Robert Epstein

Chestler: So Bob, would you begin by telling me about your growing up, your household, and whatever else you want to talk about with that?
EPSTEIN: I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 17, 1940. I had an older sister, Judy, who was four and a half years older than I. She’s now deceased. She’s my only sibling. My father’s name was Morton Morris Epstein and my mother’s name was Sylvia Shirley Ruttenberg, her maiden name. All four of my grandparents came from the old country. They were all from Kiev Gobernev, (which means the province of Kiev) around the city of Kiev and what is now Ukraine. And I thank God often that they decided to immigrate to the United States. Strong people who just pick and go. I always appreciated that. I was educated in the public schools of Philadelphia. I went to Central High School, which was a wonderful, all-academic, all-boys school. There was a comparable girls’ school in the city too. 90% of the graduates or more from my high school went to college and in my graduating class of 190 students there were 31 merit scholarship finalists. It was that kind of school. It was a wonderful school. And I think it was the best school I ever went to, even though I went to the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine later on. So I was very lucky. Good public school education. And then I went to Penn State, where I met Mimi. So it was a very good decision to go to Penn State because that’s where she went. After college I didn’t know what to do with myself. So I joined the Navy. I was a naval officer for five and a half years. I was all over the world, literally. Saw all the seven seas. They used to say when I was a kid, “join the Navy and see the world.” I did [laughs].

Chestler: This was after you went to undergraduate school?
EPSTEIN: Yes. A lot of people who joined the Navy didn’t go anywhere. But I was very lucky, I was in South America, Southeast Asia, Africa —

Chestler: What years?
EPSTEIN: 1962 to 67. It was good. I liked the Navy but not enough to stay in. While I was in the Navy I discovered the one I was most friendly with was the doctor. I started reading his doctor books. When I was a kid I used to say when grown-ups would ask me “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I would say I want to be a doctor. But when I got to be 15 or 16 I got real smart and I said hmm, that takes a long time. Well it turns out I started medical school when I was 27. After the Navy, I don’t know. Mimi and I met in 1960 we got married in 1965, after having broken up and not seen each other for three and a half years. We’re coming up on our 50th, so it seems to have worked [laughs].

Chestler: Apparently so. Can I ask you about your Jewish experiences when you were a kid? 
EPSTEIN: My parents always belonged to a synagogue. It was Ezreth Israel. The Help of Israel. Interestingly it was the synagogue that they were the co-founders of, with a group of people. So I always thought that was kind of cool that I ended up in the beginnings of Havurah and kind of did the same kind of thing.

Chestler: Yes – absolutely. History does repeat itself. 
EPSTEIN: Sometimes. I went to Hebrew school there and hated it. It was the old-fashioned – they hit you on the hand with a ruler if you didn’t say it right. In retrospect, it was very ironic, because I was always a good student but I really didn’t like the Hebrew school at all.

Chestler: What denomination was the synagogue?
EPSTEIN: They called it Modern Orthodox. And the only thing that was modern about it was they didn’t have a mechitza. Otherwise it was really Orthodox. The service was almost all Hebrew. The Kohanim got up at Yom Kippur and blessed the congregation – all that old stuff – we did. I didn’t like it. [laughs] 

Chestler: You didn’t like it. Did you have a Bar Mitzvah?
EPSTEIN: Oh yes. Oh sure I had a Bar Mitzvah. There were no Bat Mitzvahs in that synagogue. Still not in the Orthodox. I had a Bar Mitzvah. And this in retrospect once again – I thought was very strange. I also had a Confirmation. I guess it was the parents that got together – and just like in Havurah we had one confirmation class and I was in it. Interestingly it turned out that Mark was in the only confirmation class that Havurah ever had. 

Chestler: A bit of irony.
EPSTEIN: Isn’t that bizarre? Isn’t that strange? There were four of us. It was strange. I didn’t know then but Confirmation was invented as a substitute for Bar Mitzvah by the Reform movement. It had no place in an Orthodox synagogue. But there it was [laughs].

Chestler: Okay. There’s so many variations of how people do it.
EPSTEIN: I went to Hebrew school from age eight to 13 and didn’t learn a whole lot. I could decode. But it was very poor teaching. Later on in my life I took up Hebrew very intentionally and now I know a good bit of Hebrew but I didn’t get it from that.

Chestler: Did you observe Jewish holidays and things like that at home?
EPSTEIN: Oh yes. My mother never bensch liht. I don’t know why. 

Chestler: Bensch liht? Would you tell us what bensch liht is?
EPSTEIN: She never lit the Friday night candles. Praying over the lights is what that literally means. And we didn’t have a kosher home.

Chestler: Did you have a Seder?
EPSTEIN:; Oh absolutely. Always had a Seder. We were always members of a synagogue. We always went to High Holidays. But not much happened in the home. We had a Seder and we lit Hanukkah candles and there were Hanukkah presents and so on. 

Chestler: Were there relatives or friends, like more of an extended family for your Jewish experiences?
EPSTEIN: My parents had a lot of friends, and they were basically all Jewish. Some would come to Seders, and so on. I never became friends with any of their children. The ages never matched up properly. I think, basically all their friends were Jewish. We did not live in a Jewish neighborhood. We lived in a mostly Catholic neighborhood. There were two other Jewish families on the street. One of them had a boy who was about my age. He was different, so he didn’t fit in real well. No, I was the only active Jew in that Catholic neighborhood. So I had to fight to make it known that they couldn’t pick on me. That’s what happened, that’s what you had to do, you either fought or you got beat up.

Chestler: You mean physically?
EPSTEIN: Physically! Yes, fists! Huh. I remember very distinctly, very distinctly fighting with a kid named Linn Wise and crying. That’s what I remember – crying and fighting. 

Chestler: You must have been fairly young at the time?
EPSTEIN: Oh, nine or ten or something like that. But you know anti-Semitism was not unusual in those years, it was the norm.

Chestler: So in Philadelphia they didn’t have Jewish neighborhoods?
EPSTEIN: Oh they did. Oxford Circle was a big Jewish neighborhood. We just didn’t live in it. Mimi grew up in a Catholic neighborhood, too, in the suburbs.

Chestler: So was this a suburb that you grew up in?
EPSTEIN: No, we were in the city. It was the far northern part. It was only a mile or two from the city line. But it was definitely in the city. It was a working class neighborhood. 

Chestler: Why do you think you lived in that particular neighborhood? Do you have any ideas?
EPSTEIN: No I don’t know. It’s a good question. I really don’t know. Well maybe, maybe I do know. Their best friends, or almost their best friends lived on the street one street over. It may have been that the Tannenbaums lived there first and they moved in to be near the Tannenbaums. I don’t know. I’m just guessing. I never asked that. I can’t ask them now. 

Chestler: What did your dad do?
EPSTEIN: When I was growing up he had a dry cleaning store. He didn’t go to college. He tried. But that’s another story. He had a small store. He employed two or three other people- pressers and cleaners. He had a truck for delivery of the clothes. They used to deliver them in those days. So we didn’t have a car until I was 17 years old. Because there’s no money –you know we couldn’t afford to run a truck and a car. So when we went somewhere, since I was the boy –it was a panel truck and I’d be in the back on the floor of the truck. My kids could not imagine being in a house without a car. It was unimaginable. We didn’t have a car!

Chestler: Maybe we should go back to – you decided to go to medical school. Can you tell me a little bit about then what happened? I want to know how you ended up in Portland actually.
EPSTEIN: Okay. I went to University of Pennsylvania Medical School. I applied to four medical schools in Philadelphia. As soon as Penn accepted me I said okay because Penn was a top-notch school. I wanted to be in Philadelphia, I’d been away for five or six years at that point. Mimi’s parents lived in the suburbs of Philadelphia. You know the famous short story Goodbye Columbus?

Chestler: Of course.
EPSTEIN: Well we were a Goodbye Columbus couple. She was the rich girl from the suburbs and I was the working class kid from the city. Same as Goodbye Columbus. Actually they were not rich. They were comfortable. 

Chestler: Were you married by the time you were in medical school?
EPSTEIN: Oh yes, we got married when I was in the Navy. Our marriage invitation –Mimi likes to joke about that my name took up two lines: Robert Warren Epstein Lieutenant Junior Grade Us Naval Reserve. She only got one line. We were married in 1965. I didn’t get out of the Navy until 67. So she was a Navy wife for a while. When she married me she thought that was the career. That’s what I was thinking at that time–that I would stay in. But I changed my mind, which was the right decision. 

So how did I get to Portland? When I was maybe a junior resident, maybe when I was senior resident, I don’t know. After I finished medical school, when I was in my residency, a guy came to be assistant professor in the medical school, who had done his fellowship in infectious diseases at U-DUB, at university hospital of University of Washington in Harborview hospital in Seattle. This guy’s name was Rob Roy McGregor. I’ll never forget his name – it’s a great name. He was a nice guy. He raved about the northwest. He loved the northwest. He thought Seattle was great – he didn’t know anything about Portland. But he thought it was wonderful, and if it hadn’t been Penn that offered him a job, he never would have left Seattle. And on and on. So I said to Mimi, “Let’s go look at the west coast.” We really didn’t want to stay in Philadelphia. I hated the weather – hot, humid summers. We had too much parenting. Particularly Mimi’s parents really demanded that we were there a lot. More than either of us wanted. And so we wanted to get away from that. In the middle of my senior residency (that would have been in summer of ’73) we came out to the west coast and we camped from Santa Cruz, CA as far as the north cascades for three weeks. I had an interview in Portland with Kaiser. We just loved it. We thought it was just fabulous. It was warm; it wasn’t humid. And the scenery was gorgeous and all the things we love about the northwest. We decided I would try to get a job out here. And I did. The job was with the Portland Clinic. And that’s where I spent my entire career. 

Chestler: Amazing. That was so straightforward!
EPSTEIN: Very simple. I liked the Portland Clinic. And I retired young because I was sick. So the career was only 25 years, which is not long by most standards. But that’s what it was. I retired when I was only 58. 

Chestler: So what kind of medicine did you practice?
EPSTEIN: I’ll give you my standard answer for that Carol – excellent.

Chestler: Do you have anything to add to that?
EPSTEIN: Yes, I was a general internist. People say what’s an internist? It’s a GP for grownups. I had a mostly geriatric practice. I bet some of your friends were my patients. I had a lot of geriatric Jewish patients. Maybe not because you were much younger than—

Chestler: No you took care of my mother-in-law.
EPSTEIN: Your mother-in-law. And when all the Russians moved to Portland I got a bunch of them because I spoke some Russian. I had a couple years of Russian in college. How many doctors in Portland, OR who were Jewish and speak Russian, right?

Chestler: Very right. I wonder if I referred any to you because I was the Russian Resettlement Coordinator. 
EPSTEIN: You very well may have, I can’t remember.

Chestler: I can’t either.
EPSTEIN: Too long ago. That’s in the ‘80s.

Chestler: So when did you move to Portland?
EPSTEIN: 1974

Chestler: Tell me about your wanting to connect some way with the Jewish community out here. Was that even a factor for you?
EPSTEIN: Oh sure. Mark was seven when we moved. He was eight very soon after we moved here and Mimi started to say, “What are we going to do about Bar Mitzvah?” My disaffection from organized Judaism at the time was so complete that I said, “I don’t care. Do whatever you want.” Because I didn’t like my Jewish experience as a child. That’s one of the main reasons I feel proud of having been part of the group that created Havurah, because we have so many Havurah kids that look back with great fondness of their Jewish upbringing. I didn’t have that. Certainly Neil does, our son Neil. In any case I said, “Do whatever you want.” And she had grown up in a Reform synagogue which she loved. She had one of these rabbis that was revered. I never met him. He was gone by the time I met Mimi. So we joined Beth Israel and I detested it. It was everything I didn’t like about…. I felt like I was (this is very unfair but this is what my feelings were). I felt like I was in a Presbyterian church. At the time they had a cantor, so called, who was a Mormon; I don’t know if you remember that? Yes, a Mormon. Blew my mind. In any case we stayed there. Mark had his Bar Mitzvah there. But right around the time Mark had his Bar Mitzvah we actually knew about Havurah almost when it was in the very original formation. But we were not invited to join so we didn’t. And a year later we joined – almost a year later.

Chestler: Do you remember how you happened to join at that time?
EPSTEIN: Oh yes, Jerry and Amy Brem. Jerry was one of my medical partners and we were friends.

Chestler: Okay. Expand a little bit about that, how—?
EPSTEIN: Well they were enjoying it and they liked it and Mimi and I didn’t like Beth Israel. Mimi didn’t like Beth Israel either. So it’s really on Selichot of 1979 Mimi said, “They’re having the services at Joanie Rosenbaum’s house.” They were in that basement playroom place they had.

Chestler: That little shul down there?
EPSTEIN: Exactly. That little shul down there. Of course I didn’t know about. I didn’t know Bob and Joanie at that point. She said they’re having this Selichot service and I would like to go. And I said, “Oh I don’t want to go to that; it’s probably going to be just a lot of … (I think I said something like a cocktail party)” It was just talk, ignorance on my part. And we went to it and I loved it. It was Alan Berg and Aryeh [Hirschfield]. You were there I’m sure of it. 

Chestler: I don’t know if I was at that one. But I know what year you’re talking about – 1979. It was right before we had our first High Holidays. 
EPSTEIN: No, second High Holidays. You had the first one at Neighborhood House, the year before.

Chestler: Yes that’s true, but that was very small
EPSTEIN: That was the first real one, yes, exactly. And I loved it. I loved the way Alan talked and Aryeh. It was great. So I said, “Okay. I think it’s great.” And I said to Mimi as we were going home, “I think we should join; this is really my kind of group.” And she said, “Well actually I joined for us today.” [both laugh] It shows you what a good relationship that we had that I wasn’t mad at her. 

Chestler: So you went to the Selichot before and High Holidays and what did you think of that?
EPSTEIN: It was great. For me, I’ve always been very musical. I can’t play anymore because I have peripheral neuropathy and I can’t feel the instrument, which is very distressing. I played the recorder. For me the music [at Havurah] has been our form of prayer. That’s what’s been with people’s souls involved. And certainly that was the case for me. And I thought the music was great. And the High Holidays I can’t remember what Alan said, he probably gave a couple of Drashot, but I don’t remember them. But I was very positively impressed. I really liked it. I remember very much we were at High Holidays, at the MJCC or was it at West Hill Unitarian?

Chestler: No, we had the Holidays at the Mittleman Jewish Community Center.
EPSTEIN: I remember – very strong memory- of looking around and everybody seemed to be really involved, really engaged. And that was not my memory of growing up. I’d look around and the women would be chattering to each other in their little fox stoles. Not stoles–those things they put around their neck with the beady eyes. And I remember as a child that’s what they did. And people would not be involved because it was all in Hebrew and most of them didn’t know Hebrew. So what was the point; that was my idea, Havurah – there was enough Hebrew but it was enough English, enough music that people were really involved and really engaged is all I can say. That was very impressive to me. 

Chestler: So how did you become more involved beyond going to services?
EPSTEIN: Oh I jumped right in. I was very enthusiastic. And as you know I was the fourth president. That would have been 1981 or ‘82. So a couple of years later, I don’t remember what activity I first got into but over the years there was a bunch of different activities. 

Chestler: You were in on the ground floor.
EPSTEIN: Yes. Right. I remember asking, it probably was in 1979 maybe 1980 asking whether I could attend the steering committee. And being told absolutely, everyone is welcome at steering committee. But I learned of course if you attend the steering committee, next week you’re on the steering committee, which is what happened to me [laughs].

Chestler: That was in the fine print.
EPSTEIN: That was in the fine print. I was on the steering committee off and on for years – you were too. I’m sure we were on it together. I don’t know how many years, but a lot. 

Chestler: You spoke about Rabbi Alan Berg, who was Havurah’s first rabbi. He didn’t stay that long. Do you remember as a member of the steering committee dealing with that fact?
EPSTEIN: What I remember about Alan in those years that he was the most disorganized person imaginable. We didn’t have an office; we had no secretarial staff. We didn’t have anything. I remember meeting him somewhere to do something. I don’t remember what it was. His office was in the trunk of his car. I don’t know if you knew that. He opened the trunk of his car and there’s all these papers in piles and just piled up. He digs in here and there. That was our rabbi; that’s how he did it. [laughs] Blew my mind. And of course he was always late. I don’t know if you remember this, He was always late; he was never on time. It didn’t matter because he was so charismatic–at least I thought he was. He was so approachable. He came up with different ways of looking at things and different viewpoints that I thought was great. And I was disappointed when he left. 

But then I was involved in hiring Roy Furman. Mimi and I were both involved in hiring him and you too, I was the first one who spoke to him. I was sitting in my study in my old house. And I answered his application. I don’t remember the sequence. I was the first one in Havurah that he spoke to.

Chestler: That’s something.
EPSTEIN: And Mimi picked him up at the airport. We did the same thing with Joey. We were involved with Joey’s hiring too. Not with current hiring. I’m not involved with it. 

Chestler: So um ….
EPSTEIN: I made some notes.

Chestler: Oh you did. Okay
EPSTEIN: About what my activities were in Havurah to help me try to remember. You know it is 35 years or so it’s a lot of time. So let me get that up.
[Looks at computer] Oh maybe not. You can ask me questions while I’m doing this.

Chestler: By the time you were president of Havurah was the second rabbi, Roy Furman, already there?
EPSTEIN: No, well maybe he was, I’m not sure of the times. What year did he come? Do you know?

Chestler: Probably 1981, I would think.
EPSTEIN: I might have been the president when he came. I was president in ‘81 or ‘82. I don’t remember. I found what I was looking for. It says, “Notes for the interview with Carol Chestler.” And I capitalized your name. Okay president of congregation 1981 to 82. You won’t remember this probably. I had a short term because we changed the time of year when we had elections. So I had less than a year. I was on the steering committee for I don’t know how many years, but for quite a few. I was on spiritual life committee for several years. I helped to write liturgy for High Holidays. I remember that sitting in Jerry Brem’s backyard writing High Holidays liturgy.

Chestler: Could you say a little bit more about that, you were sitting where?
EPSTEIN: Jerry Brem’s backyard.

Chestler: Maybe you need to talk about Jerry Brem and you doing this.
EPSTEIN: Well I know it was Jerry and myself and probably some other people, I don’t remember. I just remember we were writing different translations of the Hebrew in the sense of making it more meaningful for people in 1980s versus people in the 1680s or whatever. It was long before we had the siddurim from the Reconstructionist Federation. I don’t know if you remember we had a paper siddur for a while.

Chestler: I do. It was blue. Powder blue. 
EPSTEIN: Michael Kay put it together. I don’t remember the details. I have to tell you that. But we did. It was exciting. Who am I to write liturgy? But in Havurah (I’m not telling you anything you don’t know) if you wanted to do it, people said, “Do it.” You know, whatever you want to do, if it’s worthwhile and it’s useful, do it. So we did it.

Chestler: Those early years, do you remember we had to get Roy Furman? We had to get a new rabbi. Do you remember anything about the struggles we went through to decide if we were going to affiliate with a movement?
EPSTEIN: Yes. I remember it very well. The first thing I remember with Roy Furman was when we (oh this may have been with Joey, I’m sorry). What I was remembering looking at the Reform Movement’s instructions on how to hire a rabbi, they had a pamphlet on how to hire a rabbi. I was on the committee or I was the chair, I don’t remember, but I was involved with that. What they said you have the rabbi come for a visit, you have him meet with the board (steering committee), the board, and have him give a sermon. That’s the word they used, not a drash or anything like that. That was it. And I said, that’s not the Havurah way [laughs]. We had him for three days, had him give a drash, meet with the steering committee, meet with the Shabbat school, and play with the kids—

Chestler: We actually hired him in my dining room. 
EPSTEIN: Is that right. I didn’t remember that. Roy?

Chestler: Yes. But before we could even apply to get a new rabbi we weren’t affiliated.
EPSTEIN: That’s right, we affiliated so that we could use their placement service. That’s right. I remember very distinctly the discussions about what group to affiliate with. You may not remember this but Mimi and I were going to Philadelphia to visit our families. And since the Reconstructionist Movement’s headquarters were in Philadelphia -in those days they were on Broad Street right across the street from Dropsie College, a Jewish college – so we went. And we met Ira, what’s his name, Ira Einstein, Mordecai Kaplan’s son-in-law who was then the head of the whole Reconstructionist Movement. What was his last name? Einhorn? Something like that. We met him and we met the people who were there, it was a little, little thing. At the time the whole membership of the Reconstructionist Movement around the United States was 20,000 people- it was tiny. We came back and told the steering committee presumably, that they are very nice people, I like their theology, but they had nothing to offer us. So we joined the Reform Movement thinking that we would get something, that they would have educational materials for us and so on. Well, Mimi was at that time the head of the Shabbat school with Sidney Gold. And the stuff they had was so un-Havurah. It was so wrong for the way our people looked at religion that we couldn’t use it. 

Chestler: So I’m going to ask you – when you say it was wrong for Havurah – what was Havurah like, why do you say that? Give me some examples.
EPSTEIN: Okay. I have an answer to that. The Reform Movement has probably changed – you know everything’s changed in 35 years or 30 years. The Reform Movement was very, very hierarchical. It was very much top down. It was –“this is how you do something.” Do you remember that guy Morrie coming and telling us, “You can’t do this; you can’t do that?” And we’d telling him to—ha. Well that’s the way it was and that’s the way the educational materials were. This is how you teach this. And Havurah was not top down; it was bottom up. The information, the thinking, the way of doing things rose up out of the congregation, from the people who were involved, who were interested. So that’s what I mean that it was wrong – because it was so hierarchical was the word. I felt like it was like getting military orders. It’s very orthodox in tradition. This is how it’s done and we didn’t do it that way. 

Chestler: But you were in on the ground floor of Havurah as it was inventing itself, as it was evolving, as it was gaining new members. How would you characterize the members at that time, you know –
EPSTEIN: At the very beginning?

Chestler: Yes, in the early years.
EPSTEIN: At the beginning it was doctors, lawyers, social workers, though not as many social workers as now. Almost everybody was married and had a couple of kids. We were sort of like that. That’s of course changed very radically since then.

Chestler: Well I know. Let’s focus on those early years because so much had to be accomplished to create something out of nothing. What were these people like? Were they young?
EPSTEIN: Oh yes. I can’t remember this guy’s name. We had an old couple, a husband and wife. I remember one year we gave the husband Max…
 
Chestler: Forse. Max Forse.
EPSTEIN: That’s right. What was her name?

Chestler: Marilyn.
EPSTEIN: Marilyn. That’s the couple. We gave him an aliyah. And he was thrilled. No one had ever given him an aliyah before. It was wonderful. To me he was an old man. Maybe he was in his sixties.

Chestler: So what does that signify about Havurah?
EPSTEIN: What I remember about that was that we were mostly young. You were one of the older ones and you were young, too. We were mostly young, and I remember being in a group when people were complaining that we didn’t have any old people. We were all young and we needed some old people. And I think it may have been Max who said, “Well you’ll have to grow your own.” And we have. [laughs]

Chestler: Yes. That’s for sure.
EPSTEIN: So we were mostly young, mostly professional. I don’t think we had any gay people at the very beginning. But we did pretty rapidly because we made it clear that they were welcome. In those years they were not really welcome in any other synagogue in Portland.

Chestler: What about intermarried couples?
EPSTEIN: We were very welcome to intermarried couples. Not only welcomed intermarried couples, but we, I don’t know what the word is – allowed, encouraged- we had non-Jewish members being important in the congregation, being on the steering committee and including once I think we had a president who was non-Jewish. I can’t remember her name. I remember I was on the JRF board at that point.

Chestler: What board?
EPSTEIN: The Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, the national board.

Chestler: Okay, this is much later.
EPSTEIN: This is much later. But it was when she was the president. I mentioned it to somebody and there were just in total shock, “How can you have a president of the congregation that’s not Jewish?” And the answer is that she was enthusiastic about our congregation; she worked hard; she was on various committees; she was raising her children Jewish even though she hadn’t converted. And that doesn’t happen anywhere else, I don’t think, at least in those days, who knows now?

Chestler: So Havurah way back when didn’t have any…other than Rabbi Berg was a part time rabbi…
EPSTEIN: Right, halftime

Chestler: Half time. But then in the early years of Roy Furman the members had to step in and do…
EPSTEIN: Everything. 

Chestler: So what stuff?
EPSTEIN: Whatever needed to be done, if somebody needed something typed up and copied and distributed. There was no internet.

Chestler: Mm-mm. What about decision making? Where did that lie? How did it come about?
EPSTEIN: I think very early on we (and I mean you and me and all the other early members) decided that we wanted as much involvement of the congregation at large as possible. So we had congregational meetings. We never missed a congregational meeting in those years. And we made the big decisions together. The steering committee was tasked to take care of the day-to-day business of the congregation. Because we didn’t have any hired staff other than rabbi. But if a more important decision had to be made, it was made in a larger group. It was made by the congregation as a whole. I remember breaking up into smaller groups to discuss things and come back and have someone speaking for each small group. You know that technique? We used that early on. The object was to have as many people in the congregation be part of the decision-making. It really worked for us; that’s why we had such a tremendous participation when we decided to build a building later on. Everybody was part of it because they already knew they were part of it. That’s my opinion. 

Chestler: When you were president do you remember anything that stands out as to what decisions were made or how Havurah moved forward during that period?
EPSTEIN: I really don’t, Carol. I was trying to think about that. What I remember that we had been working on some kind of plan for something and as soon as Elden became the president (he was the one who followed me) he threw it all out and that was the end of that. Sorry. No I don’t remember any details. Too long ago.

Chestler: Back in those early days Havurah did not have a place of its own. What was that like, not having a place?
EPSTEIN: I think in many respects it was very good, because we all—not we all-there was always some people who were more engaged and involved than other people – you were one of them before you left, and I was one of them and Mimi was one of them. But we got to have meetings at people’s houses, we got to look at each other’s houses. It was more intimate, more intimate. So that was lost when we built our building. I think it was right to build the building, don’t misunderstand me, but there were aspects of it being ours that were good. We always knew if something needed to be done, it wouldn’t be done unless we did it. We couldn’t say well Mario will take care of it. Or uh —what’s her name?

Chestler: Teri?
EPSTEIN: Yes, Teri. Of course, we couldn’t say that. So I would call you up, or Joanie up, or Bob, or Jerry, or any number of people, Bill Kwitman, whatever, and say could you do this and they always said yes.

Chestler: So what would you say the spirit was like, among the people? What was the modus operandi? How did we get things done?
EPSTEIN: By asking. 

Chestler: But people had to be willing. 
EPSTEIN: Absolutely and they were, and that’s what I’m saying.

Chestler: You asked, but people said yes?
EPSTEIN: Absolutely. People were very enthusiastic about Havurah. A lot of people were refugees, if you will, from other synagogues where they didn’t like it, where they didn’t feel engaged, where they didn’t feel in charge, etc. And there were other people like me who had just thrown Judaism out completely. I mean –I say that’s too strong, I was always Jewish, I always knew I was Jewish, but I was not interested in organized Judaism. So there were people like me. All of us found a home where we felt needed, appreciated and hence willing to do stuff, willing to say yes when somebody asked us to something. In those days it wasn’t at all hard to get people to do Friday night services. People were enthusiastic to create their own services. I remember that. That kind of died away as years went by, but in those early days—-and there was a lot of creativity, a lot of wonderful creativity at the services, both Friday night and once a year for the High Holidays.

Chestler: Is that still true today about High Holidays?
EPSTEIN: I think it’s true today for High Holidays. I still enjoy High Holidays. We don’t have Friday night services per se, on the basis that we used to. I think Kabbalat Shabbat is fun, but it’s not what I think of as a Friday night service. They succeed, they get the parts thrown in. The Shema …

Chestler: Can you say more about what you would prefer?
EPSTEIN: No, no I wouldn’t prefer. I think its fine. The main reason it’s fine is because it gets people to come. The predecessor system did not get people to come. Because the enthusiasm, maybe people got burned out or maybe they got older and too involved in their kids’ lives. I don’t know but the enthusiasm for creating Havurah activities seems like it died off. It certainly did in me and it must have in others too because they didn’t happen. I remember stuff where we did exciting stuff. I remember Elden being Moses and leading the Israelites through Gabriel Park. Do you remember that?

Chestler: I don’t, but I know it happened.
EPSTEIN: Yes, but you didn’t have young children. You might not have been there.

Chestler: We missed out on the Shabbat School 
EPSTEIN: Because your kids were older. Shabbat School was very, very important and I think it’s still very important. From what I understand, a lot of people join because of the Shabbat School. So it’s very important.

Chestler: How did it work in those days – you know early?
EPSTEIN: How did what work?

Chestler: Shabbat school
EPSTEIN: Well Mimi and Sidney Gold worked very hard. The parents were involved as teachers as I’m sure they still are. And that was very different from any other Shabbat School. I remember we tried professionals one time. We hired a couple – I don’t remember their names. It just didn’t work out. We didn’t like it. We went back to our system of having just the parents because the parents were learning too. And they’re learning something that they may have been exposed to when they were kids but never really got it. And now they had to get it because they were going to give it to their kids. It worked better.

Chestler: So maybe you can describe how that has worked with you and your children. Neil went to Shabbat School? Mark was older?
EPSTEIN: Neil was three and Mark was 13; he just had his Bar Mitzvah.

Chestler: So Neil got in on the ground floor.
EPSTEIN: Absolutely, his entire Jewish education was at Havurah.

Chestler: So how do you think that went for him and for you as a family?
EPSTEIN: The way I can answer that is that Neil, when he left home, wherever he went he sought out a Jewish community to be part of, everywhere. He went to college at Swarthmore and then graduate school at University of Chicago and then he spent a year at Boston with another mathematician that he was learning from. Then got his Ph.D. in Kansas, in Lawrence Kansas. Then he went to Germany for three years, he was very active in the congregation there. So what it tells me is that he grew up in a Jewish home. We did have candles, and we had Seders, not kosher, but no pork products. And Neil has never eaten a pork product in his life and still doesn’t. Obviously it was good for him because he’s continued it, very much so. He married a woman who was not Jewish but who was very, very enthusiastic about what she had learned about Judaism and very rapidly became Jewish – converted within a year of their marriage. But not because she married a Jewish guy. She was one of these people looking (I’m sure you’ve heard this story before), was unsatisfied with where they were and went looking. For Elizabeth Judaism was it, and she’s wonderful. She’s learned so much. To answer your question, I think Havurah had a lot to do with it. Good for him. Growing up Jewish was fun and good and worthwhile.

Chestler: When he was a kid all those years, did he like going?
EPSTEIN: Oh, yes. Oh sure.

Chestler: He didn’t complain about going? It was every other Saturday. Like two Saturdays a month?
EPSTEIN: Mimi could answer that question better than I because I wasn’t around a whole lot. I was working very long hours as a doctor. But I don’t remember any complaints. I really don’t. I think he was fine.

Chestler: Did you participate as a parent in teaching?
EPSTEIN: I did some. Mimi did much more. I know I did some but once again I can’t remember exactly what I did.

Chestler: Can you talk about the experiences of getting to know the other Shabbat school parents that were like in that class, say? How did that work for you?
EPSTEIN: You know Carol, Mimi and I are strange people. We have a large collection of fond acquaintanceships, like you, but very few real friends. It’s just who we are. We’ve always been that way. I can count the people I consider real, real friends on a couple of fingers on a hand. Now if I were in trouble, or sick as I’ve been so much in recent years if we called you up and ask for help, you would say yes. I know that. And all those people that I call fond acquaintances would say yes. In fact some of them did – you did, some other people did, exactly. So I know that’s there. I know that people like me and Mimi enough that they’re willing to do that. But close friendships we haven’t had except with a very few people. The close couple of people that I think of, one is in Havurah, one isn’t. So we didn’t make close friends with any of the people in our Shabbat group is what I’m saying but I don’t think it was because there was anything wrong with them; it’s just who we are. I often thought we were just too comfortable with each other. We didn’t need anybody else.

Chestler: Interesting. Of course the turning points for Havurah have been hiring new rabbis, building up the various ways and philosophies of doing things, but how do you think it has helped having a building. What do you remember about that whole process even before we got the building?
EPSTEIN: Oh yes. A couple of years before we started building – I don’t remember the details – I think it was Andy Gordon and I convened a committee to try to get the idea of a building going. We thought that Havurah at that point had been around for 15, 16, 18 years, something like that. We were going to continue; we were established and we should have a building.

Chestler: Why would you say that though?
EPSTEIN: Well up until that time the joke was, “You can’t say the “B” word.” You remember that? Yes. The objection to the idea of a building was that it was going to interfere with our commitment, our spiritual commitment and so on. I didn’t believe that. I thought we needed to establish a place for a couple of reasons. One, it would make our existence somehow more real. The building isn’t going to fall down; it’s going to be there. It would make it easier to have meetings, to have events, to have an office for the rabbi. We had an office for the rabbi, but it was some rental place down on Capitol Highway. Not the synagogue. All those reasons. If you recall our membership went up by 50% within two years after we built the building. And I knew that, because I was connected with national organizations. That’s the experience around the country. When you build a building. It’s like, “Build it and they will come.” And it works. It has worked for Jewish foundations. So I thought that would be good too. The other thing was, and I didn’t know that this was going to happen, you and Mimi, you were the first one to chair the development committee, weren’t you, or did you take it after Mimi?

Chestler: Mimi was the first. I was president at the time and then when she couldn’t do it anymore after my presidency. I continued it. 
EPSTEIN: Well I thought – and of course you guys did a fabulous job. I brag about Mimi, I say, “Do you know? She raised a million dollars for our congregation.” Well she and you…

Chestler: And a lot of other people
EPSTEIN: And a lot of other people, absolutely. But she’s my wife. I can be proud of her. [laughs] I thought that that would be another way to bring us together. I was right. We had 95%, I’m not telling you what you don’t know. 95% of the members gave something.

Chestler: So are you talking about some kind of campaign – capital?
EPSTEIN: I’m talking about the money raised for building the building.
So 95% of the membership gave something. Do you know what the national average for involvement with that is?

Chestler: No, I don’t
EPSTEIN: 50%

Chestler: Okay!
EPSTEIN: 50%. See that’s why I think –when I said before I was talking about it was the way we did things, engaging everybody, and having all these meetings and talking about stuff before we made decisions. That’s why people gave their money. Some people gave $50, some people gave many thousands of dollars. Nobody – we didn’t say, “Congratulations Joe Cohen. We’re going to put your name on the building; or we don’t have plaques.” Those of us who gave money I think all of us feel like we own the building.

Chestler: It’s a piece of the pot.
EPSTEIN: It’s a piece of the pot. And I think that brings us together. I think that’s very important.

Chestler: So you and Andy –I don’t know the story –
EPSTEIN: Oh, okay. What happened was we started the committee, we talked about it, and then we went around basically interviewing people. It was very clear at that point nobody was interested in a building.

Chestler: We bought the building the end of 1995 and we had had a process for a couple of years, so this must have been around 1990?
EPSTEIN: 1990 or 1989, something like that. Well before….

Chestler: Okay, just to give us a framework of time
EPSTEIN: Yes, people were not ready for it then. But as time went on they got ready for it.

Chestler: So what did you and Andy actually do? I still don’t quite get it.
EPSTEIN: Once again my memory is not like it should be, but I think what we did was just talk to people. We talked to the movers and shakers, the people we could identify. Probably we talked to you.

Chestler: So did your talking to people…? I know you said a lot of people didn’t agree but some people must have because it was only a couple of years later that we started having… Noam Stampfer led a group committee that came up with….
EPSTEIN: We need a building—

Chestler: What we needed to bring with us if we had a building. Evaluating who Havurah was and what our values, kind of revisiting what our values were, do you remember that?
EPSTEIN: I was not involved with that. I don’t think so. No I wasn’t involved with Noam’s thing. I don’t know what changed. I think I was maybe a little discouraged. Though I was certainly in agreement with the building and of course we were people that contributed like most of the members

Chestler: What do you remember about all that process, not just raising capital funds, but trying to figure out…? Do you remember when we bought the building, the two warehouses? What do you remember about those two?
EPSTEIN: I went (you may have been there that day too) with Pam. She brought us there.

Chestler: Would you say who Pam was? Pam Webb?
EPSTEIN: Pam Webb. Do we tell them what she told us?

Chestler: No. I don’t remember.
EPSTEIN: Pam Webb was a wonderful member, an architect, unfortunately sadly now deceased, who was driving down 18th Street one day and she saw this building was for sale. She, with her architect’s eye looked at it and said, “I’m going to look into that.” She looked into it and she came to us and she said, “This is what you should build; this is what you should buy and we can design a beautiful synagogue.” This building had been a storage facility for celluloid film, the old kind of movie film. Because celluloid film was extraordinarily flammable this building had very thick concrete walls. So it couldn’t possibly burn down. Do you remember that? I don’t know who was invited, but Mimi and I went, and you went. I don’t know who else and I don’t know who was chosen and why, but we went. And we walked through this place and it was dusty and dark and it looked awful. I’m saying, “How can this be?” But Pam had this wonderful architect’s vision and she was right, because I think our synagogue is wonderful; it’s unusual and special. She could see it. She could see what could be done. It was this building that was for celluloid film storage and there a small building right next door to it and she had the idea of joining them up with a fancy….

Chestler: They were being sold as one unit.
EPSTEIN: I think it was a great leap of faith for us to listen to her and say we’ll do it. I thought that was amazing at the time. And it was right. It was the correct decision. 

Chestler: It was. By then our way of doing business with each other, our way of respecting, I don’t know, would you say that it became our way of operating that we had all this trust in each other?
EPSTEIN: I think so. By that time (we’re talking, 1994, 1995) the congregation…. I went to the first meeting, you went to the first meeting where we decided to become a real congregation. Do you remember that? It was the spring of….

Chestler: 1979.
EPSTEIN: No, no maybe it was winter of 1979. It was soon after we had joined.
We, the group who was there, said, “We don’t want to be just a Havurah; we want to be a full scale synagogue. We want to have a rabbi, we want to have school, we want to have bar and bat mitzvahs.” And so on. And we made a decision we were going to be Congregation Havurah Shalom. Do you remember that meeting? 

Chestler: No, go ahead. I know it happened.
EPSTEIN: You must have been there. But maybe not. I think from that time it was always the way of Havurah, as I said before in this interview, to include as many people as possible, to listen to as many opinions as possible. And we always had some people who disagreed. Some of those people stayed and some of those people disagreed so much that they left the congregation. Which was their right of course. I just think the inclusiveness of our process is what has allowed to do what we’ve done. I have to tell you. In recent years I have not been doing anything with Havurah basically. Mimi says, “Well you do this; you do that, a little thing here and there.” But not like I used to because I’ve had a lot of illness.

Chestler: You have good reason.
EPSTEIN: So I don’t know really if that spirit still is going on. It’s been very, very important in my life. 

Chestler: Well I think in some regards it is, and in some regards not as much–or different. Things change.
EPSTEIN: What I see when I go to an event is a lot of kids, and that’s the answer whether your organization is going to continue.

Chestler: Like what have you been to recently, are you talking maybe Purim or something?
EPSTEIN: Actually, to tell you the truth, it sounds funny after what I just said. I avoid those things that have a lot of kids because the noise really bothers me. I have hearing aids and they really bother me. Whenever I go to something…. I always go to Kabbalat Shabbat services and there’s always a bunch of kids there. And they seem happy. You know? I hope what I think is happening is really happening. I don’t know.

Chestler: Yes. It’s working and we’re growing.
EPSTEIN: I’m told we’re the only congregation in Portland that is growing. Of the major congregations.

Chestler: Oh really?
EPSTEIN: I don’t know who told me.

Chestler: I think we’re about 370 membership units, families, whatever. In the early days we started out in the very beginning with 20 families.
EPSTEIN: When we joined it was about 45 or 50. Well you know everything has changed Carol. You live a certain number of years, the language has changed and what’s important to our kids’ generation is not necessarily the same thing that’s important to us. That’s the nature of the world.

Chestler: So your sons are both married?
EPSTEIN: Mark is not married. But he has Sharon who he’s lived with for a number of years. They have a child together, so it’s like a marriage, but not quite. Neil is married.

Chestler: So the grandkids, do you think they’ll be Jewish? 
EPSTEIN: Absolutely. Neil and Elizabeth are much more traditionally Jewish than we are. Their home is kosher; they don’t turn on electric switches on Shabbat, all that stuff. They got that when they lived in Germany. Because in Germany they lived in a small city of 160,000 people called Osnabruck where the university is where Neil was a post-doc. They had a Jewish congregation that was almost entirely made up of Russian immigrants, because all the German Jews had been murdered. There were a few of the German Jews, they had come back after the war. Neil and Elizabeth got very, very active in that synagogue. If you wanted to have friends come to dinner in your house it had to be kosher, or they wouldn’t come. So the rabbi came and determined that their house was sufficiently kashered. They have continued that. They did not join an Orthodox synagogue when they joined a synagogue in Fairfax, VA where they live. They joined a Conservative synagogue, which they like. Mark and Sharon – Sharon was brought up in Eugene in a very Jewish family. She had a Bat Mitzvah. She was very determined to raise her children Jewish and she’s doing it. Max, who’s three and a half, walks around with his little kippah. They’re Jewish; they’ll be Jewish, I have no doubt about it.

Chestler: Do they live here now?
EPSTEIN: Yes, Mark and Rachel. Mark and Rachel! He was married to Rachel. They were together for 15 years and they’ve been divorced for ten years now. And I still say Mark and Rachel. Mark and Sharon moved here about six months ago. It’s the first time Mark has lived in Portland for 27 years. So we were very pleased. Talia, who is Sharon’s daughter from a previous marriage, is kind of a faux grandchild of ours. She doesn’t remember a time when we were not in her life. She was just barely five when we met her. We’re the ones who function as grandparents.

Chestler: Of course. Is there a chance that they may become members of Havurah at some point?
EPSTEIN: No, no. They joined Neveh Shalom. Sharon doesn’t like Havurah Shalom for some reason, and Mark said, “Whatever you say, Dear.” Which is not a bad thing to say. And she’s very active in Neveh Shalom. She started leyning. She hadn’t done it since she was a Bat Mitzvah. Now she’s leyning every two weeks at their services. 

Chestler: Could you say what leyning is?
EPSTEIN: She’s chanting the Torah portion. She’s very involved. She was chair of the decorations for their Hanukkah party. I mean she’s very involved.

Chestler: Nice. 
EPSTEIN: Yes, very nice.

Chestler: So I wanted to get back to you. You talked about how you got very much involved in studying Hebrew. Can you talk about that? Was that through Havurah or elsewhere?
EPSTEIN: When I got into Havurah and got back into active Judaism, I really felt that my Hebrew was very inadequate. I could always decode, there was no problem with that, but I —

Chestler: What do you mean decode?
EPSTEIN: Decode means you could say the words as you read them but you don’t know what they are. You’re not translating.

Chestler: Okay. Well that’s a distinction there.
EPSTEIN: Absolutely. And most of our members – that’s what they do, if at all. If they have any Hebrew at all they decode. There aren’t very many members that really know it as a language. So I decided that I wanted to know it as a language. But I couldn’t when I was working. There was just no time because I was a very busy general internist. I would have 8 hours in the office, then another hour in the hospital in the morning and another in the night. Come home and dictate. I was working 12-14 hour days.

Chestler: That’s changed though.
EPSTEIN: That’s changed, it sure it has changed.

Chestler: Just briefly, just as an aside, how has that changed, the medical?
EPSTEIN: Oh it’s changed because they have what is called hospitalists now. When one of my former colleagues at the Portland Clinic who’s still working admits a patient, the patient that goes to the hospital is taken care of by the people who work for the hospital not by that doctor. Not the way it was when I was working. I was the doctor. I was in charge of the care, all the care. So it’s very different. They don’t have night call at all anymore. They don’t have hospital calls. It’s a much easier life. I would have hated it.

Chestler: You would have hated it? Could you say why?
EPSTEIN: I was Mr. Smith’s doctor. When he had a problem, I was there for him. When he was sick in the hospital, I was there. When somebody had to tell his wife that this or that was going to happen which was not happy, I was there. You’ve had doctors that you cared about, that you depended on. Well I was one of them. I had some families where I had three generations of family as my patients. I just like that. I always felt that what I did counted. I wasn’t some poor guy putting a nut on a bolt again and again and again. Or selling apple juice or whatever.

Chestler: You made a difference.
EPSTEIN: I made a difference in a lot of peoples’ lives. I didn’t mind if some people didn’t like me, so they went to somebody else. But I had a big practice and I had a lot of loyal patients, many of which I kept for many years. When I retired, in 1998. When I retired I decided I needed to send a letter to my patients. Nobody in the Portland Clinic had ever done this before. But I thought I needed to do that, explaining that I wasn’t going to be there for  So I wrote a letter to 3000 patients. The office said, “You were their doctor.” And I got hundreds, literally hundreds of cards. Mimi kept them. I said, “What do you keep them for?” She said, “Your grandchildren are going to want to see them.” So they’re in a file cabinet downstairs–hundreds of cards from people who were regretting that I retired. They understood but they wished I didn’t have to. 340 cards! Whole Bunch.

Chestler: Well obviously you made a big difference in a lot of peoples’ lives and they appreciated that.
EPSTEIN: I think so.

Chestler: So being under the hospitalist system would not have been as gratifying for you.
EPSTEIN: Exactly. It’s more like you’re just an employee.

Chestler: So maybe you retired at the right time
EPSTEIN: Well that and also the feds have gotten so much more involved with medical care. All my doctor friends hate it. I know people that are retiring early because they don’t want to work in that system. It’s really bad.

Chestler: So it gave you time to—-
EPSTEIN: Oh we were talking about Hebrew. When I retired I kind of recovered for year or two. Then I started taking Hebrew at Portland State. And I took five years of Modern Hebrew at Portland State University. They only teach three years but I repeated year two and year three. They have a wonderful program for seniors. I wasn’t a senior then. I paid whatever I had to pay then. When you become a senior you can take any course at the university for free, as an auditor. And I’ve taken many. I’ve taken 35 courses.

Chestler: I’ve done that too.
EPSTEIN: Have you been there too? I’ve taken, literally, I’ve counted up about 35 courses since I retired. I haven’t taken Hebrew for the last five or isx years and now I am teaching Hebrew to a young woman who has become a friend of ours. We met her through Sharon. She is very active in a Messianic Christianity church, where their service is very Jewish. She knows the Jewish psalms. She knows some Hebrew but she wanted to learn it as a language. So we’re meeting every Sunday. We’re about halfway through the book, which teaches the alphabet. I asked Cecile, I asked her when we started, “Do you want to just learn how to decode?” and I explained what decode meant. “Or do you really want it as a language?” She said, “Absolutely I want to learn as a language.” So I’m teaching her the alphabet but also I’m throwing in vocabulary and starting her on understanding the grammar, which is very, very different from Indo-European. I don’t know how much Hebrew you know.

Chestler: Not much. I did have a Bat Mitzvah a few years ago.
EPSTEIN: Oh that’s right, of course you did.

Chestler: B’nai Mitzvah I should say. But I didn’t retain very much.
EPSTEIN: So you didn’t have it as a child. You were not taught any Hebrew as a child?

Chestler: Oh I went to Hebrew school, not to Hebrew school, to Sunday school
EPSTEIN: This is in Cleveland?

Chestler: Cleveland. So did you teach at Havurah at all ever?
EPSTEIN: Yes. I taught Hebrew at Havurah for a couple of years. I taught prayer book Hebrew. Susan Brenner knew absolutely no Hebrew when she came to my class.

Chestler: Wow!
EPSTEIN: See how far she’s gone.

Chestler: That’s a success story.
EPSTEIN: She’s the most successful story. But there were mostly women. The first class I taught I started planning to offer five lessons, just to get people started. I had five or six people in the class. And when the five weeks were over I said, “Well that’s all I planned to teach.” And they said, “Oh no. This is wonderful you have to continue.” And I taught until the following May. I started right after High Holidays and gone through the rest of the year and the next year. Susan Brenner was in that group. There were a number of people in that group. And then I taught it the next year, it was a smaller group, and they were not as enthusiastic. I offered it the third year nobody was interested. It’s a huge commitment to try to learn Hebrew as a language as an adult. It’s very hard. 

Chestler: So it wasn’t just prayer book Hebrew?
EPSTEIN: No it was Hebrew.

Chestler: Hebrew, the language.
EPSTEIN: The language yes. The book I used was Learning Prayerbook Hebrew, but it was learning how to read and understand so teaching a language. You say Baruch Ata Adonai, you knew what that meant, but did you know what came after that, that kind of thing. I used the book and I did other things. I remember collecting a bunch of names of synagogues and having them learning the words, the vocabulary and the grammar from the names of the synagogues. 

Chestler: Very nice, very interesting.
EPSTEIN: Stuff like that. It was fun.

Chestler: So what other — adult education
EPSTEIN: I taught history at Havurah.

Chestler: Yes, I thought you were involved in other kinds of adult ed.
EPSTEIN: Long ago. I taught some Jewish history at one time. I don’t remember anything else. It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. (I need to look at my notes, that’s why I made them, because my memory is no good at all) Oh okay, I wanted to tell you about High Holiday service. We did a lot of different of High Holidays, the portions of the services over the years. And the one I remember—

Chestler: You and Mimi?
EPSTEIN: No, it was always me and Mimi. You may remember this one. I especially remember doing the Yizkor service and introducing the concept of having people in the congregation tell their own Yizkor service stories. 

Chestler: I remember that. It was very moving
EPSTEIN: Yes people liked that. I built a set of bookcases for Joey’s office. I was a woodworker. He needed something to put his Talmud on. I’m sure he still has it. 

Chestler: I remember those bookcases. Beautiful.
EPSTEIN: One time we, Mimi, Michael and Rachel Kay and I played a Hanukkah suite on a Friday night service. Recorder, flute, violin and I don’t know what Michael played. Drums, maybe. I know he was terrible at drums. He didn’t have a sense of rhythm. Were you there that night? 

Chestler: Maybe
EPSTEIN: It was in a suite by an 18th century Italian composer whose name I can’t remember right now.

Chestler: That really illustrates the variety of creative adventures in Havurah.
EPSTEIN: Absolutely. But there was a question in your thing about outside in this community. I was in the Chevra Kadisha for many years.

Chestler: Could you talk about that?
EPSTEIN: I stopped doing it because I had such bad arthritis I couldn’t lift the met anymore and I didn’t want to just stand around and talk about it. We did taharot, which means purification.

Chestler: Who is we? Talk about this organization.
EPSTEIN: The Chevra Kadisha is a Jewish burial society, basically. There are two of them in Portland, one is Orthodox. They do their own; they’re not interested in the way we do it. We of the Chevra Kadisha do everybody else in Portland who wants this kind of burial. There’s no requirement to have this. It’s just the traditional Jewish burial. I was a member for six, seven or eight years, something like that.

Chestler: It wasn’t just Havurah members.
EPSTEIN: No, no, no. It was from all throughout the community. There were people from a variety of synagogues. There were people who didn’t belong at all.

Chestler: How many would you say?
EPSTEIN: In the whole Chevra? I don’t know, I really don’t know.

Chestler: Do you have a guess? 
EPSTEIN: 40. Well I don’t know. That can’t be right. Men do men; women do women. Oh yes. I’m thinking maybe 40 men, so maybe 80. Talking to people recently they’re having trouble getting men to do it. Less trouble getting women to do it.

Chestler: So how did it work? 
EPSTEIN: Well I would get a call and they would say, “We have a taharah tomorrow morning at 8:00 am.”

Chestler: What is taharah?
EPSTEIN: Tahara is purification. It’s what you do to the body before the body is buried. It was always at Holman’s, which is the funeral home in Portland where most Jewish burials happen, not all, but most. They’ve been doing it at Holman’s for many years. I get a call. I would walk into a room at Holman’s. There would be three men usually on the team. There would be a body of somebody who died, and who already been thoroughly washed and cleaned. There was a porcelain surface with drains for water. There’s a procedure that’s done. There are prayers that are said. It’s mostly from psalms. You read various sections from psalms that have to do with —-you know the term k’vod hamet. It means honoring the dead, respect for the dead. And that’s what this taharah is all about. You clean the body as much as it needs cleaning. It really doesn’t need any cleaning because the people do it very well. We wash the body with water, we clean the fingernails and the toenails, the whole bit, wash it, dry it. Then we dress the body in the particular form that is traditionally used, which has a white cloth, with cloth ties. And you tie the ties in a certain way so they make a shin [Hebrew letter].

Chestler: And the shin is for?
EPSTEIN: I knew you were going to ask that. Probably Shalom. Peace. There’s a jacket and there’s pants and there’s little booties and you put a yarmulke on and there’s a hood.

Chestler: These aren’t real clothes.
EPSTEIN: These are white cloth, cotton, and they are clothes in the sense they have sleeves and they have pants, but it’s not something you would wear on the street. And when the man is all dressed – you pick him up and there is a plain pine box coffin there. You lift him and you put him into the coffin. In the coffin there is a tallit that his shoulders sit on and then you wrap him with tallit. There is some earth from Israel that goes in the coffin. You close the coffin. One of the prayers at the very beginning ask forgiveness from the dead person for any indignities that I had to do to prepare you. I found the being on the Chevra very moving. There were a couple of times when it was awful, but I won’t tell you about that. The great majority of the time it wasn’t a problem. It was moving. It was not done for the met, for the dead person. It was done for their families. They weren’t there but they knew it was happening.

Chestler: So while you were washing, drying, dressing, was one of the team saying prayers at the time? Or you were as you were doing it you’re saying prayers?
EPSTEIN: Yes. Prayers or readings from psalms. The readings that talk about the body as beautiful and the teeth are like pillars of ivory and the legs are strong like the legs of a gazelle and stuff like that.

Chestler: So that’s like the ultimate show of respect to a person isn’t it. I’m very moved by your description.
EPSTEIN: There’s also the shiparei.

Chestler: The what?
EPSTEIN: Names. Guardians. Shiparei are people who stay with the corpse until it’s buried. They just sit by. 

Chestler: Is that what the Chevra does too?
EPSTEIN: Yes.

Chestler: Family members do that sometimes?
EPSTEIN: I think they can but I don’t know if they do.

Chestler: It seems to me I remember that happening at one point at a funeral I’ve attended.
EPSTEIN: We’ve treated death in a different way. When my father died my mother was still living; we did the funeral. Mimi and I did the funeral. It was in a home. We didn’t get a rabbi. We did it. We knew how to do it. We knew the prayers.

Chestler: You knew how because you had studied Hebrew?
EPSTEIN: Yes. And I’d been a member of Havurah and I read these prayers all these years. Yes. We did it. And people came up to us afterwards and said that was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen.

Chestler: That’s really very beautiful.
EPSTEIN: And I never would have done that if I hadn’t been in Havurah.

Chestler: Tell me more about that.
EPSTEIN: Wouldn’t have occurred to me to do that. Well Havurah gave us all permission to do it. To do whatever we felt was necessary or appropriate or we wanted to do –Jewishly.

Chestler: How did they do that? How did that happen?
EPSTEIN: Well you know the old line in Havurah, if you want something to happen, do it.

Chestler: Yes?
EPSTEIN: Well that’s how. That’s the permission. If you’re in some other unnamed synagogue, I don’t know how it is now, could have all changed by now, in those days if you were in some other unnamed synagogue and you wanted to do a service, they said go away, the rabbi does the service. Or the cantor. Havurah said, “Sure.”

Chestler: We had an opportunity to do a lot of our own Friday night services because why? We had a rabbi. 
EPSTEIN: Because we told him, when we hired him, do you remember this?

Chestler: No
EPSTEIN: Oh yes. When we hired Roy and again when Joey came, we said, “You will be allowed to do two Friday night services a month. The rest the congregation will do.”

Chestler: Really?
EPSTEIN: Absolutely. That’s what happened. It was because people were still enthusiastic about doing it. It’s a participatory congregation and participatory includes services. Not just running a mimeograph machine. That shows my age doesn’t it? [laughs]

Chestler: What is that? [laughs] You got permission to do the service for your own father when he died.
EPSTEIN: I didn’t ask for permission. I said, “This is what’s going to happen.”

Chestler: Because the Havurah way was so ingrained it was like second nature would you say?
EPSTEIN: Yes. Exactly. People who never created services, who never wrote services, never wrote liturgy, never learned the order of the service and what should be there and what doesn’t need to be there, would never think of doing anything that. It would never occur to them. 

Chestler: So you were among other members of Havurah that actually created services and had to learn what that entailed.
EPSTEIN: Of course. Absolutely. 

Chestler: You didn’t really start out knowing. 
EPSTEIN: My Jewish education was very inadequate, growing up. I’m sure it was a lot of people. It certainly wasn’t just us. Did you give services in the early years? Did you run services?

Chestler: I think maybe a few times, but not anywhere near the depth that you did. 
EPSTEIN: But you did other things that were equally important.

Chestler: But I think there has been a small group of people like yourself or Susan Brenner or people who really have taken on almost a rabbinic role.
EPSTEIN: Oh yes. Susan, Michele Goldschmidt.

Chestler: Was she in your class too?
EPSTEIN: No. But she became….I heard this story one time that somebody met a non Havurah member and she said, “Oh are you the synagogue who has the black rabbi?” 

Chestler: Laughs.
EPSTEIN: Because she had been in a service when Michele was leading services.

Chestler: So tell us Michele’s last name
EPSTEIN: Goldschmidt.

Chestler: Okay, so Michele Goldschmidt.
EPSTEIN: Yes, she’s wonderful. I don’t think she’s doing it anymore. But for years she did it for Saturday services.

Chestler: So we talked a little about Friday services. What about Shabbat mornings, Saturday services in Havurah? Did you participate in that?
EPSTEIN: In the early years I did. But when Joey came I stopped. Because I didn’t like his services at all. It was too traditional. A lot of people love that and I understand that. But I wasn’t one of them. When Roy was here I remember when were in the West Hills Unitarian Fellowship we went to the Shabbat morning services every week. I liked it. It was great.

Chestler: What was the difference?
EPSTEIN: I think there was more Hebrew and I wasn’t as well versed in Hebrew then as I am now. It was just a different attitude, a different approach. I’m totally aware that my viewpoint on things is not necessarily like anyone else’s. But I didn’t like Joey’s services.

Chestler: But that’s fine. 
EPSTEIN: We’ve had him for 28 years I think. He must have done something right. 

Chestler: Is it? I know he came in 1987.
EPSTEIN: Well it’s 2015. That’s 28 years.

Chestler: Your math is better than mine. That’s good. So, we’re getting close to when we’ll wrap our interview and I really enjoyed reminiscing with you. It’s been really great. But I want to give you a few minutes to just, if you would like, to talk about anything that you want to say more that you would like to have on this history interview because it’s going to be eventually in the Oregon Jewish archives, the Jewish Museum archives. It will be available online. People can hear it–listen to hear it. What would you like to say? I know our reason for getting together is to gather especially from the early members of Havurah what it was like to start a congregation in the city. Do you have anything more that you would like to talk about?
EPSTEIN: I talked about a lot of it. I think I could say and I know my wife agrees with this that being members of Havurah Shalom has been a major influence on our lives, a major positive influence on our lives. We have loved it. I hope other people have had that same kind of experience and I hope that it continues in the future. People talk a lot about Judaism dying out. Is it going to be there for our children? Of course they’ve been talking that way for hundreds of years, as it turns out. Every generation. But you hear that. I hear that. I think the way to continue Judaism is for it 1) to change as necessary with the times, which is what Reconstructionist Judaism is all about and 2) to have the children have pleasant experiences, exciting, interesting, worthwhile experiences in the synagogue. And I think we do that. And I think that’s very important. And I hope does, I don’t know. 

Chestler: That is a great note to end. But I thought of something that I wanted to talk to you about. I know that Havurah affiliated with the Reconstructionist Movement in 1997. I believe you were our representative to the organization in Philadelphia. 
EPSTEIN: Well I was on the board.

Chestler: You were on the board.
EPSTEIN: For six years.

Chestler: I would like you to address the Reconstructionist Movement and Havurah and your being on the board.
EPSTEIN: We joined the Reconstructionist Movement as I understand it, largely at Joey’s suggestion. Joey was very aware that we didn’t fit into the Reform Movement. Their ideas, their approaches, their theology, if you will, was not ours. Whatever that means. I don’t want to try to explain. He’s the one as I remember who instigated that discussion. And by that time the Reconstructionist Movement had grown quite a bit. They seemingly had more to offer. I think it was a pretty widespread consensus that we were getting nothing out of the Reform Movement that we decided to leave it and join the Reconstructionist Movement. I think you have a misunderstanding. I didn’t get on the board because Havurah nominated me. That’s not what happened. What happened was that Mimi and I went to the national convention of the Reconstructionist Movement shortly after our congregation had affiliated. 

Chestler: So you were representing Havurah, that’s why you went …
EPSTEIN: No. no. We just went because we wanted to go. Havurah had nothing to do with it. 

Chestler: Oh!
EPSTEIN: We were interested. And it was in Chicago and Neil was living in Chicago so that was another reason to go, that he was at the University of Chicago graduate school. We went there and I was very enthusiastic and went to a bunch of committee meetings and met a bunch of people. You know I’m not shy. Maybe two weeks after we came home a woman that I had met there called and said, “How would you like to be on the board?” It was another example of if you speak up they grab you. That’s how I got to be on the board, it had nothing to do with Havurah. I was a member of Havurah obviously, but Havurah didn’t recommend me or send me, it was the board. I never felt that I represented Havurah particularly. I was a member of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation as a member of a congregation that was affiliated. They gave me the job –this sounds bragging but it isn’t bragging. I was one of the very few members on the board who actually did anything. Outside the executive committee, they did plenty, the president, the vice-president and so on. But they were five men and women. Then there was a board of 50 people, approximately. For almost all those other board members they went a board meeting once a year and they gave their money. We had to pay a certain amount of money. When I finished it was $1800 to be on the board, which wasn’t bad. To be on the College Board. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College board at that time was $10,000. [laughs] So $1800 didn’t look so bad, in any case. But they asked me to be the outreach chair. I was for six years or five and a half years with a rabbi, Shawn Zevit, who worked for –you know Shawn , he’s been in Portland a number of times. 

We were the outreach people. I visited congregations around the country. This was mostly trying to get people to join. I went to Hoyt something Montana. I actually visited the congregation Kol Ami, but they didn’t join us, they joined the Reform Movement – that’s the one in Vancouver. And others. The one of Philadelphia, I thought it had a great name, it was Lev Haher. Do you know what that means – “heart of the city.” [laughs] Isn’t that a great name? I did that with Shawn all those years. We would call people and have conversations and report to the board. I was one of the very few people that actually did anything.

Chestler: So that was satisfying to you.
EPSTEIN: Yes. Sure. But six years was enough. They wanted me to take another term but I didn’t want to.

Chestler: So just in a few sentences can you tell me what Reconstructionist Judaism as opposed to say Conservative or Reform?
EPSTEIN: (sighs) I’m not a theologian. Mordecai Kaplan wrote a bunch of books, which are very hard to read. The basic idea was he believed he wanted to create an American Judaism. He realized in the 19teens, the 1920s that the Judaism of the old country was just simply not going to fly here. The Judaism of the shtetls was not going to work here. Because they were not democratic, they were authoritarian. You could get kicked out of the community if you did something they didn’t like. There was excommunications. All that stuff was very real in the Jewish community in Eastern Europe. That’s where most of us came from. The vast majority of American Jews – their ancestors were from Eastern Europe. He was born in Eastern Europe and trained there. He said that’s not going to fly here. We have to develop a Judaism that recognizes democracy, recognizes the power of people. He wrote many, many papers and books and so on.. He did not found the JRF. His son-in-law did. Ira —

Chestler: Weinstein, Weintraub?
EPSTEIN: No. Ein- something or other, it’s embarrassing, but I can’t think of his name. [transcriber note:Ira Eisenstein] What Reconstructionist Judaism means to me, it’s a Judaism in which change is not only accepted, but invited and embraced. Recognizing that the world keeps changing and if we want Judaism to be meaningful it has to change too. As it has! Havurah’s Judaism is very different from the Judaism that I grew up in. But we have all these enthusiastic people who want their children to grow up in it too. So that’s good. To me that’s what Reconstructionist Judaism means. It means – his famous line is, “tradition has a vote but not a veto” – you’ve heard that. That’s what it’s all about; we respect the tradition. There was survey done, it must be 20 years ago now and they looked at who in the various denominations, if you will, and there were many, many more families in Reconstructionist group as a percentage that kept kosher as compared to Conservatives, many more.

Chestler: Very interesting.
EPSTEIN: But not because Reconstructionism says you must, but because you’re honoring tradition and you want do it like your grandma did.

Chestler: Nice. Do you think it’s a good fit for Havurah?
EPSTEIN: Yes. You know they haven’t told us what to do. They have accepted us. On occasion we have used their Mordecai Liebling, he has come a couple of times. Shawn has been here a couple of times.

Chestler: Now that Rabbi Joey is going to be retiring and there’s a search process going on, will the Reconstructionist Movement come into play as we get a new rabbi?
EPSTEIN: I don’t know if they have a placement service. Do they?

Chestler: I don’t know.
EPSTEIN: I don’t know either. What I would like to see is a young female Reconstructionist rabbi who plays the guitar or some other instrument that is musical.

Chestler: So what you want in a rabbi in five easy words? Wow.
EPSTEIN: Exactly. Well I think somebody like that could—it depends on the individual. We had that young woman who was here a few months ago.

Chestler: I wasn’t there.
EPSTEIN: She was juvenile; it seemed her talk was like a high school senior’s talk. But it may be hard to find the right person. I don’t know. What do I know?

Chestler: It will usher in a whole new era for Havurah.
EPSTEIN: Absolutely. You never know what you’re getting. We may find somebody that seems terrific that turns out to be not terrific. Or we pass up somebody who we should have hired. Who know?

Chestler: As you said, Rabbi Joey has been with us for almost 28 years and he isn’t all things to all people all the time. But he’s been a good fit for us, I would say. 
EPSTEIN: Yes, I think so too. He embraced the idea of participatory congregation. He was very happy with that. I remember talking to him about that at the very, very beginning probably when he interviewed or shortly after he came here. He thought that was just fine. He wasn’t going to be the “boss.” He wasn’t going to be standing up on the bimah giving directions.

Chestler: And he’s made that very clear.
EPSTEIN: Exactly, and that was a very good fit for us. I would have liked somebody that I personally could have felt that I would go to if I had spiritual problems or questions. Roy probably would have done that for me, but Joey wasn’t. For me. But he’s been great for many people. I know that.

Chestler: Yes he has. You’ve been a great person to interview.
EPSTEIN: How do know? it’s your first one. [laughs]

Chestler: Well that’s why I can say it in all honesty. I thank you very much. If you think of any other things that you want to talk about I’d be happy to come back.
EPSTEIN: Well there was a thing about photos and mementos.

Chestler: Oh that reminds me. I have to take a picture of you.
EPSTEIN: I have started looking at photos and I will pick out ones that have Havurah history. I’m picking out photos for a slide show for our May event. Our May anniversary event. Amazing. We started to go through people to ask. Very quickly the number was 72. It scared me. Well you know we live in different worlds. We’ve been dancers for 40 years so we’re very into the dance community. We’ve been very into Havurah for many years. Mimi has other people that she’s in –we live in different worlds and they all have to be represented and then you have to say, oh well, you can’t have everybody from our dance community, can’t have everybody from Havurah, you can’t have every –you know it’s very difficult.

Chestler: I hear you. But that’s nice that you’re going to be celebrating 50 years.
EPSTEIN: I feel very lucky.