Linda Veltman

Aldrich: We want to document the story of Jews in Oregon. How they got here, how they participated upon arrival. How they participated in Jewish communal life and the broader community and the changes that the community has gone through over time. So I need your help to kind of understand how we are as a community and I have a number of questions here. State your name, place and date of birth.
VELTMAN: My name is Linda Veltman. Veltman is my married name. I was born Linda Popick. I was born in Portland, Oregon, April 13, 1943 in Wilcox Memorial Hospital. 

Aldrich: OK tell me about your household growing up. Who lived with you?
VELTMAN: My mother, Ray Honeo Popick. My father Hyman Popick. And I have a sister who is 22 months older than I am, Susan Popick Mosler.

Aldrich: Tell me what was Jewish life like in your home? You celebrated Shabbat? Or not?
VELTMAN: When my grandfathers were there we celebrated Shabbat. But we celebrated all holidays. For many years my family belonged to Congregation Beth Israel, Congregation Shaarie Torah and Congregation Ahavath Achim. My father had grown up in Shaarie Torah and I attended religious school there for a number of years but being a smaller congregation it sort of had a sort of stop. It started with older students and then younger ones kept joining into the class so there was a wide age spread and was repetition to catch the newer ones up to speed. So then we attended Beth Israel’s religious school. We did not keep kosher but all holidays were observed. And all of the holidays that included family meals were always, when they were alive, at my grandparents’ homes and, because my mother was Sephardic and my father was Ashkenazi, it was a very interesting meld. We had totally different holiday meals at each of the grandparents’ homes. And when I started reading Hebrew, when my two grandfathers would be there, it was a great debate. They wanted to hear me read and Sephardic Hebrew is Israeli Hebrew, Modern Hebrew is today. So that when we say “et” now, was “es.” And so they debated between each other how I should say things. 

Aldrich: Was there any debate about how you should view religion?
VELTMAN: No, no. Although we were observant to a point, Jewish ethics was something that was stressed continually – and the Jewish soul. So the practice was not linked to attendance, to any specific rituals. We participated in them but that wasn’t the stressed point.  It was a Jewish neshama [soul], my grandfather Popick would say. And neither of my grandfathers tried to put any behavioral patterns on us. They were very gentle grandfathers, especially my grandfather Popick. He was one of the most accepting people…. He had 13 grandchildren and each one was cherished and understood and whatever we did, if it was honest and fair, then he was happy. And with 13 grandchildren there were homes that various degrees of involvement in the Jewish community and participation in day-to-day Jewish life. And he did not (even though he was kosher and he went to services every Saturday) he did not put that upon his family,

Aldrich: Both grandfathers lived in Portland?
VELTMAN: Both lived in Portland.

Aldrich: Do you know when they came to Portland?
VELTMAN: My father was born in Odessa, Russia. And when he was three years old, his family came to Portland. And I believe they came through New York. I never knew exactly the reason they came to Portland. My mother’s father came I think about 1910 to the United States but he left Rhodes to flee from an arranged marriage. He knew my grandmother and he felt this was the woman he wanted to marry. But his family had arranged a marriage so rather than go through with that, he came to this country. He worked and I think it was 1912. Then he went back to Rhodes and married my grandmother and brought her here.

Aldrich: Where is Rhodes?
VELTMAN: Rhodes is the island of Rhodes, which they pronounce Rhode-es. I believe at that time it was under Turkish rule. It is now considered a Greek island; it is part of Greece. He was a sponge diver there. They are famous for sponges and he was a sponge diver. And he went to Seattle, actually. I shouldn’t say Portland. And my mother was born in Seattle and she was I think four or five they moved to Portland. They spoke nothing but Spanish in the house. My mother did not know English until she went to school. 

Aldrich: What is your father’s full name?
VELTMAN: Hyman Popick. And no middle names. I don’t think any of the seven children got middle names. I don’t know that middle names in those times were as common in those times. My mother did not have one; my father did not have one. And her name was Rachel Honeo. When they came to this country, it was Huniu but they wanted, I guess, to Anglicize it so I have had over the years seen it spelled, referring to my mother or my grandfather, both ways. And when my mother was probably 80, 81 my husband and I took her to Rhodes. She had never been to Rhodes, and we were going and we took her with us. And there is a Sephardic synagogue there and on the exterior are the names in the tablet of all the members and Honeo was spelled with a J at that time. And when he came to this country he changed the spelling and then he changed it again, or maybe it was changed as he entered the country.

Aldrich: OK, so you said that you went to Hebrew School, and that was at which synagogue?
VELTMAN: When I first started Hebrew school, I was seven years old, and Hebrew school was taught on the east side in a home that belonged to the Kobin family. And so there was no transportation, there was nothing. And at that time my mother didn’t drive. And because I was seven, I was too young to take the bus. So three days a week, I went around the block to Chuck Kobin’s home, he was a little boy here in Portland and he was probably four or five years older than I, and he and I would walk to the bus. We would take the bus to Hebrew school in this old house and then his father or my father would pick us up and take us home. That Hebrew school moved to SW 13th where Ahavai Sholom (which is now Neveh Shalom) was housed. And for maybe a year or two I attended there. And then we went into the basement to the old Shaarie Torah was on First Avenue, and that was where we had Hebrew school. The interesting thing was that everybody decided in those years after it moved from the east side, that we had to have transportation. And the Hebrew school was very small originally so transportation was provided by two men who owned a parking lot downtown, Ross Cohen and Nate Kesselman and they had a pickup truck and three days a week, to Beaumont School, would come a pickup truck and my sister and I were given, especially in the winter when the weather was bad, we got to sit up front. We were the only girls who rode the truck. And there were boxes – vegetables and fruit used to come in wooden crates and they would line the crates up on the back of the pickup truck and we would sit there and pickup maybe four or five boys and that’s how we would go to Hebrew school. Eventually the Hebrew school grew so they got a bus and that became quite uptown. [laughs]

Aldrich: Did you live in the same house?
VELTMAN: From the day I was born till the day I got married.

Aldrich: And what address was that?
VELTMAN: 3040 NE 37th and it was, I think about six or seven blocks to Beaumont Grade school and I think about the same number of blocks to Grant High school. So my whole life was in that area and at that time there were a fair number of Jewish people in that area. People had, the younger generations, moved from South Portland to the east side and so up the block on our block were the Enkeleses the Kobins, the Potblacks [?] and ourselves, all on one block and the Rosenfelds down the block and the Galtons up the block so… it was quite a community.

Aldrich: And you went to Beaumont grade school…
VELTMAN: Which is now a middle school.

Aldrich: OK, and how many years did that go through?
VELTMAN: Five, kindergarten and it went to 8th grade. There were no middle schools so that’s where I went and in two weeks I go to my 50th high school reunion. 

Aldrich: Congratulations. OK, which Jewish institutions were part of your family’s life?
VELTMAN: My father, for both my parents were active when we were young at Shaarie Torah. My father for (oh I can’t remember how long) always was a solicitor for Jewish Federation. My parents belonged to the South Parkway club, which was a Jewish social organization. I think it started for men who were newsboys and my father was the oldest child in his family and he quit school when he was 13 and was a newspaper boy until he got old enough to have another kind of a job; he worked to help support his family. I think that being a newspaper boy was very common among Jewish teens; they were all friends and they started this organization. My parents had, I don’t remember how often, South Parkway meetings and they played cards and had big dinners. At the time of my growing up, there were Jewish sororities in Portland and oh, I never met a club I didn’t like and so I was a member of Queen Esther’s daughters. There were two social clubs. I was also a member of the BBG We used to call it the BBYO. And then they had, as I said, these social clubs you got an invitation to. There were two of them and then when you were a sophomore in Highs school, there was another club. You could be a member of Queen Esther’s daughters (which I was a member of) or K’maia (which I was a member of) when you were a freshman. When you became a sophomore members of both of those clubs were got bids to become members of Sub Deb and so these clubs had meetings every other week. They would also have dances. There was a boys’ social club called Eta Phi. They had a big formal every year. It was the social event, the be-all-and-end-all for Jewish teen girls.

Prahl:  Can I one question? Living on the east side, how did your family get to Shaarie Torah for shul? Did you ride a car on Shabbat?
VELTMAN: Oh yes, even my grandfather Popick, (he lived on the east side) drove. My mother learned to drive when I was eight years old and it was very interesting. My father and a man called Ruben Kailes owned a company called Pacific Garment Company and they manufactured ladies’ coats and suits. The building still stands I think on 9th and Davis by Benson High Sschool and my father would not fly. I don’t think it was much of an option when he first started. He went twice a year to New York and to Chicago four times a year. Two of the Chicago trips were coordinated with the New York trips. And because it took three and a half days to go to New York, he would be gone five and six weeks at a time because he went to Denver, he went to Salt Lake He worked his way across the country, selling. He was the sales person for the company and Rubin Kailes was the designer and he had been a tailor in the old country. So my father was gone a great amount of time. My mother took care of all the family finances, the house, everything because he was gone so much. But for the first eight years of my life she didn’t drive and we took the buses and she had a couple of lady friends who would take her once in a while and my father would keep saying you need to learn to drive. She took lessons and learned to drive. It started out, her driving career, as really not a very good drive and drove until she was 85 and she remained not a very good driver. 

So driving on Shabbat, to my grandfather Popick, he didn’t care. My grandfather Honeo lived most of his life (until the urban renewal), where he would walk to synagogue. When he would go to Ahavath Achim at its old location, we would go in our car, and when the service was over, we always went through the same routine. My father always called my grandfather Chief. He didn’t call him Dad, he didn’t call him by his first name and he would always say, “Chief you want a ride home?” And of course my grandfather and his wife would walk. My mother’s mother Syriu Honeo died before I was born. And my grandfather married a lovely lady from Seattle. And she was all I knew as a grandmother. I regret, to this day that we Auntie Jamilah, we never called her “grandmother.” And she treated us as good as any grandmother could have treated children. And she had no children herself. We were her grandchildren and we should have called her grandmother. But they always told us to call her Auntie Jamillah and we did.

Aldrich: And your paternal grandmother’s name was?
VELTMAN: Rose. Rose Popick.

Aldrich: OK. And I can get back to that later. So we already know that you lived in the Grant Park area. What do you remember about, not necessarily to do with Judaism, but your neighborhood? Your early days in your neighborhood. 
VELTMAN: There was a restaurant of which anybody who was 25 years younger than I, at least, who grew up in Portland knew called Yaw’s Top Notch. Yaw’s was a part of our social life. It was a hamburger place, a different type of hamburger than anything I have ever tasted any place, and we could walk to Yaw’s. I would walk with my girlfriends there. When we drove, we would drive there. I belonged to a number of social clubs at my high school that were not Jewish. Those were a big part of my non-Jewish life and we would have meeting and we would get in our cars – I didn’t have my own car, we used our parents’. And we would go to Yaw’s afterwards. It just was the be-all-and-end-all. It was a “Cheers” that served hamburger and no beer. Everybody knew everybody. My mother belonged to a poker club. Eight Jewish ladies, every Monday, they met for poker. So every Tuesday morning, before school, my father would take us to Yaw’s for breakfast because my mother slept in, after a big night of poker. The neighborhood was wonderful. We biked and roller-skated everyplace. There were tennis courts, and still are, at Grant Park. We would go there. It was something that was really sort of particular to its time because we would walk 8 o’clock at night, to each other’s homes. It would get dark. We didn’t think anything of it. Nor did our parents. You knew whose houses were unlocked and went in and out. And there are books by Beverly Clearly about that general area and it was like that.

Aldrich: Did you go to a particular playground?
VELTMAN: We went to Wilshire Park. They used to have crafts taught there during the summer and we would go up there, to Wilshire park, and do crafts and play and everybody’s back yards, There is a hill on Klickitat that goes from 37th down to 33rd. It’s a very steep hill and the minute it snowed, everybody would take their sleds go to Klickitat Hill and we would spend the whole day going down and one of my best friends from going up, a gal named Peggy Edwards, lived at the top of the hill and so our group of friends – it was our own ski lodge. We came and went, we had a bathroom, we had hot chocolate and it was a lot of fun. And right across the street was a large mansion with a man who lived there by himself. It was sort of like a haunted house. At one time. I can’t remember if it was Shaarie Torah or Ahavai Sholom, when the Urban Renewal came, they tried to buy it to make it into a synagogue. And there was I think neighborhood resistance because it was so residential. But for a time we thought what fun, to have a synagogue on the block. 

Aldrich: Ah, OK. So you went to Grant High School. Did you go on to college?
VELTMAN: I went to the University of Washington. To a Jewish girl that was no big adventure. If one was interested in being in a sorority (and as I said, I love the clubs [laughs]), at the University of Oregon I would not have been able to be in a sorority at that time. 

Aldrich: Why was that?
VELTMAN: Because I was Jewish. Many of the sororities had national policies about taking in Jewish people and so I went to the University of Washington where there were two Jewish sororities and was in a sorority there. But after my freshman year I met my husband. He went to the University of Oregon. We decided way too quickly for 18 and 19 year olds that we would get married, three or four years in the future and so my husband came up with the idea that if I transferred to Portland State, then we wouldn’t have so much distance. It would be easier to see each other on weekends. I met him in the summer after my freshman year. I went back, it was too late and I didn’t want to do anything too rash as to transfer to Portland State. I went one more year and then I transferred to Portland State.

Aldrich: Did you have any interest in any specific subject matter at that time?
VELTMAN: I thought that I would like to do one of two things, and so I started out my first couple of years taking all the speech classes, not the education classes, I wasn’t quite sure about being a teacher. Taking speech classes for speech education, thinking I wanted to leave the door open but I also considered becoming a lawyer. And there were some prerequisites to law school to take. I think there were two speech classes and a business class and maybe accounting; I don’t remember. So I took those classes and then, when I came to Portland State and I realized I really was going to marry my husband, he was going to go to medical school and my mother was very old fashioned about some things and really quite right. She said, “Sometimes you can’t get the teaching jobs. And one job you can always get is to be a secretary or a bookkeeper.” So when I was at Portland State I took classes in business machines. I took shorthand. I was pretty good typist (a word that is never used anymore). And so I took all those classes and when we got married I became a secretary up at OHSU, which was UOMS [University of Oregon Medical School] at that time.

Aldrich: How long did you work there? 
VELTMAN: I worked there three years and then I had my first child. 

Aldrich: And you traded in the secretarial for the mother?
VELTMAN: Well, I actually did transcription work at home in the evenings for some doctors downtown and when I was born it was during World War II. And Jake Enkeles who was a well-known Jewish family physician and he was my mother’s physician but he was in the Navy, and there was a woman Lena Kenin and she was an obstetrician so my mother went to her to deliver me. She was, I know, I can’t do the math right now, but pretty close, she was born in the late 1800s, because when I had my first child in 1967, she was 72 years old. And so when think, (and I do often because she was such an outstanding woman), when I think of a Jewish woman going to medical school in those days between the religious quotas and women being so rare, it was really quite something. But she was quite something. She never had children and when she got older, she told me, she decided that she was never much good at… she wasn’t a great surgeon and being an OB, the hours could be difficult; she went back to the University of Pennsylvania and became a psychiatrist. So the serendipity of it all, when I went to work at the medical school, it was a civil service job and you went and interviewed for the positions were available.  I went to the department of psychiatry and took the job and I worked for her, the woman who had delivered me as an OB! I worked for her as a psychiatrist. In those days there was a forced retirement at 72 and just when I quit she retired. But she didn’t really retire, she continued to practice. She lived at the Vista St. Clair and she saw patients there and I worked for her until she died.

Aldrich: And she delivered your first —
VELTMAN: No, no, she was a psychiatrist then, she was past that. But no, she spent the last 15-20 years of her practice as a psychiatrist. 

Aldrich: OK, the war.  I know you were born right in the middle of it and I don’t know what you remember about that time. What can you tell me about it?
VELTMAN: One thing I do remember, the first thing I can truly remember is the day Franklin Roosevelt died. And I remember I was a toddler. My was mother sitting on the wood stairs to our basement crying her eyes out. And I do remember that. I remember as I got older my parents talking about it and I think the first real understanding that I had was, I believe, 1948. My mother’s first cousin, Diane Golden, who lives here in Portland at the Rose Schnitzer Manor, came to this country. She had been in a concentration camp. She had lost a number of her siblings and her parents. She was my mother’s first cousin; they had never met. And she came to Portland. So my mother spoke to us in 1948 or 1949, I was five or six years old. My mother tried to explain to us. She came to our home and my mother had put out a bowl of fruit and nuts. It was a very emotional thing when she came; my mother was so excited to have a first cousin we had never met. We knew this family had gone through this and she came and sat in our living room and the two things I remember so much that day, besides how lovely she was, was that as they were talking she would pick up a walnut from the bowl and put it in her hand and break the walnut. There was a nutcracker there but she broke it in her hand and I was overwhelmed by that strength. Of course, as I got older I realized that if you were a survivor you had to be strong. And we went into the kitchen to eat lunch and somehow she said two things she did not like. Food was so precious but there were two things she wasn’t she wasn’t crazy about. They were rye bread and Coca Cola. And that is what I remember. It was only hearing about it after the fact to explain what had happened and what people had gone through.

Aldrich: Were any of your uncles or aunts in the Army or Navy?
VELTMAN: My mother’s brother was in the Merchant Marines. I believe my father’s brother Irving, who was year or two younger than my father, maybe was in the Navy. I know he was in the military but I really can’t remember — Some branch. And my father was supposed to go and then the war was over so he didn’t have to go.

Aldrich: As a very young child were you aware, other than your mother’s cousin, of what was going on in Europe with the Jews? 
VELTMAN: I knew because I was told; it was not exclusive to one family or one person. And my father was very political. I have early recollections of his anger. He was committed to a number of Jewish organizations that cared for people who had survived the war and getting them out. I do remember the immigration thing was a big thing with him. The older I got, the more he would explain about how our country didn’t act quickly; how so much of this could have been prevented. How we closed our doors to a lot of people who could have been saved. And that more money and more political influence could have made a big difference. 

Aldrich: Okay. Social political factors – did you hear anything about Japanese internment in the Western part of the United States?
VELTMAN: No, I really didn’t, I don’t think I ever heard it discussed in my home. As I got older, certainly, I learned more about it but at home it was never discussed. 

Aldrich: What about other social events like the Civil Rights movement?
VELTMAN: Yes, absolutely. It sounds like a chapter out of The Help, but my mother and father had a woman who cleaned and she and her husband, every year, went to Mississippi to see family. And they had to drive because taking a bus or a train or plane they didn’t feel safe. So every year, sort of the subject would be reiterated in our house and my parents were both  (especially my father) were very liberal and my father also very committed. One time, my mother, when I was very young, it’s embarrassing to say but she had a woman, my mother was very sick when I was young and was in the hospital for about six weeks and had a woman, she would stay in our home, for a number of years, my mother told her that if she didn’t vote for Truman she might not have a job. [laughter] That was always the joke. I can never remember hearing any kind of prejudice and yet I think within Jewish people, humiliating as it is to say, there were two words, I don’t think have ever been uttered in my house. It was a generational thing. They were schvartze and goyim. And yet my parents always had many, many non-Jewish friends. It was a time when I don’t think there was much racial interaction but my father had a number of men that he knew well from the trains. Because he took trains. He would go cross-country on the trains and he would sit and visit with them. You would get to know them very well. So I don’t think there ever any issues. I know that during the Civil Rights movement they were emotionally involved. My father was always a member of the Anti-Defamation League and of anything that fought for civil justice.

Aldrich: What about the Women’s Rights movements? Were there any feelings in your family? How was it discussed? 
VELTMAN: I was too old. It really didn’t come to the fore until I was out of the house but there was never anything in our family. I was one of two girls. And my mother was a wonderful role model for doing whatever you wanted to do and because my father was gone so much my mother invested in the stock market on her own; my mother made major decisions on her own. Women were valued and not as someone to clean the house and make the meal. My mother was quite bright even though she’d only gone to high school and I never really thought about it, in our household, as there ever being any restriction to anything a woman could do. And I never personally had any problem doing what I wanted to do in the outside world. However that does not mean that I have not been very supportive of it. I think that there are still areas to improve. On the other hand, I think that there has been a small percentage of women who have given women a bad rap because they have been just plain whiners instead of trying to go out and accomplish – being a woman is not an excuse, it’s a privilege.

Aldrich: Zionism – was Zionism important to your family? 
VELTMAN: Yes, because of the war and because of this problem with people being in another type of camp until they could be placed. 

Aldrich: Was Zionism something that was discussed in the community and if so, how? 
VELTMAN: Because of my age at that time, I have no idea. But it must have been because my father was more active. That is the one thing I wills is that in those days, organizations were run by men. There were sisterhoods. There were ladies’ organizations. But there were, for the most part, not power organizations. I do know there is a plethora of projects, because the Oral History Project was started by the National Council of Jewish Women, which was an organization that had real empowerment, but that was the exception.

Aldrich: And as you left your parents’ home and went to college and got married, and started your family. Were you aware of what was going on in Women’s Lib?
VELTMAN: Absolutely, yes yes yes.

Aldrich: What do you remember about the day Israel became a state?
VELTMAN: Not much. 1948. I was five years old. What did I listen to on the radio? There was no television. I listened to the Green Hornet.

Aldrich: Probably more interesting to a little girl. OK so, I know that we’ve done an interview with your husband and you told me on the phone that he was a mohel. I don’t want you to tell his story, but just briefly, about his businesses? 
VELTMAN:  He practiced as an obstetrician and gynecologist and when we moved to Portland there was no mohel. For a bris they would bring mohels from Seattle. Of course, the OBs do the circumcisions in the hospitals and he was a practicing Jew so he would be asked some times to do the circumcision and a rabbi would come. And then Rabbi Stampfer approached him, I don’t know how many years ago, and we weren’t members of Neveh Shalom at that time, we belonged to Beth Israel but he had done circumcisions with Rabbi Stampfer doing the religious portion as did Rabbi Rose at the time, and Larry performing the circumcision itself. And he said there was going to be a class at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative Movement, in New York and I think it was a 10-day class. They were doing this thing for surgeons to become mohels and he thought it would be a wonderful thing and so Larry went and was certified, and even though he retired four or five years ago, he still does a lot of risk-management work around the country but the only procedure he does any longer is brises.

Aldrich: So he does brises in town still?
VELTMAN: And now there are two other certified mohel.

Aldrich: So what year did you get married?
VELTMAN: We got married in 1965. 

Aldrich: And the dates and names of your children please?
VELTMAN: Amy Veltman, she still goes by Veltman even though she’s married, was born November 27, 1967 and Julie Veltman, August 30, 1969. 

Aldrich: Where did you live with Larry and the girls? 
VELTMAN: Amy was born in Portland. When she was 8 months old we moved to Torrance, California. There was a L.A. county hospital there and that’s where Larry did his internship and residency and then he had one year that he did research way out in the San Fernando Valley, and Amy was going to be going to school so we wanted some place where there was a good public school and for one year we lived in Pacific Palisades. Following that we moved to Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc California and we were there for two years and then the week of our 10th anniversary we moved into our first home – we moved back to Portland and we have been here ever since and that was 1975.

Aldrich: And have you been in the same home?
VELTMAN: No we bought the home because we liked the area, there was a school across the street. We didn’t love the home but that was all there was on the market. But we had never owned a home. We didn’t know what we wanted or needed and we saw early on that we would move. We stayed in that house for five years and we moved a block away and have lived there ever since. 

Aldrich: What part of Portland?
VELTMAN: In Raleigh Hills, near Raleigh Park. We’re two doors up from Raleigh Park School. I can hear the kids playing. I was so excited today – the first day of school. I watched them from my kitchen window, going to the first day. I took the dog out for a walk, saw the kids out on the playground. It’s a nice neighborhood.

Aldrich: How did you raise your children? It’s a very open ended question.
VELTMAN: With a lot of rules! We raised our children, as far as the Jewish component, when we lived in Torrance, we belonged to a synagogue there. It was a lesson for synagogues on what not to do. Here we had joined a synagogue we could hardly afford but we wanted to have a Jewish component. The first year we were there we had only one baby and we got a baby sitter – that was only about four times, the whole time we lived down there – so I could go to synagogue. I walked into the synagogue and I stayed for the whole service. I smiled at people, I mouthed hello and I had not one person speak a word to me. And it wasn’t – they had a sort of a mommy and me thing, I took my child there. It wasn’t very easy for me to meet people there. I was hoping for that too but we made a lot of friends other places and we had a nice life there. We moved to Pacific Palisades, an area that was so out of our circle, so to speak. We rented a home and Larry moonlit in order to pay the rent, and my mother came to visit us and said, “Why are you living here? You always have lived in nice, clean places. This place is just terrible. Why would you live here?”  And it was sort of a rundown, dirty place that I spent the first 6 months cleaning, but it had good schools and we joined a synagogue there. It was the only synagogue at that time in Pacific Palisades. It was this very affluent community and we were very non-affluent. We moved in and then immediately left for a couple of months to New York – Larry had a fellowship there. We moved back to Pacific Palisades and maybe three or four weeks after we moved in I got a call from a woman who said, “We understand you’re new to the community and we know you’ve joined the synagogue.” She knew the age of my children.  And she said, “I’m having a lunch after Rosh Hashanah services and we want you all to come.” We had never been in a synagogue that has been more welcoming. We made wonderful friends there and it was just amazing to us that in the one year we lived there we had developed such community.

And then we moved to Vandenberg Air Force Base and I wanted the children to religious school. There was nothing there of course. About a forty-five minute drive away was synagogue in Santa Maria, California. So we joined – there were 28 families. It was a very, very nice synagogue but it was so small that, I don’t remember why, but they didn’t have Sunday school for my children. So I came to Portland and bought books at Beth Israel and taught every Sunday. We had Sunday school every week in my living room. It was an interesting thing to live in such a small community and such a non-Jewish community. There was no place to get the accouterments of being Jewish – a Shabbat candle, a bagel. Not that a bagel makes you Jewish – now you can get bagels everyplace. But at that time bagels were sort of a Jewish food. So I felt a bit like “Little House on the Prairie.” I made bagels. I made challahs all the time. Because otherwise the girls wouldn’t know. Then my children both went to Hebrew School.

Aldrich: Where did they go to Hebrew School?
VELTMAN: They went to Hebrew School at what was then called the Jewish Education Association. It was where Hillel School was, which is now PJA [Portland Jewish Academy]. The synagogues had bar and bat mitzvah preparation but I really felt like it was just Hebrew to get you through the bar or bat mitzvah; it was not really Hebrew. So we sent them to regular Hebrew School. Then they both had bat mitzvahs. My married daughter especially, because she has children, is making all efforts to expose them as she was exposed.

Aldrich: That is Amy.
VELTMAN: Yes.

Aldrich: And who did Amy marry?
VELTMAN: This will be a good test for you: Daniel Knoepflmacher.

Aldrich: Now if only we knew what a knoepfl was!
VELTMAN: It’s a little button, I am told.

Aldrich: And her children?
VELTMAN: Lucy was born in 2003 and Eliza was born in 2006.

Aldrich: Those are your only two grandchildren?
VELTMAN: They are my everything.

Aldrich: Maybe we’ll get back to Julie in a little bit. I’m going to end with your Jewish life now. But first I want to ask you what changes you have seen in the Jewish community since you were born.
VELTMAN: One thing that I am seeing now is the new rabbis. We had such a static community of rabbis. I think I will always miss that. Not that they were each perfect rabbis, but it was such a familial feeling. You really knew all the rabbis. When I was growing up there were only five or six synagogues (seven or eight at the most counting all of them), but the major, Reform, Orthodox, and Conservative, you just knew the rabbis, whether they were from your synagogue or not. Of course I have seen the changes of the buildings. Beth Israel is the only one that still has the same synagogue building. From the Sephardic synagogue, which had a lovely, Moorish building – now they have the Barbur Blvd building. Shaarie Torah was an old, rickety building. Now they have their nice building up the street. And Neveh Shalom had two different buildings because they built a new synagogue when I was growing up across the street from what was then the Jewish Community Center. Then they had to relocate yet again. The personalities of the synagogues have changed over the years. Growing up we had never seen (only in pictures of people at the Wailing Wall or in the diamond district of New York) people like… Chabad is something new. I didn’t know what Chabad was 25 years ago. We have seen an influx of different kinds of Judaism. Judaism in practice is new to this community. We have seen generally, something that thrills and scares me. That is that growing up, there were so many things that weren’t open to Jewish people. Now the community has opened. I can think of only one place that has a little bit of an NJA policy. But basically, from the time that I was young I always felt that the only way that we are going to get passed these ridiculous quotas or non-entrances is that Jews should not spit on these. Once Jews start being accepted. I think we have seen that. I remember the Multnomah Athletic Club and these places. Now who would even think twice about joining? My husband and I have joined places that used to not accept Jews. I know there are two ways of thinking of it but I fell like I am here to show them that we are just the same.

Aldrich: No horns.
VELTMAN: No horns. I don’t want my children or my grandchildren excluded from anything. And if you don’t start including yourself in things those doors will never be opened. I am sure there is plenty of prejudice out there but people certainly have come far enough to know that they don’t spew it. Although I am one of the greatest proponents of it [inclusion], it frightens me. I think that a lot of people don’t understand that just because you are a part of a community that maybe you were not able to be a part of at one time, you should not forget who we are. I think it is a real threat to Judaism in Portland that people lose that strong connection. On the other hand I have seen an enormous number of young people in this community who really have a feeling for the Jewish community. I hope that it remains strong and grows stronger.

Aldrich: How do you and your husband participate in Judaism now?
VELTMAN: My husband always says that I am the ambassador. Of course he has his brises, which he feels is a huge privilege and is a strong Jewish connection for him. We belong to a synagogue. My husband is not a person who has the patience for boards. He is willing to support Judaism emotionally and financially, but don’t ask him to join a board. I have been very involved over the years. I have been on the board of Jewish Family and Child Service. I have probably spent years on the board of National Council of Jewish Women. I have been on the board of Robison Home/Cedar Sinai for oh, I can’t remember how long. I became active in it in 1978 or 79. I was on the building committee for the May Apartments, which have now become the Rose Schnitzer Manor (they have melded into one). I got into that through the National Council of Jewish Women and I remained on that board for 10 or 12 years and have been back on it for 10 or 11 years now. I was on the Federation board. At Cedar Sinai I have been a vice-President; I have been a secretary. For Federation I was treasurer. I have been on the executive committee there for a number of years. I was on the allocations committee for a number of years. I stay active.

Aldrich: What synagogue are you a member of?
VELTMAN: We belong to Neveh Shalom. We were married at Beth Israel. Our children had their bat mitzvahs at Beth Israel. One was named at Beth Israel. But both Larry and I feel more traditional than the services were at Beth Israel. We had a lot of family there. We had a great number of friends there. It was a big part of our lives. So it was rather a heavy decision.

Aldrich: When did you change?
VELTMAN: I know it was 18 years ago because my parents belonged in later years to Beth Israel. My sister-in-law and brother-in-law, my brother-in-law’s mother and stepfather were there. So we had our own little family within Beth Israel. Everyone felt pretty much the same as we did. But my mom just felt that her daughters were married at Beth Israel and she felt quite a pull to stay there. Every year Larry would say, “Well Mom?” and she would say, “No, I’m not ready yet.” Then 18 years ago (I remember it because it was my niece’s wedding. It was the first grandchild of my mother’s to get married – my father had passed away. My mother was so thrilled. She had had maybe a glass of champagne and a glass of wine, which for her was a lot.) The wedding was in August and here it was time for the holidays. Larry said, “Gee Mom, we’re kind of getting close to the holidays. Have you thought any more about changing?” And she said, “Oh, I’ll do whatever you want.” [laughter] So the last vote was in and we all moved to Neveh Shalom. My brother-in-law, part of his family was at Neveh Shalom so I just feel like all the synagogues are all of our synagogues, really, but we like the services there.

Aldrich: Your grandfather. I am going back in time. He was a what was it?.
VELTMAN: He was a Chacham. This is my grandfather Abraham Honeo. They called him Avram but in the workplace he was Abraham.

Aldrich: What I pulled up was that it was not just knowing Torah. That the position was that of a judge in the community. I don’t know how far back they are going. There are things that he is not supposed to do. [she is reading from a list]. “He is not to go about in perfumed garments. He is not to walk alone at night or to wear shabby shoes or converse with a woman in the street, even if she is his wife.”
VELTMAN: Oh, I think these must all predate him. Although my grandfather never wore shabby shoes. My grandfather came to this country and, as many Sephardic did, he worked in the produce business in the old farmer’s marked downtown. But for whatever reason he left that and he shined shoes for the rest of his life. So he was proud of his shoes.

Aldrich: [continues reading the list] “He is not to sit in the society of an ignoramus or be the last to enter the Beit Midrash” And I don’t know what that is.
VELTMAN: That is the synagogue.

Aldrich: [continues again to read] “So he can continue as a witness in suits concerning money transactions before a judge to is his inferior in knowledge. He can absent himself for testifying.”
VELTMAN: Probably these were ‘old country’ rules. He really had all of the abilities of a cantor. He had a beautiful voice. But to my knowledge he never gave a sermon or anything. And in Seattle there was a rabbi, Rabbi Maimon. He came down for the High Holidays.

Aldrich: One more question: I know you have talked about being excluded from certain clubs and organizations. Other than that have you felt any direct anti-Semitism?
VELTMAN: No. And frankly, I was on the cusp. Yes, when I went to college, if I had gone to the University of Oregon and wanted to be in a sorority, it would have been a Jewish sorority or nothing. But in my time, even as a co-ed, all of the sudden that started changing, little by little before my very eyes. When I went to the University of Washington I would say that 90% of the sororities would not take in a Jewish person. My second year they took in one and then all of the sudden they took in many. So I have seen so many of those things change and all for the better. I haven’t felt any anti-Semitism. I think that we as a society are not past the point (myself no exception) that someone would refer to me when I wasn’t there as, “I have this wonderful Jewish friend.” I don’t say, “I have this wonderful non-Jewish friend.” So we still are thought of with our Judaism as being a main identifier. I think that still exists today.

Aldrich: OK. I have one question here. You said that you were part of two organizations now that had not allowed Jews in before. Can I ask what those are?
VELTMAN: Of course. The Junior League of Portland and Waverly Country Club.

Aldrich: Great. Thanks. [is reviewing her list of questions] Let’s review spellings now. Popick, Honeo, Hyman. Syriu?
VELTMAN: Syriu [?] I don’t know how she spelled that.

Aldrich: That was your grandmother. And she died?
VELTMAN: In 1941. I know that because my mother was pregnant with my older sister.

Aldrich: OK and your grandfather remarried Jamilla. You talked about going sledding and going to Yaws with your neighbor. Can you tell me how to spell her name?
VELTMAN: Oh, it was groups of friends. We didn’t just do things with one person then. And the Hollywood Theater – that was a huge thing. I think 10 of us would walk down to the Hollywood Theater on Friday nights and then afterwards we would go to Yaws. This was before we were old enough to drive. We would walk over to Yaws and have our French fries and Coca Colas. And Yaws had toasted, buttered buns. They were just fat buns that were toasted and sopped in butter. That and a Coke we thought that was just the best. That was yet another part of the neighborhood that, to this day, when I go to the Hollywood Theater for something it is just overwhelming nostalgia.

[continues to ask for spellings of names. Then they look at photos]
VELTMAN: This is Julie Veltman. She teaches Spanish at Willamette University. It is very nice that they are both here in Portland.

Aldrich: Tell me about the food that your mother made.
VELTMAN: Everybody thinks that their mother was a good cook. But my mother truly was a wonderful cook. My sister and I talk about this. My mother was an adventurous cook in many ways. She was brought up in a Sephardic home, which has a very specific cuisine – a wonderful cuisine. When she married my father there was nothing from making strudel with your own dough, with your hands underneath it on the kitchen table. Same thing with knishes. There was nothing… Other than kishkes there was no Jewish dish my mother didn’t make and make really wonderfully. But she also made what was thought of as… you know, day to day we ate what families eat. But she was never hesitant to try something new and different. It was always a treat… what next? But she also, of course, made Sephardic things. In Sephardic cuisine a lot of the entrees, because of the economics of it, are vegetables with a small amount of lamb. And lamb was always the meat. I can’t remember anything with beef that my mother made Sephardic. Oh, that’s not true there is one little pastry called the pasteliko. It is the most beautiful little pastry. It is the size of a cupcake but with a little top, like a pie top, with fluted edges and sesame seeds sprinkled on. And inside (it sounds terrible but it is really delicious) is hard-boiled eggs and ground beef and sautéed onions and parsley. They really are quite a delicacy. Sephardics tend to make okra. Okra is big. And black-eyed peas. Yoghurt. My mother used to make homemade yoghurt. Now I’m 68, so at least 60 years ago, who knew about yoghurt? But the Sephardics made yoghurt. Now the way that you made yoghurt was from a relative, or there was a place called The Buttermilk Corner downtown, you got yoghurt so you had the culture. Then you came home and added it to the milk and all that. But it needs a certain amount of moisture. My friends growing up, my school friends, were mostly non-Jewish. They would come to my house and they thought (and my Jewish friends thought the same thing, actually because none of them had a Sephardic background). She would take these little glasses and put the yoghurt in them. Then she put them in a big kettle. And you couldn’t cover it. You needed some of it to escape. So she would put a dishtowel over the kettle that had this hot water in it and then take an afghan and fold it up and set it over. So you would walk by the stove and see a pot with an afghan on top of it. There was almost always yoghurt in the house so I think she did this often. There was always yoghurt, always knishbroit (same thing as mandelbroit). Those were steady on the diet. But she also made pastries called bouyus, which is like a spanakopita except you make your own dough. And it is every bit as thin. And it is laborious. Every year, when we settled here, after my dad died, we always had Rosh Hashanah dinner at either my sister-in-law’s or her sister-in-law’s, Sara Cogan (who was a very strong leader in the Jewish community, who was killed 5 years ago). We would pick my mother up to take her to these dinners and she would have a platter, like a huge turkey platter piled with these pastelikos, with the meat filling, and the bouyus, with a spinach/feta filling, and then borekas. They are from the Turkish cuisine. They are a half-moon shape, some filled with cheese, some with spinach. And here would be this enormous thing and we would laugh and say, “Are we the only Jews who are having cocktail hour?” because Rae would bring the big platter and we would all devour them. And Sara used to say, “You must learn how to make these, Linda. Now I cook a lot, but my mother kept my freezer supplied; I had no reason to learn. I kept saying, “I know I should.” My daughter Julie once said, “You know, Grandma, what if I came over and did a video of you making bouyus?” It is a two-day project because the dough has to rest. It is a whole big thing. So Julie went to my mother’s. Now this is also the beginning of the cooks on TV. I think Julia Child was the only one. My mother was not the neatest cook in the kitchen. Suddenly her kitchen was immaculate. She was all dressed up. My mother was very pretty. She started out by telling how she learned to make these and said, “These are called desayunos.” They are what Sephardic people have before the meal. She explained it and then she started making this dough because the dough has to rest. So there my mother is in her condo and there Julie is making this video and when I saw this, when Julie brought it home and showed it to me, we laughed so hard because there is my mother. She makes the dough in the little pan that she always made the dough in. And then she tells what you do with it next. It has to sit in the refrigerator overnight. And then she turns around to the counter and says, “I happen to have one that I made yesterday.” [laughs] so the continuity of her filming… Then Julie went back the next day because it was still a two-day project. So I have a video of my mother making the bouyus. And it is really quite something. They used to make homemade marzipan. Homemade is better than anything I have ever had anyplace. And for weddings the Sephardics would make little meringues. They would color them different colors. They would call them ajuplados.

Then, of course, in my grandfather Popick’s home we had the traditional prakas [?] and chicken soup with matzah balls. I never saw, in a Sephardic home, we would go for Passover the first night, always to my grandfather Popick’s and have (I don’t have to tell you, Seder food) the gefilte fish, the soup, the chicken. And the next night we would go to my grandfather Honeo’s. And we would start the meal, as they often did, with a small piece of salmon “con tomat i limon.” (with a tomato and lemon sauce). And the tomato sauce was filled with water. It was almost more like a broth. There would be certain things. Remember I said there was no beef? My auntie Jamilla used to make miyoyos (I don’t know if that is a nickname or what), or brains. It was a beef brain pudding. I wouldn’t touch it. Then we would proceed with the vegetables and roast chicken. The vegetables were cooked in lamb. They were entrees upon entrees. Sephardic eat rice. And all of these vegetables were cooked and served with rice. I had a great aunt, Molly Hasson. Everyday of her married life, my uncle would walk from downtown to Front Street to go home for lunch. And she made him this Sephardic rice everyday. If you walked into her home [you would smell it]. She was a famous cook. When I told my friends this they thought it was nuts. She used to mash up an avocado with salt and pepper and lemon juice and maybe a little mayonnaise. It was really guacamole. Nobody would think anything of it now but it was so unusual then.

The Sephardics, when they would come to our house on Sunday, my grandfather and Auntie Jamilla, my mother would stop at a place called Pierre’s French Bakery. They were open on Sunday. They made fresh French bread. And my mother would grate Parmesan cheese and a bowl of olive oil. This was something because this was how Sephardics ate.

Aldrich: What was your favorite dish of your mother’s?
VELTMAN: Oh, it is so hard to think. My mother used to make a pumpkin chiffon pie at Thanksgiving and I waited all year for that. But truly every night was a treat. And our family ate copious amounts. My husband could not believe it when he started eating with us. We would have a lot of bar-b-que in the summer. Shishkabob was something in the Sephardic community so shishkabob had Spanish rice with it. But before that went on, or the steak, or whatever the entrée, my dad would grill up hamburgers and hotdogs; that was hors d’oeuvres. 

Aldrich: Well Linda, thank you so much for sharing with us.
VELTMAN: This has been so wonderful. You have just been delightful. 

VELTMAN:[showing a photograph] This is the graduating class June 13, 1924 from Shattuck School. Now if I can find him, this is my father. And someplace here is a man named Babe Director. And this was the South Parkway Club. Here. I just grabbed a file folder quickly this morning. Here is the scorecard for bridge. Oh, and here is this. The City of Hope used to be a very active organization in Portland. It was a Jewish organization. This is my grandfather Popick. He was very active in it and he got an award at a banquet. So I was there to bring in the cake. And this was, I know because I wrote on it, “Grandpa Popick on his 70th birthday.” Here he was. And this is an interesting man. His name was Mr. Albert. Louis Albert. He was my grandfather’s best friend. He invented something called Portland Punch, which you can still find some places. It was a huge thing. We never had a party without Portland Punch. And this is my grandfather Honeo. And this is a man named Shaia Sadis. I think maybe his name was Sam and this is his son Sam and this is his son-in-law, I can’t remember his first name.

This is my mother. I had to bring this. When she was a young girl and when she was older. I don’t know how this picture got so beaten up. And this is my grandfather at his home. I thought this was a good picture because it has him at home.

And this is one thing I didn’t talk about. That was summers for the Jewish people, how many people went to the beach. And there was a man named Mr. Boxer. Mr. Boxer’s house was where they had the services. We used to go all summer when I was little. There were all these ladies that my mother knew. The men would come on the weekends and we were there all summer. We would take our bikes to the beach.

Aldrich: What town did you go to
VELTMAN: Seaside. All the Jews went to Seaside. Mr. Albert owned, you know in the turn-around at Seaside there is that Trend West building? He owned all that property. It used to be a swimming natatorium and a skating rink. The sailors from Astoria used to come there and, oh my gosh, it was such a happening thing. He also owned a big house there. The kids, at ten years old, we used to walk ten or twelve blocks on the beach at night to go to the movies while our moms played cards. The ladies played cards all the time. And there were two women that were such fun. They would have a theme party every year. Oh, here was one [shows photo]. This was “come as your fantasy” or something. Look at this. Were those ladies who knew how to have fun? This was my mother. Two of them thought to wear a strapless bra. Both of them came as ballerinas. She came strapless; my mother was too big to ever have a strapless bra. But she took the curtains from the house that we were renting and made her skirt. I still remember her doing that. One time, when I was a pre-teen my sister had her best friend come to the beach with us. And we walked downtown and did whatever kids do, bought a Coke and walked around, looked for boys. And we came back to this rented house and my mother was having a card game. We came in. I think they thought we were going to a movie and then we didn’t go to the movie. We walked in and all these ladies were playing Pan and they were sitting around the table and they all were smoking corncob pipes. [laughs] We walked in and I thought my sister would die of embarrassment because Mom!! My mother didn’t smoke. My mother said, “We went and bought them. We wanted to know what it was like to smoke a pipe. And maybe we will try our cigars next.” They had such times. And many of these ladies were in my mother’s Monday night poker group. And oh, we used to stand at the top of the stairs and listen and they would laugh. And we got the first TV for probably two months, until somebody else got a TV,  every Monday it was at our house so the ladies could come and watch I Love Lucy before they started playing cards.