..inte: Esther S. Fireman ..intr: Dr. Phyllis Martinelli ..da: 1985 ..cp: 1991.005.003 Esther Samuels (Fireman), second from left, sits with friends outside her father’s store, Douglas, Arizona, 1916. ..ca: ..ftxt: An interview with Esther S. Fireman January 31, 1985 Transcriptionist: Carol Ruttan Interviewer: Dr. Phyllis Martinelli Arizona Jewish Historical Society Log For Esther S. Fireman Interview Pages 1 Family name and reason changed to Samuels 1 Moved to Douglas from El Paso, Texas 2 European origins of family 2 Parents' marriage arranged by mother's sister 3 Kosher home in Texas, contrast between El Paso and Douglas 4 What Douglas was like growing up, Jewish families and friends 5 Her family home In Douglas: garden, animals, yard 5- 6 Location of Jewish families In Douglas, their businesses (mostly merchants) 7 Her cousins in Douglas: father's brother, uncle's sister-in-law 8 Community involvement of Jewish family 8 General lack of discrimination 8 Jewish children excel in school 8 High Holy Days in Douglas 9-10 Religious practices in her family, following dietary laws, 10 Passover 11-12 Traditions taught to children, Yiddish 12-13 Her younger siblings 13 Older sister's teaching career 13 Organized group of Jewish girls In Phoenix, and later in Tucson14 Move to Phoenix, father's job 15 School in Phoenix, change felt in move to Phoenix 15 Most Jewish families left Douglas 16-17 Won contest in school, trip, saw first "talkie" 17-18 Phoenix Jewish community, contacts in it, socializing 19 Her family encouraged education 19 Why didn't stay in teaching, bookkeeping work 20 Moved to San Francisco with brother 20 Sorority formed in University of Arizona 21 How met Bert Fireman, his background, their marriage 22 Active in formation of temple in Tempe, Arizona 22-23 Her activities in Jewish organizations 24 Expected to marry Jewish spouse 25 Orthodox families 26 Her contact with family in Texas, Mexico, California 26-27 Depression 27 Phoenix, help for visiting Jews 27 Prominent Jewish families 29-30 Father's death, mother lived many years after 30-31 San Francisco Jewish community Esther S. Fireman Interview Today Is January 31st. This is Phyllis Martinelli. I'm going to be interviewing Mrs. Esther Fireman for the Arizona Jewish Historical Society. We are in the Hayden Library In Tempe, Arizona. I started off by leaving out a very important historical note and that is that the year is now 1985. MARTINELLI: Can I call you Esther? Would you be comfortable with that? FIREMAN: Of course. MARTINELLI: What was your family name? FIREMAN: Well, that's an interesting story. My father changed his name before I was born to Samuels. Originally his name was Ilitsky and he changed his name because he had many problems with a brother of his. He came to Douglas from El Paso in 1912. My parents had one child who was born In El Paso, my older sister, Lena. Then I was born In Douglas in March of 1913. We moved from El Paso to Douglas because Douglas was being highly touted as the coming city of the West, gateway to Mexico. A new smelter had Just opened and he thought that he would get rid of his brother and improve his financial circumstances and left El Paso where he had a grocery and meat market and moved to Douglas and started a dry goods store. MARTINELLI: Could we back up just a little bit in terms of your family. When about did they originally come to the United States; do you have any Idea? Where were they from originally? FIREMAN: My father was from Russia, near Minsk and he came to the United States I think about 1906, I'm not sure of that date. He landed in Philadelphia and everyone was talking about the West and the opportunities in the West, so he went to El Paso. The reason for that I don't really know. His marriage to my mother was an arranged marriage. Her father had died when she was an infant and her mother had died. She came to Chihuahua, Mexico when she was 16 because she had a sister who was married and had children and was waiting for the quota to come Into El Paso. She lived with her sister in Chihuahua. Her first language was Spanish. She learned to speak Spanish fluently before she learned to speak English. She was Introduced to my father, who was single, and that's how they met. I don't remember if I said that she came from Poland. She came from Lublin in Poland. So we constantly had that give and take about Polish Jews or Russian Jews as we were growing up. My father used to tease her about her Polish accent. MARTINELLI: Do you know who arranged the marriage? How was that done? FIREMAN: well, it was done in the Jewish community. There were so few Jews at that time and I don't know that it was really an official person like a rabbi or a shatchen. You know, young men knew where the single women were. It was a very, very small community. In fact, she had been suggested to another Jewish gentleman by the name of Goodman but her sister vetoed that arrangement because he was not an observant Jew. Neither was my father, but my aunt didn't know it. MARTINELLI: So that was a factor though for your mother's family? FIREMAN: Yes. MARTINELLI: Was your mother's family then fairly Orthodox? FIREMAN: Yes. My aunt was very religious. It was difficult to keep a kosher house but she kept a kosher house. I remember hearing all kinds of stories about her and how she beat her Mexican maid with a broom because she used the milk dish rag on the meat dishes. In El Paso they had more of an organized Jewish community than they do in Douglas. In Douglas we had no rabbi and we had no services except on the High Holy Days or the special holidays when members of the community conducted services. There was no rabbi. There was an old gentleman by the name of Blumenthal, who was the schohet for the town. He had a son, Morey Blumenthal who wrote the Arizona state song. MARTINELLI: Oh, really. How interesting. So they were members of the Douglas community? FIREMAN: Yes. MARTINELLI: What was it like for you as a youngster growing up In Douglas? FIREMAN: Well, Douglas was a very small town. There were never more than 20 Jewish families In Douglas. Of course, most of our friends were the Jewish children. We went to a grade school that was segregated in Douglas. Mexicans had their own 7th Street School and we went to the Clawson School. We didn't mix much with the Gentile community. Things were simpler in those days. I don't think people entertained as much as they do today. There weren't many social events of any importance. Douglas had no swimming pool. There was a swimming pool outside of town on the way to Bisbee. I don't remember if it was a service club or who was the sponsor, the operator of that swimming pool, whether it was just a public swimming pool, but we used to go there. There were very few automobiles also when I was a child growing up. There was one taxi in Douglas that happened to be run by a Jewish man who was a baseball player, Shy Greenberg, and he was quite a character around town. He had this touring car and he used to take us kids for a ride in it occasionally. That was my first ride in a car - in his touring car. It had those canvas tops. There were few automobiles and there were few telephones. I remember to use the telephone we used to go to the Lyric Theater where there was a telephone that we could use. My cousins did have a telephone in their house but we didn't have a telephone for a long time. It was a border town and we used to go across the border to buy vegetables. There were some Chinese markets there that had great vegetables. It was just walking distance from our house there on the border. I remember hearing stories about Pancho Villa shooting up the border. We had a big triple lot at our house. My father was quite a gardener. He raised a lot of vegetables, vegetables that weren't heard of, like kohlrabi and things like that that he liked. My mother, who had been raised on a dairy farm, had cows and chickens and ducks and turkeys, we had a croquet court and we had a big enough yard so we had a baseball diamond. It was really more like country where we lived than city. MARTINELLI: Was it a pretty setting or was it sort of rugged? FIREMAN: No, It was nice. It was not rugged, no. We left Douglas in 1929 when I was 16 and had graduated from high school and moved to Phoenix in 1929. MARTINELLI: In terms of the Douglas Jewish community you mentioned you tended to play with the Jewish children. Do you recall did the Jewish families tend to live in the same part of town? FIREMAN: No. They were scattered. G Avenue was the main thoroughfare and most of the merchants were Jewish. There were the Levy brothers who had their In-laws also working for them, two Levy brothers and their brother-in-law, Nor Davis. They had really a small department store. There were the Langes, who had the tea and coffee shop. There were the Stoleroffs, who I remember had a dry goods store. There was my father and his brother, who had a sort of a surplus store - they used to call them army and navy stores, and he had a scrap yard also. Most of the merchants in town were Jewish. The drug store was not owned by a Jew, nor was the grocery store. Then there was the big company store, the Phelps Dodge Mercantile Company. It's a small town and all the stores were concentrated in this three or four block area on G Avenue, so my mother helped my father in the store and we spent a lot of our time downtown. We saw mostly the Jewish kids. If we were invited to a birthday party or something like that it was always one of the Jewish kids. MARTINELLI: Did you give me the address where your family house was located? FIREMAN: No. I guess it was 641 5th Street. MARTINELLI: The exact address isn't Important; just an idea if someone wanted to go back and find out where families were located. But there was not a concentration of Jewish families so they were scattered throughout Douglas? FIREMAN: No. We lived on 5th Street and the Farbers lived on 10th Street. My cousins lived on 8th Street. They were not close to each other. It was not what you would call a ghetto or anything like that. MARTINELLI: You mentioned cousins. Now, who would these cousins be? FIREMAN: Well, these cousins were my father's brother, whose name was Isadore Ilitsky. My father had brought all his brothers over from Russia. He was the oldest and three of them were in El Paso, one of those three went to Mexico and became a cattle rancher in Mexico. His children still live in Mexico. They're quite affluent. This particular one who followed us to Douglas, his name was Isadore Litsky and he's the one who had the surplus store and the scrap yard. Then he brought his wife's sister and husband and family over. The Farbers had three sons, one of them became a psychiatrist; he's written several books. He's since deceased. He graduated from high school together with me in 1929. Another brother, the middle brother, was also a psychiatrist. Interestingly enough he was deaf and he managed to pursue his profession In spite of that handicap. I don't know that any of the other Jews became prominent. Leon Levy, one of the sons of the Levy brothers, was on the Board of Regents when they expanded their department store and moved to Tucson. Incidentally, he Just a few weeks ago took his own life. He was very ill. MARTINELLI: You mentioned that most of the Jewish families were Involved in businesses on G Street. Were they involved at all in any of the, for example, the politics of Douglas or did they concentrate more on their businesses? FIREMAN: No, I don't think so. I don't think that at that time that Jews did that. I don't think they became involved in community affairs in any way. I don't know that you could say that there was discrimination. Sometimes some of these Mexican children would throw rocks at us and say "Christ killer" and "You killed Christ" and things like that, but the Jews kept to themselves. I don't remember that any of them participated in civic affairs at that time. MARTINELLI: So the group somewhat voluntarily stayed together? In other words, it wasn't that people in general were hostile toward you, with the exceptions you mentioned? FIREMAN: No, I don't think that there was any real discrimination or any hostility, any overt kind. In school we were all accepted, all the Jewish kids were always on the honor roll and the brightest kids in class and that sort of thing. Mostly, they kept to themselves. MARTINELLI: You mentioned when we started talking there was no rabbi in Douglas and for something like Rosh Hashanah the families would celebrate the High Holy Days. Did they rent a hall? FIREMAN: Yes, they rented a hall. Well actually, I suppose they rented it; I don't know if it was given to them. I think it was the Elks hall. It was upstairs above a furniture store and I think that Mose Kline, who owned the furniture store, probably owned the building. I'm not sure about that, but I know it was above his furniture store upstairs and that's where services were held. MARTINELLI: The families themselves would conduct the services? FIREMAN: Yes. MARTINELLI: Do you recall, for example, we were talking at that meeting at Mr. Smith's house, or someone was discussing how a young man had to go to Phoenix to study for his bar mitzvah. Do you recall any of your contemporaries having to leave Douglas - to study for something like that? FIREMAN: I don't remember anyone being bar mitzvahed; anyone going away to study. I think that Blumenthal, that elderly gentleman who was the schochet, did have some pupils, they did take some [training] from him but I don't remember that they were for the purpose of being bar mitzvahed. MARTINELLI: What about within your own family? You said that your aunt was very Orthodox but your father really wasn't and she didn't know that. What was your household like? FIREMAN: Well, this aunt lived in El Paso and I think she also was one of the reasons my father wanted to leave El Paso because she was always Interfering in his marriage. My mother was her youngest sister; she was the oldest and she lived in El Paso. The aunt that I had in Douglas was my father's brother's wife and she was not observant or religious. You couldn't get Jewish products. My father used to sort of take orders around on G Avenue and he sent to Chicago for the matzos at Passover. Then he would send for things like cheeses that he liked and sardines and salami. We cut our eye teeth on Vilno salami instead of the Hebrew National that the New Yorkers all seem to prefer because Vilno salami came from Chicago. I remember these big boxes used to arrive and then the different merchants down the street would come and take what they had ordered. But there was no place In town where you could get any of the ethnic foods. MARTINELLI: What did your mom cook then, in terms of the household? Did she try to observe any of the dietary laws? FIREMAN: Yes, she did. She observed the dietary laws and she used to take her chickens to be killed by this Mr. Blumenthal. Of course we had our own cows so she made cheese and butter. She observed the dietary laws as much as she could. MARTINELLI: Did you have, for example, the two sets of dishes and silverware? FIREMAN: Yes, and a different set of dishes for Passover. At Passover time we only had one set of dishes so we didn't have milk dishes. I remember feeling so deprived at Passover because we had no butter, no milk; everything was Just meat because we only had meat pots, pans and meat dishes. MARTINELLI: So your mother must have kept very busy at home. FIREMAN: Well, she was busy all the time and she was a hard worker, she was very industrious. MARTINELLI: Did she teach you and your older sister traditions in terms of keeping the household, did she expect you girls to help her? FIREMAN: Yes, she lit the Friday night candles and scoured the house at Passover, you know. I remember we used to get our house painted every year. Since then I've thought that it was really going above and beyond to paint your house before Passover every year, but my father used to have the house painted every year before Passover. As far as formal learning of any kind we really didn't have that. My father did teach us to read the Fourard, the newspapers that he subscribed to, but of course I've since forgotten all of that, never having practiced it. MARTINELLI: But there was no Hebrew school in a place like Douglas to help you children learn? FIREMAN: Yes, no cheder or Sunday School. MARTINELLI: You mentioned at one point that your mother had learned Spanish when she first came here. I was just wondering, what languages did you grow up hearing in the home? FIREMAN: Well, we all four of us children grew up speaking Spanish because we had a lot of Mexican customers. One of the chief sources of income or sales were these Mexican peddlers who used to come across the border with orders, called anchetas (Reddlau). They were usually women who would take orders and come and buy the stuff and then take it back across the border and sell it at a profit. A lot of our customers were Mexicans. Of course, we grew up speaking Spanish because there were a lot of Mexican kids around. Since my mother and father both spoke Spanish and since we spent a lot of time in the store all four of us children grew up speaking Spanish. Now, we all speak Yiddish; all four of us children understand Yiddish and speak Yiddish. They, when they [our parents] wanted to talk so that we wouldn't know, they would either talk in Polish or Russian. We didn't grow up learning any of those languages, but we did speak Yiddish, we did speak Spanish and English. MARTINELLI: When the Jewish children got together to play, for example, would you speak in English to each other? FIREMAN: Oh, sure, always. MARTINELLI: What about the adults when they would get together, would they use Yiddish? FIREMAN: Yes, they spoke in Yiddish. MARTINELLI: You mentioned now there were four of you. Who were your younger siblings? FIREMAN: Well, I was the second child and my brother was the third child. MARTINELLI: His name was? FIREMAN: His name was Louis and he lives in San Francisco. My younger sister, Bess, lives here in Phoenix. MARTINELLI: Your brother was not bar mitzvahed then? FIREMAN: No. My older sister went to Tempe Normal School which is now ASU and she taught school in Douglas for many years after she graduated. Then she moved to Phoenix and taught school in Phoenix. She was president of the Junior Council of Jewish Women. When we moved to Phoenix -- do you want to talk about Phoenix or just Douglas? MARTINELLI: I Just wanted to talk a little bit more about Douglas and then we can talk about Phoenix. Go ahead and finish what you're saying about your sister. FIREMAN: Well, when we moved to Phoenix in 1929 there was one synagogue and very little organized activity for young people. We organized a group of girls -- there always seemed to be a lot more girls than fellows around -- but there was a small group of girls, 8 or 10, who had an informal kind of an organization. Then we got together and Carrie Lewkowitz, Jerry's mother, was our sponsor. There was a Senior Council of Jewish Women. We organized this Junior Council of Jewish Women. I was an officer, my sister became president of the organization in later years. When I went to the University of Arizona there was no Jewish group. There was a ZBT, there was a men's fraternity, but there was no girl's and there was no club for young Jewish people. We did organize a group called, the Maimonidean Society and, interestingly enough, our sponsor was an English teacher at the University who was a convert to Judaism. She had married a Jewish man. They met in a tuberculosis sanatorium. Her name was Elsie Raffman, and she was a very, very dedicated convert to Judaism. She sang in the choir and she was our sponsor for the Maimonidean Society. Then, later on, while I was still there at the University -- I graduated in 1933 -- while I was still there at the University we started a sorority. Now, of course, I guess there are three Jewish sororities on campus. But at that time there was none. MARTINELLI: You were able to get one started, it was the beginning. FIREMAN: Yes. MARTINELLI: Could we back up just a little bit. You mentioned that your family left Douglas in 1929. What was the reason behind that? FIREMAN: Well, it was economic. I mean, the conditions were not good and I was graduating from high school, I was 16. My father found a job In Phoenix and we moved. My sister was -- I don't know if she was through at the Normal School. I think she had one more year to go. In those days you only went two or three years. I don't remember. I think she went three years and she had one more year to go. So she was going to school in Tempe and I was going to start college. So we moved to Phoenix then in 1929. MARTINELLI: What kind of work did your dad do in Phoenix? FIREMAN: He worked for the White House, which was a dry goods store, department store. He worked for a man named Hyman Gold. MARTINELLI: Now, you were 16 and you moved to Phoenix. Did you then go directly to Tucson? FIREMAN: No, I went to Phoenix Junior College for two years and then went the last two years to the University of Arizona. MARTINELLI: As a teenager, how did you find this change from a small town where you probably knew just about everybody to I guess it was a big city of Phoenix? FIREMAN: Well, all of us hated moving because we had our friends and we came to Phoenix in September and it was so beastly hot. We didn't like being uprooted but my father thought it would be better for us in the bigger city; more Jewish people. We gradually got over being homesick and made friends. MARTINELLI: You mentioned there had been about 20 Jewish families in Douglas as you were growing up. Did they mostly remain there or did they also look for better economic chances? FIREMAN: No, they didn't mostly remain there. They mostly left. A few stayed, but most of them left. The Farbers left; the Stoloroffs left; the Levys moved to Tucson; the Aaronwalds went back to New York; they mostly left. MARTINELLI: Another thing just before we get all the way on to Phoenix. I was curious, in other families I've talked to in mining towns like Italians or the Chinese families, they would travel throughout the state of Arizona for special occasions to visit other Italian or Chinese families. Do you recall growing up in Douglas ever visiting Jewish families in other parts of the state? FIREMAN: No, we never did. We never did. My first train ride was when we left Douglas in 1929. Then the train didn't come all the way into Phoenix. We had to switch at Maricopa and that was a beastly experience. It was hot and there were mosquitos and I think we had to wait several hours for the other train to bring us into Phoenix. But that's the first time I had been on a train. MARTINELLI: Maybe it's because Douglas was so far south, do you think? FIREMAN: Well, I don't know. People didn't travel that much in those days. I did have an exciting trip when I was a senior in 1929. I came to Phoenix with a group from high school. I was a contestant here at Tempe In a bookkeeping contest and I won the state championship. It just so happened that we stayed at the Luhrs Hotel and our teacher, H. Glen Penny, took us to the Rialto Theater, which is gone now, which used to be on Washington where Patriot Square Is now, and we saw our first talkie. We saw Al Jolson in -- what was the name of that movie? MARTINELLI: He was quite a star. He made several movies, didn't he? FIREMAN: Yes, but that was the first talkie. I can't remember the name of that movie. MARTINELLI: It'll come to you. FIREMAN: Yes. That was I think my first trip -- well, we used to go to places nearby like on senior ditch day and all that, go to Bisbee and Wilcox and Dos Cabezas and things like that. My father did start a little store in Dos Cabezas because that was supposed to be a boom town, but that failed. But we never traveled very much. MARTINELLI: You know, in contrast to Douglas when you moved to Phoenix, or in comparison I guess I should say, did you also tend to have primarily contact with Jewish families, or in a bigger city did that change? FIREMAN: Well, mostly our contacts were with the Jewish community. I did have some friends at college that were not Jewish but mostly we did socialize with the Jewish kids. MARTINELLI: I've read some accounts that Indicated in Phoenix that there was a certain amount of prejudice towards Jewish people. There were some places where they might not be as welcome. Did you ever encounter anything like that? FIREMAN: No, I never experienced anything like that. MARTINELLI: Were there stores that made it a little bit easier to get some of the foods that you were talking about earlier or did your father, for example, still have to send to Chicago for his salami and things? FIREMAN: No, he didn't send to Chicago. There were stores in Phoenix at the time. MARTINELLI: So there was a little bit more of a settled community. FIREMAN: And there was a synagogue. MARTINELLI: Did your family go out to the synagogue regularly once you moved here to Phoenix? FIREMAN: Oh, yes. I taught Sunday school. I taught Sunday school in Phoenix; I taught Sunday school in Tucson. And we became members of the congregation. In those days the World Series games were announced on a big board on Central Avenue by the newspaper office. They had this board with a mechanical bat and the World Series coincided frequently at the time of the High Holy Days. I remember my mother being very, very angry with me because a group of us walked from the synagogue at 2nd and Culver to Central and Washington to watch the baseball game. She thought that was a very, very bad thing to do on a High Holy Day to go and watch the baseball game. But Central Avenue would be just jam packed with people. MARTINELLI: So it probably would have been hard to avoid it. FIREMAN: Well, if you stayed in the synagogue and fasted and prayed all day you had no business going to watch the baseball game. MARTINELLI: So that's why you got her upset with you then. You mentioned that your older sister went to Normal School while you went to college. Did your family then encourage education? FIREMAN: Of course. I think that most Jewish families emphasize education and want their children to be educated. That was one of the things that my father was very adamant about. He wanted us to excel. He wanted us to get good grades. He wanted us to be first on the honor roll. MARTINELLI: So there was a definite encouragement within the family? FIREMAN: Oh, of course. MARTINELLI: What was It you took up in college? FIREMAN: Well, I had two majors. I took Spanish and education and then I also took some business courses In the hope to do accounting. When I got out of school the only teaching job -- things were terrible in 1933 -- the only teaching Job that I was offered was -- I forget which little town in the boondocks somewhere in eastern Arizona. I didn't want to teach anyway. I had done my practice teaching at Tucson Junior High and was teaching Spanish and had these kids that couldn't tell the difference between a noun and an adjective and a verb. I had to teach them English grammar. I didn't have much patience with that, so I never really had a teaching job. I kept books while I was going to school part-time and then I kept books and I was a bookkeeper on the produce market for the valley Citrus Company. Then my brother and I decided that we needed to move and I left Phoenix in 1936 and went to live in San Francisco. Then I lived in San Francisco for ten years. Then when I got married I came back. MARTINELLI: In terms of the sorority you were involved in college that you mentioned a little bit earlier, you helped get that started? FIREMAN: Yes. MARTINELLI: Who was involved In that with you and what were some of the purposes of that group? FIREMAN: Well, It was mostly because we felt left out and discriminated against. There was a Jewish fraternity on campus and there was a young woman who had come to Tucson who was in California and she was sort of our sponsor. I guess it was Just mainly social, you know, because we didn't feel welcome In other social groups. So we went about organizing this group of girls. We didn't get the charter while I was there; that happened later. MARTINELLI: Who were some of the other young women involved with you in that early sorority? FIREMAN: Gosh, you know, I have such a terrible time remembering names, creeping senility. I can't even remember the name of that girl, I can just see her face and what's her name; that young woman whose husband was the manager of a shoe store downtown. There was Lilian Kline from Douglas; she was killed in an automobile accident with a Jewish boy from New York. There were quite a number of young Jewish men who came to Arizona for their health who were in college. There was a Jewish woman, Nellie Goldberg, a very wealthy woman who lived in Arizona in the winters for her health. She used to have the students in for readings and dinner and she had a car and a chauffeur and used to take us on picnics to Sabino Canyon. I can't remember the names of the girls who were in that group. MARTINELLI: Were they mostly local Arizona girls or were they -- FIREMAN: Yes, they were local Arizona girls. MARTINELLI: I was wondering, you said that you went to San Francisco for ten years, which is my hometown. Then you got married and came back. How did you happen to meet your husband, Bert? FIREMAN: Well, of course I had met him in Arizona. He was my younger sister's boyfriend at college. They went to Tempe together. She then met her husband who had moved from Texas to Phoenix. My husband came up to Pittsburgh, California to work on a newspaper, the Pittsburgh paper, and just came calling. So then we were married in 1941. We moved back to Phoenix in late '44. MARTINELLI: And you've been here ever since? FIREMAN: Yes. MARTINELLI: Do you find it in your own married life that you keep traditions that you grew up with? FIREMAN: Not really. My husband did not have a Jewish upbringing. His father was not interested. His father never joined a synagogue or was interested in observing any of the traditions. He grew up in Glendale and there was nothing in Glendale and coming to Phoenix was not something that his father was interested in. We did, of course, belong all the time to a synagogue. We belonged and went to Beth El and then we joined Beth Israel and our kids went to Sunday school and were confirmed at Beth Israel. Then, we moved to Tempe in 1968 when he became connected with the college. There was a move to organize a temple and we were both very active In that. we were on the board and helped organize Temple Emmanuel in Tempe. But as far as observing Jewish customs in the house we didn't do that. our children did go to Sunday school and were both confirmed and are proud of being Jewish but I would not say that they're observant. MARTINELLI: You remain active within the Jewish community and with this historical group? FIREMAN: Oh yes, I volunteer at the Jewish Community Center one day a week; I belong to a number of organizations although I'm not active in the Jewish organizations. I'm not active in them because I feel that I have done my share and It's time for younger people. I'm getting old and decrepit. I support any number of Jewish organizations - Brandeis Women, City of Hope, the UJA, the Sisterhood in Phoenix, the Sisterhood in Tempe, all that sort of thing. MARTINELLI: Up to now I've been asking all the questions and I was wondering if there's Just something you would like to say about what it was like growing up here in Arizona or things that maybe I really haven't touched on, things that might be important. FIREMAN: Well, I don't know that there was anything unusual or outstanding. The Jewish community was so small that we knew everybody In the community and we didn't, in Phoenix even, have much contact with the Gentile community. I remember some discussion at a Jewish Family Service board meeting, which I was on, about whether we should sponsor a Jewish Boy Scout troop. There were some people who were against that kind of segregation. But I don't think that I had a very eventful life growing up. MARTINELLI: It's probably a very nice life growing up in a little town; sounds like it might have been kind of nice. FIREMAN: Pearl was very interested when I made a comment one time about Cecil, her husband. He was the beau of the town and every girl In town pursued him. There were very few of us you know. We used to have picnics at South Mountain and some dances at the synagogue and things like that, but it was all within the Jewish group. MARTINELLI: I would imagine by the time you were old enough to think about getting married, the arranged marriages were sort of -- FIREMAN: You were really ostracized if you married a non-Jew. That generation, you know, really didn't believe in mixed marriages. MARTINELLI: Which have become so much more common today. FIREMAN: That's right. MARTINELLI: But did families -- for example, did your mother ever point out the eligible young men. Did they ever try to sort of arrange things informally? FIREMAN: No, not in my family, not my mother because she was not that type. But she was happy when we brought Jewish young men to the house. MARTINELLI: So you knew that she was approving of that. FIREMAN: Oh, of course. Most of that generation frowned on even dating - we didn't date non-Jews. MARTINELLI: So it wasn't even a matter of Just getting engaged, you didn't even date. FIREMAN: That's right. MARTINELLI: So it was nice that you had a little larger community to be able to have young people to go out with. Otherwise it would have been somewhat restricted for you. FIREMAN: That's right. We were not allowed to go out with Gentiles. That was a strict rule. MARTINELLI: Was that for both girls and young men? FIREMAN: Yes, of course. Although the boys had a little more freedom than the girls, you know. If they wanted to date a non-Jewish girl they would do it but it was not approved. MARTINELLI: They had to face the family. FIREMAN: Right. MARTINELLI: So it sounds like sort of a fairly slow paced kind of life and people really got to know each other during that period. Were there any families that you recall that were particularly Orthodox in contrast to other families or was everyone more or less living in Arizona having to cope with earning an honest living? FIREMAN: Well, there were families that were Orthodox and that's what caused a split in the congregation. That's why Beth Israel split and Beth El was formed because there were some families that were Orthodox and didn't like the idea of a Reform congregation. They had Rabbi Dow, who had a meat market and was the schochet and the kosher butcher. He acted as their rabbi when they were first organized. They used to bring Rabbi Zielonka from El Paso for ceremonies and things like that. Mr. Meckler was one of the prominent people who split and helped form Beth El, which became the Conservative synagogue. I think Pearl's people, the Reiters, were more Orthodox. The Newmarks were Orthodox; the Newmarks came to Phoenix in '29. MARTINELLI: Same time you did. FIREMAN: Uh-huh. They were Orthodox and observing. There were a number of families that were Orthodox. MARTINELLI: Have you through the years kept up your contacts with your family in Texas and I think you said Mexico? FIREMAN: Oh, yes. We see our Mexican cousins. We hear from them, we get invited to their simchas. My family in El Paso is all gone. one of my cousins was the number one draftee in Arizona. He was a tail gunner and he was killed over Germany. His younger brother died a few years ago and his older brother just died last year. So there's nobody left of our family in El Paso. I have some cousins in Los Angeles we see. MARTINELLI: Did your cousins from Douglas also move to Phoenix in 1929 or thereabouts? FIREMAN: No, they did not. They stayed in Douglas awhile and then moved to California. MARTINELLI: I know a lot of families I've talked to in mining towns who do move to California. I guess they felt there was a little more opportunity. The Depression must have been really difficult in places like Globe and Bisbee. FIREMAN: In small towns, yes. It didn't hit until later. I mean, it wasn't '29, but it was maybe '32, '33. You know, things were terrible, just awful. The Depression was hard, it was hard on everyone; I mean, Jew and non-Jew alike. It really was difficult. A lot of places closed up. MARTINELLI: I read somewhere that in some of the bigger cities where there were large Jewish communities the Jewish families helped each other out a great deal during the Depression. Do you recall that that was also the case in Phoenix? FIREMAN: Well, I think that Jews tend to be very charitable. I don't know of specific instances. I know that Mr. Meckler downtown and Hyman Gold downtown if there was any itinerant Jew they had a fund and always helped them. It was not organized like the United Jewish Welfare or anything like that. But they were generous with people. They put them up or got them passage to where they were going. MARTINELLI: So there was sort of an Informal network of helping in that situation? FIREMAN: Right. MARTINELLI: I don't have any more questions, but again, If there's anything that's come to mind that you would like to add. FIREMAN: I really don't know of anything really significant to add to this Jewish history program. There were so few of us in the early days but we stayed together. Of course, there were Jewish people who really left their mark on Phoenix. There were lawyers, like Herman Lewkowitz; the Rosenzweig family; the Korrick family; the Diamond family. As far as my family was concerned we didn't make any big waves. MARTINELLI: I think in any community there's a lot of families that are part of the support of the community and then you have the few families that become prominent. I think all the families go into making up that community. I know one of the things that's so Interesting to me about this history project is most of what you read about the Jewish communities in America are the larger ones in cities like New York and Philadelphia. So it's always been of Interest to me in Arizona how communities survived that were so much smaller. FIREMAN: Well, people in the East are amazed when they come out and find that there are Jews in Arizona who speak Yiddish and who are observant Jews. They think of the West as still being, you know, the Wild West. When my daughter went to Columbia for graduate work people would ask her what her father did and she said he's an Arizona historian who teaches Arizona history and writes about Arizona history. They would say to her, "Does Arizona have a history?" They're very provincial back there. But the Jews have survived wherever they've gone. I think that's the secret of their survival. They have stuck to their religion. MARTINELLI: And also as you pointed out help each other when necessary too. But Arizona does seem somewhat unlikely all the same. FIREMAN: Quite a few of them came early. Quite a few of them went to California, were disillusioned in California and came back to Arizona in the early days. MARTINELLI: And then there were some in Mexico who came up as you mentioned. I found It interesting, I don't know why Texas should be any different than Arizona, but it was interesting when you mentioned that there was a community in El Paso. I guess like a lot of other immigrant groups people went where the opportunities were to advance themselves and their families. It sounds like that's what your dad did. FIREMAN: Yes. MARTINELLI: Did he eventually own his own store again here in Phoenix or did he continue to work at the White House? FIREMAN: No. He died early. He had had a heart attack and he died in 1934. He was only 56 years old. MARTINELLI: Did your mother work then to support the family or were you all -- FIREMAN: No. My brother left college and went to work. I was already working; I had graduated from college in '33. My older sister was already working. MARTINELLI: So you probably helped your mother out then. FIREMAN: Uh-huh. MARTINELLI: How long after your dad passed away did your mother live? FIREMAN: Oh, she lived a long time. She died In 1970 when she was 83. He died at 56. She was only at that time 40 years old, I guess. MARTINELLI: Did she remarry? FIREMAN: No. She would never think of that. I reflected on that quite often. She was so young when he died. There was 10 years difference in their ages so she was 46 when he died; he was 56. But she would never think of remarrying. MARTINELLI: So she spent almost another 40 years as a widow. Well, I would like to thank you. FIREMAN: Well, you know, as I said to Pearl I don't think that I have anything of real consequence to contribute. They already have Herman Lange on tape about the early days in Douglas which were, you know, uneventful. The Jewish community did stick together. MARTINELLI: Well, I haven't heard his tape but often more things come up from talking to different people that had different dimensions. For example, I found an interesting dimension about going to the University of Arizona and forming a sorority and all these little things go together. FIREMAN: Well, hopefully it has been somewhat productive. MARTINELLI: We started talking about San Francisco, and you mentioned that you were working for the Temple Emanuel. That's very old. FIREMAN: Very old, 1848. San Francisco, of course, was largely a community of German Jews and of course the first temple was organized as a Reform temple. They were very active in preserving history and promoting Judaism. There are a lot of prominent Jewish San Franciscans and they had done a lot with Jewish history there. I worked there at Temple Emanuel in the office for nine years until I was married and my first child was born. MARTINELLI: I think the San Francisco Jewish community had more of a neighborhood. They were a little more concentrated than what you described in Douglas. FIREMAN: Well, it was a larger community of course and an older, more established community and a more diversified group, like the Reform Jews and the Orthodox Jews. The Orthodox Jewish community did live in a certain region. They were concentrated around McAllister and Fillmore but the Reform Jews did not. They lived all over, especially the wealthier ones lived in the most exclusive areas in San Francisco. MARTINELLI: Were there contacts between the Jewish community in Phoenix and San Francisco and Los Angeles? We already talked about El Paso, but were there ties there as well? FIREMAN: Well, I suppose people who had relatives might have had contacts but -- do you mean did the San Francisco community reach out to the Phoenix community? MARTINELLI: Right. Did they ever send a rabbi or a kind of official representative? FIREMAN: No. I don't think so. MARTINELLI: I believe San Francisco had a Jewish newspaper. FIREMAN: Yes. MARTINELLI: Did you have a Jewish newspaper here in Phoenix or did you get one from Los Angeles or other parts of the country? FIREMAN: No, because we really weren't interested in a Jewish language newspaper. In those early days the English Jewish newspapers tended to be chronicles of social events and things like that. There was a Jewish newspaper in Phoenix. There were several started before this Phoenix Jewish News, but nobody in Phoenix would subscribe to the Los Angeles Jewish newspaper or to the San Francisco Jewish newspaper. MARTINELLI: Did you like San Francisco? FIREMAN: Yes. MARTINELLI: Your brother's still there? FIREMAN: My brother's still there. My older sister is still there. Now I go there, you know, two or three times a year. I have a lot of friends in the Bay Area. [Tape runs out. End of interview.]