Morris Tiktin

Frankel: Good afternoon.
TIKTIN: Good afternoon. 

Frankel: I will ask by stating your full name, date, and place of birth.
TIKTIN: Okay, Morris Tiktin [spells it]. Lets see, what’s the second question?

Frankel: Where were you born and when?
TIKTIN: Born in New York City, on March of 1921.

Frankel:  Tell me a little bit about your family. Who lived in your household, names of your parents?
TIKTIN: My family came from Palestine, and they arrived here a little before my birth. My father was a very distinguished journalist and writer in what was then Palestine, because we didn’t become a country until about 19 – What was it?

Frankel:  1948.
TIKTIN: ‘48, good. So I was the first child here to speak English and to get an advanced degree – to get a couple of advanced New York city degrees to the great delight of my family, all of whom had to work. Because they had to go to work, they couldn’t afford to go to school. 

Frankel: Was your father born in Palestine?
TIKTIN: No, my father was born in Russia, somewhere before the turn of the century. And he came here; he was sent here, here being Palestine, probably to escape service in the czar’s army. An old story, you probably know an awful lot about it, probably more than I do, because my father was a rather closed individual. So I got ahold of this just by… it bounced off from other sources. 

Frankel: What was his name?
TIKTIN: Sh’muel. Samuel Ephraim Tiktin. 

Frankel:  Was Tiktin the Russian name, or did he change it in Palestine?
TIKTIN: That’s a whole long story itself. There is some controversy, and I’ve never figured out what the thing was all about. When I was in France during the war, I met an uncle of mine – what was his name? Anyway, he told me that our name really wasn’t Tiktin. It’s a strange experience, because when somebody says you are not…

Frankel: You’re not who you think you are? 
TIKTIN: It creates great confusion. There was a town named Tiktin in Russia, and that’s where they came from. My father came from Jewish scholars. He was a very brilliant man, but I think he had difficulty, psychologically. He was not a very open guy. He never knew how to work the system in the USA. You’ve got to know how to work the system. Had I been his psychologist I could have done great things for him. But I was a mite of, you know, days old.

Frankel: [Laughs] What about your mother?
TIKTIN: My mother was a woman who spoke Yiddish, and my father left her here [in Palestine] with their children while he came to this country. But unfortunately, it was in the middle of the war, and so there was no way for Mother and the family to get over here.

Frankel:  What was her name?
TIKTIN: Her name was Miriam, Ma’riam.

Frankel:  Do you know her maiden name?
TIKTIN: Sachs, if you were to Google Sachs she probably would emerge. I never did it, for a lot of reasons that are maybe irrelevant to this story, or maybe they’re relevant, I don’t know. So she came here with me – no I wasn’t born yet. She came here without me [laughs]. I was in utero at the time. 

Frankel:  Did you have siblings?
TIKTIN: Yes, oh yes. 

Frankel: How many?
TIKTIN: Well, the way this started was that the marriage itself is an interesting story to be told all by itself. What happened was there was a myth that if you got married in Judaism, and the wife died, it was the obligation of one of her siblings to step into her place. My brother, who was a bit of a scholar, and I tried to research it, but we couldn’t find it, but we always believed that that’s what happened, that she married my father because of his grief, his mourning, because he lost his wife. 

So what we had was, we had an older brother named Eddie, a separate story, which we won’t have time to go into. There was Eddie, there was Velvel, (William), the next one. There was Chana, who came here, couldn’t go to work, because they didn’t have the money to let her do that, so she became a stenographer for the Jewish telegraphic agency. She was quite a lady, but she didn’t have any formal education. My mother, by the way, could not speak English. She spoke only Yiddish. She and I communicated, as did she with her siblings and her families and her loved ones, in Yiddish. That was my first language. And we moved into Harlem, what is now a very elegant place because of gentrification, and I went to the yeshiva forever. Hated it, disliked it intensely. Every Jewish boy hates the cheder. 

Frankel: Were your parents observant?
TIKTIN: Oh! Up to the eyeballs. So sad. So all of my training, every success I had, was self-taught. I’m a great autodidactic. Put me in a place and I’ll find my way around. They didn’t know what side was up. 

Frankel:  So your older siblings were from a different mother?
TIKTIN: From a different mother. Not all of them, all of them except one. Eddie was my father’s second babe, second child. We didn’t, like most American families, like Yankees, they [didn’t] talked about the past, all these things. So I’ve had to piece this together, from relatives, and things of that kind. 

Frankel: And your mother, clearly, also lived in Palestine. How did she get to Palestine? 
TIKTIN: She was born in Palestine. And from a family named Sachs, a big family.

Frankel: Did you know your maternal grandparents?
TIKTIN: No. No I didn’t. Never met them.

Frankel: So do you know, how many generations they had lived in Palestine, from your mother’s side?
TIKTIN: I don’t know. I don’t know. So how do things end up now? It’s not my number one agenda now to follow, to go to one of those people in Utah to know. I should be more interested, but I’m really not. 

Frankel: But your parents clearly spoke Hebrew as well?
TIKTIN: No, my mother spoke only Yiddish; my father was brilliant in Hebrew. He was a writer, he wrote for the equivalent to an important paper, you know, Hadar. Do you know?

Frankel:  The Hadar was an American Hebrew paper.
TIKTIN: Exactly. So he wrote for them, and he wrote for the Jewish papers in Yiddish. He was really quite an outstanding man, who never quite materialized his great potential. 

Frankel: And so, at home, did you speak Yiddish as well?
TIKTIN: Oh, from day one. 

Frankel:  And what do you recall? Did you have extended family here? Any extended family?
TIKTIN: No, because the principal people of that extended family came here with my father. Just before the war, while he was going to wait, figuratively, for my mother to show up with the rest of the kids. The rest of the kids were Willie, Eddie, Judah (Yudel) and I was not on the scene. I was produced here. 

Frankel:  And so you went to cheder full time, or was that after school?
TIKTIN: No, I went to cheder all the time. I had an extensive Jewish education, and I’ll tell you again. I disliked every second of it. 

Frankel: Until what grade did you go to cheder? 
TIKTIN: I went to cheder, you see, a local cheder. And I ultimately went to the yeshiva, you know the yeshiva of which the yeshiva college – 

Frankel: Yeshiva University?
TIKTIN: Now university. It was just a little dinky podunk college at the time. God, I’ve got to sort this all back for you. I’m [Yiddish] but I’ll get it for you. 

Frankel: That’s fine. So, just describe a Friday evening at home. Your parents were very religious?
TIKTIN: Very religious.

Frankel: What was it like?
TIKTIN: Friday was not very important. My father went to shul because he was older. I stayed home. My mother stayed home and she ran the household. She was a very kind, lovely. I remember her with great kindness. She taught me all the psychology I needed to become a very successful psychologist, by example, by how you relate to people. And we came here. But a lot of it is hazy, really.

Frankel: Did you have a bar mitzvah?
TIKTIN: [laughs] Is the Pope Polish? My father was a writer. He wrote three speeches for me. A Hebrew speech, an English speech, and a Yiddish speech. Can you conceive of this idiocy? [laughs] Oh god it is so funny, I mean, it really wasn’t funny, it was sad. But…

Frankel: Did you rebel? Did you not…?
TIKTIN: Oh, I rebelled all the time. On Saturday morning when my father went to shul and I was old enough, I was theoretically going to shul at a different level, but I never went to shul. I used to visit my friends We went to the public library and I read The Nation, The New Republic, and what else? The New Yorker. All my life since the age of 11. I still do exactly that thing right now. I used to come home and lie to them about where I had been. I learned how to lie. That is, by the way, a very important skill. I mean, you have to do it appropriately. But I had to tell them I was in shul, and really, I wasn’t in shul.

Frankel: What was your relationship with your siblings?
TIKTIN: Well, I was the baby, so they took good care of me. They were a little jealous, I think, because I didn’t have to work. And I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to do. I was really spoiled rotten, actually.

Frankel: So, none of your siblings finished high school?
TIKTIN: None of my siblings finished high school.

Frankel: And so your father continued to be a journalist in this country?
TIKTIN: In this country. And he had some stray jobs, but he never knew how to make a living in this country. He didn’t know how you comport yourself. He didn’t bother to become as good in English as he was in the other languages. He had a great reputation, as a journalist, as a writer. He had a lot of very good status. The rabbis respected and loved him. I didn’t know any of this until we were taking him [on] his funeral cart, to be laid to rest. I realized that the rabbis adored him. I mean adored him in the sense of what they knew of him. I was just…. [turns away from microphone, greets a person] I was outraged that I had to get all this second, third hand. I had to make most of it up, really. A lot of the things I would tell… I was just a smart Jewish kid. 

Frankel: So, after high school…?
TIKTIN: For who? Whose high school?

Frankel: For you. 
TIKTIN: After high school… See, I got myself out of the yeshiva by turning myself, by going to the public school, by going to see Dr. Chaim, who was the principal of the local public school, and I told him some lie – God, am I putting this down right? I am going to have to edit this. Nah, doesn’t matter; it is true. Because there was nobody to rescue me. So I went down and I told him that we had moved here, which is true, and that I needed to be put into school, which was by this time high school. I had gone to public school [interruption from the background] in the third grade, then they got me back to the yeshiva again! I couldn’t escape; it is like a thorn in my side. But I obviously did OK. People liked me. I knew how to relate. My mother taught me how to relate to people. I became an expert at it. That was my professional field, later. My masters and PhD, and so on. So, I had a good life, really. 

Frankel: So you went to high school, to the public high school.
TIKTIN: To the public high school, where I did very well. Very well, because I knew how to work, I knew how you do it. The teachers were all liberal, and I was a liberal. I was already a liberal, you know, all skirted with the party, and that sort of thing. 

Frankel: And when did you graduate from high school?
TIKTIN: 1938. 

Frankel: And then what?
TIKTIN: Well, shortly I did some odd jobs with my aunt Emma, who had a lot of pull in the community. 

Frankel: And who was she in the family?
TIKTIN: She was Mother’s sister. She was a very charming, a very well connected lady in the community. She got me a number of jobs, all of which were inappropriate for me. They required addition, subtraction – and mathematics were never my greatest [strength]. But I had to learn that, because I made it in this country. Oh, how nice! [turns away from microphone]

So anyway, I had a good life, I played on the streets. I never did delinquency. I never got in trouble with the law. I never hung out in pool halls. I was always well liked everywhere I went. I had a touch for people, which I got from my mother I think. 

Frankel: So after high school…?
TIKTIN: After high school, World War II had come upon us. The best part of my life was World War II, at that time.

Frankel: You enlisted? 
TIKTIN: No. I was drafted. I was drafted, but from day one I made the most of it, because I knew there were some treasures here that nobody would tell me about but that I could catch on. There’s a certain way to do it, and there’s a certain way not to do it. And I knew how to do it. 

Frankel: So where were you in the [background sounds become very loud] [service]?
TIKTIN: [unintelligible] … I think in a minute, as soon as we finish this unit, we’ll move to another place. 

Anyway, the story is: I went to New Jersey for induction, and then a number of things came my way that were very lucky. I had a girlfriend when I was 20 years old, and she said to me, “You do not want to go into the service as an infantryman. You want to have something to show.” She was a medical person. She worked for doctors. She sent me to a place to teach me urine analysis and blood chemistry. I disliked it intensely. Anyway, I didn’t – Should we relocate ourselves? 

Frankel: So you mentioned that your girlfriend suggested that you take a class?
TIKTIN: So that I could present credentials. When I got into the army at Fort Dix, New Jersey, I already had papers. You got to have papers. I didn’t think that they wanted to see the papers, that they’d believe me, which was true. I took the course, and I told them. What they did was, they moved me into a small detachment of 23 New York wise guys that didn’t want to work, didn’t want to be in the army. Were not cooperative. And I was made sort of like the acting corporal. I was the first officer, so to speak. [unintelligible] …wanted to be a corporal, but you know in the land of the blind…

Frankel: The one eye [laughs]…
TIKTIN: So I was the one-eyed king. And they made me a doctor right away. I am not kidding you! They put me in charge. The boss was an Irishman, an idiot, a total idiot, and he didn’t want to work and he was a drunk. You know how we knew he was a drunk? The person who cleaned his room used to mark his booze. I don’t know why they did it. I didn’t ask him too.

And so I was in there for maybe two months, dispensing castor oil and laxative pills. This stuff could almost kill you. If you had appendicitis you could die. But fortunately I never killed anybody. And one day while there, we were visited by a group of officers and there were always rumors. The rumors were that we were going to be parachuted behind the Polish lines. A total lie [laughs]. Never jumped out of an airplane. Anyway, what happened was, they said, “Tiktin get yourself packed up.” I left these yokels behind me and they sent me to the University of Cincinnati for nine months in the middle of World War II, where you can get killed, you understand. They took me right out of the anti-tank – where you could really get killed – and they sent me to the University of Cincinnati!

Frankel: What did you study there?
TIKTIN: German! Which I already spoke!

Frankel: Oh, they wanted you to learn German. 
TIKTIN: They wanted me to learn German. Well if you could speak Yiddish, you could almost…

Frankel: Fake it?
TIKTIN: [Mumbled] because a lot of the world is fake. And I didn’t know my way around, but I was sure going to make it in the Army. So I was there for nine months. I met the woman who was later going to become my wife. She was a student at the university. Very, very wise, smart woman. She furthered my education because I didn’t have any college education. I had been to City College at night, and that’s no way to get an education. So anyway, she was my girlfriend in the first few months of the Army, but she was too far away to really progress with that. She was in New York. I was in Cincinnati. And I had a great time. I got a hell of a lot of university credits for that narrishkeit, you know. You speak Yiddish? 

Frankel: Mmm hmm. 
TIKTIN: So I got about two years of advanced education by that program. When I was through with that they disbanded the whole program and sent me to Military Intelligence School, which didn’t require much intelligence, really. But I could make that fairly kindly… what did I do? And then they sent me overseas! That was Germany, Belgium; mostly it was Germany, France. Germany and France. Made a lot of lovely experiences with that thing.

Frankel: So you were in an office?
TIKTIN: No, I really wasn’t in an office. They put me in a group of five or six GIs; they gave me a rank of sergeant, so I did pretty well. The guys I was with still didn’t want to be there; they were really goof-offs. I stayed there, and I never got shot at, except once, which is a separate story, which I will tell you separately. And then when that was over, I decided I didn’t want to go home yet. I wanted to stay in the Army a short while, but not as a permanent guy. I read somewhere on a brochure they had a school in France! In Grenoble! You know that neighborhood? 

So they sent me to a school in Grenoble for a couple of months, where I had a wonderful, marvelous time. There were no shootings, and in that time we went through V-J Day, the war was over. And nobody supervised us. I went from there to London, to go to another university. I picked up little credits, later on, sort of helped me make my way. Because I wasn’t that great of a student. I wasn’t a general student that joins the fraternity. And then I came home.

Frankel: Were you aware of the massacre of the Jews, were you aware of the concentration camps? When you were a soldier in Europe? 
TIKTIN: No, No. Nothing. Nothing, zero. See, we didn’t know about it until Eisenhower toured the camps. And what he did was he went into the towns closest to the camps, and insisted that the locals be taken against their will, be demonstrated to, because they said they never heard about it. I don’t know if it’s possible that that could have happened, if you lived in those areas, you couldn’t [know]? I was untouched, I’ll tell you right now. And then the war was over, and I came here, and then there are a lot of small details that may or may not be of interest. 

Frankel: But when you went back, you went back to New York, after the war?
TIKTIN: No, no. I went to Cincinnati, where I met my wife. 

Frankel: Did you go back to the University of Cincinnati?
TIKTIN: Yes. Yes, they loved me, because I was one of their people. 

Frankel: What did you do? Did you then enroll as a regular student?
TIKTIN: Remember, we had the GI bill, so you could go anywhere you wanted to go. You could go to Harvard. But I went there because they knew me. My wife had a clerical job there, at the Jewish Community Center, and it was a good place. People took the trouble to talk to you. I was thinking about it the other day, people would give you time. When I came out, what was I going to do? I enrolled immediately in the law school in Cincinnati. And the social workers, who knew my work for other reasons, I was sort of the Joe DiMaggio of social work. Do you know Joe DiMaggio? They could smell me out as a candidate for the helping professions. So I was on the way to register to go to law school, and the social workers wouldn’t let me go! They said, “You should be working with people, not lawyers and other stuff.” They were right, by the way [laughs]. My son wanted to become the lawyer and the judge he has since become.

Remember, everything, all of this, was touched like Midas, and I had nothing to do with it. I knew nobody. I had no connections in the army, but each was an opportunity that I could take advantage of, because if you show some enthusiasm, they’ll help. Doesn’t cost them anything to give you breaks. I was there; I went there. I then went to Cleveland. By this time I was sort of interested in Freudian psychiatry and I was an avid reader and I had a wonderful wife who was a scholar, a scholarly lady, a brilliant lady.  

Frankel: What was her name?
TIKTIN:  Elizabeth.

Frankel: And her maiden name?
TIKTIN: Hussel. She was not Jewish. And both of our families excommunicated us. Have you ever been excommunicated?

Frankel: No.
TIKTIN: I don’t think you want it. It’s scary. I didn’t know about the excommunication until years later. I was so mad at my family for doing that. Anyway, I ultimately got into graduate school, and again, I keep saying: the rest is history. There were just opportunities waiting for me to grab them. 

Frankel: So, graduate school was in Cleveland? 
TIKTIN: In Cleveland. 

Frankel: What did you major in, in graduate school?
TIKTIN: My first major was in in social work. And I went immediately from there into the Jewish Community Center movement. Do you know anything about that?

Frankel: A movement?
TIKTIN: Yes, a big movement. Oh, it’s not relevant to the present, but I’ll keep you posted.

Frankel: Well, how do you define the Jewish Community Center movement?
TIKTIN: Today, if you go to the YMHA, they’re part of a large network of Jewish centers. But they are not religious. So I got into that, and I had, again, some good breaks, and the opportunity to see something good when I saw it, which nobody else might have seen. 

Frankel: Was that also in Cleveland?
TIKTIN: No. Well, it was started in Cleveland. I got my master’s degree in Cleveland and then I worked there for a short while, and then I went to, what did I do? It’s confused, there’s too much, I’m trying to give you a whole meal at one point. 

Frankel: It’s fine.
TIKTIN: I had just some good breaks and people who cared about me and steered me and gave me hints and where to go.

Frankel: So do you recall, after Cleveland, where you moved?
TIKTIN: Yes! After Cleveland there’s the movement, the Community Center movement sent me to Newark because I had built up friendships and a cadre of political stuff. So they sent me to Newark on the advice of one of their very favorite people, one of their specialized people in one of those fields. I became sort of his boy and he semi took care of me. He thought I had something to offer.

Frankel: So you worked for Jewish Community Center in New Jersey?
TIKTIN: I stayed in the Jewish movement from the time I got my masters degree, all the way until, by luck, I met a psychologist who steered me into becoming a psychologist. It’s luck! There was a psychologist who had just written a book on intensive group psychotherapy. Somewhat of a fake, but he was a kindly fake to me. He taught me how to work the system. And he advised me to come to LA and come to his office for a month and he would teach me what I needed to know. And he did. He didn’t know he was teaching it to me, but he taught it to me. And at this point I was still working for the center.

Frankel: In New Jersey? 
TIKTIN: No, I moved from New Jersey to Cleveland and in Cleveland I met the psychologist who had just written this book, the first of its kind. 

Frankel: Do you remember his name?
TIKTIN: Yes! I don’t know if I should tell you, I don’t think I want you to use it. His name was Bach. He was interested in anger management, and he taught me all he knew very quickly. And when I opened my practice shortly thereafter, I used him as my model of how to run this thing. I was enormously successful. It didn’t take much.

Frankel: That was already in Cleveland? 
TIKTIN: [Pauses] By this time, I was already in Portland. How did I get here?

Frankel: So were you a psychologist before you worked for the JCC here?
TIKTIN: I became a psychologist only for charismatic reasons. I had a very unorthodox training program. And when I came to each of these places, I already came as an accomplished professional, and so I brought charisma. I didn’t have to work as hard, and they didn’t treat me like a teenage kid. I was very lucky.

Frankel: Do you remember when you moved to Portland? The year?
TIKTIN: Yes. I moved to Portland, I believe, in 1960.

Frankel: OK.
TIKTIN: They came and got me to become the executive director, see, the outfit I told you about that was the organization of these place, you know, took care of my thing, told the people here that I was a good guy. They sent somebody to New York. They interviewed me. They brought me there, they moved me there, and I worked there for a bar-mitzvarii of years, for 13 years. 

Frankel: In Portland?
TIKTIN: In Portland.

Frankel: And had you replaced someone?
TIKTIN: Yes, but he was a very disliked fellow [laughs].

Frankel: So you don’t want to mention his name?
TIKTIN: No, no. I think he probably died by now, him I don’t care about. He was a nothing.

Frankel: So can you describe the scene, the Portland scene, when you arrived?
TIKTIN: Yes. 

Frankel: Who were the rabbis, who were the leaders, the neighborhoods…?
TIKTIN: Yes. There was a small cadre of Jewish professionals. The guy who was the executive director of The Home for the Aged, the guy who was –

Frankel: Do you remember their names, any of their names?
TIKTIN: I probably do. Give me a minute; I’ll get us there. So, we would meet. But I was an independent guy, the people and my employers assumed I knew what I was doing, and I did. I brought interesting things to my job. And this is where I connect to the reason you called me. 

Frankel: The Eggheads.
TIKTIN: Because what happened was, there was a family named Gordon, you know the name?

Frankel: Bill Gordon and Helen?
TIKTIN: Bill Gordon! Good! And Helen. Helen was one of the most dynamic women that you could probably want to meet. She worked with handicapped children, and she had developed a whole new shtick that nobody else knew anything about. She was really quite a dynamo. And this is where our story really begins because I was her supervisor and it took all I could to be ahead of the game so that she has some respect for me. And she was rather – did you ever see her? No, you never met her.

Frankel: I never met her.
TIKTIN: You never saw her. She was a small, dynamic woman; she’s like a monster. She’s very smart, very quick, very determined. We got along well. We kind of left each other be and she ran it, because I didn’t know anything about how you run a nursery for children. At this point, I decided that I had to have a PhD in order to survive in this field. And I said to my friend Bach, do I need a PhD? He said no. But he didn’t know what he was talking about. I quickly managed the PhD, here in Oregon. I used to travel down a couple of days a week –

Frankel: To the University of Oregon?
TIKTIN: The University of Oregon. I made myself at home and I did very well. At that point they were already treating me like a visiting professor. I had a good time. And I decided that since the Jewish Community Center had been so nice to me, instead of getting my degree and leaving, I stayed an extra year. I didn’t tell them that, but I did it because they were nice to me. They treated me very equably, very respectfully. 

Frankel: So tell me, before we move on to the Eggheads, about the community. First of all, where was the JCC located when you first came?
TIKTIN: It was not where it is today. Have you been to the JCC here? They had a place down on 12th Avenue; I don’t think you saw that because it’s a series of freeways.

Frankel: Right.
TIKTIN: And one of my jobs was to bring theater, drama, romance, lectures, whatever to this job. I was very, again, fairly charismatic and noisy. And it’s a place where a little guy could make a little noise and get going a long way. Because the job itself was a political job, you have to know the mayor. You have to know how to work with the board of directors.

Frankel: Who was the mayor at the time?
TIKTIN: God, I’m sorry you asked me. I’ll tell you in a minute. What the hell was his name?

Frankel: It’s easy to find out. 
TIKTIN: Right, see, I could meet him on a train somewhere, and he knew who I was and I knew who he was. There was a lot of this stuff going on. If you can make it in New York, which I didn’t have to make, you can make it anywhere. And these people would open their offices, and introduce you to people, and treat you with charismatic respect. 

Frankel: And again, you mentioned all the cultural activities that you provided. Who were some of the speakers that you brought to Portland? Do you remember any of them?
TIKTIN: Do you remember the lady who invented the women’s movement?

Frankel: Betty Friedan? 
TIKTIN:  Yes! She had just written a book, and so we made –

Frankel: The Jewish Mystique.
TIKTIN: Yes. No, not quite. It wasn’t The Jewish Mystique; it was The Feminine Mystique. Am I right?

Frankel: I think so, yes.
TIKTIN: A nice lady, but whoever we wanted really. It was tantamount to an invitation to the White House, to be invited by us, because we had a lot of, you know, people who thought we were good. We did theater…

Frankel: And you would get big crowds to attend a lecture?
TIKTIN: Yes! Whatever we did was appreciated in the community. I’m trying to think of something. Something triggered in my mind about that thing. It was a good time. I enjoyed it because it’s where my head’s at anyway. I wasn’t a budget person but I was programmatic. Bill Gordon was my program director. Bill and Helen Gordon belonged to the [aside to someone in the room] It’s not a problem, come in! Hello –

Frankel: Bill Gordon was your program director?
TIKTIN: He and Helen said, when we came we didn’t know anybody here. So normally –

Frankel: So did you have children by the time you moved here?
TIKTIN: Oh yes, I had three growing children. 

Frankel: Their names?
TIKTIN: I’ll get to it. What happened was, our friends grew out of Bill and Helen because they invited us. They were very generous, and so people invited us. And we got a freebee from it, because they didn’t know that we weren’t really big Reds. We were little Reds. We were very liberal. So I got into the inner circle of that group. I don’t know if you know them.

Frankel:  Well I knew Vicky’s generation, a few of them. Carmella –
TIKTIN: Carmella, oh yes. Carmella Ettinger.

Frankel:  I knew her parents, Asher and –
TIKTIN: You did! Asher and Ceil, really, where did you meet them? Here?

Frankel: They were involved, yes, in the Jewish Education Association.
TIKTIN: Okay, the JEA, you see, they took us in as if we were old, not anti… Because it was a dangerous time if you were working for the government. You probably know a lot more than you quickly let on, and you were taken in. And if you were working in the theater, working for the government, you could lose your job. You could go to jail. You could get… So they took me in like the zeyde. I didn’t tell them that I wasn’t quite as avid, but I was [mumbled]. That was where I was most comfortable. I liked these people. They were decent human beings. So they took us in. Liz enjoyed it. They liked Liz, my wife. They liked me. I guess we saw each other a lot for the Egghead weekend. That was a creation of mine. 

Frankel: Can you elaborate a little bit about those weekends?
TIKTIN: One of my jobs as the director of the center was to run the children’s camp. But I had a camp director. I didn’t have anything to do. But at the end of the summer, there was something called Men’s Camp, you heard about it?

Frankel: That’s the BBYO.
TIKTIN: The BB camp, yes, yes. And there was a lot of good food left over, and we used that as the springboard to have a weekend camp called the Egghead Weekend. It was the time of Stevenson. Remember they called him an Egghead, do you recall that at all? Anyway, so I loved that group, very intellectual, very nice, very nice people. I found a home, but they saw me in a different light than I really was. Because they were dyed in the wool, what we call roitenkesen, you know, Reds. They were nice people. That’s why I would never, even in retrospect, 30 years later, say anything that might get them a bad reputation. They were nice human beings. 

Frankel: What did you do during those weekends?
TIKTIN: We went horseback riding. We had cookouts. We went boating. We talked. It was a very nice bunch of intellectual people. It was my kind of people, and I liked it. 

Frankel: Was there any Jewish content?
TIKTIN: Not if I could avoid it. Because there was simultaneous to this, a whole effort by New York and the center movement to infuse Jewish content. I’ve been running away from that since I left my family!

Frankel: But culturally, when did…?
TIKTIN: Well, we did plays of Jewish content, but that’s already theater, that’s not the yeshiva. And we had rabbis come and speak, and it was a very exciting time, actually. 

Frankel: And so, tell me a little bit about the leaders and the community when you first came. Who were the rabbis, and did you have any relationship with the rabbis?
TIKTIN: No, it was mostly a liberal, Nodel. Does that ring a bell?

Frankel: I’ve heard the name, Beth Israel?
TIKTIN: Very charming, told great stories. He’s a wonderful guy. Very un-religious. A nice man. We used to, informally, the rabbis got together, but we didn’t take the Jewish part very seriously. Asher Ettinger was a very charming, kind of dissident, you know much about him?

Frankel: A little bit.
TIKTIN: He was a very bright guy, lazy, didn’t want to teach, but we had a lot of fun together. He used to come down for the weekend, he and Ceil. Ceil was a delightful human being. She didn’t die until very recently, you know, she died in a car accident. I liked her. It was a much more liberal, less Jewish-oriented community. That came in later on, because of influences of the Jewish-Jewish members in the movement, [who] tried to introduce stuff. We fought them all the way. [Laughs] God, this brings it all back to me now.

Ok, liberal, very liberal community at this point, broken out of the center part into new, nice, buildings. Have you visited the buildings, the synagogues?

Frankel: Yes.
TIKTIN: So, the Jewish Community Center when I was here was across the street from Neveh Shalom, which finally moved out to what you saw in the country. They all became very country club. I don’t mean it in any bad sense. It was very nice, you know. They were good people. They raised kids. They came to the center. The center was not doing very well because the Jews who previously frequented weren’t interested. They had all become Yankees. They weren’t interested. 

Frankel: But the center, as you said, was not a Jewish place?
TIKTIN: It was Jewish, but we also had a lot of non-Jewish members. And we also had this great program for older people, and younger people, who needed hydrotherapy, which we opened to the community. They were very conscious of being integrated. They’ve become a little more Jewish since I came here. And the people who were brought in from the national Jewish Welfare Board were already more Jewish. They wanted to bring Jewish content in. It’s a bunch of people who were old Yeshiva boys, didn’t know. They didn’t want that! It was an interesting…. I mean, this could be gone into in greater detail, but I’m skimming, leaving some things out. I think I’m touching the important things, but…

Frankel: So was the community center like a buzzing place? People were there all the time?
TIKTIN: No. No, because they all had TV sets. By this time, the country club, which had once been totally exclusive of Jews, now suddenly took Jews in. So if you wanted to mingle with the hoi polloi, you could go to a country club. You were let into a regular country club, and you could get into what used to be the Jewish country club. I never went there, by the way. 

Frankel: So, people left the JCC for those country clubs?
TIKTIN: They left for that, and they left because everything began…we didn’t need the synagogue anymore. We didn’t need the community center. The community didn’t need it. And they’ve all become business people! They got rich. They’re not going to be associated with the Jewish Community Center.

Frankel: How about for the young people? Did it used to be a place where they hung out? 
TIKTIN: No, no. Not really. Some did, some didn’t. They did it as an adjunct to the synagogues. The synagogues all had programs for their kids so if you were active in the Jewish community, you went to your synagogues’ day camp, your synagogues’ other kinds of… The whole thing burst open. Because it was a little bit more ghetto-ized, a little more…

Frankel: So, if you were to think about the early days, when you served as a director, and before, when you left, how would you describe the changes that occurred?
TIKTIN: It was a totally different culture.

Frankel: How so?
TIKTIN: Well, the people there belonged to their synagogues social clubs.

Frankel: Later.
TIKTIN: Yes, toward the end of my tenure. Because I was only there for 13 years.

Frankel: Well, enough to see changes.
TIKTIN: Yes, but that was different. The Jewish influence has dropped away. The young rabbis were themselves interested at getting at the youth, in their day camps. Some of these families sent their kids to Israel for the summer. We didn’t have that when I was there. It was poor; it was much poorer. It was more of a settlement house. 

Frankel: But weren’t there a lot of sports activities?
TIKTIN: They didn’t need us for sports. They used to need us for sports because they couldn’t get in with the non-Jewish crowd.

Frankel: But could everybody afford the country clubs?
TIKTIN: No, everybody wasn’t in the country clubs. But those who could got in there, for business reasons, for status reasons. The community has changed so much that it’s as if a great big rain has washed out, leeched out the community, the Jewish community, and it was a different place. It’s a totally different place, actually. And it happens a day at a time, a week at a time. Now the thing that was steady, that didn’t change –

Frankel: The Egghead?
TIKTIN: Yes, good for you! The Egghead stayed.

Frankel: So, did you join the group after they had started, already, meeting?
TIKTIN: No that –

Frankel: Were you a latecomer, or were you a part of the founding?
TIKTIN: No, I helped organize that. I was part of the fostering. I came in at the beginning. 

Frankel: So, besides the weekends, what else did you have, like a goal in mind? Was it a close group?
TIKTIN: No, it was a close group, because it was mostly ex-Communist (yes there were ex-Reds). What were they doing? And they didn’t relate. The people who were not part of that group didn’t have it. They weren’t smart enough to talk to these people, because the people were smart, well educated, liberal. They weren’t interested in religion. They were interested in sociology, and voting rights, and all kinds of things. 

Frankel: So were you active politically?
TIKTIN: [long pause] I’m trying to think how to answer that. My wife was. She worked for candidates. She worked for Senator Moss – you know about him. She was very active politically. I was not. I was active in my job. I also taught in the university, so I had other connections and I wasn’t particularly [interested] in being more Jewish. I had already run away from that. Earlier.

Frankel: And did you celebrate any of the holidays together with the Eggheads?
TIKTIN: Yes – No! Only with some. [Eddigans? mumbled] used to make the kneidlach, the soups, which were very heavy, and not very well done. My wife knew how to make them. She didn’t. But we did meet. We had mostly Jewish friends. It was smarter. They were humanistic. They were nice people. They had a feeling for people. They’re menschy, you know? 

Frankel: And how were the children involved? Did the children join the weekends?
TIKTIN: No, it was adults only. We had something else before that; we had a weekend of family camp, which I helped organize in my day. But it wasn’t terribly Jewish. They were mostly Jewish people because it grew out of the Jewish community. But it wasn’t… If you came in you wouldn’t realize that there were Jews here, necessarily. And contemporary to all this, they all got richer. They moved to nicer neighborhoods, they joined country clubs.

Frankel: You mean the Eggheads?
TIKTIN: Yes. Some of them, not all of them. Mostly they couldn’t stomach it because it wasn’t our kind of thing. But we had the intelligence. 

Frankel: And so, during the year, how often would you get together?
TIKTIN: Occasionally. When Pete Seeger came here. Pete Seeger was beloved of this group. He liked these people. They grew up together in the social milieu. Pete… It was a good time.

Frankel: How, or why did it end?
TIKTIN: I think it had lost its purpose. The need wasn’t there. 

Frankel: What was the need, at first?
TIKTIN: The need was, like you have a cousin. You don’t need a thing with your cousin. You celebrate certain holidays and birthdays with the cousin. Not because he’s Jewish, it just happened to be Jewish. And they also had other places to go. They had series in the community. They would go to lectures. They went to the opera. They went to the symphony, all that. Because the general community had already intermeshed, so it was a different. It was a different. And there were no strong rabbis, or agitators, to keep this going. 

Frankel: Well, why did you mention rabbis, since you said the group didn’t want to have anything…?
TIKTIN: Well, the emergence of the rabbis in the community is a very recent development. When each has people move away from the central Portland. Some will stay. They all opened synagogues. We’ve got fifteen synagogues here! And so they emerged, but each of them belonged to different sects. There was a de – a de…

Frankel: A decentralization?
TIKTIN: A decentralization, thank you. That’s what it is. And today, I don’t go there. I don’t go to synagogue anymore. 

Frankel: Did you ever join a synagogue?
TIKTIN: I did for a short period of time.

Frankel: Do you remember which one?
TIKTIN: Yes. Ahavai Sholom. 

Frankel: Oh, before it merged with Neveh Zedek.
TIKTIN: It never –

Frankel: Neveh Shalom is a merger of two –
TIKTIN: I think you’re right, yes, yes, yes. 

Frankel: So was Rabbi Stampfer your rabbi there?
TIKTIN: Oh, he’s still there! Did you meet him?

Frankel: Oh yes, I know him very well.
TIKTIN: A nice man. Delightful. He (I was going to say baptized [chuckles]), he officiated. I always liked him. And we liked each other greatly. A nice man. God, he’s been around forever. He’s still around. Nice man. 

Frankel:  And after you left the JCC, what did you do?
TIKTIN: When I left the JCC I actually didn’t have to sever myself from the Jewish community, because I wasn’t that intergraded with it. Except for some of these programs that I attended because they were ancillary, offshoots of some of these things we did at the Jewish Community Center. And a lot of the professionals were still around; they were our friends. But we didn’t need them Jewishly, really. We needed them because we were comfortable with Jews. They accepted us. By this point, McCarthy had died. We didn’t have to contend with that threat from the outside. 

Frankel: So did you retire after you left the JCC?
TIKTIN: Never. I worked until two months ago – three, four months ago. 

Frankel: In your psychology practice?
TIKTIN: In my practice. I still had a huge practice. And I just gave up my license six months ago. 

Frankel: So, did you work with Shirley Tanzer?
TIKTIN: Yes. She was one of our directors. Did you ever meet her?

Frankel: Mmm hmm.
TIKTIN: Well, how did you know her?

Frankel: Through oral history. She started the Oral History program.
TIKTIN: That’s right, that’s right. Yes, yes. She’s a bright lady. Difficult, could be difficult, but she was bright. She was Jewish. I knew her family in Cleveland when I worked in Cleveland, when I came out of graduate school. She was one of my members. She was a kid member of my programs. Unbelievable. 

Now, what needs to be filled in for you?

Frankel: Well, if there are any other members of the Eggheads we haven’t mentioned that you feel you want to add, or any other events that you…?
TIKTIN: The most interesting ones were Gordon and his wife. She died first; he died after. Did you know her daughter?

Frankel: No, I only knew Lee Gordon, their son. 
TIKTIN: Yes. They had another lady who was a very prominent in the women’s movement – [aside] are you okay?

Frankel: Yes.
TIKTIN: Ok. 
A prominent women’s movement at the University of Michigan, I believe. Am I right?

Frankel: I think so. I don’t know her. 
TIKTIN: I never saw her since then. She’s very brilliant, regarded as a very brilliant person. [Mumbled something] Professor. Her specialty was the general women’s movement. I don’t even remember her very well, but we used to come to their house for holidays and parties, birthday parties… Nice, nice, nice woman. Very fine woman. I’m trying to think where else… See we’ve touched a lot of, I think, what may happen is if you go back and review your notes, you’ll come up with things that are glaring open spaces that you’ll want to fill in, and maybe that’s the point at which to hear from me. 

Frankel: Ok, ok.
TIKTIN: So I can make the connection.

Frankel: Ok, but you did want to, when I asked you about your children, you said later, so is this the right time?
TIKTIN: Oh, my children, my children should happen to you. I have three children. The oldest one is a distinguished judge in Oregon. 

Frankel: And his name?
TIKTIN: Steve. Unusual fellow, very smart. If he didn’t want to remain a yahoo, which means away from headquarters, he would’ve gone to the Supreme Court. Very distinguished kid. His kid brother – kid brother! He’s 60 years old – Is a philosophy major. Wonderful guy, you’d love him. And my daughter followed in my steps as a psychologist, social worker. Very good.

Frankel: And their names?
TIKTIN: Steve.

Frankel: Steve is the oldest?
TIKTIN: He’s the oldest. David is the second one, and Emily is the third, lives out in – where does she live? She lives somewhere in… Ah, God I’m blanking. It doesn’t matter.

Frankel: Were they all born in Oregon?
TIKTIN: No, Steve was born in Newark. David was born, I think, in Newark, I don’t remember. And Emily was born in…

Frankel: Cleveland?
TIKTIN: Cleveland, yes. She and one of her siblings were born Cleveland. 

Frankel: Do you have any grandchildren? 
TIKTIN: Yes. Emily has been very, very lucky with those kids. Very smart, nice, nice children. They  live all over the place. My daughter got the distinguished department all to herself, from, from, what is the… University of Oregon! She’s just moving here, right now. 

Frankel: Oh, I see. 
TIKTIN: Her brother, he’s not going to go to the Supreme Court. And David is just wonderful! Delightful, smart. Good guy. A very good guy. You would like all my children, really [laughs]. I mean, everybody says it about theirs kids, but it’s not true. Very often I’m embarrassed to talk like this about my kids, because they have family members, many people in their family who didn’t quite make it, you know, and I’m embarrassed on their behalf. So I’ve been very lucky; it’s a story about luck. 

Frankel: When you said that both you and your wife’s family excommunicated you, did you have no contact with them ever again?
TIKTIN: No. You see, when we lived far away, somehow they knew everything. As they say, people talk to each other. I didn’t know I was excommunicated until very recently! That they had a ceremony, you know, Jews do everything with a ceremony; so I didn’t realize I’d been excommunicated. Because we saw them so irregularly. I told my wife when the children came, they will appear, because they wanted to be part of the story. 

Frankel: Have you kept contact with the Jewish Community Center after you left?
TIKTIN: I didn’t. I didn’t really. I severed… I had other things to do. I didn’t leave the community but I had a different… I had a practice to build, which I could do rather quickly. I was lucky there too. I retained quite a few of my friends from the old days. But I didn’t retain it. 

Frankel: How was money raised for the Jewish Community Center?
TIKTIN: It was raised once a year in addition to periodic fundraisers. It was raised through the Federation. 

Frankel: So you were an agency of Federation?
TIKTIN: We were an important agency for the Federation.

Frankel: And who was the head of Federation when you moved here, do you remember?
TIKTIN: I remember what he looks like, but at this point it’s… He had a guy who took his place who’s named Josephson [?] I doubt that you’ve heard his name. Josephson and his wife. Josephson was kind of a smart, slick, good guy. Never made any great contribution. But he was a nice man. I guess he was Jewish. It’s like the rabbis. You can be a rabbi without being Jewish. Right? [Laughs] His wife ran off with a lawyer, a friend of mine, in the community. Never thought it would happen. She just got tired of him, and she moved out. She moved away. There are a lot of little side stories, gossips, interesting little… I sort of got into knowing what was going on with people. 

Frankel: When you first moved here, was there still South Portland as a Jewish community?
TIKTIN: No, it was in transition. The key name in the South Portland was a Mr. Mosler. Do you hear the name? Do you know about it?

Frankel: Mmm hmm, the bakery. 
TIKTIN: Makes great bagels. Great bagels and rye bread. 

Frankel: So the stores were still there?
TIKTIN: Yes, they were still there, but they were Sunday morning. Ripe bagels! That’s a treat, a great bagel, as you know, is a joy forever. 

Frankel: So anything else you wish to add?
TIKTIN: No I can’t think of anything else at the moment, there were a lot of things. See, it really wasn’t much of a Jewish community, in terms of Jewishness. 

Frankel: Portland as a whole? When you came and when you left the Jewish Community Center there was no…?
TIKTIN: Oh, there was a difference. Because the new young rabbis, when they came here they came with guitars. That’s a metaphor. And they all developed programs for children. They encouraged the children to go to Israel for a summer. They started classes in Talmud for adults. There was a lot of Jewish stuff going on. Remember, I was fleeing from that. When I came here, I was in flight from that. I had a good Jewish education, but I really was swimming upstream. In a way it’s a little sad, but I did walk away with a feeling, for us ethnically. Many of these people got rich. They were very smart. They were computer people. They sold their businesses to the Japanese. There were changes within changes within changes. It wasn’t straight.

Frankel: Did you ever visit Israel?
TIKTIN: Yes. I was there several times. 

Frankel: When was your first time?
TIKTIN: My wife was a very brilliant woman. She wasn’t a student; she was a scholar. She used to go every other summer to study the archeology, the biblical archeology. She knew what was going on. We went together. She was like going with your own travel agent. She knew her way around Israel. She had no particular feeling for Jewishness except that she had converted. Like many non-Jewish people who converted to Judaism, she knew a lot of things because she was a reader, and a scholar. A most rare, especially for me. She completed my education in a lot of ways. If she hadn’t met me, she would have gone on to be a professor of archeology in an American university. Very complicated lady, very complicated and special person. People liked her. I was lucky to have her. And she liked me. 

Frankel: When you went to Israel, did you have any relatives? Do you still have any relatives? 
TIKTIN: Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Frankel: Did you visit your relatives?
TIKTIN: Yes, yes, oh yes. 

Frankel:  What was it like, and did they remain Orthodox, the relatives? 
TIKTIN:  Mostly they lived in ghettos.

Frankel: In Israel? When you visited later?
TIKTIN: They never got out of the ghetto. Ever been to Israel when it was a ghetto?

Frankel: I don’t know what you call a ghetto.
TIKTIN: Well, a ghetto is where people who never graduated from the middle class continue to go to synagogue, and pray, and retain their Jewishness, which I did not, obviously. My mother had a very hard time during the war. She had to open a little business to sell food. And by that time, by the time I went back, she was already gone. From here. She died here. It’s a very strange business, this whole business. The people who lived in my family’s apartment were rabbis with long beards and very ultra, ultra Orthodox. They moved into Jerusalem. If you drove your car there, they could stone you. 

Frankel: On Shabbat.
TIKTIN: On Shabbat. 

Frankel: So, when was the first visit? When you first went back to Israel, or first went to Israel. 
TIKTIN: ‘70s, ‘80s – ‘70s and ‘80s. I’d need to sit down and sort it out.  

Frankel: That’s fine, so as you seem to say, all the relatives you have remain ultra Orthodox and live in certain quarters of Jerusalem?  
TIKTIN: No, they were all, they were either poor Jews, or they were eye surgeons. Because there’s a lot of eye problems in the Middle East. They all became optometric doctors. Another, separate study, all its own. Named Sachs. There’s a big family of Sachs people there. I never met most of them. One of them moved to Boston and was a very famous eye surgeon. I think I met him once, years later. It’s strange, very strange, jumping around background. Which I had to piece together myself. Because nobody bothered to, to do what American families do, create a history, create a story. Not a bad life. I did okay. I still speak Yiddish. 

Frankel: Do you use it anytime?
TIKTIN: Every day. Whenever I can.

Frankel: So again, anything else…?
TIKTIN: Can I, can I dredge up? At the moment I can’t. My head is tired. 

Frankel: Mmm hmm.
TIKTIN: At this point there are anecdotes, stories. There’s a picture of my father writing, a great writer. 

Frankel: Do you have any of his pieces that he wrote?
TIKTIN: No. I think his daughter has some. I don’t read Hebrew well enough. He was also a calligrapher. He had a marvelous hand. I would find somewhat to ask you what impressions you have, about this story, about what’s missing for you, what would you like?

Frankel: Oh, I don’t know what’s missing, but shall I turn it off at this point?
TIKTIN: Yes, I think you can. Because I’ve got nothing today that’s original. 

Frankel: Ok, thank you.