Meet the Narrators of Lynn

"My grandmother was a Gold Star Mother. She was a Hadassah person, early on. I remember being in a political rally for Stevenson, a twilight rally, up on my father’s shoulders with candles. They were politically involved and active in the community, that I remember."

"I will say that I went to Hebrew school, whatever the days were—Tuesday, Thursday—Friday night services, Saturday services, and Sunday school. And when I'm in the shower, to this day, I sing Hebrew prayers. That's what I sing in the shower."

"My mother, and I think Phyllis too—Michael’s mother—the joke is in the family that my mother started the JCC nursery school so that I would have somewhere to go and she could go to work. Phyllis was very involved in that, too. I was in the first class—I know that—of the JCC."

"Yes, they had their Sunday night club, where they would take turns going to each other’s homes, and the men would be playing cards in one room, and the women would be playing canasta or mah jongg or whatever they were playing, in our living room. Yeah, all their friends were Jewish ... And it’s interesting, because Lynn was certainly not a 100% Jewish area ..."

"I should say that I went to Hebrew school from first grade, I guess, on the way up. Unlike my other friends, I loved Hebrew school. We belonged to Temple Beth El in Lynn, which was on Breed Street, and it was so warm. I had other people that were like me. My friends were Jewish. I loved, loved Hebrew school..."

"The other interesting thing is—and another thing I had discussed with my brother—I don’t know when we knew about the Holocaust. I mean, that was something that never was ever discussed. I think maybe we heard—certainly in Hebrew school we heard about all these things that happened to the Jews way back in history, and pogroms and things like that."

"My friend—Bruce Stewart is his name—came from a Scottish Protestant immigrant family...And a guy by the name of Vin Lamaro, who was northern Italian. His father was a doctor. They were all redheads. And my father once, in his inimitable Jewish accent, said to me, “What’s the matter? All you know is redheads?...So I got to know—not only did they get to know my family; I got to know their families, and it was the first exposure for me, close exposure, to families that were not Jewish."

"Yes, my mother kept a kosher home...They would have Sunday dinners at the Hawthorne Restaurant downtown, the Continental on Route 1. My mother, if the truth be told, had three sets of dishes—milchig, fleishig, and Chinese food, which she kept— She kept the Chinese food dishes in the basement, in our home."

"Well, you had two grocery stores, Jewish—Goldstein’s and Leshner’s. Our family happened to be customers of Goldstein. You had a New York Model Bakery, which was owned by the Friedman family. Their daughter and I went to high school together. You had Sheldon’s Pharmacy. You had Tobin’s Egg Store...There were all these little stores, many of them owned by Jews who shut down on Shabbos. And there was even a barber shop, the Schultzes..."

"And I also remember I used to walk to the corner to pick up—wait for my aunt and walk—she worked in Salem in a factory, and I used to walk home with her. And one day, I was walking home with her, and some non-Jewish people on the street, kids, started taunting me—'Haha, haha, your mother has to work!' And I thought to myself, 'You schmoes! That’s not even my mother!'"

"In my mother’s house, my grandmother lived with us, and an aunt also lived with us, and lighting Shabbos candles was a ritual. And celebrating the holidays as a family was a ritual. And walking my grandmother from our house to her shul was a ritual."

"I grew up in a Yiddish-speaking household. I can understand Yiddish—I’m going to tell you a story—but I can’t speak it, except sometimes. I can’t speak sentences—but an occasional phrase. Just a bisl! But one day I was driving home from work...and somehow or other I got a Yiddish radio station, and it was a political interviewing panel. And I didn’t understand one word, and I realized at that point that I knew what I term as Kitchen Yiddish, not Yiddish-Yiddish."

"That was a place for Jewish kids. We had the best time there. We had the Lynn AZA which I belonged to for many, many years. We played basketball. We played softball. We had leagues. We had bowling there. We had a basketball court there and so forth. All the kids from all over the place came to Lynn, Massachusetts, because of the JCC in Lynn. It was unbelievable."

"I must tell you something. I love being Jewish, and I think the Jewish people are the most generous and most wonderful people in this world. I don’t know why we're having so many problems with this anti-Semitism and so forth, because most Jewish people are very, very, very nice."

"Then there was a place that had the best potato salad, Kayes Delicatessen, right nearby. Then they had the Merits Drug Store, Sheldon’s Drug Store there. There were all kinds—then Stone’s Bakery, New York Model Bakery. They were on Summer Street. Bars. A fruit store was on Summer Street. Summer Street had a lot of the Jewish delicatessens and things of that nature."

"My mother's mother lived with us for many years, and she kept a kosher home. Because having grown up in Western Massachusetts among non-Jews, I think keeping kosher was an important part, for her, of continuing traditions, certainly for her mother, from what she knew in the past. I would say having a kosher home was a major thing."

"We always belonged to a temple, and myself and all my brothers, we all went to Hebrew school for many, many years, and we all were Bar Mitzvah-ed. Being one of five boys, sometimes if they were looking for a minyan, they’d call my house, where they might get six people at once, including my father. But I wasn’t like praying every day or putting on tefillin or anything like that."

"I think Lynn, like Chelsea, has always been a gateway city for people coming into this country. It was a place where they could get reasonable housing and I guess services. So, it has been changing demographics. When we were kids, it was Irish, Italian, some old Yankees, some Jews, and stuff..."