Lesley Isenstein

Rosenthal: Can you start off by telling me your full name and place and date of your birth?
ISENSTEIN: Lesley Isenstein, born in Seattle Washington April 17, 1946.

Rosenthal: If you would just describe a little bit about your household – sisters, brothers.
ISENSTEIN: Growing up you mean? I had one sister and two parents and we all lived together in a happy little house. I don’t know what else to say.

Rosenthal: What about grandparents? Did your grandparents live near you?
ISENSTEIN: No we had no grandparents. For family we had my dad’s first cousin and his wife and three kids. The two of us families were the family and everyone else lived in Chicago. 

Rosenthal: Okay. And where did your grandparents come from before they got to Chicago? 
ISENSTEIN: My grandparents. Well I know names. My paternal grandfather came from Lithuania. I believe somewhere near Kovno. I don’t know if it was a town or it was a province or what.

Rosenthal: And what was their family name?
ISENSTEIN: Shapiro. And then my paternal grandmother came from a little town, or I guess it’s bigger than a little town called Sulwaki [spells] in northeastern Poland. When I looked at a map when we were in New York at a synagogue (the Eldridge street synagogue) I saw that those areas were quite close to each other. It was probably just World War II that changed what they’re called. 

Rosenthal: What was the last name there?
ISENSTEIN: Her name was Rakov [spells]. My maternal grandfather and my maternal grandmother both came from some little town in Ukraine. And it was the same little town. They met in the US. They both came very young and they met at one of those luftmenschen – the groups of the people who came from the same little shtetl. So that’s why they came from the same area. 

Rosenthal: What was your maternal grandparents’ last name?
ISENSTEIN: Cohn. You could never guess my religion, could you?

Rosenthal: What kind of religious affiliation did you have as a kid?
ISENSTEIN: Well that’s a funny story, because my mother was never educated Jewishly, I don’t think, just whatever they did in their family. My father came from an extremely Orthodox family and he hated it. Since my mother didn’t really know what to do, and my father was her be all and end all, we celebrated the holidays. I guess when they first moved to Seattle she tried to keep kosher. Seattle was a very tight community and the kosher butcher would not wait on her. 

Rosenthal: What year was that?
ISENSTEIN: It was 1942. Some lady who was really nice would have to buy her meat for her. Since my dad had such a chip on his shoulder about Orthodoxy anyway that was soon abandoned. We belonged to a Conservative synagogue. But when I got to the point where I would be starting Sunday school and Hebrew school, [they asked me] did I want to go three days a week or one day a week? So we switched to the Reform synagogue. That was true. It was classic Reform. So I didn’t have much of a religious upbringing at all. In terms of knowing much, knowing Hebrew, nothing

Rosenthal: But you went to Sunday school?
ISENSTEIN: I did and I was confirmed. 

Rosenthal: You were confirmed. Not bat mitzvahed?
ISENSTEIN: Not bat mitzvahed. They didn’t bat mitzvah there in those days. Just confirmed when I was 15 or something.

Rosenthal: Were you part of the youth group movement at all?
ISENSTEIN: I don’t remember. I think so. I went to summer camp.

Rosenthal: Where?
ISENSTEIN: Camp Ben Bow. Which I think was a JCC camp. I don’t remember where it was, even. But I think it was a JCC camp that I went to. A couple of times. And as an aside, my counselor turned out be Ken’s older sister. 

Rosenthal: Ken, your husband?
ISENSTEIN: Ken, my husband’s, older sister.

Rosenthal: Did your family celebrate the Jewish holidays?
ISENSTEIN: Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Rosenthal: What kinds of things did you do?
ISENSTEIN: Ate.

Rosenthal: Oh you ate. 
ISENSTEIN: [laughs] – We got together with my cousins, my dad’s cousin’s family. We did a Seder; we did Rosh Hashanah. We broke the fast. We did all of them, all of the big ones. Hanukkah was interesting because my parents were into assimilation. So we got presents every single night, and on Christmas we got to hang stockings and we got a big present. [laughs.] It’s just interesting from an historical perspective. 

Rosenthal: So then you went to public school.
ISENSTEIN: I went to public school.

Rosenthal: After graduation?
ISENSTEIN: My first year of college I went to Mills College in Oakland, California. That was the time that free speech had come of age in Berkeley and I wanted to transfer to Berkeley, but I was not allowed. So I went back to the University of Washington and I got a degree there in English literature. And after I married Ken I went to Davis and got a master’s in English. At that point I decided I didn’t want to go on for my PhD and be a college professor because I couldn’t stand the backbiting and the brown nosing that was going on in that department. I figured it was all the same. 

Rosenthal: Where did you meet Ken?
ISENSTEIN: Blind date in Seattle. A friend of mine, who I’m still friendly with, had made another date for the same night and so she called me and said, “Will you take this date?” And that turned out to be Ken [laughs].

Rosenthal: Just for the record, what was Ken’s background in Judaic life?
ISENSTEIN: He grew up in Forest Grove. He was not bar mitzvahed. His mom celebrated the holidays probably somewhat like we did. Her brothers and her parents lived… She grew up here after immigrating from somewhere in Russia or Ukraine, I don’t know.

Rosenthal: They came directly to Portland?
ISENSTEIN: They came to Vancouver, BC. Somehow they got down here to Portland. She grew up on the Old South side, as it was called then. 

Rosenthal: Do you remember her maiden name?
ISENSTEIN: Amiton. She was an Amiton.

Rosenthal: Do you want to want to tell me anything about your children so we have that for the record?
ISENSTEIN: I had two children with Ken. One was Alysa and one was Jamie. They both still are Alysa and Jamie [laughs]. They grew up in Havurah. Their sense of Judaism is from Havurah.

Rosenthal: How did you and Ken decide to settle in Portland?
ISENSTEIN: After the Army we came back to Seattle. He worked for people. He was a veterinarian and he wanted to open his own practice. He could not really find a place that he liked. But lo and behold in Portland, which is where he was from, he found a practice that he could work for and then he went out on his own.

Rosenthal: When you were first living here as a married couple did you belong to a synagogue then?
ISENSTEIN: No we did not.

Rosenthal: So you didn’t affiliate?
ISENSTEIN: Not when we first got here. Alysa turned one when we first got here, or just a few months after we got here. And we did not affiliate. Then as she got a little older I went to teach at Beth Israel. And that was where I saw Beth Israel and was not super happy with it. That was kind of when I met you, when we started to work to create a synagogue that would be much more what we wanted.

Rosenthal: Okay. So now let’s move on and talk about the beginnings of Havurah. You mentioned that we were trying to form something new. Talk a little bit about your role in getting the group started. 
ISENSTEIN: My role?

Rosenthal: I know that the first meeting was at your house.
ISENSTEIN: That’s true. But there was a lot of work before that.

Rosenthal: Okay so what was that work?
ISENSTEIN: I remember you being pregnant with Debra. We talked about it and then – see I’m a little fuzzy but I remember we set up a High Holiday service at the Neighborhood House. It wasn’t a synagogue or anything. In fact at the very beginning “synagogue” or “congregation” was a dirty word that we didn’t mention. So we danced around it. I’m just trying to think who was involved in that group. It was Margie and Elden and Ken and I and Marie and Lou [Livingston], eh, not so much.

Rosenthal: Priscilla and Tony [Kostiner]. 
ISENSTEIN: Priscilla helped us set up that first service and Art Levinson was involved.

Rosenthal: And Gene Borkan.
ISENSTEIN: Then, really? I don’t remember that. Where did he come from?

Rosenthal: I don’t know.
ISENSTEIN: [laughs] Okay, so then we had this kind of service at the Neighborhood House. It was just word of mouth. It was very well attended. It was hugely attended. I have no idea numbers of people. We had like an oneg or something afterwards. I remember food. That’s all I remember.

Rosenthal: But we had the first meeting at your house before that.
ISENSTEIN: Oh that was before that? Really truly? I thought the meeting to come together as a congregation was after that. 

Rosenthal: Yes. That’s true.
ISENSTEIN: And I thought that was the meeting at my house.

Rosenthal: No the very first meeting was also at your house.
ISENSTEIN: Oh, Okay. And then another meeting later. In between we also did the Havdalah at – I don’t remember – we were going to do it at Gabriel Park, so we wound up at the Weils. Then we had a meeting at our house. It was 20 families who came together to start a congregation. Meantime we had this mailing list and we would mail people things about what we were doing. 

Rosenthal: What, though, in your mind was the impetus for getting together in the first place?
ISENSTEIN: To create something where I wanted my children to go. My kids were my main motivation. I wanted a place where they could be comfortable, where I was comfortable, where they would learn. And I didn’t care for what I saw at Beth Israel.

Rosenthal: Okay. So we decided to form something more concrete than just a social group?
ISENSTEIN: Right. I learned from Elden how to run a meeting so that you get what you want out of it [laughs]. I remember the meeting. Also Ben Green was there, and Michael and Meryl Nussbuam and the Weil’s and us, and I thought Marie [Livingston] was there. Who else was there? Chestlers were there, Tarlows, both Art Tarlow and his folks, both of them. Eventually his brother joined too. Then Alan Berg decided to take a leave from Beth Israel. We worked with him and he became our rabbi for $12,000 a year.

Rosenthal: How did we raise $12,000?
ISENSTEIN: Geez, I don’t know. First we started with… Dues were like $100 a family and eventually we had to raise them. I don’t remember where we got $12,000.

Rosenthal: What was your role? The congregation started some time in – when did Rabbi Berg come to work?
ISENSTEIN: I think that was 1987.

Rosenthal: No ’70…
ISENSTEIN: ‘78. ‘87 is when I married Steve. 

Rosenthal: ’78, ‘79. What was your role then?
ISENSTEIN: I was doing the newsletter, which was very important. I remember meetings with Alan, Art Tarlow, and Elden – the four of us setting up by-laws, setting up the legal structure, going for the 501(C)(3), just setting up the legal structure.

Rosenthal: But then you eventually became president, right?
ISENSTEIN: Right. 

Rosenthal: You were the second president? 
ISENSTEIN: Right.

Rosenthal: What kinds of things happened during your presidency that were important?
ISENSTEIN: Well, Ken got a brain tumor.

Rosenthal: While you were president?
ISENSTEIN: While I was president. [pause] So Ken had the brain tumor and he was not even 40; he was 35. We were a group of young professional people and it blew all of us away. It was such a difficult time. It was very stressful for the whole congregation. Then Michael Nussbaum also wound up with a brain tumor. It was a very difficult time for the congregation. I remember – oh what was his name – Morrie [Hirshman].

Rosenthal: Hirshfield.
ISENSTEIN: No, not Aryeh Hirschfield. No Morrie-something-or-other from the Reform movement came up. We had joined? Had we joined it at that point?

Rosenthal: I don’t know.
ISENSTEIN: With the tumors and the stress, and the this, and the that, Rabbi Berg went back to Beth Israel. Then we tried to get Morrie-whatever-his-name was from UAHC, who would help us start looking for a rabbi. And we went about, I think it was a year or two years maybe before we hired Roy Furman. That’s what I remember.

Rosenthal: So even with all that stress and trying to keep things going, what did the Havurah community provide then for you or for your family? How did you see Havurah from the standpoint of somebody who was trying to be a leader and also trying to deal with a family crisis?
ISENSTEIN: I think a lot of that got erased. I remember sitting in Joan Rosenbaum’s living room and Alan telling us he was quitting. I remember that as clear as a day. I think for a while I actually took a leave of absence, which Morrie whatever-his-name-was was all up in arms about. Because he just didn’t think we were stable and we couldn’t get a rabbi and blah, blah, blah. But I think I took a leave of absence during some of that time to kind of get my feet back on the ground and get my family moving as forward as they were going to be able to move at that time. I thought everything as far as the Havurah went, functioned really well with my handing off to Joan [Rosenbaum], who was the vice-president at that time, and then taking it back. I thought everything was in place and went really, really well.

Rosenthal: Okay. And then, as things moved ahead, what were some of the important aspects of Havurah, important things that happened that made you want to stay part of the group?
ISENSTEIN: It’s hard to separate that from the emotional. This is partly my baby so I wouldn’t think of leaving it. We got the religious school up and running. You know I had such a deficient Jewish education, putting services together, helping put the religious school together was my education. That’s how I learned my Judaism. I was going to relate something. The first High Holiday service that we did as a congregation and we had it at the Jewish Community Center. Rabbi Berg had brought Aryeh Hirschfield in. This was before he was rabbi or anything. He was just from the House of Peace and Love in Berkeley. He came and he did some music with us. I remember having a – a something – and it was at the West Hills Unitarian Church, which is where we had first started. Not for the High Holidays, but for our Friday night services and eventually our Shabbat school was at West Hills. I remember being in that upstairs congregational room of theirs. We were sitting around and Aryeh was asking people for songs to sing. I said Oseh Shalom and I remember him giving me such a bizarre look that I would have thought of something that simple, but I’d never heard it before until my kids went to Neveh Shalom pre-school. I remember that really clearly. He looked at me like I was coming from Mars. 

Rosenthal: So you were saying that Havurah gave you an opportunity to learn stuff.
ISENSTEIN: It’s like a teacher has to learn their stuff in order to present to the kids. I had to learn a lot of my Judaism in order to help shape this community, help shape the synagogue. I helped shape the religious school, the services. I learned what a service was. Who knew [laughs]?

Rosenthal: Did you think that was unique to Havurah?
ISENSTEIN: It certainly was to my experience. I grew up in a very classical Reform and then at Beth Israel, which was at that time pretty classical Reform. The rabbi spoke from on high. To learn parts of the services and the prayers versus the nigunim, the songs and the psalms and all that stuff was new and was new to me and exciting and interesting because I like learning things like that.

Rosenthal: Okay. Good. So you maintained involvement in the synagogue through the years. What kinds of changes have you seen both in the congregation and in the Jewish community of Portland as a whole?
ISENSTEIN: Well due to health problems I backed out of the Jewish community, because I was very active in the community.

Rosenthal: What were some of the things you were active in?
ISENSTEIN: I was on the Jewish Family and Child Service board because they had come in when I needed help in my house because of Ken. Then I became president of that and then from there I was – I can’t even remember them all. I was involved with bringing Melton into the community. I was involved with Federation; at some point I was head of the allocations committee. I was on the Federation board. I don’t even remember everything. Oh, let me backtrack a minute. When we were putting the congregation together Rabbi Stampfer from Neveh Shalom called me one day and said, “We are getting new prayer books and we’re going to bury our old ones. Would you like them?” And those were the first prayer books we had. In retrospect Rabbi Stampfer was very supportive of us emerging. I’ll leave it at that [laughs].

Rosenthal: And changes in Havurah over the years?
ISENSTEIN: Let me go back. I think the community (not counting Rabbi Stampfer, because I leave him out of this conversation) in general with the new group of rabbis for the most part, the community has been less territorial and more community [minded] than it had been when we were there. When we were looking for rabbis – I won’t go there – I’ve got all these feelings and emotions but I don’t want to go there, because it’s going to be on tape forever, right? Try to be positive, right?

Rosenthal: Okay. So the congregation has gone from 20 families to now we’re over 350 families. What are some of the things that you think are good and what are some of the things that aren’t so good? Do you have some feelings about that?
ISENSTEIN: Once I married Steve I was –

Rosenthal: What year?
ISENSTEIN: 1987. I was not so involved with Havurah. He is seven years older than me and comes from such a traditional background that he wasn’t totally comfortable. Eventually he got more comfortable. At that point I kind of pulled back. That was just about when Joey was being hired. I no longer have kids in the religious school so I don’t feel very qualified to say where we are today. I do my little things and then I back off. And then I’ll do another little thing and then I’ll back off, but I don’t feel like I have a handle on what Havurah is today versus what it was 20 years ago or 30 years ago.

Rosenthal: What about involvement in the broader Portland community? You’ve done a huge amount of stuff in the Jewish community. Are you involved in organizational or volunteer work in the broader community at this time?
ISENSTEIN: No, I’m not really involved in anything right now. I’m a member of this committee. But I was sick, as you know, all winter. I’ve got to move back in. No I really have felt guilty and terrible that I haven’t been involved in anything in the last while. Even when I got the shingles, I quit. I was on the board of the Cedar Sinai Family Services [Jewish Family and Child Services]. I felt like I needed to quit that because I was sick. I was on the overseas special projects committee of the Federation. I backed off when I had the shingles and I had actually co-chaired that one too. I’ve co-chaired Melton. So many I just don’t remember. I backed off from that with the shingles, but then I joined again. Then I got the meningitis. That committee does its work in the late winter and the spring. I couldn’t participate in that this year so I resigned again. 

Rosenthal: As far as your involvement in the Jewish community does that relate to your early involvement in a leadership role in putting Havurah together?
ISENSTEIN: It clearly does. Actually as you asked the question I was thinking. I sat – there was CAJE –

Rosenthal: – the Coalition of Jewish Education-
ISENSTEIN: Here in Portland, yes. They used to have board meetings or something. I was on that representing Havurah. It gave me an entrée into the broader community. Then through my involvement with Jewish Family [and Child Services] I got into the bigger broader community. Like I said early in this interview, Elden [Rosenthal] taught me how to run a meeting [laughs] to get what you want out of a meeting. It gave me a lot of confidence and it gave me skills. From understanding more of Judaism through Havurah was partly how I got involved with bringing Melton into Portland. So, yes, I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for Havurah.

Rosenthal: What direction would you like to see the synagogue move toward in the future? 
ISENSTEIN: I would like to see Havurah take a more active role in the broader Jewish community. They do well in the broader community. Part of my work with the Federation I was trying my hardest to integrate Havurah into the broader community and it didn’t really work. After I quit it started happening. I don’t know if maybe I laid some groundwork. I don’t know what. But after I quit it started happening. I would very much like to see Havurah take its place as a major synagogue within this community. When people are looking at things they don’t just look at Beth Israel and Neveh Shalom and maybe at Shaarie Torah, I don’t know, but they look at Havurah. Havurah has to take the initiative in that and that’s one of the biggest things I would like to see. 

Rosenthal: Okay. Are there any other things that you thought about that you wanted to talk about? Your experiences or your kids experiences? Anything like that?
ISENSTEIN: Yes. Because I’ve seen it starting to happen a little bit again. I taught in religious school as we all have. One of the things I had wanted to do that never came to fruition (partly because we never owned where we were for so long), was I wanted the structure of the religious school to work around the calendar and around planting. So that when it was Sukkot time and it was harvest time we had something we could do. When it was Pesach we could start planting. All the holidays do have an agricultural component to it. I wanted (it never happened) I wanted to see the religious school using that as kind of a structure.

Rosenthal: We’ve never had the land.
ISENSTEIN: And we’ve never had the land to do it. And then I didn’t pursue it after a while. But when I was teaching I wanted to do that very badly. 

Rosenthal: I think those are all my questions, unless you have anything more you want to add.
ISENSTEIN: I don’t think so. I’m sorry I don’t have a better memory. When you’ve gone through stress it tends to wipe out whole chunks of your memory.

Rosenthal: Well the question that I would have is that when we had that first meeting at your house and my recollection was that it was June of 1978 because my daughter Debra, was very young; she was a tiny baby. There were quite a few people who came to that meeting but I don’t remember how they got there. I wondered if your remember what brought them. It was a somewhat disparate group,
ISENSTEIN: I think for one thing, maybe it was Michael Axman who brought it to Kaiser. I don’t know? But the Weils, the Nussbaums, who else? There were a whole bunch of Kaiser doctors involved and particularly from the OB-GYN area [laughs]. That’s the only thing I can think of because we knew the Axmans but we didn’t know the Weils until they came in. That’s the only connection I can think of. I think it was word of mouth. Harriet Braunsten was involved in the very beginning. She’s now Harriet Shlim [Richard]. Yes we just – each of us in our own ways went in different directions and brought people. I don’t know where Gene Borkan came from [laughs]. No idea. Or Ben [Green]. I thought Ben had brought Gene in but where did Ben come from?

Rosenthal: I don’t know, but they were at the first meeting at your house. That was the first time I met them. 
ISENSTEIN: Yes. But that wasn’t the congregational meeting. Oh that was when we were still playing “we can’t talk about that.” Okay. I do remember them and I remember exactly where they were sitting in my house. 

Rosenthal: Okay. I think we’ll end the interview there and I thank you very much for participating.