Morris “Moe” Stein

Marcus: The first thing I would like you to do is tell me about what you remember about when you were first hired to come to Portland, and I hope that Hershal Tanzer will be involved in these reminiscences.
STEIN: Let’s start with Hershal, and first of all with his physicality, if you will. I came down to Dallas [Portland?] for the interview in May or June, I think, of 1967. No, it had to be after the Six Day War. It was about a month or two after that. I got into town late, and I was to meet with the president of the Jewish Federation the next morning. I am a strapping five foot six, and I came into the office and there was this guy, six foot four. He was with this shorter guy, who was Hal Saltzman. I think Hal was six foot three [laughing]. And right off the bat, both of them are extremely friendly, and Hersh is particularly loquacious. He seems to know so much about so many things. Right away, he sounded like a very curious guy, asked good questions during the interview, and I just remember this big, tall, articulate guy.

Marcus: Was there some situation in San Francisco where there was a GA? Was that later on, with some kind of relationship with Hershal and the young leadership program?
STEIN: No, I don’t remember anything like that.

Marcus: OK. So you had come for this interview, and there are Hershal and Hal, and they ask you what kind of questions? Here you are, a Canadian of all things.
STEIN: I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday [laughing]. Well, the fact that I was a Canadian is interesting. You jogged my memory. One of their concerns was whether I understood the American political system, and I kept on wondering why did they think I wouldn’t.

Marcus: They thought that was important to your job.
STEIN: They thought that was important to my job, I guess, but one of the things that happened when I got here, within a few months, my observation was that there was very little going on in terms of community relations on an organized basis. Others may quarrel with me, but I thought that it was during my time that the community relations program really got started and that we were looking at a number of things.

Marcus: When did you actually come to . . .?
STEIN: I started work, as I recall, either at the beginning of August or September of 1967. I remember that we drove down from Edmonton, Alberta, during the hottest summer that Oregon had had to that point. I remember being in Hood River at the end of July.

Marcus: So what were they asking you to do when you got here?
STEIN: I think the 1967-68 campaign was already being organized, so it was kind of picking up the pieces there and getting to know some of the people. I don’t recall whether Hersh or Hal were going to chair that campaign.

Marcus: Who had been the executive director prior to . . .?
STEIN: Cliff Josephson, and then there were several months during which Hershal was actually the acting director.

Marcus: In addition to the other things he did.
STEIN: I think he was pretty happy to give up the job. Now if I can skip forward to one of the community relations events that I remember, which I think is one of the funniest ones.

Shortly after I got here there was a Packwood-Morse debate. I was lucky enough to see it. I was sitting up in the gallery at the City Club. Bob Packwood frankly took Wayne Morse apart. I don’t think Morse expected that kind of thing to happen. Anyway, fast forward about a year or two, Bob Packwood is in the Senate. We were very concerned about Packwood’s attitude toward Israel. We got Moe Tonkin to arrange a meeting between our new Community Relations Committee, the Federation Leadership, and Packwood, and he just came out gung-ho for Israel. He just amazed us. We talked to Moe a week or two after the meeting, and Moe was not a great Zionist by any stretch of the imagination, and he was worried that we had been too tough on Packwood.

Marcus: That you had gone overboard in your support? 
STEIN: Right.

Marcus: So in terms of community relations, that was a big success.
STEIN: That was a big success, and we really did quite well because the relationship between members of the Jewish community and the political leadership was super. Clay Meyers was state secretary at that time, and he went to every bar and bat mitzvah in town and probably every Jewish wedding. They knew him. Tom McCall was a delight. It was easy to arrange appointments with Tom McCall. I used to take the Israeli consul general to meet with him. That was marvelous. Edith Green might have been a little bit less accessible, but she was certainly accessible. Les AuCoin. These were people that folks like Arden Shenker or Jim Meyer could just pick up the phone and talk to. Jonathan Newman.

Marcus: Talk to me about Jonathan, since obviously we are not in a position of being able to do an interview with him.
STEIN: He was a real . . .

Marcus: Was he a member of the board of what was then the Jewish Welfare Federation? We changed our name later on, right?
STEIN: Right. All right, then, let me go off on a different tangent here: Jewish Education. When I came to town, the Jewish Education Association was going through one of its regular crises, and the people around the table at the beginning were Jonathan — we met at Jonathan and Carol’s home — Jim Meyer, Arden Shenker, of course. I don’t remember that Stanley was there. Jack Schwartz. There were about five or six of us. That was the beginning of an endless number of conversations about Jewish education. Jonathan was very much involved. He might have been a vice president of the Jewish Welfare Federation at that time as well. And when he ran for school board, a lot of us got involved in that. He was an amazing person. Lil called him her “Abraham Lincoln.”

Marcus: That is perfect. For his ethical, yes. Who else was involved besides Hal and Hersh?
STEIN: Henry Blauer and Gilbert Sussman. Henry was always telling us to be careful. Henry was a guy who really cared but was very careful about spending money. He wasn’t always easy to convince, but once he was convinced he was with you all the way. He used to get very offended by people that he thought acted hypocritically or unethically.

Marcus: That hasn’t changed. So you were located behind the Jewish Community Center?
STEIN: When I first came in 1967, we were located in a little building behind the Jewish Community Center. We were on 12th Street. That brings up another funny story. They were working on the architectural sketches or blueprints of the new JCC. I remember Harold Schnitzer coming to me one day. I had been here maybe all of three months. He said, “What do you think of this space that we have got for the Federation? 750 square feet. Do you think that’s too much?” Then Hal was looking at the drawings one day, and he noticed that there was no library and said, “How can you build a Jewish Community Center without a library?”

Marcus: That’s very interesting.
STEIN: Anyway, so there we are on 12th, and it’s 1967. We’re across the road from Portland State University. These are the roiling days of the Vietnam War. The university looks like Hippy Heaven. I remember a couple of things. We would publish the Portland Jewish Review, and it would always have the dates and locations of bar mitzvahs. The students used to come over to pick up copies of the paper to figure out where they could get something to eat on Saturdays [laughter]. But Kent State occurred while we were still at that location. I still remember the student strike when the cops came down. 

Marcus: Was that in sympathy with Kent State?
STEIN: Oh, yes. There was a student strike. It tied up the campus for weeks, I think.

Marcus: Was it difficult to get to your office?
STEIN: No, it wasn’t difficult to get to the office. No, the action was all on the University campus.

Marcus: Was this the office that Sam refers to as the “Quonset hut?”
STEIN: Well, it wasn’t really a Quonset hut. It was just a big shack. It was like one of those cabins that you put up yourself at the lakeside.

Marcus: So you must have been very eager to get into a different environment. Were you?
STEIN: We were certainly going to get into a much nicer environment. Location-wise it was great. It was five minutes away from where we eventually lived. 

Marcus: You’ve named quite a few people that you interacted with when you first came to Portland. Are there others you can recall?
STEIN: Kurt Hamburger, Stuart Durkheimer. Stuart was an unusual individual. He was a very, very Reform Jew, but he was really learned about the rest of the Jewish world and was really committed. And there was Gilbert Schnitzer, of course. He played a unique role. Gilbert cared very much about the Jewish community, and he cared that money be spent wisely, but he wasn’t reluctant to spend money if it was important. I remember him saying once, “The trouble with these people sitting around the table is that they have cash registers in place of a heart.” He was a bankruptcy attorney and was an economist by training!

Marcus: In terms of 1967, the world was very different, the Jewish world and every other part of the world. The Federation reflected that difference, didn’t it?
STEIN: Sure it did. There was Miriam Rosenfeld, who was a staunch Zionist. She was the great defender of Israel. 

Marcus: Her grandson Eric is a very prominent member of our Jewish community today, and when asked why he does this, he says it’s because of his grandparents.
STEIN: I’m sure. Ben and Miriam. Sure.

Marcus: So that’s kind of the cast of characters?
STEIN: There are many more, but that is enough.

Marcus: Where do you think the Portland Jewish community was trying to go? Were they just trying to get themselves together to raise enough money to support Israel at this perilous time?
STEIN: No. I’m not sure that there was universal support for Israel at that time. I’d have to give you a 1967 and 1977 comparison. To be Jewish was a much more private thing in ’67. You didn’t show your Jewishness too much. You didn’t deny it. But I think by 1977, the community was much more assertive about its Jewishness.

Marcus: Was that the 1973 [Yom Kippur] War on top of the Six Day War?
STEIN: The ’73 war was a watershed event, not just for the Jews but for the Jewish Federation.

Marcus: Because it changed . . .?
STEIN: I came after the Six Day War, and the Federation had apparently been very slow in mobilizing for the ’67 war. The result was that it became an Israel Bond event, which I couldn’t understand. It may have been because there was some kind of division of opinion. In ’73 we met right after Yom Kippur in the Goldberg house. We sat in the basement and really started to figure out how we were going to respond to it.

Marcus: So it was instant.
STEIN: That’s right. It was instant. We had that big rally in the JCC.

Marcus: The campaign would have been starting anyway about that time, right?
STEIN: We were just beginning. What we were really doing was finishing up from the earlier ’73 campaign and getting the commitments. Our big drive was to get cash, to get money.

Marcus: Instead of pledges.
STEIN: We did both, but the big drive was to get people to pay up to the campaign that had just finished.

Marcus: Was there borrowing?
STEIN: Individuals were borrowing. [But] one of the best campaigns we had was 1973. There were hundreds of people at that rally. We had a speaker, but we didn’t need a big name for that. People just came out, and people were just sending in money. The funny story about it was that — we had good relations with the police department; the cops were there for protection. They called me. They had stopped one man and wouldn’t let him in, so they called me. He turned out to be a Hassidic Jew that we happened to know!

Marcus: He looked suspicious [laughter].
STEIN: Right. This guy in the black hat. We kept the office open. For the first if not the only time, we were in the office on Sukkot. People were coming in because it meant saving lives.

Marcus: Would you say the entire community came together at this point, the congregations . . .?
STEIN: Everybody was in on it. There was every likelihood that Israel would lose, so that was very scary.

Marcus: It was more traumatic than the ’67 war.
STEIN: I would think so. Well, you were here.

Marcus: I remember. There was a bonding.
STEIN: Yes. The community really seemed to come together. 

Marcus: What did the community achieve by that coming together, other than raising money, do you think? Were there other benefits?
STEIN: You would be a better judge than I. I don’t know whether more people began to relate to one another, or whether more people began to come to the Jewish Community Center, or whether more people wanted to learn.

Marcus: When I think about what you did in Portland, I think about leadership, raising people up. Was this a piece of that?
STEIN: No. It certainly helped because it got more people ready, but the idea of leadership development is one that I came with. I didn’t know what the situation was when I first came. I had no idea. My feeling was that in order to be a community leader you had to understand the totality of what it meant to be Jewish. It wasn’t just emphasis on Israel, and it wasn’t just emphasis on doing good stuff together, it was understanding and being exposed to Jewish learning, in the best sense of the word. We had a fair number of people participate in the UJA missions to Israel. A lot of pro-Israel stuff went on here.

Marcus: What was your theory about raising leaders, in terms of what skills they ought to have?
STEIN: I was a crazy social worker. We had all kinds of leadership skills. You had to know how to lead a discussion. You had to listen. You had to have an open mind while you listened to the ideas of others. It was the people like Jim and Arden and Stan and Susie and others who understood the importance of opening up the system because, even with super people like Hersh and Hal, the system can be very closed. One of the things I always prided myself on was building boards. I think I managed to do that. 

Marcus: When did the name change at the Federation?
STEIN: It was happening across the country.

Marcus: Because “Welfare” had a connotation?
STEIN: Tell me if I am right. We had a Jewish Welfare Fund here, and if I remember correctly, they raised money for Israel. The Jewish Federation raised money for local causes. It might have been under Milt Goldsmith’s administration. It was happening around the country, the Jewish Welfare Funds that would really look after everything. Okay. That happened. Money for Israel starts in ’36 or ’37, when CJF first forces the JDC and the United Palestine Appeal to get together. In a lot of communities, including this one, there was separate fundraising, same people but separate organizations for each, because there were a lot of people who wouldn’t give money for Israel. Later on we got both. Then sometime in the late ’60s or early ’70s there was a movement across the country to start naming our organizations Jewish Federations. It was our version of the United Way, so there was a certain amount of uniformity, a certain “brand name” if you will. If you moved from city A to city B, you would already have an organization to connect to. 

[TAPE PAUSES AND RESUMES]

STEIN: In our conversation about Jewish Education, in ’67 there was already a Hillel Academy at Shaarie Torah, an Orthodox school, and there were the problems with the Jewish Education Association, the JEA. It was when we were starting to build the MJCC that there were serious conversations about whether the Hillel Academy should be permitted to use the JCC and whether it made sense to combine, to have one Jewish school in a community that had a day school and also an afternoon, supplementary school. Portland was one of the very few communities left, in 1967, that still had a community Hebrew school. The congregations had not yet started programs. I think that was part of the agreement between the JEA and the synagogues. 

In the course of the conversation, one of the consultants that we had hired for this turned around to us and said, “You don’t really want a day school, do you?” We let that drop because I don’t think anybody really thought there would be a good chance of merging the two, probably because the two of them had so darn many problems; we didn’t need to combine two sick organizations. And the Center didn’t want to have the day school in its building. First of all, they said there wasn’t enough room. But someone suggested we build four extra rooms at the end, and then there would be room. It could be a community school. Somebody from the Center said, “We don’t want all those kids with yarmulkes running around.” So that’s where they were at. 

When I left in ’77, we were still talking about possible mergers. The Portland Jewish Academy had not yet been born. Hillel was still struggling, and the JEA was still struggling. The rabbis had done so much complaining about the JEA that it was finally decided to make them the Board of Education. They decided that we should adopt the New York Bureau of Jewish Education curriculum. I don’t think that made anybody happy, not Asher Ettinger, who was the principal of the school and had had numerous run-ins with the rabbis, or the rabbis, a couple of whom already wanted their own Hebrew schools to begin with. Then one day, they discovered that they weren’t happy with the curriculum. There was an agreement that there should be Maariv prayers every day. They discovered they wouldn’t be happy with the prayer service because it contravened their particular denomination, and all hell broke loose. The problems at JEA never went away in my time.

Marcus: There was a funding issue, too, about getting the community to support the school.
STEIN: Yes. I think Mitch Greenlick was JEA president in my time. Mitch was an interesting guy. He was an honest-to-God atheist, but he felt that a Jewish community should provide all of the amenities that are important to the Jews that live within it, so he was a prime supporter. He was Jewishly knowledgeable, and he felt that Jewish education had to be excellent. The other story — I don’t know where you have the mikveh now, but there was a private mikveh association, and they needed money. A family by the name of [Brown?] looked after it. They needed money. There was a big argument in the Federation about whether we should fund this obviously purely Orthodox outfit. It was Mitch Greenlick who led the charge to say, “We’ve got to have it because it belongs in a Jewish community.” This was the real struggle in the Jewish community — it mirrored what was going on around the country — for Reform and Conservative and Orthodox to recognize the legitimacy of [each other’s] concerns. Then we could live together and do a lot of important things together.

Marcus: And we are indeed today. I think Birthright [Birthright Israel] is a good example of that.
STEIN: Birthright is a terrific example. It goes a lot further than that. The purpose of Birthright is primarily to create relationships between young Jews around the world and Israel. The data tells us that there is a reciprocal relationship between age and empathy with Israel. The younger you are, the less there tends to be a relationship, and that’s a serious problem. 

There was the whole development that took place within the Robison Home, in some ways, I think, because of the Federation. Like a lot of homes for the aged, there was always that drive for them to keep themselves more independent than a lot of other agencies. It seems to be in the nature of the beast. But standards were raised, partly because we made it possible for them to do it. The community, when all is said and done, really wants to make sure its elderly are well looked after. The Robison began its first expansion. 

Another funny story — the home was always short of money because it is, by nature, a very expensive proposition, and there were problems, usually with Medicare, which was a constant problem. We were going through their budget, and Sam Lisitz, who was their executive director, started telling us — we were still going through line by line, which I felt was none of our business, but in this case it worked out. We started talking about the cost of food for the staff. My question was, “Why is there a food cost for the staff?” “Because it is a kosher home, and we feed them kosher food, and that is expensive.” I said, “Why don’t you set a room aside and let them bring their own food and give them an extra nickel or dime an hour? That would cost you less, and people will eat what they want, and you won’t have the headache.” Nobody had ever thought of that. They did it, and it worked! And of course the workers were happy. In 1967, a dime more an hour, four bucks more a week, meant something, especially if you were at the lowest level. 

Marcus: That brings up a question. I don’t know if it is answerable, but I wondered what role does the head of the Jewish Federation play in relationship to the agencies? How much do you get involved?
STEIN: It is a constantly tense role, and different people do it different ways. It worked for me differently here than it did in other places. I think there was a fairly good relationship. What I think is important for Federations to learn is that they don’t manage the individual agencies, and what individual agencies have to learn is that — a couple of things. One thing is that some of the people in the Federation really know some stuff, and when they’re asking a question it doesn’t mean that they are hostile. The question that used to drive at least one agency director crazy was, “What if we don’t give you all the money that you’re asking for?” It wasn’t a hostile question. It dealt with reality. Another thing that a lot of agency directors have to learn, whether it is here or in Dallas or anywhere, is that the Federation director doesn’t make the determination about how much should be given, and that the Federation’s money is finite. It doesn’t have all the money in the world. It’s not because they misunderstand or that they don’t sympathize with an agency.

Marcus: It’s not mean-spirited.
STEIN: It is not being mean-spirited. So that tension goes on all the time. You can get a situation where a Federation and an agency director relate to each other well socially, but professionally it is a real tug-of-war. My desire was to build a board, not to control it. Neither the exec nor the president is a puppet-master.

Marcus: Were you able to carry this same philosophy to Dallas?
STEIN: Yes, people had to learn there, too. There I had some very strong agency directors; there was a different level of confrontation. But in the end we wound up working with each other.

Marcus: You had common interests.
STEIN: Common interests, and again, the Federation shouldn’t manage the agencies.

Marcus: What about when they see an agency in trouble?
STEIN: Then they have every obligation to step in, alert the agency, and try to work with the agency. It’s not always easy, but agency and Federation boards have fiduciary responsibilities, and that’s not just money, that’s a responsibility of loyalty to the agency and to the community.

Marcus: To do the best job they can.
STEIN: To do the best job they can, to use their resources properly, and of course, honestly.

Marcus: So what do you remember most about living here as a family in Portland?
STEIN: Great city to live in.

Marcus: Do you think your kids would remember that, too?
STEIN: Oh, yes. It’s a terrific city to live in and raise kids in. There are a lot of accepting and warm people here. The problem in so many communities is for newcomers to be able to break in.

Marcus: Did you think it was easier in Portland?
STEIN: I think it’s easier in Portland. Let me put it this way. I think it’s not terribly difficult in Portland. In Dallas it was tougher. It’s an older, more entrenched community, and I don’t mean that in a negative way. I think it’s easier when you have children. The social meeting is so much more frequent.

Marcus: I don’t want to forget to try to get a personal sketch of Hershal. What was he like in your view? What were his skills as a leader and a human being?
STEIN: Hershal was a gentle giant. Very kind, very caring, intellectually curious, really interested in so many things. He had real humility and real modesty. Here’s a guy who could have been as arrogant as he wanted to be and wasn’t. He was really interested in people. He was a good president, and so capable that sometimes it worked against him. People would say, “Well, if you leave it to Hershal, it will be done.”

Marcus: So people expected him to pick up a lot of pieces. And did he?
STEIN: Yes, he often did. He was a real mensch. And he had a sense of humor.

Marcus: So he wasn’t disappointed when people didn’t do what he’d hoped that they would do, either financially or leadership-wise?
STEIN: Hershal was the kind of guy who would come out with the statement, “Why do we always fuss over the tenth person who comes to the minyan? Why don’t we do the same with the first nine?” He was this big, tall, gentle guy. A great family man.

Marcus: Had he lived here in Portland? I’m trying to remember if they were Oregonians.
STEIN: That I’m not sure of. Hershal and Hal, of course, were the greatest of friends. Hal is a great guy. I think Hal was maybe a little bit more cautious, a little bit more of the businessman, if you will. Both men were quite assertive, in a good way.

Marcus: When they picked up the ball they ran with it.
STEIN: When they picked up the ball they ran with it. They rarely if ever bad-mouthed people, even if they were disappointed in them. And of course, a great family there, too.

Marcus: I am wondering if there are people out there who are the Hershals and Hals . . .?
STEIN: Yes, there are the Hershals and Hals of today. But they are still pretty special.

Marcus: They have a very special place in Portland, in our hearts. I think they both excelled in making those connections.
STEIN: You have to think about what Arden and Jim do, Jim’s problem solving and ability to listen.

Marcus: That’s a tricky piece. Do you think that’s in your genes, or can you learn to be that kind of a listener?
STEIN: Probably both. Jim said to me one day in the parking lot, before he became a macher, “I’m 29, and I was president of a company when I was 25. I don’t know why anybody thinks that I couldn’t be president of a Federation.” So we made sure that he became president of the Federation.

Marcus: But he said it was by default on the first round. It was more or less, “All right, you’re the only one standing, so it’s you.” That’s what he told me [laughing]. So age isn’t what it’s about on either end.
STEIN: That’s right. Some people are young and wise, and others of us are old and foolish. There’s no age barrier. The constant struggle for any organization, and particularly for the Jewish community, is to maintain the flow of leadership. Again, all of the people that we’re talking about have been able to do their terms of office, not get in the way of their successors, stay engaged without invading the responsibility and the authority of the people that succeeded them. You go down the list. It was Hershal and Hal and Henry and Kurt and Jim and Arden, Stanley — Marcus, I mean.

Marcus: I think also that it’s not an allegiance to an amorphous organization; it’s also an allegiance to something else. That’s what you were talking about when we started this conversation, “What is it about?”
STEIN: I think that the important thing is that everyone on that list I just gave you understands change. It’s for sure that this is not the same community that it was in 1977. It faces a bunch of different challenges, and it’s getting more cohesive than it was in 1967.

Marcus: Maybe neither of us can answer that. When you taught your class in organization, what were the key factors in community organization that you taught?
STEIN: That’s another interview.

Marcus: I love it [laughs].