deans offices, before I was in the
dean 1 s office, central administratio~ Board of Trustees ... absolutely none.
I do believe that there are people in the university who 1 s early life exper
ience has ~ery little to do with Jews, and Jewish culture is something of a
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 23
A. (Continued) novelty to them and they're curious about it, and I think you
got to be paranoid if you think someone who asks you a question about how the
Jewish people feel about this and regard that as an anti-semitic posture.
They really don't know! Uh. and t~ey 1 d really like to know, and in many
cases they'd like to know so that they don't step heavily on people's sense
of (unintelligible). I've had some inquiries like that. I've had inquiries
like that from Bill Wrightman, who's a good friend of mine. And ... uh
who just didn 1 t know. I !m trying to recal I ... I guess the first Bar
Mitzvah he attended was one of Peter Rettestry's children, and he said to
me, well, what's the proper behavior . I don't know, I 1 ve never been to
one. don't regard that as anti-semitic. Ther~ are people who would. Uh,
So, why I came is sort of (unintelligible). Why I stayed here speaks for the
quality of the place. have never gotten used to the flat land, and I have
never gotten used to the gray weather. It snows and it's cold in New England
but the sun shines. It's chilly and it's beautiful. It's beautiful 30 miles
south of here, but right here, I don't regard it as one of the great beauty
spots. But, the intellectual climate of this place has held me here, there's
absolutely no question about it.
Q. Sure. Okay, well, I'd like to ask you some questions ..• um ... more
about Rochester itself and then when I come back, we' 11 spend all of our time
talking about the U ,of R. I think that would probably be the best path to take.
A. One thing let me slip into this thought. If you see in your example, there's
no Miriam Rock .
Q. She is being interviewed, yeah.
A. Okay, Miriam probably knows more about this than me, than anybody who's not
professionally involved.
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 24
Q. Yeah. No, she's on thhs new 1 ist. She' 11 be interviewed in the middle of
January, I think.
A. Okay, that's fine.
Q. Um ... okay. Now, when you got ... when you first came here, where did
you move in? What neighborhood?
We moved into the 19th ward. And had no religous temple, synagogue, affilia
tion ... my heart is st i 11 very much with Hartford, and we drove home for
everything. Even when we couldn't afford it. We lived on Arnett Boulevard
and Rugby Avenue.
Q. Was that a Jewish neighborhood?
A. No. (Laughter) It was not a Jewish neighborhood; there was a neighborhood
at the end of the ghetto. It wasn't clear what all was gonna happen. The first
of the riots broke out while we were 1 iving in that neighborhood. It was one
mile from where we were to Bull's Head. We were worried.
Q. Could you just go into how you felt, you know, when the riots were happening?
A.
What you felt caused them, that sort of thing. What was your impression of
the riots?
Oh, my. Let me tell you one thing about that neighborhood. Uh the
neighborhood was a mix of Italian and Greek. There's not a big Greek in that
neighborhood some. And, I don 1 t know what all else. No black families
in that neighborhood when we moved there. The neighborhood ... we had a
(unintelligible) ... the neighborhood's own reaction was ambivalent. To
some extent was like my own. You couldn't blame the black people for being
(unintelligible). There was an arguement among neighbors between those who
really were bigoted and hostile towards blacks and some rationalized (unintel
ligible), and others who really felt guilty, who felt it was wrong, who didn't
want to take on all that neighborhood and didn't want to try to fight the
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 25
A. (Continued) whole world in order to make justice for black people, but
who felt, in fact, that black people got a bad deal. And there was a .
sort of low-level arguments among people in the neighborhood about that. On
the other hand there was great (unintelligible) in that neighborhood ..
that if black people came all in through that neighborhood, they would
have been shot. And that's not an uncommon pattern for tight ethnic neigh
borhoods ... Italians, Polish, Greek ... it almost doesn't matter. If
it's a tight ethnic neighborhood, where the people all know one another.
saw the same thing in Hartford; there's one neighborhood like that, when
went into Hartford. When the riots in Hartford happened, the men in that
neighborhood waited on the street corner. They just waited with baseball
bats. Nobody ever showed up, and yet the same arguments went on in that
neighborhood. (unintelligible) made up of Klu Klux Klan. They were divided
between those who really were bigoted against blacks and those who felt that
the blacks really had gotten a bad deal. But none of them were gonna stand
still if you get mad (unintelligible). And that was the general attitude
if not understood at that point. That the blacks were some kinda spastic
self-destructive (unintelligible). The thought really was blacks were gonna
come bursting out of the ghetto and try to burn down white society. Well,
that clearly didn't happen, and people sort of stood around in some puzzlement
trying to see what the hell really was going on. And why would you burn down
your own neighborhood. And I think to this day, not too many people understand
that, including a lot of blacks. Well, one reason you'd burn down your own
neighborhood, clearly it's not your neighborhood. You' reliving there, but
somebody else owns it. And, uh ... I was not at that time a party to what
must have been important discussions going on in Jewish communities. Alright,
because I was not living really in one. That was the beginning, however, of
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 26
A. (Continued) when it was I observed that they were Jewish stores that were
being burned and looted, and it was observed that there was intense feeling
against the Jewish merchants and landlords in the ghetto. The Jews began to
turn in on themselves and ask themselves what was going on. Jews saw them
selves until then as straight champions of black people. They would weep
sincerely when Martin Luther King came to speak at their temples, and they
thought themselves enlightened. They had been trodded upon and they didn't
wish to tread upon anyone else. And they referred to their ) . And they never, never understood that part. I don't think that generation
is ever gonna understand that part. Some of them more in some ways. All
these things are comp] icated. My mother and father wer,e very different in
their attitudes towards black welfare. It's surprising, my mother was the
hardest. My father, through all his 1 ife, he used to fight in the streets
with black people. When he was a boy, they were both on the short end of the
stick. Somehow he fought tough enough and long enough that he got to really
taking people one at a time. To him, somebody's a bum, he's not a bum. But,
it's got nothing to do with what they look like when they come in. Depends
who they are. And, uh . he's been able to sort pretty well. My mother's
pretty good at it too, but she gets so damned turned off because she's the one
who goes to make the bank deposit, well, they've moved now way out In the
suburbs. But when they were in the city, she would go down to the bank to
make the deposit and she would come up in line with the welfare check cashing
ladies, and it 1 s literally true that you'd ~ee people rolling up in taxicabs
or parking cadillacs out;in front. And it does offend people who are working
hard and, she knows perfectly well because, in fact, they have a fairly sub
stantial number of middleclass black people who are their customers in their
furniture store over the years. lbs a small n~mber, but its grown over the
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 27
A. (Continued) years and all of these people are people who have worked their
way up in one generation, and have the whole . . work hard, save the money,
educate the children syndrome. So, she can sort alright, but she gets irri
tated anyway. Well, look, the riots were the beginning of the reassessment.
Q. Do you think the riots themselves were anti-semitic, that is, do you think
that the black people were lashing out against Jews, or against whites, or
just against themselves?
A. Oh, my God. Look, I think the black people in the ghetto would have J~~b~d
dut'against anybody who owned their property. Pure and simple. I think
there 1 s no big, profound rationalization, I mean, there 1 s no big, pro~ound
rationale. True. However, the fact is that a Jot of that property was owned
by Jews, that 1 s almost an action into the historical mobility (unintelligible)
and .. uh . the fact that the Jews owned that property and the fact that
the Jews . the middle east are in a confrontation with another culture,
made it easy to work the black Moslem exercise. lt 1 s not clear to Europeans
that bought arms (unintelligible) I ight skin or dark skin, that 1 s really not
clear at all. And, it 1 s not hard to make that spinoff .. Uh . . I can
conceive of a whole nother scenario where you 1 d wind up with blacks hating
Arabs because of historical things having to do with the slave trade, and I
would guess if a bunch of Mos]ems had owned the ghetto properties, the ball
game would be the other way. But history didn 1 t work like that and the way
it works now, I think there 1 s a substantial cleavage that began there and has
~valved and will continue to be a point of some difficulty between militant
and revolutionary blacks and Jews. The militant and revolutionar}es are gonna
identify with Third Wor]~. And the Third World is going to include, somewhat
paradoxically, the Arab World, am I right? And, the black African countries
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 28
A. (Continued) are gonna be in a confrontation with the developed western world
thatrs Third World country. don't know where the oils gonna come out of,
as a matter of fact, but it's gonna be a very vital kind of thing. The other
thing that's a tremendous pain in the neck as an analogy, is that the south
Africans are in very much the same situation that the lsraelies are, in that,
they live surrounded by what they regard as a hostile environment with their
backs to the sea. They have absolutely no place to go. And, that's a very
uncomfortable thing for most Jews because it's an easy sympathy between the
lsraelies and the south Africans. Didn't used to be. Didn't used to be at
all. But as the Israel ies found themselves increasingly confronted with
Third World (unintelligible), they found themselves sitting really in the
same boat as south Africans. And, so they have mutual trade arrangements,
mutual weapons, munitions, all kinds of things come up like that. It would
be very embarrassing for American Jews who don't know what to do about it.
The fact is of the military (unintelligible) types around the world today
which probably would be the case, is that the two toughest armies ini-the
world today are the lsraelies and the Africans. And for the same reason,
can·1·t afford not to be ... you'd die (unintelligible). It's never been
clear that either one of them could win their wars in the last (unintelligible)
war. Their premise is in each case, that if you make that war look expensive
enough, the other guy won't fight it. And each one is absolutely committed
to making that war prohibitively expensive, incredibly expensive. That's
gonna put us in a very funny boat in this country. The other dimension
that's gonna put American Jews in a very funny boat is where this country
stands visavis the Arabs because of the oil. There's more to it than the oil,
though, and that's the thing I think most American Jews don't really under
stand and should. And it's that it's a tremendous dilema. The Israel is
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 29
A. (Continued) understand it perfectly well. And that is the U.S.S.R. and the
Arab block. The U.S.S.R. doesn't need the oil from the Arab block, it just
needs tb,command the territory. If the U.S.S.R. commands the eastern end of
the Mediterranean, well the southern and eastern end of the Mediterranean, the
Israel is are in a lot of trouble. (Laughter) If the U.S. doesn't keep the
Arab block from falling to the Soviets, then what will? And how would the
U.S. do that? That's a real dilema, because if the U.S. takes an absolutely
unmitigatedly hostile stand toward the Arabs, it's relatively easy then for
the Russians to subvert the area lying in the middle. And if they subvert
the area, the Israel is are in a Jot of trouble. On the other hand, if the
U.S. is a great buddy of the Arabs, then the Israelis are in a Jot of trou
ble. (Laughter)
Q. Have you yourself ever been to Israel?
A. No.
Q. Would you like to go?
A. No.
Q. Do you consider yourself a Zionist?
A. No. don't .consider myself a Zionist in the same way
an orthodox Jew. But ask me a different question: if
war, which war would I 1 ike to die in?
Q. Okay.
don't consider myself
were gonna die in a
A. That's the one. And I don't think the Jews have any more to that land than
anybody else. They just got no place to go, and it's a decent culture.
hope it stays that way. The dilema internally that the Israelis face is how
they gonna keep themselves from becoming south Africans. How they gonna keep
the culture that they brought to that land from being totally corroded by
the (unintelligible) of a fortress state. Whether they could still continue
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 30
A. (Continued) to regard Arabs as human beings, I mean the fact that Jews, that
young Jews in Israel conducted the equivalent of pogrom, is a horrible idea.
And it horrifies the Israelis. And I don't know if you know what happens
but, you know, when ther:e's an incident, the first thing the Israelis do is
send the pol ice in to keep the Jewish kids out of the Arab court. Because
they're gonna rip it up. I would, you know, if I'm gonna die in a war,
that's alright so I'd be willing to die in a war. There are no good wars;
that war has the single virtue that those people have no place to go; that
they have a really decent culture that doesn't get ruined and is probably
worth dying for. Not too many wars are worth dying for. Not dying. But
anyhow, but, they're not so clearly worth dying for. That's a gut response.
It's a thing that ... I had no interest in going to Israel, except to do
that. I think in the last ditch stand, it may be pure Walter Mitty fantasy,
but in the last ditch stand if ... particulary if my kids are grown and are
off .. I think that is the thing that I'd like to be involved in. But if
I had my druthers of where I'd go, 11 d go to Japan. (Laughter)
Q. You just mentioned your kids, are you giving them .•. how old are they,
first of all?
A. Well, my daughter's seventeen and my son is fourteen.
Q. Were they given a Hebr:ew education?
A. Well, yes, to varying degrees. My daughter went to ... well, they were both
educated in Talmud Torah after school hours, kind of an exercise before Sunday
school. Initially in Henrietta in a little synagogue out there which was just
then started. My daughter, for reasons I don't understand, turned off it
very early and dropped out. She was getting super tensed up so we let her
drop out. Never had a Bas Mitvah, didn't want that. Dropped out when she was
about eleven. She has a very mixed group of friends. She's very self-con-
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 31
A. (Continued) scious about the question of Jewish. I don 1 t think she feels
anything about Jewish, but she senses that that 1 s odd. I can 1 t quite figure
it out. My son fought Hebrew school all the way. He 1 s tremendously compe
tively oriented, doesn 1 t like the educational system. He 1 s an extraordinarily
able student. He 1 s an 11 A11 student in the pub! ic school system. He 1 s
turned off by the whole educational game in Hebrew educational process.
He 1 s ambivalent about these Jew, non-Jew things ... doesn 1 t I ike to see the
world sorted that way. Continued on after his Bar Mitzvah. When I said to
him, look, if you continue that 1 s your business. You 1 re welcome to it, but
I don 1 t want any more of this grouching around the house that anybody 1 s
bothering you, forcing you, making you ... it 1 s your business ... you go
... you get up, and 11 m not gonna live with you as a miserable human being
on the premise that you• re sacrificing .•. you• re sacrificing nothing.
Well, you do it because ~e gets credits for the regents of something else.
That's your business. He keeps going. don 1 t exactly know why he keeps
going. Some of it is friends there, some of it is learning, and some of it
is sort of he 1 s intrigued. gather he has a sense of:~bhere 1 s something in
there. He doesn 1 t know what it is. And, there are times, indeed, I think if
I weren 1 t in this position, I would almost certainly do it, but I would love
to have him sit in on some of Bill Green 1 s seminars and learn what the devil
is really about. But, I think, and l 1 ve heard several ser,ilous students of
this thing say it, that probably the great tribute that you can, one of the
great tributes that you can pay to the sanctity of the Jewish culture is that
it survived the Jewish educational system. And if these kids come back
anyhow, and I see it here, I see kids who come into this program after they• ve
become completely turned off by the experiences they 1 ve had, and now come back
because they want to learn something. And I don 1 t ... there 1 s apolitical
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 32
A. (Continued) dynamics there that explains part of it, I ebaldn 1 t understand
what the tremendous preoccupation with learning Hebrew was, strictly Bib-
i ical Hebrew, it seemed to me, one: that they ought to have taught the lan
guage, which is a fine idea, in as much of contemporary terms as they could.
Surely the Israelis school children had primaries that speak to the common
wealth, they don't speak to little boys who are tending sheep under trees.
I mean, it's got nothing to do with, you know, if you look at the primaries
they use in the Talmud Torahs, they're all Bible stories. Well, these kids
don't know from Bible to begin with, it's not like they come from a home like
mine. So, my argument was, look, why don't you teach them the Hebrew in
context they understand. You know, current Israelis newspapers. We know how
to do that, I mean, we do that over here. Teach them Bible stories in English.
And, when you teach them Bible stories, always we've needed some principle.
Some ethics. Some moral value. What is a story? This story, that story,
they remember the little boys name in the story. why? What they're really
interested in is what's there, what's right, what was wrong here, what was
judged. mean, that's what the Bible stories are about ... completely lost.
Nothing. Okay? Well, that's why the kids was really getting turned off. They
go through this whole thing and have no idea there's some moral understanding
to this exercise or anything else. And, I think, it's a disaster. But I
think you can sense now ... now he's in the highschool and they're getting
into things which sort of interest him. don't know how far he 1 11 run with
that, I'm just letting him go easy, I have this a~bivalence myself, I cherish
the ethical values, I can't believe there's any practical reason for.
there's a partial good ... I can't get myself to believe in, my God, that
there's any empty universal kid where (unintelligible). can't imagine any
of these holy words have ever had anything to do with any (unintelligible)
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 33
A. (Continued) I'm convinced more people have died in holy wars (unintelligible)
Yet, I ... I'm not convinced, at all, that the ritual is superfluous.
Q. Okay, I have one last question before we stop for today, and that is about
your daughter. Do you think she' 11 go to college?
A. She certainly will.
Q. Do you think it's ... do you have different feelings towards ... um ...
educating daughters than to educating sons?
A. None whatever. That's . . well I ... I tease the women's l i bbers about
the things I've said. Something I ran into yesterday was called (unintell i
gible) I said what the hell are you talking about! On the other hand, I
think that 1his culture that you' re fighting most of the time has surprised
themselves (unintelligible). As an educator, I see women in these roles
in Cunintelligible) in their applications and they're not (unintelligible)
theytre very bright. At least there's a lot of very bright women. And, it's
a dumb thing, particularly in our society, in that they really were earlier
societies. It's not so clear if you go to a frontier society which is
mostly manual of one sort or another. But there was all this much division
of labor and stuff. To be a homemaking frontier society was one hell of a
complicated demand. mean, it required intelligence, well, you could do it
all kind of ways, plus being sharp. But, sharp meant a lot of intelligence,
a lot of ingenuity, an enormous amount of strength, moral and physical and
moral, I mean, tough to withstand the pnemonia deaths of little children,
freezing cold, chopping wood, cooking that started at 5:00 o'clock in the
morning and the people worked like the devil and ate a lot and ... a
making a home was a profound exercise. It's a trivial exercise in its physi
cal components today. If you're gonna be a homemaker today, in fact, making
a home is a wholly emotional orchestration. That's some trick. I don't who
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 34
A. (Continued) exactly makes the home, it makes a lot of people much more comfy.
And it happened as an outfall from the old days when the common endeavor to
stay alive ... I mean the husbands didn 1 t go off with their little black
bags and come back to . nor the wife 1 s either, for that matter. You
worked the fields, everybody worked the fields at certain times during the
year. You had a little store, it was next door, everybody worked in the
store. People would leave when another one went upstairs to eat. So, family
wasn't a unit in a way that it is today.
Q. Well, do you think the Jewish family will suffer from the professionalization
of i. ts women?
A. No. Not at all. I have a thing, and I ca 11 it the metamorpt-os is of the Jewish
Princess to Empress. God help us all. I say that because I remember both of
my grandmothers. My father's mother was a spitting image of Golda Meir. When
I met Golda Meir, I couldn't believe it, and I really had to keep doing double
takes and she was exactly 1 ike her. She was brilliant, tough, driving woman,
who fought off muggers and chtldren, and landlords, rip-off artists, what
ever. Ran that family, raised those kids, watched the child ... broke
through. Then there was the generation of the Jewish American Princess.
Don't exactly understand what that was all about, really. And, I ... my
wife is Jewish and she's no Jewish American Princess. She skipped that thing.
But the idea that you musn't learn, and you musn 1 t do this or that ... I
don't know where they came. I saw, sort of, one half of the matriarchcal
thing, but lacking the rationale that made a matriarch a matriarch who could
really do something, well, the opening up of women 1 s rights and(_;opportunities
is just shy of that. And I watched the metamorphosis, I watched kids come in
to this school out of that background, and when they just shake it off, you
know, and I see their grandmother and you really gotta watch out, because the
Interview with Arthur Goldberg Page 35
A. (Continued) fact they are smart, and something, you know, some of what
enabled their grandmothers to carry three bags of groceries up hills and
three stories to the apartment, and to connive when they had to connive,
and to really argue when they had to argue and win arguments; all that's
buried there someplace in the genes and is coming up. So, as far as I'm
concerned, I can see nothing but good. Except, that Orthodox and Reformed
Judaism are gonna have to take another look at what their talking about
Biblically. That's all. Whether you're gonna have women in the rabbinate,
it's inevitable. The only question is, what do you want, five years, ten
years, fifteen years? I don't know and can't predict, but it's absolutely
inevitable and it is highly desirable,\
Q. Well, the Reformed Jews are doing it now.
A. What, they always lead the way and then the other people say, well, what do