“There was even a specialty shop where you could buy herring out of a barrel. All this guy sold was herring, pickled herring, and he had this large barrel, and he would reach in and wrap it up in a newspaper and hand it to you.”

“Back then, there were so many synagogues, shuls in the Dorchester area...[and] we never referred to them by their Hebrew name.”

“There was one Chinese restaurant in Dorchester, and [the owner] spoke Yiddish!”

“We knew bad things were happening to our people, and for that reason, World War II, to the kids of the neighborhood, was personal.”

“They never wanted to forget their Jewishness. In fact, the longer they lived, the more Jewish they became, if that was even possible with my grandparents. They were traditional Jews to the core.”

“I mean, once in a while, somebody would mouth off about a dirty Jew, or the usual consequences would follow. ... We knew it would always be there.”

“There was friction with the non-Jewish contiguous area. A lot of it. We didn’t go there; they didn’t come to us ... It was part of the culture.”

“That was the dividing line. We always wanted to live in our own house. I mean, that was our ambition.”

“I think that my parents were observant, but by that time a bit diluted in their observance.”