Laurie David Rogoway

Hochstein: To begin, could you state your name and place and date of birth?
ROGOWAY:  I’m Laurie Rogoway. I’m sitting at the Oregon Jewish Museum with Miles Hochstein. I was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Hochstein: What is your date of birth, exact or approximate?
ROGOWAY:  February 22, 1944.

Hochstein: Tell me about the makeup of your household, growing up. Who lived with you?
ROGOWAY:  My parents and my sister, who is three and a half years younger than I am.

Hochstein: What do you know about where your parents came from, how they met?
ROGOWAY:  My mother was actually born in I now know was Moldova. She always called it Bessarabia, a little shtetl called [Lacan?] and she was about three when she came with her parents and her family to Canada. I still to this day don’t quite have the whole story of their immigration, where they came in. Nobody has ever been really clear on it. I think they came in through Canada but I’m not 100% sure. I know they came to Regina because there was a cousin there. That much I know, but there is a missing piece. My father, the oldest of six kids, was born on a farm maybe half an hour from Regina in what was a colony. There were land grants. I’m trying right now to remember the famous Russian. It wasn’t Rothschild but it was one of the other major families who bought these packets of land for Jewish immigrants, both in Canada and I think in North Dakota. It will hopefully come to me. My father’s parents both ended up there, different routes. My grandmother came with family first to Chicago, but whoever took them couldn’t take all the kids. She got sent off, met my grandfather there. I believe it was an arranged marriage.

Hochstein: What year was that approximately?
ROGOWAY:  My husband is the family keeper of dates. My father would be at least 100. If you want dates, I’ll call my husband and get them. I think my father was born in 1913 if I remember correctly, so my grandparents would have been there the end of the last century, turn of the century. My father was the oldest of six children. They lived there and somehow the kids got into Regina for school. The one story that has always stuck out in family—the family will tell you the story—is that my father was really smart. He wasn’t, in his senior year, able to start school until mid term because he had to work on a farm and get the harvest in. He was smart enough to have gotten scholarships to college but couldn’t go because he was the oldest kid and had to work and help the family. So, that was his beginning. At some point his family moved into Regina. His sister who was the next in line, my Aunt Edith, and my mother were best friends. So they met that way. They didn’t marry young, and I’ve heard bits and pieces that they got married because there was nobody else around, that it wasn’t necessarily a wild passionate relationship. Who knows? But it lasted. They were married over 50 years.

Hochstein: What was Jewish life like in your home as you were growing up?
ROGOWAY:  Well, they moved when I was a baby to a little town called Kamsack of 3,000 people, with really, maybe in a good year, a dozen Jewish families. But our home was really the center of Jewish life for whatever it was. There was a little synagogue just kind of down a back lane from us, and people would come in from the surroundings. I don’t know if you know anything about life in these prairie…. probably no different in the American states than in Canada. There would be isolated Jewish families in all these little towns and they would come in to Kamsack for all the holidays, and our home was always the center of where there was Jewish life. I remember huge Passover seders and Rosh Hashanah dinners and all of the rest. I can remember visiting; I think it was a UIA man coming to town. They would raise money for Israel in those early days. They’d come around to these little towns and they’d always come to our house and there would be a gathering of people, whoever from wherever they could get them to come in, to raise money for—I’m sure it was just for Israel in those days. I can remember standing—on one wall a picture of I think it was Herzog that my father got for having either given or done or some cause. It was very proudly displayed. So I had virtually no formal Jewish education but a very Jewish home.

Hochstein: This would be in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s?
ROGOWAY:  Yes.

Hochstein: Did your mother keep a kosher home?
ROGOWAY:  She couldn’t. She did the kosher style. You didn’t mix milk with meat and you didn’t have pork, although again it was funny, typical today. They would eat shellfish but not bacon, although I think they might have eaten bacon out of the house, but not pork pork. They had their own whatever, but it would have been, I think, impossible to have kept a kosher home there, unless you were a vegetarian which in those days was not exactly the norm. But there was always—Shabbos candles were lit.

Hochstein: In terms of Jewish education, it occurred in the home but you are saying there was no synagogue or Jewish external—
ROGOWAY:  No. They tried occasionally. There were a couple of men who had more of a formal education and they would try and gather the kids together that were in the town for some sort of Sunday school class. It never lasted for very long. There just wasn’t enough substance to do it. But my parents—when I was 13 they had a party which I’m sure was commemorating a bat mitzvah but the bat mitzvah never really took place because there was nobody to teach me or to do anything, but they wanted to mark the date. So they had a big party. I’m not sure I really understood why.

Hochstein: But it was your bat mitzvah party.
ROGOWAY:  It was my bat mitzvah party, there was just no bat mitzvah.

Hochstein: And your sibling also?
ROGOWAY:  That was when I was 13, obviously. When I was 14, my parents were really concerned about where I was growing up, and they sent me off to Winnipeg, which had a large Jewish population at that time, to live with a family, not even friends but people they found through friends, so that I could be out of Kamsack and go to school where was a Jewish community.

Hochstein: How was that for you?
ROGOWAY:  I think I was a very accepting child. I can’t even imagine my grandchildren now. They would have gone through—I don’t remember doing that. I just sort of took it. The family was okay, I think. I never grew close to them but they were nice people and treated me well. The high school I went to had a very large Jewish population. I got involved in BBYO, so the people I met as friends—I had a boyfriend. I became immersed in a Jewish life, which is what my parents wanted. I don’t think anybody questioned that. Is that a good fit emotionally or anything else? It just was. I went to high school, stayed there and went to the University of Manitoba. I lived in Winnipeg until I met my husband.

Hochstein: How did you meet your husband?
ROGOWAY:  My mother had two sisters who had moved here so I came to visit them in ’64 which was when I got married.

Hochstein: You moved here—
ROGOWAY:  My aunts moved here from Regina, to Portland. One went to Vancouver first, during the war years met her husband and moved here. Then her sister kind of followed her. So I was visiting my two aunts. One of them was a friend of Bert’s brother—I have to stop and think—who said I have this brother. We got fixed up. We dated for a week, the last week that I was there, pretty intensively. I went back home. Shortly after I left Bert’s father died, which did not come as a huge shock. He had diabetes and lost both his legs. I never met him but Bert would go visit him. Bert asked around, “I want to go visit this girl I met.” Rabbi Geller said, “Wait a month, then you can go.” So a month later Bert came to Winnipeg. We had a few days there, and then he asked me to marry him there. I said yes. We went into Regina so he could meet my parents. He was scared silly, and if you’d known my father, such a pussy cat. And my aunt that had fixed us up was just by chance visiting in Regina and already had given my parents the whole story, this boy, this family, so they weren’t questioning who he was. We went to Regina, got engaged, and got married three months after.

Hochstein: Nice.
ROGOWAY:  And we’ve been married for over 53 years.

Hochstein: So, he was from Portland. At that point did you remain in Canada or did you move immediately to Portland?
ROGOWAY:  I moved to Portland shortly before we got married. We actually got married in Portland for lots of family reasons.

Hochstein: That was what year?
ROGOWAY:  That was ’64.

Hochstein: We could go many directions from here. There you were in Portland in 1964. You were 20 years old, newly married in Portland, Oregon. Tell me about how you started your life here, what did you do, who did you associate with?
ROGOWAY:  I had my aunts, I had my sister-in-law but we were never very close. There was a lot of age difference. Bert is 14 years older than I am, so there were lots of age differences. I had just started graduate school when we met. A different world. To give you an example of how different the world was, I decided to start graduate school in Winnipeg where I was, but I had applied to several others. About three or four weeks after we were engaged and planning to get married, my mother said, “Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you, you had a call from the University of Washington. They offered you a teaching assistantship, but I knew you’re not interested.” The truth was, I didn’t really get angry or upset or anything, because I was doing what I was supposed to do. I found a nice Jewish boy and I was getting married. That was that world.

Hochstein: I didn’t ask you: What had you studied in college and what were you doing in graduate school?
ROGOWAY:  Psychology. I was going to be a psych major.

Hochstein: So the graduate school was in psychology and you had started that.
ROGOWAY:  I had just started that, walked away from that without any qualms.

Hochstein: Really.
ROGOWAY:  No. Again, it was just—it’s hard to explain the psyche of young women in those days. I have so many friends, really smart, here, who never completed college because they were getting married and either their husband had to go someplace else or they needed to work or whatever, but it was never a question. That was this world. I was lucky I was young. I had started college when I was 16, so I at least finished my undergraduate work, but I thought I would go back to school in Portland. I had started looking around and there really wasn’t anywhere in Portland at that time where I could have done a master’s in psychology. Portland State was this teensy little school. I never found anything. But in the meanwhile we had decided, I think in part because of Bert’s age—he was 31. In those days that was old. We decided we wanted to start a family quickly and I got pregnant so I put thoughts of school aside. I’m trying to remember what I really did with my time in those years. I’m not sure. Well, we were in an apartment and we bought a house which was partially completed, so we had to work with the builder and figure out all that stuff, and I’m sure that kept some of my time busy.

Hochstein: What neighborhood was that in?
ROGOWAY:  We lived near [?]. I want to say behind Reed College. The apartment was on SE 28th, just around the corner from Reed. We were going to build into this little neighborhood that was kind of off of Steele.

Hochstein: So your choice of living in that neighborhood was that—?
ROGOWAY:  Because that’s where our family was. I knew nothing else. But my aunts were nearby and my sister-in-law was nearby. For Bert it was easy for work so it was never really—I didn’t know enough to even say, wait a minute. Is this the best place? But the house was in a very nice neighborhood. It was a good place for the first few years. We didn’t move until I got really tired of schlepping the kids to Neveh Shalom preschool.

Hochstein: You have how many children?
ROGOWAY:  Three. But there’s a piece here I should fill in. So that pregnancy, I lost that baby at birth. Cord around the neck. It was an awful—what can I tell you? I won’t say I blocked it out but I try not to think about it a lot. I lost that baby. I had sort of irregular periods and it was a real question would I be able to get pregnant again easily or not. Somebody said to me would you consider adoption? At first, we didn’t even want to talk about it. But we sort of talked about it a little more. At that time Rabbi Geller was president of Jewish Family & Child Service. Are you from Portland?

Hochstein: No, but I’ve lived here for many years.
ROGOWAY:  So you knew Rabbi Geller. We went and met with him. It’s like, of course here’s what you should do, etc. There was a baby that was going to be born in a month or so. Again, you get very little information. All they said was both parents were Jewish. Whether that was true or not I don’t know but it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, we had just gone through the interview process and all the things that they do, and I got a call. I was shopping. You remember Meier & Frank? With a friend at Meier & Frank and I called home. There was a cleaning lady there and she said she had this call from the agency. I’m thinking maybe they’re calling to tell me we’ve been approved. No, they said, they were calling to tell you you’ve been approved and we have a baby and she’ll be yours in five days. So, this was a month from the day we first applied. We’ve often said things are bashert, and that was. Not that it makes up for losing a baby, but we wouldn’t have had our daughter if that hadn’t happened.

Hochstein: Her name is?
ROGOWAY:  Susanne, last name Wendrow. Actually, everybody else calls her Susie Anne, which is what she started doing in college, but we’re grandfathered in to be able to call her Susanne, because she knows I have enough trouble keeping names straight.

Hochstein: That’s wonderful, you have a child.
ROGOWAY:  Yes, we had a child. I have two others, Allen who was born 17 months after Susanne, and Edie who was born five years after Susanne.

Hochstein: So you were living in Southeast Portland.
ROGOWAY:  We were living in Southeast.

Hochstein: At some point that wasn’t working for you. When did you move?
ROGOWAY:  We moved when Susanne was in kindergarten, so she was—she was born in ’66 so probably ’71, someplace in there. We moved to the west side.

Hochstein: Did that change your ability to be involved with the Jewish community or your involvement in any way?
ROGOWAY:  Yes, absolutely. I had tried a couple of things before that. I tried B’nai B’rith Women at the time was active. Somebody got me to go to that. It just never felt like quite the right fit. But once we moved and we could go to the Center, I was kind of getting a feel for what there was. So I got involved with two things:  National Council of Jewish Women, which again at that time was thriving and was doing all kinds of amazing things, and Federation. For the life of me, I’m not exactly sure how I first got involved with Federation. I think I worked with some of the young women doing young women’s fundraising, but I got involved in the community relations committee stuff early on, and that was really in the days of Soviet Jewry, and that’s where I really got involved with Federation.

Hochstein: Let’s explore that a little. What were you doing on the Soviet Jewry issue?
ROGOWAY:  A lot of things. I don’t know how familiar you are with all that went on.

Hochstein: Not in Portland very much.
ROGOWAY:  There was stuff nationally but we were doing marches. We always did a Simchat Torah rally and we’d take the Torah I think from the Center to Hillsdale and we would have rallies and letter-writing drives, and God knows what other things we used to have. We had a Women’s Day for Soviet Jewry and we did a luncheon at which we served what we thought was a typical Soviet meal, so black bread and gruel kind of things. But everything possible, particularly politically, to draw attention to Soviet Jewry. At the same time with Council—I’m going to get the years mixed up, but probably in the early ‘70s the vast number of Jews got out of the Soviet Union after 1990 when Communism fell, but there was some movement early. There was a period where they were letting out a fairly significant number, and Council took on the job of getting stuff for their households and setting up the households. I think I chaired a committee there with a friend who set up a, not a food bank but a clothing and household goods stuff. We organized the community to collect things for those immigrants that were coming in, that were being resettled by Jewish Family, and the money was coming, some money from HIAS or from Federation, I don’t remember all the sources.

Hochstein: Were Soviet Jews settling in Portland?
ROGOWAY:  Yes.

Hochstein: Did you have personal contact or relations with any of them?
ROGOWAY:  I did, but not a lot. I was much more sort of in the, “Let’s get them here and then the personal” camp. I mean, we had families that would come to our house for dinner, we had a family for Passover. It’s not that I didn’t, but that was never my primary focus, until I guess one family—I’m trying to think of dates. It was just when I was starting to work for Federation, which happened in 1984 when I made that transition. So we started before for that, and said instead of fighting for everybody let’s be smarter politically to focus our efforts on one family. Riva and Isaac Premysler
were living in Portland. I don’t know if you know—do you know Riva? She’s now a doctor, she’s a psychiatrist. She’s a great woman. Isaac died a couple years ago. Anyway, she had a brother who was still in Russia who was either jailed or under threat of being jailed, and his situation was dire. So we decided we were going to focus our efforts on him. We got Les Aucoin who was a congressman at that time to take on his—and that was sort of—everything we tried to do politically was focusing on that.

Hochstein: So you met with the congressman. How did you publicize the issue?
ROGOWAY:  Through the Jewish Review in those days to whatever we could do. Synagogues, we used whatever resources we could find.

Hochstein: Non-Jewish press?
ROGOWAY:  Yes. Les Aucoin’s involvement made that easier to get it into the non-Jewish press. To this day, we all get emotional. They finally let Isaac—let the brother—now I’ve just lost his name. It’ll come to me, I hope. This mature memory stuff is really awful. Anyway, they let the brother out and I think Les had flown to New York to come into Portland with him, because it was good for him, too, politically. It was a smart move. So when the two of them arrived there was a huge press outpouring for them. One of the things that struck me is that the suitcases had a little sticker on them from HIAS. Do you know the work of HIAS? It was like it made it—it took it from this abstract to:  This is real. That night—just a coincidence, I had just started to work with Federation and we were having a major donor fundraiser, and the family came. It was probably the most emotional and effective kind of moment where you see what you’re doing come to fruition and real, and it’s real people.

Hochstein: It sounds powerful and moving.
ROGOWAY:  It was. It was an incredibly powerful period. That started when I was with American Jewish Committee.

Hochstein: That was a third involvement. You’ve mentioned National Council of Jewish Women.
ROGOWAY:  Hold it, I’ve jumped around. So, I was doing all this volunteer stuff and had become chair of the JCRC, the Federation.

Hochstein: JCRC?
ROGOWAY:  Jewish Community Relations Committee, which was the arm of the Federation that deals with all the political/social action. It’s an umbrella, kind of, for all the organizations in the city. So I was doing that. I think I’ve got my years straight. It was ’78, I think. So I’d been working with Council, was a volunteer at the Federation, and a friend called me and said, “I saw this ad in the paper for a job and I think I want to maybe apply for it, but I don’t really understand, and I figured you know all this stuff.” It was an ad that I had totally missed, looking for somebody to work for an organization called American Jewish Committee, which I was only vaguely familiar with, part-time, a start-up kind of thing. I read the ad. I said, “You know what? This sounds like me.” 

I had no idea how to write a resumé. I had never really worked. I took out the encyclopedia and got:  This is how you write a resumé. And Council had published, the national office had published a brochure that talked about translating your volunteer activity into marketable skills. If you chaired a committee, what does this mean, etc. I used those; I created a résumé. And I did—which was novel in those days—I Fedexed it to the San Francisco office where they were collecting resumés, in part because I had no idea whether the job was still open or anything else. Anyway, I got the job. It was all of ten hours a week, working out of home, etc., because again, American Jewish Committees, one of the national organizations like ADL, headquartered in New York. Somebody sitting in New York had this bright idea—hey, there are Jews on the West Coast and maybe we ought to try and do something with them. So it was a great learning experience for me. They had all of 42 members in the chapter here, almost all men, mostly older. A lot of—American Jewish Committee, more than the others, were tied to the German Jewish community, so there were a number of prominent people, Beth Israel kind of membership. I just started calling them. I didn’t know what else to do. I finally got a few who would come together and have a meeting. My supervisor from San Francisco came in and talked with them and we talked about what we could do. I was lucky enough, or smart enough, I’m not sure, a little bit of both, to pinpoint the one person who could make this come alive, a guy by the name of Stuart Durkheimer. Did you ever know Stuart? He was great. I loved Stuart. His daughter is one of my closest friends but I knew Stuart totally separate from my relationship with Barbara. Anyway, Stuart agreed to become the first chair of this, the local chair. He sat down and hand-wrote letters to a couple hundred people saying this is an important organization and you should join it, and because he was so well respected many of them did and it was fun building something from nothing.

Hochstein: Two questions. It sounds like this was a big transition for you personally, from volunteer work to paid work. What was your strategic goal once you were in this job? The first question first.
ROGOWAY:  It was a big transition. Again, it was an era where women were really starting to work and were being—I don’t know if we were looked down upon, but you were not as well respected if you were asked, “What do you do?” and you answered it with “volunteer” or a “house maker.”

Hochstein: What year was this?
ROGOWAY:  It was ’78, I think. So there was a lot of transition stuff and I’d say women were—one of the answers to that question “What do you do?” It wasn’t quite cutting it to say “I volunteer in 25 different organizations,” or “I stay home and raise my kids.”

Hochstein: Is that one of the reasons that you were seeking employment, so you could answer that for yourself?
ROGOWAY:  I don’t think I really thought it through, but it was probably in the back of my mind. This just seems like one of those things that were meant to be. It sounded so much like me. I don’t know that I had any long-term aspirations. I had never really thought of myself as a career person. I certainly hadn’t thought of myself as working in Jewish communal service. I don’t think I knew what that was growing up, although I’m sure I saw lots of people around me who worked in Jewish communal service. I hadn’t a clue.

Hochstein: What was your self-definition prior to your engagement in this kind of work?
ROGOWAY:  I was a student, a college student. I was a very good student. I got lots of awards and recognition. I was going on to graduate school and that was—it was not like—maybe kids today, I don’t know, but not thinking ahead:  What’s my life going to be? You’re supposed to get married and have children. That part seemed to be kind of clear. The rest of it was just sort of—I watched—when we come back I’d like to talk some more about my parents because they both had things I think are worth noting. But I don’t think I ever sat down and created a game plan. It just did, and it just kind of evolved from one to the other.

Hochstein: To the point where you began to be involved with AJC, you describe you had some goals there. What were they? What were you trying to accomplish by reaching out to all these people?
ROGOWAY:  I think to build this into kind of a meaningful organization that could work, that first of all had enough substance, national organization, very clear, they were really bottom-line interested in fundraising and how much money they could raise. I just kept saying we’ve got to get some people on board before we can talk about that. So the first couple years we got it put together and people were starting to make contributions. I don’t know that they were making major contributions but more than the minimal dues and they were getting a little money in, but they really wanted to see us do these—they called them “plate dinners.” They were really to target the non-Jewish community. The goal was to raise money from non-Jewish ________. The goal was you found some major public figure and you had this dinner to honor them. I don’t remember, in those days you charged $100 a plate, but that’s how they would make a lot of additional money. I stalled on that I think as long as I could. They were really:  You’ve got to do this. Well, the challenge was—and I was never afraid to pick up the phone and call people that I didn’t know, especially in the Jewish community. So I called—there were some prominent Jewish judges, Moe Tonkon who was a lawyer who was one of those—he was Tonkon Torp. He was one of those first who sort of integrated some of the Multnomah Club and the various…. There was Gus Solomon who the courthouse is named after. Great stories about Gus Solomon. He would invite young lawyers to come to his office for lunch and he would tell them, “It’s great if you build your practice but you have to give back; you have to give to the Jewish community and general community.” He laid it out. If they wanted to have a good relationship with this judge, you didn’t monkey around. Anyway, I wasn’t afraid to call people like that, but there had been so many of these. There’s nobody—I can’t bring you anything. Finally—I’m missing pieces here—I hooked up with Arlene Schnitzer. Arlene, for whatever her reasons, said okay, and she got—I can see the face in front of me, a non-Jewish businessman, to co-chair with her. Together with their clout Arlene could—she was a master so I watched her—they got the guy who then was the head of Plaid Pantry to agree to be the honoree. He wasn’t the biggest fish. It would have been better if she had the head of a major oil company, but he was big enough. They worked the phones and they created this first dinner and I think it was successful enough.

Hochstein: This was Portland area or greater Oregon?
ROGOWAY:  Portland, yes. I don’t remember; we did a couple of those while I was still there, but that was sort of the model. We did a non-Jewish fundraising, a Jewish fundraising dinner geared to the Jewish community, and I came up with the idea of having an award established after Morrie Sussman who was another lawyer, a prominent good guy involved with AJC. So we established the Sussman Award which was given out for years and years until AJC folded, once a year to a member of the Jewish community who had done good things in the community, and who would agree to be honored. Not everybody was willing to be honored. But you’ve seen these dinners around. So we’d do two dinners a year. One was for the Jewish community and one for the non-Jewish community. That went on while I was working and for many years after. But AJC gave me a chance to establish myself in the Jewish world. Then I was really recruited to come work for Federation.

Hochstein: How did they approach you about that and ask you to be involved?
ROGOWAY:  The person who was then the exec who wasn’t here for very long asked me if I would consider it because I knew a couple of the lay leaders. Harold Pollin was one, Phil Blank, I don’t know who you know. Anyway, great guys, great guys. The current president, president-elect, etc., I talked to them, and I finally said yes, in part because I think I had accomplished—I can’t even say what I hoped to do, because I don’t know that I set out with a game plan, but I had gotten AJC on a steady footing and it would have been kind of doing more of the same, I think.

Hochstein: So you were ready for a new kind of challenge.
ROGOWAY:  Yes, and my first involvement had been with Federation, and that had been a positive experience. I got to do lots of interesting things with them, so I said yes to Federation. This was in ’84. At that time, I was asked to handle the women’s campaign because they really had separate women’s stuff, and the community relations committee.

Hochstein: That’s interesting. There was a separate focus on women. Just out of curiosity, how long did that carry forward and when did that begin to change?
ROGOWAY:  Well, it’s still there, to a certain point, but different. That was, again, back in the day when men controlled the money, and Federation campaigns were really talking to the man of the household. There were a handful of women who were involved but it was really the man who made the decisions. Women were thought of, “She has her pocket money; she can do a little bit of something.” So the women’s campaign was to get those extra dollars and to get women involved. It was interesting. 

Hochstein: You started on the women’s side?
ROGOWAY:  For all practical—it had been there years before. There had been a Women’s Division and some prominent women were part of it, but it faded away to next to nothing. So I got that. I had that as a portfolio. There were a couple of things. One was a program that I started jointly with Federation while I was still at American Jewish Committee. We decided to do a joint program called “The Emerging Jewish Woman.” It was looking at where women were coming out and what was happening in the women’s movement, etc. We did this huge, for Portland, conference with Betty Friedan as our keynote speaker. We had people—we did it at a hotel that is not functional any more. We were using the stairwell for seating room, we just oversold. But it was a huge, huge success.

Hochstein: What year?
ROGOWAY:  That would have been probably in ’84 when I started. So that was one impetus for getting women going. I may have lost chronological order here so I’m not sure, but some place early on I put together a women’s mission to Jewish San Francisco, and took a group of women, I think there were 12 or 15 women who Ann [_____?] and I worked with. At that time it was United Jewish Appeal (names have changed since then) to connect with people in San Francisco and take us on a tour of Jewish San Francisco. So we saw the center there and the senior home and we did the synagogue and we did the Mikvah which most of the women had not seen. We met with Dianne Feinstein because one of the women who was from the San Francisco area had been a big Dianne Feinstein [fan], so she met with us and we did some political things, and we threw in some social things. 

We ended up with caucus. Are you familiar with caucus? It’s where you sit around and you share your thoughts, and caucuses usually have a financial goal, and hopefully people will announce what they’re going to give. It’s a very emotional, sometimes a pressure situation. It really depends on the dynamic of the group, but we did a caucus there. One of the women there was Lois Schnitzer who was married to Leonard who died a few years ago. I don’t know how well you know the Schnitzer family. Lois was very quiet and shy and she was there and she said, “I know what I want to do, but I have to go home and talk to Leonard first.” 

That was very much the women of those days but it was very much Lois. So, long story short, she decided she wanted to become a Lion of Judah. The Lion of Judah is a national, international organization for women who commit, in their own name, not as a family gift, a minimum of $5,000 a year to the Federation campaign. It’s still big money but back then it was really big money. So, Lois made that commitment and invited a group of women to come to her home and I think with a couple of Seattle women were sort of ahead of the curve, and got probably in that first year, maybe there were eight or ten other women, to become Lions. 

That changed a lot. It changed the way women were looked at. Suddenly they had power, they were giving real money, it wasn’t, “Here’s my babysitting money.” It also made the men look at what they were giving. “If the little wife can do this, what should I be doing?” Huge, all over the country. It’s real life. Now, things have changed again. If I were doing it today my push wouldn’t be to get women to make their own gifts. I would make sure they were at the table every time there was a discussion and that it was a family gift, and the man and woman were sitting together whenever possible. That would be my mantra. I don’t know that it’s anybody else’s, but I think we’ve passed that time of needing to showcase what women can do. 

Anyway, I was doing that and I was doing the community relations stuff which focused—there was a lot of Israel stuff going, there was still lots of Soviet Jewry stuff going on, there was lots of stuff going on. But someplace in there the person who had hired me, the exec, was asked to resign. It wasn’t working. I ended up in the Federation alone, the only professional there, while they did a search. The search lasted for a year before they could find somebody, so I had a year. I hired—do you know the Blauer family? So Karen Blauer, who is from Portland, who had been working a little bit at a Federation—I can’t remember where, someplace in Texas—came back home and worked—I don’t know if she stayed for a year but I sort of cobbled together a team. I was clueless. I mean, I knew so little at this point, but again, that’s how you learn. It’s a great learning experience. So I did, and when they finally hired somebody (who was Charlie Schiffman, who was the best of the best), Charlie said, “What do you want to do?” and I went on to become the campaign director and did that. Over the years I’ve done almost everything in the Federation but primarily campaign from that point on, which involved lots of—well, missions that involved events, that involved lots of different things.

Hochstein: In your career as a fundraiser, how much attention have you focused on the other side of the coin? That is, where the money goes after you raise it. Or have you focused primarily on providing the resources?
ROGOWAY:  No, because—I sort of forget these things, so I’m glad you asked that. I was also for a huge amount of that time, almost all that time, the head of allocations. I had to raise the money and then I had to work with the lay committee to figure out where to spend it. I was very aware of where it went.

Hochstein: What were your priorities and how did they change over the years?
ROGOWAY:  Oh, they changed a lot. From early on, Israel was huge. There were a couple of emergency campaigns for Israel in addition to the annual campaign. There was a war. Israel was pretty traditional. There was Israel, there was Robison Home, there was Jewish Family, there was the Center. I can’t remember where else, a little money going to Hillel, a little money going to national organization, but it was sort of the main organizations. Some place in that came the crisis with the Center, where it almost closed down.

Hochstein: What was that situation?
ROGOWAY:  It’s interesting that this is not something—I assume—it was like this burning light. The Center just—they were—how is the best way to put it? They were being too nice. They let everybody use the Center without really charging appropriately. A group organizer would come in and say we want to have a meeting here. Sure. They never figured the fact that it was costing them lights and janitorial. They just were fiscally mismanaged and they didn’t have good professional leadership. They just didn’t, and they kept trying, and they were almost ready to shut the door because they were just out of money. So Federation had to step in. Interesting. Charlie was in Israel at this time, so I was there without him, and over a weekend I and Dick Davis, who was then president of Federation basically asked the board of the Center to resign, and over those few days appointed a whole new board of I think a dozen people, really power players, because if the Center was going to be rescued you needed really heavy hitters. I don’t mean just in terms of their own pocketbooks but who knew how to manage this kind of stuff. Jordan Schnitzer actually became president at that point.

Hochstein: This was what year?
ROGOWAY:  I want to say around—it had to be in the ‘90s at some point but I’m really—maybe it was 2000. It was very much touch and go for a while but we hired a crisis manager and we committed I forget how much money a year for every year—because they’d take out a mortgage. The building never had a mortgage and their board didn’t know what else to do. The bank would have closed if we couldn’t—so it was a mess. So that tied up dollars at that point, and I think things starting shifting. There was a new awareness that we needed Hillels, a Jewish future, needed more money, [for] things like Jewish camping. It was a gradual shift to recognize that if we kept doing the same things we were always doing we [would not be] meeting needs. We did a demographic study which showed this huge unaffiliated population. Again, I don’t remember what year anything took place. I think the demographic, the big one, was early 2000, 2001, someplace in there, showing literally tens of thousands of people that were not on anybody’s radar. Part of it was that the community wasn’t really serving them. If they lived on the east side, they weren’t going to come to the Center and they weren’t going to come to preschool. They weren’t going to enroll in a day school also. PJA was one of those sort of major organizations. 

So, much more rapidly in recent years since I’ve been gone, where the money goes has started shifting to new innovations, which I applaud. Things like money for families where the kid is starting a Jewish preschool for the first time, any Jewish preschool. You could go to a synagogue; it doesn’t matter. The idea was to encourage family stuff, to get the kids into Jewish preschool because that’s one of the major entry points for [?]. That was just starting when I left the Federation, that particular initiative. It’s a long-winded answer to your question about did I get involved with where the money went. Yes.

Hochstein: I’m struck by the contrast. You started out on the east side in your early life in Portland. Many Jews I’ve spoken to have that same experience. They migrated to the west and then the discovery of that whole new demographic in the early 2000s of people living on the east side who were not affiliated.
ROGOWAY:  But I have a daughter who lives on the east side by choice. They love it there. They live in the Hawthorne district. They are definitely affiliated. They’ve gotten involved with some eastside organizations like the Northeast Chabad. It has done a good job of outreach to families like them, but they belong to Neveh Shalom. 

Hochstein: You said a while ago that you wanted to return to your memories of your early childhood and your parents and I would love to get a little bit more about that. We might come back to what we’re talking about right now, but let’s take a few minutes and go back. What was on your mind?
ROGOWAY:  I’ll talk more about my dad, but my mother—I didn’t think about her having input this way, but she did. She was—do you know the word berya? It’s Yiddish, I guess. She ran this house; she cooked all the time; she baked all the time. We lived in a pretty modest house but everything there happened. But she also worked with my dad, not quite full-time, but she was at work every day, which was not common. They had a little department store, a little store that sold men’s and women’s clothing and shoes, that type of stuff. She was there with my dad almost every day. She was involved in a social life and she was a member of Eastern Star. There wasn’t a Hadassah, so she found the organization that she founded. I always think of her as a model for a homemaker but she also showed me some other things, too.

Hochstein: She must have had a lot of energy if she was working in the department store and managing her whole family.
ROGOWAY: “Department store” makes it sound very grand. I don’t know what other word to use for it. A little retail store. Yes, she did. They would have parties all the time at home. There were not a lot of places to go out. You didn’t go out to eat, so this was home-based. My dad was I think an extraordinary man. He never really got a chance to get his formal education. We’ve all wondered what he would have done if he had had that chance. But he was chairman of the school board for almost the whole time that we lived in Kamsack. He was responsible for building the first senior nursing home in the [province]. He was responsible for the first junior high in the province. 

He was on the town council as long as I can remember. He tried to do things that would have been so innovative; they didn’t always work. There was an Indian reservation (I’m not sure if that’s the politically correct term but I don’t know what is) about 16 miles from town, and he, through the school board stuff, would go out there and be very concerned. He had this idea that if you could get these kids away from their environment they’d have a better shot at education. So, when I was in the eighth grade, I think, he had a couple boys from the reservation come in and go to school with us in town. Now, I don’t know where they lived. I don’t know if they went back and forth or if they lived with somebody in town but they went to school every day with us. I don’t know how they did academically. I think they were probably miserable socially. I can remember a school dance and them having to come, and standing there, and probably would have rather been anyplace else in the world than there. It wasn’t a good idea, but my dad was willing to try things like that to see if there was a way to make things better, a different way of doing…. He was as politically involved as possible with the NDC which was the political party of Saskatchewan, very liberal left party, but he was connected there.

Hochstein: Did you think he faced any challenges as a Jewish man, being so involved politically that you were aware of?
ROGOWAY:  Yes. His best friend was mayor so my father was always on town council with him, but when his friend moved away, the logical thing was my dad to run for mayor. He was trounced by the guy who beat him, who was literally a farmer from out in the country in one of the surrounding areas. He had never done anything politically, but they weren’t going to have a Jew as a mayor. It became very clear. I’m sure there’s lots that I never heard about as a child, but that was the most blatant.

Hochstein: Yet he was head of the school board. That was okay.
ROGOWAY:  That was okay, apparently. He thrived. And he was a party guy at the same time. He loved to have parties and probably have one drink. Well, we laughed with the grandchildren that, “One drink he was happy, two drinks he went to sleep.” For bar and bat mitzvahs, the grandchildren had the jobs of monitoring Zayde and making sure that he would be okay. But he loved to party. He really loved curling, probably badly. I don’t think he was a good athlete. Then he had these bond spills, and he’d go away for a curling month. He had such a good time. He loved it. He was doing all these things. He was having fun at the same time he was really, at least in his little world, making a difference.

Hochstein: What part of his way of being do you see in yourself?
ROGOWAY:  I’m not so sure of the party part. I like it but I think my commitment to some of the things that I’ve worked for have come from him, his sense of you can’t just sit back, you have to do.

Hochstein: How do you see your mother’s life having influenced you?
ROGOWAY:  Today when I think of my mother I always think of her in terms of the homemaking side. I still like to do the family dinners and probably make my kids crazy by wanting too many family dinners, but that’s—to me that’s what you do.

Hochstein: I feel like I didn’t ask you very much about that. We got to Portland in 1964 and the next thing we knew we were talking about the Federation.  What was your home life like in ’64 to ’74 with your young children and how did you celebrate Jewish holidays?
ROGOWAY:  We did all the holidays. We did Shabbat, we always had seders at our house, usually with lots of other people. [We did] Rosh Hashanah. Hanukkah became too big a deal with packages up to the ceiling. We let that get a little out of hand. I don’t think when the kids were little but as they got older I made the decision that we were going to have Shabbat dinner in the dining room with the good dishes, because my mother always said good dishes are for company. I finally said at one point, “Who is more important than my family?” So, Shabbat was in the dining room where we would make the blessings over the kids. It was always special, until our son starting playing football. Football games are Friday night, so that sort of disrupted that. As the kids got older it got harder. I had help. I was lucky I had good help at home, and that made it easier for me to work and do. I didn’t have to worry about cleaning the house or doing the laundry.

Hochstein: Your spouse and you were on the same page in terms of doing that sort of thing?
ROGOWAY:  I think so. Bert was great. Especially as my work world grew and I sometimes couldn’t get away and the kids had something; he would be there. He was an involved father. You know, the Y Indian princess [?] the kids and there was something at the Center that was—I mean, he did all those kinds of “Daddy and me.” He changed diapers and he gave the kids baths when they were little. I mean, he was very hands-on. We had an active home. I think the kids always had friends over. Our home was busy.

Hochstein: Is there a question I haven’t asked you that you wish I had asked you?
ROGOWAY:  We’ve talked about my work life, we’ve talked about family, early days. I’ve been retired for the last—I can’t remember, either three or four years, and that’s an interesting different state. As everybody told me, “You’re busier than you ever were, when you retire.”

Hochstein: What have those activities been for you?
ROGOWAY:  Well, the thing I think is most meaningful is I’ve become a CASA. Are you familiar with CASA? CASA is court-appointed special advocate. You go through a pretty intense training program to become an official court advocate for kids in the foster care system. You’re assigned a family and you work with the family and report to the court as to what’s happening within a family, what do you think should happen, what do you recommend. Judges take that seriously and you have the right as a CASA to not only meet with the kids but to meet with anybody you want. If you need to talk to a teacher, the teacher has to talk with you. If you want to go talk to a doctor, the doctor has to talk to you. It’s a very intense training. I’ve been lucky with my first case. I had two kids whose foster parents were their maternal grandparents who were terrific and I think they are about to be returned to their mother. But I found that there was a whole world about which I knew nothing. It was much more hands-on than doing reports, because you meet with these kids and you get to know them and get a chance to see them. That’s rewarding. 

Not so rewarding but necessary, I just finished three years as chair of our condo association. I’m glad that’s done. I can’t tell you it’s a pleasure. But we travel a lot, as much as we can, and have time with grandchildren.

Hochstein: How many grandchildren are there?
ROGOWAY:  We have nine grandchildren, five of whom are here. It gives us time with—particularly the ones here—to do whatever with them. These days you do different things. We talked about growing up. Growing up in a little town as one of a handful of Jewish kids, I think my friends—I never, from friends, ever got any antisemitism or anything. I had occasionally gone with them to church and done something. They loved to come to our house, in part I think because our house was always filled with good food. They were there a lot. It was different than what I think my kids experienced growing up in Portland with a Jewish environment for them.

Hochstein: How much did the Canadian-ness of your childhood matter? Perhaps not at all.
ROGOWAY:  Probably not very much. I think by and large the Canadian educational system was better, but I don’t know that there was this strong, “I am Canada” kind of thing. You felt part of the British world.

Hochstein: It wasn’t difficult for you to come to Portland from Canada in any way.
ROGOWAY:  In those days, for sure not! No, it wasn’t a big cultural change or much of anything else. Now one of my daughters says, (according to her, and she’s a lawyer) in becoming American I didn’t cancel out my Canadian citizenship. She says I ought to activate that right now. “Just in case, you ought to have that!” I’m not sure. No, I don’t think it made much of a difference one way or the other.

Hochstein: The small-town Jewish life was never something….
ROGOWAY:  I think it had a significant impact in the [?]of my life.

Hochstein: Would you even call it empowering in the sense that you could see that someone could make a difference in a small town, perhaps?
ROGOWAY:  I never thought about that way. Maybe. My father certainly made a difference, but I don’t know that I ever thought of it. It’s an interesting question. It was embarrassing at times. He would come to my school to make a presentation, and who wants their father in their school when you’re a little kid?

Hochstein: What would he make a presentation about?
ROGOWAY:  I don’t know if it was a Girl Scouts cookie seller—whoever sold the most, that kind of thing. I don’t remember what was being sold, but more or less.

SECOND INTERVIEW ON MARCH 19, 2018:

Hochstein: This is a follow-up of the previous interview, because there were a few subjects that we wanted to cover. Tell me what you felt needed to be included?
ROGOWAY:  Well, I stopped to think about it. I think we talked about my work here as kind of the early years and some of the early things with women’s activities. I don’t think we talked about much more. I told you I did the fundraising but I also did the allocations, but I don’t know that we did much more than that.

Hochstein: That was about it, and I’d be happy to cover some more areas.
ROGOWAY:  Because my years at the Federation were such an integral part of who I am and the work I did there went well beyond what we’ve talked about, and brought me all kinds of really rewarding experiences. Just to start where we left off, we were talking about women and Women’s Division [of the Jewish Federation] and all of that. What I don’t think I talked about was at that early stage there were no women in leadership positions. There was always a handful of women on the board. There had never been a woman president; there had never been a women’s campaign chair. Those were all kind of Women’s Division stuff. Because of the power of the Women’s Division, both in involvement but also with their growing philanthropy, suddenly everybody took notice.

Hochstein: What year was that?
ROGOWAY:  I was trying to think when we had our first women’s campaign chair. It must have been in the ‘80s at some point, but I don’t keep those dates in my mind. If my husband were here he’d know every date. But I would say in the early ‘80s. But out of that I think we’ve had three women presidents. We’ve had numerous women campaign chairs, either by themselves or co-chairing with a man. I don’t think there have been two women co-chairing. But women have taken major, major leadership roles in the Federation and in the community. That was one of the things that when I started we never saw. It was part of the changing times that we lived in, where women were moving into all kinds of different roles. But it was exciting to see, and it put the pressure on the men to achieve, both philanthropically and to step up their game. 

That was a piece of what I want to talk about. But I think the two pieces that I really felt we left out were the people that I got to know, and the experiences that I had, particularly out of the country. The kinds of people who I worked with, first professionally and I have to talk about first, I’ll get emotional, Charlie Schiffman. I don’t know if Charlie was still here when you came. Charlie was for many people almost god-like. He was brilliant, he was exotic. His knowledge of Judaism on any topic, whether religious or secular was—there was nobody. Everybody looked up to Charlie. They might not have agreed with him. He was much more observant than most of us but he never pushed his lifestyles on anybody. You could go out to eat with him and you could have bacon or shrimp and he would never, never frown upon you. He did his life in the way that was right for him and his wife. He was an incredible role model and teacher. So you can see I’m getting emotional just thinking about him. He died way too young. He died in Israel. When he retired from Portland, he did what he wanted to do which was move to Israel, which was hard, always was.

Hochstein: What did he teach, and how did he influence people?
ROGOWAY:  I think he influenced people by modeling. If you were looking for a quote, if I was writing something for myself or somebody I’d say, “I need a quote.” I just knew I could go to Charlie and he would have it, whether it was a Jewish quote or an English quote, he had it. When he came to Portland, that was when I had been—well, I think I talked to you about this but maybe not, I had been with the Federation for certainly less than a year when my then-boss was—I think we discussed this—was asked to resign. He did, and I was on my own for about a year, which was a great learning experience. When you have no choice, you’re forced to learn a whole lot really quickly, and I did. I had some great lay leaders who kind of helped me along the way. But when Charlie came, the Federation really was at a low point. [unclear] He was such a tower of strength and such a model of the person you wanted, that he really rebuilt the Federation both internally and in terms of recruiting lay leaders who wanted to work with him. If you’ve been involved with not-for-profits at all, it’s very often the professional leaders that determine whether somebody wants to get involved with the Federation. They may care about the mission but if they don’t want to work with these people, they don’t respect these people. Charlie was just somebody that everybody respected, even when they disagreed with him. I’m not telling you he didn’t have his things that people didn’t like, but he was widely, widely respected. And he really helped rebuild the Federation in the community. 

I was really privileged to be part of that team. When he came he asked me, “What do you want to do?” I said I want to be campaign director and he said fine, and I did that. He brought in some other people to run the [Women’s Division] and to run the community relations committee, which I had been doing. I don’t think we talked about that. That was an interesting—what I had done at AJC so it was kind of a carryover into the Federation world, but with lots of inter-group relations, I continued work on Soviet Jewry and those kind of issues. When Charlie got settled in I became a campaign director, and really had the privilege then of working with a whole different group of people. That’s the other thing, the quality of people who became involved as volunteers, as lay leaders was wonderful. Really, many of them became good friends, and are good friends to this day. They taught me a lot in terms of their modeling and their commitment and their willingness to take leadership roles in all sorts of ways, so I was lucky to work with some really wonderful people.

Hochstein: Can you give me an example of somebody who stepped up and did something that you might not have expected of them as a result of this experience?
ROGOWAY:  Sure, Elizabeth Menashe who was set to become the first Women’s Campaign chair when the fellow who was to become president in June (Jeff Farber who was with Bank of America—and he was high up, I think he headed the Portland office) was told he was going to San Francisco within a few weeks. It was huge promotion for him and we all were happy for him but very sad for the community because he and his wife Barbara, who also became a good friend…. But Jeff said he had to go, and Charlie and sat down with Liz and said, “Here’s the story…” and she said yes. She stepped up and became the first woman president. I’m sitting here as we are talking, trying to think of who filled in as campaign chair. It may have been Gayle Romain but I’m not sure. Gayle became campaign chair. I don’t remember if it was right then. But Liz is somebody who has always said yes when you need her.

Hochstein: I hate to pin you down on dates, but roughly ‘80s? ‘90s?
ROGOWAY:  I think that was all in the ‘80s. If she was sitting here she’d probably tell me exactly when, but I think in the ‘80s. Gail was another person who became a campaign chair, and became president of the Federation. And Priscilla Kostiner, who I knew. I probably knew all these women a little bit. I knew Priscilla a little more. She also took on the campaign and the presidency. When Charlie was here, his 18th year here, we had a huge community gathering that Priscilla and Gail and Liz co-chaired, and they were Charlie’s Angels. They were very clever and did a whole thing on Charlie’s Angels, but they were. They were part of that group that absolutely idolized him. There were people like that that I got to know. Harold Pollin, who I’d known because our kids grew up together, was Federation president when Murray Schneider, who was the exec was asked to leave and I had to step up and take this, and Harold was a wonderful guide and he helped me. I didn’t ever feel like I was in this job alone. I really had a partner. Phil Blank, who had been president just when I started was wonderful. Again, these were partners; they were teachers. They were wonderful, wonderful leaders. 

In my last few years there was a change. We started to see a younger group of people coming in. I’m trying to think of who would be the best examples. Lauren Schleifer whose family have been friends for many years. I remember meeting Lauren when I was on a Federation mission and she was there doing her junior year at Hebrew University, and came back to really become a leader in Portland. She was chair of the campaign, she was chair of [?]. I think she will become president. Just watching somebody like that evolve from a young girl, who even at that age showed a very Jewish commitment to taking on major leadership roles. At Federation there was a wonderful team, some of whom are still there. Rachel Halupowski, who was really my assistant and my go-to person for anything related to computer or lists or data. She was the campaign administrator at the Federation now. Rachel is wonderful. Bob Horenstein, who has been there for many years, started as a CR [Community Relations] director. He’s still the CR director but he has also become planning and allocation. It’s just been lovely to watch people like that grow and develop and really make a difference in the community. Jen Feldman, who was my colleague at Federation for many years and is now at Beth Israel, is a great friend and a great colleague. We really were a team that worked. Josh Stein, who left after a few years but was a wonderful young man. I’m not sure why I’m emotional but I am. When Josh left (and he was younger than my kids) his wife said, “The two of you were always on the same page.” We thought the same way, we approached things the same way, and he was fun to work with.

Hochstein: You mentioned that you worked as a team. Can you give me an example of something that you accomplished because you were able to work as a team? How did that teamwork manifest itself?
ROGOWAY:  Lots of things. There were several Israel emergency campaigns where we had to sort of stop everything we were doing and both raise funds for Israel and deal with the public side of everything that was going on. Everybody pitched in, everybody took a piece and everybody did. When we had big campaign events it might have been campaign…. O kay, I’m talking Federation language. Part of the way you raise funds is you did lots of—having dinners or parties or big events at which people would come and be asked to make pledge. Some of those were pretty big events and so everybody would have to take a role and really be part of it. It was never one person—and there were always lay leaders who chaired it but it was the staff who really had to get in there and make sure it all got done. We met (for most years) once a week as a staff and everybody had a voice and it didn’t matter what the issue was. You all got to jump in and sometimes people whose jobs seemed very unconnected to whatever was going on had the best ideas.

Hochstein: In those years, how did you persuade someone that they should become a participant in the Federation at this level?
ROGOWAY:  As a leader?

Hochstein: As a leader. How did you bring somebody in who you thought would be a good fit?
ROGOWAY:  In the best of all worlds you would start with somebody maybe in a young leadership program or a committee or something, and you would see that person, you’d say:  Are you ready for something else? And we would hope—when things went very according to a pattern you would move up to be on an event committee and then an event chair and then somebody would say does this person sound like they are right for the board? Not everybody is board—you know, people have different skill sets and different interests. Some people love boards and other people can’t stand that kind of process, so you try and find—but I remember I mentioned Jeff Farber earlier. He came to Portland from Seattle where he was already involved with the Seattle Federation, and the exec there I think called me and said I’m sending you a future president. I got to know Jeff quickly and it was clear he wanted to be president, so we fast-tracked him.

Hochstein: That ultimately happened?
ROGOWAY:  Well, he was about to become president. He was the one who was transferred to Seattle within weeks, but he chaired the campaign, he and his wife Barbara both did lots of things. But he was an example of somebody who was ready, he knew what he wanted. 

When I first met Liz Menashe she quickly agreed to chair (at that time) the Women’s Division campaign. It didn’t take more than a quick ask. But she wasn’t the least interested in being the women’s division president. She likes to fundraise. People have different ways. Sometimes you see somebody involved in another agency. One of the things that never worked as well as it should, but when I was in young leadership, which is something I never even thought to talk to you about, but my first involvement with Federation was as a young leader, and I actually won the young leadership award someplace, I guess, in the ‘70s. I was young. I just totally lost my train of thought.

Hochstein: You jumped back to when you were first involved and you won an award.
ROGOWAY:  I thought about that after—what were we talking about before that?

Hochstein: Liz Menashe.
ROGOWAY:  Maybe it will come and maybe it won’t. Oh, I know what I was thinking about. Back in those days when I was first involved, so late ‘60s maybe? We were married in ’64 so some place late ‘60s or early ‘70s. The process used to be that you got involved with an agency first, a Federation agency. And if you looked like a rising star there and you did some things there you would then kind of get moved into a Federation committee, and ultimately the Federation board, and it wasn’t to be elitist but the Federation responsibility was to all of the agencies, so in the best of all worlds you wanted board lay members and leaders who were familiar with the agencies and understand them in part so they could be advocates for them. 

So, leadership developed in lots and lots of different ways. Ed Tonkin who is current Federation president got first heavily involved because his cousin Cheryl asked him to co-chair a major, major event that we were doing called Food for Thought. It wasn’t fundraising for Federation, it was to raise food for the Food Bank but also to hold programs around the city on a dozen different issues. It was lots and lots of things in lots of different venues. And at the same time people were asked to bring food for the food bank so that we raised tons of food. Anyway, Cheryl convinced Ed to co-chair this event with her. Ed at that time was president of Tonkin Auto. He did a great job, and it was a chance for Mark Blattner who I haven’t talked about, who is the current Federation president to get to know him. Mark is great at cultivating and recruiting some of that next generation of leaders, and convinced Ed to go on the board, and ultimately to become president. Sometimes timing is right. Ed sold his company. For the first time he had some time on his hands and wanted, needed something to occupy him. So the timing was right. You know, you get somebody who you can fast-track when they have the skills and experience. You can teach them about what the Federation is. Leaders came from lots of different ways, but I consider myself so lucky to have gotten to know and become friends with some of the most phenomenal people in this community that are just exceptional in every way.

Hochstein: It sounds as if you were involved in the first wave of women to become involved at this level in the Federation. Is the Federation continuing to recruit women in the same way, or perhaps it’s coming differently now?
ROGOWAY:  Coming differently now because women are really everywhere. In my last years on the nominating committee, working with it, there was always a conscious effort to make certain that we were looking for women. We wanted to try to get a balance of people from different religious streams, people with different agencies, but certainly to make sure women would be well represented. It wasn’t always easy. There weren’t always a lot of women who wanted to do board and major leadership roles but, as I say, my guess is the next president could be a woman, just knowing who’s in leadership right now. I guess the only one I can say without having been at the table for the last four years, women are very much wanted. It’s sometimes harder to find.

Hochstein: We’ve reviewed a few of the people that stand out in your memory and probably more will come up if we just sit here.
ROGOWAY:  I am sure.

Hochstein: You also mentioned you wanted to talk about some experiences you had through the Federation and other venues.
ROGOWAY:  Absolutely. One of these things that have really been milestones in my life are the various missions we’ve done. “Mission” is a word Federation uses for trips, and the theory is it’s a trip with a purpose.

Hochstein: Tell me about one or two of them, some that made an impression on you and made a difference for you.
ROGOWAY:  Israel once. I was lucky enough to get to do several interfaith missions, where we went with Jewish and Christian leaders, never anybody from a Muslim country at that point. I don’t know if now. And seeing Israel from different perspectives with some really fabulous people. Being in Israel for the 50th anniversary and the 60th anniversary and just…. Have you been to Israel? Just looking at the incredible achievement. You can put all the politics in this basket (and God knows there’s enough of it) and if you ask me what I think, it depends on every half hour because it is what it is. But when I look at what Israel has achieved in 70 years, it’s nothing short of miraculous, and I kvell when I see it, when I walk the streets of Jerusalem and see how they have restored the old city. 

Our first time in Israel was not on a Federation mission, it was in ’73, ironically just before the Yom Kippur War. We left two days before the war, obviously not knowing. But they had just gotten the old city back in ’67 so they’d had five years to sort of start unburying the rubble and to get a look at what was there, but the Jewish quarter was still pretty rough at that point. But to go back over the years and see what has been done and the restoration that has been done and the care with which it’s being done is amazing.

Hochstein: Was that visit in ’73 your first visit?
ROGOWAY:  Yes.

Hochstein: I’m not sure that I asked you about this, but I’m curious now that you mention it. When you were growing up, how conscious of Israel were you in your family in the ‘60s, say?
ROGOWAY:  Well, in the ‘60s I was already married. Is that what you’re asking about?

Hochstein: Let me ask this question:  When did you first become aware of Israel and was it a big issue in your family, or just something on the periphery of consciousness?
ROGOWAY:  No, I always knew about it because my parents—I think I said to you they would, when we lived in this little town and the visiting UIA man would come to town, he would be at our house. There was a picture, I think it was on the wall of our den, that had been given to my father. There was always this awareness. I don’t know how much conversation I was part of. 

We got married in ’64 and the first big thing was the ’67 war and [?]. We contributed and then when I got involved with the community as a lay leader I became involved with the community relations committee. It’s now the JCRC, then it was the CRC, and that’s when I did a lot of the Soviet Jewry stuff. Israel was very much part of that and I was interested and the speakers would come. I was always aware but our first trip in ’73 we actually did with my sister and brother-in-law, the four of us. That was something we wanted to do. So Israel was always there, I think, in my head. Anyway, we had some phenomenal trips to Israel. We’ve seen things and done things and met with speakers and people who have shaped the country. I think lots of missions we ended up listening to prime ministers, to where it became—I don’t want to say blasé but it was not—the point person you remembered was the speaker who had survived the Holocaust and told you their story, right there, or the children or people who had played in a role in building the state. Those were the ones that really stood out from Israel. But to see the development—when were you last there? 

Hochstein: 2009.
ROGOWAY:  So, you’ve seen what’s happening in Tel Aviv. Now. Tel Aviv is one of the most…. It’s like one of the top ten cities in the world. It is phenomenal. And to see—put the politics out, to see the development in 70 years is just mind-boggling. Going to Israel has always been a highlight, but I’ve also been very privileged to go to a lot of countries in the former Soviet Union because part of what Federation dollars go for is to help people in these countries both to either rebuild their lives or stay there or to get out and get to Israel, so the getting to Israel part—are you familiar with the whole Soviet Jewry immigration? So, in ’90 when Communism was coming down and we thought it was coming down (look at the world now), but anyway back then everybody was very excited and there were these huge waves of emigration going to Israel. As quickly as people could get out, they were going, some to the U.S. and that’s another piece of the story but also going to Israel. One of the things that we did that was monumental was we raised a million dollars in one lunch for Soviet Jewry, as did communities from, I guess, all over the world. I’ll talk about the U.S. We had been standing for decades saying, “Let my people go!” And they were coming. We had to help with this. I remember going with Gayle Romain, actually, to fly to Florida for 24 hours for a national meeting where communities basically said, “Look, this is what you need to do. This is your share.” And we all said yes. At this one lunch we raised pledges for a million dollars. 

Maybe now it wouldn’t sound like such a lot, but in 1990 it was a lot. It’s really because of three families, the Schnitzers and the Sterns (Jerry Stern), and the Zidells. Emery Zidell was still alive then and Jerry Stern, and Leonard and Gilbert Schnitzer were at the table and we sat with them. Charlie and I went and we met with them and said, “We need to raise all this money and we need leaders to do it.” And they said they would; and they did. But that was only a piece of what was done. In those days there were what they called “Freedom Flights to Israel.” The Soviets weren’t at that time allowing flights directly to Israel. That has changed, but they would try to go into I think Italy, I don’t remember for sure, and then flew to Israel from there. Or people would wait there and they would get a plane filled. We raised money to sponsor a plane and people could buy—I think it was $1,000 a seat, and people could get their name on a seat. The community sponsored one plane, and Jerry and Helen Stern and their family sponsored another plane. The Stern family flew to Italy and flew from Italy to Israel with this planeload of [?]. It wasn’t really planned but it worked. We had a mission that was in Israel then, so we went to the airport. I thought I was past all this and was blasé, but it’s really not.

Hochstein: It’s emotional for you.
ROGOWAY:  It was emotional. In Jewish history I think at some point we will look at this exodus from Russia the same as we look at the Exodus because it has had that kind of transformational effect on Jewish life. So anyway, we met this flight and greeted them all coming—I’ve got to stop this, it’s ridiculous, but those are experiences that are just—can sear into your mind. 

[recording pauses and resumes]
 
So that was part of the Israel—but started to go to the Soviet Union, so part of Federation’s allocation—it still does but much lesser—would go to two organizations, the JDC, American Jewish Joint Distribution committee, and the Jewish Agency for Israel. The Jewish Agency was responsible for helping people who wanted to emigrate to Israel do that, and the JDC’s job at least—well, all over the world, really—is responsible for helping people who are living in a country, whether it’s food, housing, education. They divided the work, combined it between those. I had the chance to go, sometimes with professional colleagues and sometimes taking a mission, to Ukraine, to Kiev, to Latvia, to Lithia, to Romania, to I’m not sure I remember all the countries, really to see what we were doing firsthand, so that we could come home and tell the story. Because how do you tell people we’re asking you to give money for people.

Hochstein: What did you see when you went there?
ROGOWAY:  Amazing. Probably the thing that impressed everybody was the ability to develop, to go along with a caseworker who was taking a food package to an elderly shut-in. Most of the people who didn’t emigrate, not all but most, were seniors. They were too old to make that [trip]. They were living in third- or fifth-floor walkups that were maybe the size of this room with a kitchen that was shared with everybody. I mean, you’ve seen these pictures of these Communist bloc buildings, awful, decrepit. Half the time the elevator didn’t work, the lights were problematic, but they got full food boxes from the JDC, and a caseworker who would go with the food boxes to talk to them to see what their condition was. We were privileged enough to be able to go and help deliver those food boxes and talk to the people and let them know that they weren’t forgotten. I don’t know anybody who’s done that who could not tell you exactly where they were and what they saw and who the people were, all of those. 

So one side of going to those countries was to see what the JDC is doing in really trying to rebuild the communities. They have a center in St. Petersburg that I was lucky enough to get to, not on a Federation mission, but my husband and I took a cruise that stopped in St. Petersburg and I arranged for a guide. I wanted him to see what I’d been doing. They have a center in St. Petersburg that would put our center to shame. It would probably put any center in this country to shame. Phenomenal. Doing everything from college education to little kids. It was like a Jewish community in a box. 

One side of it was seeing the rebuilding of communities for people who wanted to stay. The other was seeing the work which JAFI was doing, particularly with kids. There are summer camps all over the former Soviet Union. They didn’t buy them; I’m sure they rented the space. I can’t remember. But they would have these kids come from all over. They could come from hundreds of miles away and they found them by all sorts of—I know of a kid—you know, somebody will send a kid and they would come to these camps for ten days. I think they cut down to a week because of budgets. They started at ten days. Most of these kids knew nothing about being Jewish. I can still remember hearing about one boy who, as his parents put him on the bus for camp, said, “Oh, by the way, you’re Jewish and you’re going to a Jewish camp.” That may have been the extreme but not so different. But these kids would come knowing nothing. By the time they left they were singing Jewish songs, they were dancing the dances, they were playing the games that kids would play at BB camp here, Solomon Schechter, whatever you want. They were immersed in Jewish life. The hope was then that they would go home and talk to their families and hopefully think about emigrating, and if they didn’t emigrate at least they might want to explore their Judaism further.

Hochstein: You mentioned JAFI?
ROGOWAY:  JAFI. Jewish Agency for Israel. JAFI was the forerunner of the State of Israel and pre-’48, JAFI fulfilled what was, in fact, government functions for the Jews that were there. When the state was formed and the government was formed they still had huge responsibilities, first among them immigration and absorption. They were the agency that would help people come and help them become absorbed into Israeli life. And they still are.

Hochstein: I think most people know about the Jewish Agency. I didn’t know it was called that.
ROGOWAY:  Sorry. To tell you how I started by learning the hard way, for the first year that I was at Federation people talked about the Agency, and I was too ashamed to say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, what Agency?” So, the experiences in various places in the former Soviet Union were just mindboggling. It was seeing a Jewish world that my grandparents came from. Most of us said, “But for the grace of God, that could have been us.” And that was the reality. I can remember being in St. Petersburg and people telling us stories of the siege of St. Petersburg and how they survived. There were very few men left. That population was almost all women. The men were killed and these women left alone, sometimes with kids, sometimes without. To hear their stories and see their strength still was just the kind of experiences that are just seared into your….

Hochstein: Mostly this was the experience of seeing Jewish life in the former Soviet Union and seeing this movement of people to Israel. Did any of the people you contacted end up in Portland? I think you mentioned that briefly last time.
ROGOWAY:  Not that I contacted myself, but yes, there was a whole program. There had been a small wave of people and I don’t remember, I want to say about ‘78, where they let some people out and we started working with Jewish Family to set up a program to help people that came here. I was still a volunteer at that point with National Council and also did some Federation work. But in ’90 when this huge wave came there were also significant numbers of people who came to Portland. They paled the number of what went to Israel. Most of them, not all of them, but a lot of them came here because they had families here, and that was the way we [?] settlement was decided was, helping people if they had a family, first go to where their families were. Yes, we had a big program in Portland to help. I think we also raised money separately for that. In those years, there are still a lot of needs but they were different needs than those needs. Israel was younger and the whole issue of resettlement for people in large numbers was a new phenomenon. I wasn’t around; I was a baby in ’48, so I’m sure Israel dealt with exactly that issue then, when you had all the Jews coming from especially the countries in the Middle East. They had to do it then. I’m too young to remember.

Hochstein: We’ve talked about some of the people you remember and worked with at Federation and we’ve talked about one of the big experiences which was this movement of Soviet Jewry and your involvement in it. Was there something else you wanted to add to that?
ROGOWAY:  Soviet Jewry—I really do believe when we look back a hundred years from now, this period in Jewish life will prove to be one of the most significant, and I was privileged to be a part of it. I don’t think there’s anything more I want to add that part. The Israel trips—each and every one was special and sometimes they were with professional colleagues. We would go to study. They did every year a mission for the lay and professional campaign chairs. One year we actually went to Ethiopia, which was again another unbelievable experience. We all met in Israel. We flew into Ethiopia for a day and a half and then we flew a little charter plane up to the Gondar region which is where the Ethiopian Jews had lived. There were not very many left anymore. By the time we went it was the tail end of this. Again, I don’t know what you’re familiar with. This was at the tail end but we got to see what they were doing in terms of the medical treatment. 

One of the people I met was a Dr. Rick Hodes who was a physician who had devoted his life to living in Ethiopia and working with this problem. He had adopted a whole bunch of Ethiopian kids himself. Single, an observant Jew, managed somehow to stay observant and work in this area of the world. We saw his clinic when we went to Gondar. In the village we went to there were no Jews anymore but we went to Hata, the home of a family that lived there. They were kind enough to let us come and see it. It really is going back centuries, you know, with a fire pit in the middle of the floor and the mother telling us how she had to walk a couple of hours every day to the river to get clean water. I mean, it was just mindboggling but in the same village there was the building that was a synagogue and you could see how it was a synagogue. There was another building that had been a school. They were doing everything—that was another piece that happened at the same time as the Soviet—what did we call that? “Operation Exodus” was the Soviet Jewry rescue. I’m trying to remember what we called the Ethiopian one. I don’t think it was “Magic Carpet.”

Hochstein: Magic Carpet was the ’48—
ROGOWAY:  The ’48 Yemenites and all of that. I think it was called the Ethiopian—maybe it will come to me, maybe it won’t. In the middle of the Soviet Jewry effort we had to stop. We had to add funds and information and everything else about this huge rescue of Ethiopian Jews. I’m sure you remember the story of the airlift that was [?]. I wasn’t in Israel then but it was not long after. Again we got to meet with families and see what was going when—I’m really jumping. When I was in Ethiopia, when we left we flew back to Israel. We couldn’t go on the same plane. I’m not sure why, something logistical. So the Ethiopians, we walked with them to their plane and then we got on one plane and they got on another. We got there just before them so that we could greet them when they landed. But it was a really good example of the gulf that they were going to have to cross. In Ethiopia, some of the programs that we saw were meant to educate them as to Western life: What’s a refrigerator? What’s a toilet? They get off the plane and they go into this room for welcome, and there’s this big platter of sandwiches sitting in the middle of the table. They’re sitting there and not touching them. Wondering, “Why? What’s going on?” They didn’t know what the cellophane wrap was around them. And [they sat] until somebody figured out what was going on and thought to open the sandwiches so that they could eat them. They were coming from centuries before. I can’t even think, but it was a huge, huge issue for Israel to absorb this population, way beyond any other because they were coming from such a different world. The Soviets that came were educated. They were prepared to live in a Western society. The Ethiopian Jews were not and that raised all sorts of problems that we got to learn about and see, and again tried to help with. 

All of these experiences were just amazing and I’m incredibly grateful that I had that opportunity. We also did a couple of fun trips in this country. We went to Washington, DC. We did a couple of trips to New York to see Jewish life in those communities. To me, Washington was much more political, to have some political meetings. In New York, it was much more cultural, to get an understanding, because most of us were immigrants, our families were immigrants who came that way. Those were fun trips and it was a great way of building leadership camaraderie of people who liked working together and knew each other in a different setting. They were fun and they were work. You know, when you go as a professional your job is to make sure your lay leaders have the best possible experience wherever you are, so you don’t get to sit back and relax until they’re all taken care of and you’ve done everything.

Hochstein: I missed that dimension of it. These trips you’re talking out, you were going as…
ROGOWAY:  As the professional.

Hochstein: And the leader and you had a group of community people who were…
ROGOWAY:  Yes. the American, DC, New York [trips], those are lay leaders and I was the professional on the trip to staff it and make sure it went well. I think one of the New York trips Charlie came also and I think another one Jen Feldman came also, but we were the professionals organizing the trip and making sure it went smoothly and making changes. It was inevitable you had to make changes en route. Most of the Israel trips were also with lay leaders where I would go as the professional, again depending on the size, one or two. There were some Israel trips and some trips to the Soviet Union that were with professional colleagues from all over the country. They would be strictly educational seminars. But most of the time it was my job to make sure that everybody had the right kind of experience,  “Was this person getting along?” “This person doesn’t look happy.” “What do we need to do?” A million and one of those kinds of things. But by and large I wouldn’t have missed them for a minute. Those were the big things that I realized we had not talked about at all.

Hochstein: I’m really glad to get them on tape and as part of the transcript, and let’s sit here for a second and think if there’s anything else.
ROGOWAY:  So I don’t wake up again in the middle of the night! I could give you lists and lists of people that were meaningful to my life and stayed part of my life. That was one of the great joys that just took me into worlds that I wouldn’t have ever known.

Hochstein: Thank you so much.
ROGOWAY:  Thank you.