Don Zadoff

Shiffman: I am at the home of Don Zadoff. It is Tuesday, the 20th of October 2009. The Oral History Project, Don, is part of a project of the Oregon Jewish Museum, and the mission is to preserve and present the history of Oregon’s Jewish Community. The Oral History Project aims to develop a community oral history and to archive it. It expands and augments the Oregon Jewish Oral History and Archive Collection assembled by the late Shirley Tanzer. 

Shiffman:  Please tell us your full name, date of birth and where you were born.
ZADOFF:  My name is Donald Jerome Zadoff. I was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1926. 

Shiffman:  Would you like to tell us whatever you can remember about your grandparents, or your family of origin who lived in New Jersey?
ZADOFF:  My parents were immigrants to this country from what is now Belarus. They came here in approximately 1912 or 1913 or 1914, right around then. I don’t have that much knowledge of my grandparents. My grandfather was a blacksmith in Russia. They never came here, so I, of course, never met them. They probably passed away before I was born. I had one brother, who was six years older than me. He since has passed away. He lived in Jacksonville, Florida.

Shiffman:  What do you remember about your family home? Did your parents speak English? What did they do?
ZADOFF:  My father was a furrier. He commuted from Newark to New York for G-d knows how many years. Six of us lived in four and a half rooms. It was a Jewish neighborhood. It was my father, my mother, my brother and I, as well as my grandmother and an uncle. We all lived together in four and a half or five rooms. In those days people lived that way. As a kid I didn’t realize how hard things were because I ate regularly and had a bunch of good friends right on the street there, and we all played together. As I said, it was a Jewish neighborhood and a very pleasant place to grow up. 

Shiffman:  Did your father tell you any stories – whether he came to this country as a furrier, or whether that was something he learned here?
ZADOFF:  He came to this country as a furrier, and he was a furrier his whole life. I don’t know too much of the history there. Unfortunately, we never asked too much because this was life.

Shiffman:  Do you remember what language your parents spoke – both to the children and between themselves?
ZADOFF:  It’s hard to remember. Since I understand Yiddish and can speak Yiddish somewhat, I’m sure I heard it in my home, but I never even thought about the difference between English and Yiddish. I’m trying to think about whether they spoke Yiddish to me. They must have to a degree.  I don’t know how much English they spoke to me because Yiddish was part of my growing up, and certainly English was. On the streets my friends and I spoke English, of course, but we always threw in a lot of Yiddish words, and most of them understood Yiddish too because that was the neighborhood.

Shiffman:  Can you tell us something about your education?
ZADOFF:  I grew up in Newark, which is where I went to grammar school and high school. At the age of 18, I joined the Air Force rather than be drafted into it. I signed up to learn to be a pilot, but they flunked the whole class out and put us into radar school, and that was my education in the Army. When I got out of the Army, we had the GI bill, which gave me a free college education. All of my friends and I went to college. It was a very important thing. It was our way of getting an opportunity to go to work and so forth, and I must say that most of my friends are very successful because they were all hard workers, and I felt that I was a hard worker. So we got along and grew up together that way.

Shiffman:  Before we go to your young adulthood, can we just talk about your family home for a few minutes? Do you remember what Jewishness was in the home? Did you keep kosher? What did you do for the holidays?
ZADOFF:  We were absolutely kosher. There is no question about the kosher cuisine and the way we lived there. My father was completely irreligious. He wouldn’t mix meat and dairy, but he never went to synagogue either. I didn’t go to synagogue very often because we were not members of the synagogue, but as I said, our house itself was a purely kosher house. As far as the holidays–Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Pesach and so forth–we observed them. It was part of the tradition and the way we grew up, and the way they grew up too.

Shiffman:  Did you go to Talmud Torah or did you have any religious instruction?
ZADOFF:  I went to a local synagogue. I remember it was on the second floor of a building over a drug store, and there I learned to read Hebrew. I learned more about my religion. I learned more about the holidays, and it was all part of life for all of us in those days.

Shiffman:  I take it you had a bar mitzvah?
ZADOFF:  Yes, I was bar mitzvahed. My bar mitzvah was on a Tuesday, I believe. My father and I went down to the synagogue, and then he went to work after my bar mitzvah. When I got home that night from school, my mother made something special, but I can’t remember what, for a friend and myself, and that was my party. We were, as I said, somewhat poor people.

Shiffman:  Can you tell us about your brother?
ZADOFF:  He was six years older than I, and he was bar mitzvahed, too. He went into the Navy, and he was a radar man in the Navy. He did communications, too. He spent most of his time in the Navy in Florida and ended up in Jacksonville, Florida, marrying a girl there, a Jewish girl. We were very close, my brother and I, but we did not live in the same area.

Shiffman:  You mentioned that your father was completely irreligious.
ZADOFF:  Right.

Shiffman:  What about your mother?
ZADOFF:  As a family we hardly ever went to synagogue but my mother kept kosher and observed the holidays and so forth. They were Jews by practice rather than by study.

Shiffman:  Were there any grandparents on your mother’s side?
ZADOFF:  My mother’s mother lived with us. As I said, I grew up in a house with six of us living there. I mentioned my father and my mother, my brother, myself, my grandmother and my uncle. My grandmother was the only grandparent that I knew.

Shiffman:  What do you remember of her?
ZADOFF:  She was a very, very proper, quiet woman. One thing I do remember [laughs] that has stuck with me: when I was leaving the house to go into the service she was by the door, and she grabbed me by the collar and said, “You’ve got to eat everything, because this is the way you’re going to survive.” So I got into the service, and that first meal they served was ham sandwiches [laughs]. I took a bite of one and I threw it away, and I never ate ham again [laughs]. I just couldn’t take it.

Shiffman:  As you recall this incident, she was speaking Yiddish. Did she speak English at all?
ZADOFF:  I can’t really remember, but I think she spoke mostly Yiddish. She passed away 50 years ago, and as I said, I didn’t know the difference between English and Yiddish in our house because when they spoke to me, I didn’t think about whether they were speaking Yiddish or speaking English. But they must have spoken a lot of Yiddish to me because I picked it up.

Shiffman:  Now, your education at school. You mentioned grammar school and obviously high school. Were your friends mainly Jewish, or was it a mixed school?
ZADOFF:  The school was about 95% Jewish. It had a reputation during that period, and later on, as being one of the outstanding high schools in the country. It had more people graduating to various professions than almost any high school in the country. It did have that reputation. A little background on that is that Phillip Roth was a neighbor of ours, and he wrote of that high school. He was younger than I, about six or seven years, but he picked up an awful lot of the neighborhood and so forth in his books.

Shiffman:  What high school was it?
ZADOFF:  Weequahic High School, which is an Indian name. And in that school we had an outstanding basketball team. I ran track and I ran cross country. If you were good at sports you were something, but if you were good at sports but poor as a student, they didn’t think that much of you. It was important to try and do well in school as a student. It was a very important consideration in my life, the training that I had there in that neighborhood.

Shiffman:  So at the age of 18 you went off into the Army?
ZADOFF:  The Air Force. [editor’s note: The Air Force was part of the Army until 1947.]

Shiffman:  What were your experiences in the Air Force in general, and also as being a Jew? You mentioned about a ham sandwich, but what other things come to mind?
ZADOFF:  What comes to mind is that I felt a lot of antisemitism, and wherever I went, the Jewish guys tended to congregate together. There were always some gentiles coming in with us, but the Jewish guys tended to congregate together. I had several fights in the Army, and fortunately, I was a fairly good athlete, so I wasn’t a loser, but you felt that you had to defend yourself quite a bit. I remember sitting at a table during a seminar about radar and so forth, and I had a fight with some guy at the table, who was an antisemite. He said, “All you Jews are the same. You want to stay out of a fighting so you join the Air Force.” And he was there himself [laughs]. Well, I had a screwdriver in my hand, and I threw it straight at him, but fortunately, it didn’t hit him. You had to defend yourself to a degree, and you couldn’t take the crap from these people, the antisemites, because they would pick on you all of the time if you did.

Shiffman:  Do any other experiences that come to mind? Did you actually serve?
ZADOFF:  Yes, I went to the Philippines, Okinawa and Japan. I was in the Occupation Army in Japan, and prior to that I was in the Philippines. I only had one flight in the air, in radar, in a P-61. It was a night fighter, and that was the only occasion that I had to fly. Otherwise, I used to repair radar and radio, and fortunately I didn’t get into any trouble there.

Shiffman:  Did you come back with lasting experiences of the war?
ZADOFF:  Not really. I didn’t see the worst parts of the war. Let’s put it that way. What did stick with me was when I went to the Philippines. I was stationed right outside of Manila, and the city was just destroyed. The smell of bodies rotting under the buildings and so forth was just horrible. And then when I got in the Army of Occupation in Japan, again Tokyo was the same way, just this tremendous, tremendous destruction there. I stayed at an airfield there for probably . . . I can’t remember how many months. It must have been four or five months. I don’t remember any problems there. As a matter of fact, the Japanese we met always seemed to go out of their way to be nice to us, as I remember it.

Shiffman:  Then you came home?
ZADOFF:  Yes, I came home, and a bunch of my friends came home at the same time who were all my age, and we spent one summer running around trying to play tennis and trying to play golf and trying to do whatever we could do, and then we all signed up for college. I went to Rutgers. I wanted to go into agriculture because I always enjoyed the outdoors. I was always a hiker and camper and so forth, and I thought I really wanted to go into farming. Of course, I was a city boy and didn’t have a farm, but anyway my first year I signed up for agriculture, and if I remember correctly, I was the only non-farmer’s son in the class [laughs]. And after one year I realized that wasn’t for me, so I took history and political science and I finally got my degree in that. When I got out of college I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do. My father didn’t have a business and so forth. I didn’t train for anything. Political science allows you very little room to do anything [laughs], and I kicked around for five years just going from one job to another, and each one was worse than the one before. Then finally a friend of mine, who I never thought of as being particularly bright, went to work for Merrill Lynch and suggested that I go down there because I might be able to get a job. It seemed to be interesting, and I went over to Merrill Lynch, and I got accepted by them. I was trained by them and was in the brokerage business for the next 25 years. 

Shiffman:  All this time where were you living?
ZADOFF:  Well I lived in Newark, and then I came out here and was in the brokerage business here for about five years.

Shiffman:  When did you leave New Jersey?
ZADOFF:  I left New Jersey in 1971, and I’ve been here ever since.

Shiffman:  Do you remember why you came here?
ZADOFF:  Yes. I was always an outdoorsman, a camper and a hiker. I also was tired of commuting to the brokerage business because I was working in New York to a great extent and I had had it with that. I didn’t want to travel anymore. I had a beautiful home in Morristown, New Jersey, which is where my kids were born and brought up for the first few years, and then I came out here.

Shiffman:  I’m going to interrupt you now. We seemed to have skipped something. You were talking about the fact that you came out of the Army and that you worked at different jobs, but I didn’t pick up that you were married. So, please tell me where you met Susan, and tell me about that part of your life.
ZADOFF:  Well, I used to date a lot in New York. I lived in Newark with my family, and a friend of mine . . .  We were dating in New York one night, and we decided to stop off for coffee after we dropped our dates off. We went to a fairly nice restaurant near Central Park, and there was a table next to us where there was a father and mother and two girls. I thought they were very pretty, both of them, and my friend said that those girls were in the show Milk and Honey, which was on Broadway at that time, and I was kidding around and said, “Which one is Jewish?” And he said, “That one.” And I said, “Get me her number.” He got me the number and the rest is history [laughs]. So I called her up and I dated her, and we eventually got married.

Shiffman:  What year was this?
ZADOFF:  We got married in 1963, I think it was.

Shiffman:  And at that stage you were still living in New Jersey?
ZADOFF:  Yes, with my family in New Jersey.

Shiffman:  So after you married Susan you set up home where?
ZADOFF:  I bought a small house in Livingston, New Jersey. It was a nice little house. I’d never lived in my own home. I was doing fairly well in the brokerage business, and we were looking around to see what we could do better. I went up to Morristown, New Jersey, and we bought a beautiful home on two acres against a forest, and that forest was where Washington’s headquarters were during the Revolutionary War. It was really an unusual place, and we lived there until we came to Oregon.

Shiffman:  During this time did Susan continue dancing?
ZADOFF:  No, she gave up dancing. But when we came out here she was looking at dancing to see what was going on, and she met a gal who had been with a dance company in London, and that gal’s husband was going to architectural school in Eugene. Well, this gal and Sue opened up a little dance school together just to keep their toes in it, and then when the gal’s husband graduated, they moved up to Portland. Meanwhile she knew this other woman, who had a part-time position at the university teaching dance. My wife, Sue, never had a college education–I think she went to college for maybe six months once or something like that–but she went over to the university to see if she could take that position, and they hired her. She did that for the next 38 years, and she is still doing it.

Shiffman:  So let’s go back. What made you choose to come to Eugene?
ZADOFF:  That’s a good question. I had never been out west, other than travel with the Army to go overseas, and I picked several towns that sounded good to me. I’d never been to any of them. I knew nothing about them. One was Boulder, one was Santa Fe and one was Eugene. I hadn’t even heard of Eugene, other than my supply sergeant in the Army was from Eugene and he used to talk about it on occasion. So I figured I’d see what it was all about. Well, I sent letters to all of these towns to see if . . . I managed brokerage offices for 18 years, and I wanted to see if there was an opening in one of these towns for a manager for a brokerage office. It happened that there was in Eugene, and I think it was the best choice for us of the towns that I’d selected. And I stayed in the brokerage business for five years here managing a brokerage office, but I got fed up with it. Do you want me to tell you why?

Shiffman:  Well, I want you to tell me about when you first arrived in Eugene. What did you find that was different from New Jersey? Was there a Jewish community?
ZADOFF:  There was a small Jewish community. I joined the synagogue right away. I was here alone for a number of months, and when my wife joined me, we were somewhat active in the synagogue.

Shiffman:  I’m curious. You came from a nonreligious family, and yet one of the first things you did coming to Eugene was to join the synagogue.
ZADOFF:  Right. 

Shiffman:  Was there a reason for that? Did you find that there were so few Jews that you wanted to be in a community, or . . .?
ZADOFF:   I wanted to be in a Jewish community, or part of a Jewish community. And although I was never that active in the synagogue, I felt that this was a way to be part of the Jewish community. I wanted my kids to go to Hebrew School and learn things and so forth. Again, I was always never that religious of a Jew, but I’ve always been part of a Jewish community, in the military or in life.

Shiffman:  Do you remember what the Jewish community consisted of when you came? And what year was that?
ZADOFF:  I came here in 1971, and there was a small Jewish community. I went to synagogue quite often because I made friends in the community. We gravitated toward Jews in the community. We certainly had gentile friends but it was so important to us to be part of a community like that.

Shiffman:  Do you remember who the rabbi was?
ZADOFF:  It was Rabbi Neimand. I got very friendly with him. I also got very friendly with Rabbi Kinberg. He and I used to go camping together and so forth, and we became very good friends.

Shiffman:  Do you remember much about the people of the Jewish community? Who was the president, or . . .
ZADOFF:  I don’t remember who the president was, but there were Brenner and Tepfer. I’m trying to think of more names . . . It was a small community and so we got to know everybody. There weren’t that many Jews. But you know, in the era of my age and so forth, whoever was here we got to be friends with.

Shiffman:  And was there a shul at that stage?
ZADOFF:  Yes, the one on Portland Street. And we used to come in and help clean up and so forth. It was a very small, tight community, or at least we felt that way.

Shiffman:  Let’s talk about your children. How many children do you have?
ZADOFF:  Three. I have two sons and a daughter. 

Shiffman:  How old were they when you came to Eugene?
ZADOFF:  My oldest son was about eight years old. My daughter was about five, and my other son was about three.

Shiffman:   What do you remember about the bar mitzvah years, or your involvement in the shul?
ZADOFF:   I was involved in the shul as far as their education. Yitz was . . . Well, let me put it this way: when we came to Eugene I had a house on University Street, at about 24th and University. Just above us at about 24th there was a little hippie house, and among the hippies were Yitz [Husbands-Hankin] and Aryeh [Hirschfield], and we got friendly with them. They didn’t know what they wanted to do at that time, at least that’s the impression I got, and Aryeh used to come and we used to chat about what he might look at and what he might do and so forth. Then they took off later on, and I guess became rabbis. Yitz was not a rabbi when my son got bar mitzvahed. 

Shiffman:  Do you remember who became the rabbi after Rabbi Neimand, and were you involved when he was hired or were you involved in the shul? 
ZADOFF:  I was involved in the shul in the respect that I attended synagogue and so forth, but I did not help select anyone. I just went along with what was going on.

Shiffman:  Are there any other things that come to mind about the Jewish community in those early years?
ZADOFF:  Yes. In those early years I was somewhat active. I was sent up to some of these small communities, to Junction City and so forth, to go to a church and tell them what a Jew was [laughs]. It was very novel to me because here I was brought up with that background where everybody knew, but out here there weren’t that many Jews. There weren’t Jews in the small communities, you know, they weren’t a presence in the small communities. But I did go out several times just to lecture on things like that. I also did lection in town here, again explaining . . . about what a Jew was and what we thought and so forth.

Shiffman:  I find it very interesting that you used to go and lecture about being Jewish. I know it was a long time ago, but can you remember anything in particular that you used to talk to them about?
ZADOFF:  Just explaining what a Jew was, and how we lived, and possibly mentioning our dietary laws and so forth, and of course, traditions. I was surprised that people really didn’t know what a Jew was and had no idea how we lived or what our background was. It was something very vague to them.

Shiffman:   Are there any other little incidents like that that you can remember?
ZADOFF:  I felt that there was a degree of antisemitism here. I joined the “Y” immediately when I came here because I was always very active physically, and I used to hear remarks. People weren’t trying to be cruel or anything, but this was their impression of what a Jew was. It wasn’t anything big, but I would just catch an occasional comment from these individuals, not that they knew whether I was or was not Jewish, it was just part of their conversation. 

Shiffman:  Did your children ever experience antisemitism in the schools?
ZADOFF:  I don’t think so. I’ve never heard that they did. They had a lot of Jewish friends. They went to synagogue when we went. They were brought up Jewish completely, but I don’t think they experienced much antisemitism, if any.

Shiffman:   Do you remember any groups that the children or you belonged to other than the synagogue? Was there B’nai B’rith, or were there any other Jewish organizations at that time?
ZADOFF:  There may have been, but I just can’t think of any at the moment.

Shiffman:  Do you remember the declaration of Israel? Do you remember when Israel became a State?
ZADOFF:  Yes.

Shiffman:  Did it affect you in any way? Were there any celebrations here in Eugene that you remember?
ZADOFF:   I came here after Israel became a State, . . .

Shiffman:  That’s right. Yes, you did. That was when you were still back East. In those early days when you were living here, when you traveled outside of Eugene, were people surprised to hear of Jewish people living here?
ZADOFF:  Yes, to a degree. I was in the brokerage business here for five years, and the group in the office was surprised that a Jew would come in as manager. Not that they felt good or bad about it, but it was just something novel. There is one guy that was in that group (who I’m still very friendly with after 30 odd years) who came to me one day and said he was embarrassed to say this, but he used to say, “Don is Jewish, but he’s a nice guy.” And this guy is one of the most liberal people in the world. Anyway, he asked me to forgive him for that because he said he just had no experience with Jews. He came from a little town in Wisconsin where there were no Jews, so he never had experience with Jews at all. So as I said, there was a little bit of antisemitism, but most of it was ignorance because people just were not familiar with anything like that. I don’t see it in Eugene now. It may exist, but I haven’t experienced that type of thing in years.

Shiffman:   Now going back to the early years in the Eugene community, you mentioned what it was like when you first came, so what can you remember of the changes that happened to the community? How it grew . . . 
ZADOFF:  It grew. Most of my best friends in town were Jewish, although I certainly had many gentile friends. I never felt that much antisemitism here either, as I mentioned. It was a very comfortable place. I couldn’t have raised my kids in a better place. I don’t think they experienced any antisemitism, from what I understand.

Shiffman:   I’m talking about synagogue life. Do you remember any of the changes when the shul was rebuilt or when they added-on?
ZADOFF:  Do you mean the old shul?

Shiffman:   Yes.
ZADOFF:  I can’t remember, other than I was one of the instigators in the Jewish Senior League. We tended to hang around with a good many Jewish people. We put together a small group of us, and we worked that out, and it continues today after 18 or 20 years. I’m still part of it.

Shiffman:  I didn’t know you were part of starting it.
ZADOFF:  Oh yes.

Shiffman:  Do you remember who started it with you?
ZADOFF:  I think Peter Lewinsohn was one. If I’m not mistaken, Marty Acker was another. I’m trying to think of some others. There were people in and out of the group over the years, so I’d have to think about it for a while. But as I said, I’ve been a continuous member from its start, and I was one of the individuals who put it together.

Shiffman:  Do you remember how long ago that was?
ZADOFF:  My impression is about 18 or 20 years ago. I may be mistaken, but it’s been going on for a long time.

Shiffman:  It’s a wonderful group.
ZADOFF:  Yes, it’s nice. And this past week we got together and there were about 12 people there, which we haven’t had in a long, long time. There have been new people coming in and out, so it seems to be growing a bit, and those who are there seem to be very much interested in continuing it.

Shiffman:   Are there any other things that you’d like to talk about, as far as changes in Jewish life in Eugene over the years?
ZADOFF:  Well, I think with the new synagogue I’ve seen some additional interest in being part of the community. I don’t know how many of them have come into it, but they all express their feelings about what a positive thing the new synagogue is. I’ve been going to synagogue a little more lately than I have in the past and I’m seeing more people there. It’s a very positive experience.

Shiffman:  Do you have any recollection of the Israeli wars or your reaction to them, or any of that? Where were you at the time of the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War?
ZADOFF:  Well, I’ve always had very strong feelings about what was going on there, and at one point before we came to Eugene Sue and I were considering the possibility of moving to Israel. But as a stockbroker, I felt, you know, what would I do? I didn’t think that I could hammer out a living as a stockbroker, and I didn’t know what else I could possibly do there. But we were seriously considering the possibility of moving there, just prior to coming here. I do think I made the better move coming here, to say the least.

Shiffman:  After you gave up being a stockbroker, did you work or did you . . .?
ZADOFF:  That’s a good question. I had sort of had it with the brokerage business after being in it for 25 years or so, and managing brokerage offices for 18 years, with the pressures and this, that and the other things. And I wasn’t making a particularly good living. Well, my wife and I were sitting at the Eugene Hotel having a drink one afternoon, that’s when Eugene downtown was a very busy place, all the stores were occupied and so forth. Anyway, we were discussing what I might want to do, and she said she couldn’t buy dancewear anyplace. She was kidding, but she said, “Why don’t you open up a dancewear shop?” And I was kidding, and I said, “I’ll tell you what. If I can find a vacant store downtown, I’ll consider opening up a dancewear shop.” We were parked by the Zenon restaurant on Pearl Street, and the store I was parked in front of was a vacant store, and I figured that maybe this is God’s way of telling me something. Well, I got a dancer friend of Sue’s to come with me to take a look into this business, and we went down to California to see what the business was all about. I saw that it was busy and so forth, and they seemed to be doing fairly well, so I came back and opened up a dancewear store, and I did that for 25 years. I eventually sold the store to the daughter of one of the fellows who was a salesman of mine. He and I were very friendly, and still are. Anyway, she bought the store from me. She had worked for me for about 20 years. Prior to that I had several heart attacks, and I felt that if I stayed in the brokerage business I might not have made it. I didn’t have the pressures in the dancewear shop. It was a very pleasant place for me to work, and it kept me going. Plus, I was able to take a lot of time off. I made some good friends at the “Y,” and every afternoon I’d go and play squash. I did that for about 20 years, so it was a good way of continuing my business career.

Shiffman:   Did you travel a lot?
ZADOFF:  I used to go down to California. I was selling. I started a catalogue; it was one of the first catalogues around. I used to go down to dance schools around the state, and up into Washington and down into California, to let them know what we were and who we were, and introduce ourselves. I got business that way too. Having a good background in the brokerage business, I realized that you have to go knock on some doors, which I used to do. And again, I didn’t have the pressures that I had in the brokerage business.

Shiffman:  Do you want to tell us about your children?
ZADOFF:  As I said, I have two sons and one daughter. Both of my sons worked for Nike. One was there for 19 years, and one was there for maybe ten years. My daughter teaches grammar school. My oldest son, who worked for Nike for 19 years, just left them because he didn’t like what was going on there. Prior to quitting there, he headed up sales in the Netherlands and sales in Sweden, and for the last three or four years he was head of sales in New Zealand and Australia. Apparently, he did quite well there. He just joined a Chinese company that makes similar products to Nike, and I guess he’s going to head up that in the United States. My other son is doing quite well in product development, and as I said, my daughter is teaching grammar school. So I’m happy that my kids seem to be doing well. You can’t ask for more than that.

Shiffman:  Are there any comments you’d like to make about changes you’ve seen in the Jewish community in Eugene over the years? 
ZADOFF:  Well, I find that because of the size of the community there are a good many people who are very much interested in keeping the community strong and growing, with the new synagogue and so forth. I’ve also found that there were some people, actually not that many, who, when I came here, were part of the Jewish community, but they disappeared from the community. They’re still in town, but they don’t seem to have that much interest. I find that the community is growing. There seems to be a much stronger community and a much more positive feeling. What truly surprises me is on the High Holidays that we fill the back hall. I just can’t believe that there are that many Jews in Eugene. They’re certainly not part of the active Jewish community that I would recognize, but the size of it is just unbelievable to me. I don’t know how many people were there–maybe 600 or 800 people. I don’t know how many, but it’s something that’s very positive, and I would like to see more involvement in the synagogue. I go on a Friday night, and there are only maybe 50 or 60 people, sometimes more, which I don’t think we saw in the other synagogue. I think the whole atmosphere is much more positive, and I think the new synagogue will be a focal point for so many other things. I see that things look like they’re developing as far as interest, lectures, what have you.

Shiffman:  One of the things we forgot to talk about was your art–your interest in art and also your actual work in art that you do. Please tell us something about that.
ZADOFF:  Okay. When I was in high school, I starting making figures in clay. But as I said, I lived in four and a half rooms with my whole family, so I couldn’t do much there, and I certainly couldn’t work in wood there, so I just diddled around with it. Then I was on a troop ship going to the Philippines, and it was hot on the boat. We were all sitting on the deck, and I got tired of playing cards. I had a penknife in my pocket, and I found a piece of wood on the deck of the boat, and I carved it. By the way, I still have that little piece. I thought I lost it, but I found it again. The little thing I carved on the boat was a figure of a sailor, and then when I came out here I got to have a shop. I did a number of pieces, which I will show you. I haven’t been doing that much lately, but I’m trying to get more heavily into it again. I’ve always enjoyed art and always liked drawing and so forth, so I felt it was something that I’d like to continue.

Shiffman:  Are you completely self-taught?
ZADOFF:  Well I’ve taken classes, but they were more workshops than classes. I went to Lane for a while, and in fact, I’d like to go back because they have models there. I enjoy drawing and so forth, but I can’t park in the parking lot and walk to the class. I’m handicapped that way.

Shiffman:  So you actually draw and you do woodwork?
ZADOFF:  Yes.

Shiffman:  Do you draw in pastels or pencil or . . .?
ZADOFF:   Pencil on paper.

Shiffman:  Have you ever had anything shown?
ZADOFF:  Well, I never tried to show it any place really, and then Jerry Williams, who was a professor at the university, came over. He saw some of my pieces here and asked if he could show some of my work at the museum in Springfield, so I did a showing there. And then somebody came . . . There is a Eugene magazine, I think it was, and somebody came and they did a little story on me.

Shiffman:  Your woodwork you do here? You have a workshop?
ZADOFF:  Yes. I’ll show you my shop. It’s something I would like to continue, and I will to a degree.

Shiffman:  Thank you Don. I appreciate the opportunity to have interviewed you.
ZADOFF:   Thank you for giving me the opportunity.