Deborah Steinig and Steve Steinig

00:06 I'm 49 years old. Today is Friday, May 21st, 2021 and I'm calling in from Baltimore, Maryland talking to my conversation partner Steve steinig. Who is my dad?

00:22 And I'm Steve steinig. I'm Seventy-Six years old. Today's date is Friday, May 21. 2021. I'm calling from Dix Hills New York, which is on Long Island. On my conversation partner is my daughter. Debbie signing, who is also one of my best friends and more specifically where we are. I am in my classroom, which is since I've been teaching at my school for like 20 years has something of a second home to me with your school is really really weird and stressful during covid by Elsa because of all our covid, protocols. I was teaching in different rooms than usual on. This bathroom was actually like my private Mouse Creek Place, so it's been

01:14 It's been really weird, like at the beginning of the year. It was really weird that like all these other rooms are I was teaching and interacting with people were really stressful to be around people. But this room that's been my familiar Haven for 20 years. Was still might happen in my private space and I can see since we're on something, like, a zoom screen that you Dad are in what the room that we always called the guest room in the house, where I grew up, that's your office now. And I can see family photos unfamiliar books on the shelves behind you, and I can even probably named what the books are even though. They're so small just cuz I'm, you know, I sleep there. Now, when I come to visit and I screws the bookshelf.

01:57 I I want to say one other thing before we launch into the topics that we had talked about. I just want to know.

02:07 It's interesting that it's you, and I who were really gung-ho to do this? Cuz Mom has the genealogist is theoretically, the one in the family? Most interested in our archives though, not always interested in having herself. Be recorded and the timing worked out better for you. Anyway, cuz 10 in the morning is never a good time for her and especially not when she's supposed to leave in an hour to come, see me in person and Baltimore.

02:40 So so we talked a little about a topic for this conversation and I said, I was really interested in talking about your old family stories about when you were growing up in Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, but also

02:57 Where is interested in comparing and contrasting, your childhood, with me and Karen's childhoods and all of your grandkids childhoods? And what got me thinking about that was remembering a conversation. We had years ago was probably when I was living in, Rochester, New York.

03:18 That and I was talking about how where I was living at the time, you know, there is such that the Jewish Community with smaller and less prominent than it had been where I was. You know, when I was growing up on Long Island, Islip Long Island bike schools were closed for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur don't like, you know, like they were real days like that the Jewish calendar and the secular calendar.

03:43 Like this like that. The secular calendar kind of acknowledged the Jewish calendar and and everything shut down. And that it felt really different to be living someplace where I took off work for those days, but everything else.

04:00 Kept going.

04:04 Add answer it. So trying to kind of make the Jewish holidays be like sacred time with something that like took more work on my part and more creating it on my part. But also, you know also in a way I felt a little less real like well, I might just pretending cuz look the rest of the world is still going and that there was a way that Judaism just felt very real.

04:31 On Long Island where it was more normative and more assumed. And your answer to that. You said, the way that you described Rochester compared to Long Island. That's what for me. Long island is like compared to Bensonhurst.

04:48 Do you remember that conversation at all? But I but I relate to the analogy, still. Can you say more about that?

05:01 The things that they were saying about Rochester wouldn't would not be true of Long Island. In other words, Long Island in our neighborhood has a substantial enough to its population that you, you know, when the holidays are in there. There's a general awareness is certainly an awareness in the school system. The more important one, there is no school, those days, that's all quite different than being in Rochester. One of my examples was a real, the Jewish holidays are on Long Island with that. There was always special High, holiday traffic. Traffic is such a big thing. And then gargaro, you know, so like if it causes traffic, it's real, the traffic would be

06:01 You well, know that Jewish holidays. Generally begin are always again that evening. And so the rush-hour out of Manhattan to home would be started to say to 2 to 4 would be the big hours as opposed to any normal work day would have might be safe for water 6. And it would be like today because of the holiday. What is the way in? Which I was making it out and saying that's how I look Long Island is compared to the Brooklyn has to do with the suburbs versus an urban setting and certainly in Bensonhurst, but but also in Forest Hills

06:52 Well, where we left, when we got married physically, walk to shul your walk to synagogue from home. As soon as you go to the suburbs and families within walking distance, and everyone else is driving. So the life on the street is is just very very different and that's such a strong difference in a specially with with, with Bensonhurst. Where is the number of people you would see walking to your synagogue. Sometimes walking to another set of God on your way to synagogue. You'd see a lot of people

07:46 People stayed dressed, which is probably change, not just in place, but a change in time cuz everything is more informal down. People probably get into their Bermuda shorts. The minute. They get home from synagogue in the suburbs and that would not have been true. So it is actually driving to synagogue with you. We would never have driven in the car to go anywhere on the Jewish holidays, when I was growing up. But it says, you're in the suburbs. You have to try this. No, there is no alternative. So it's it's a big difference.

08:26 In Forest, Hills, did we drive to synagogue? I would go to the, I go to synagogue in the morning with Uncle Lou.

08:39 Mommy, would add time to the end of services. She would walk with you and Karen. And when you she take care of it in the couch, when there's two of you Karen would walk and you'd be in the carriage. And then in those first years, she would pick us up at shul, which was about halfway between where we live and where Uncle Bill and Aunt, Betty list. And then we walked to their apartment.

09:11 And we would not drive in the afternoon either since I was only six when we left queen.

09:19 I remember very little of our synagogue in Queens.

09:23 But I remember three things. I remember what it looks like from the outside.

09:29 I remember that once a year, there was a book fair or something. And there were these work books that you would get me that had pictures of the Jewish holidays and little stickers to go in certain places. My kids loves that kind of thing when they were little LOL, Thalia, especially, and I Remember Loving Loving those dark bucks when I was little

09:51 And then I don't know why I remember this, but I remember the counter singing The Melody that I that I remember knowing since I was four.

10:10 So I know like when you've talked about, you know, your childhood in Brooklyn, you say, I owe, you know, what, like everyone was Jewish and mommy says that to about about when she was growing up in Washington, Heights. You know, everyone was Jewish, but what what is that mean? Like, in your school?

10:31 I'm going to correct you in front of all people who will ever listen to this audio. So I probably said everybody was to wish. I always say that the nurse was half-jewish and half Italian and my block my apartment house. I might say, everyone was Jewish, but but but that's what I would say that to pay who I was talking to, if they really thought I meant 100% of every apartment in that house was occupied by people who were Jewish. I would never say everyone was doing because it was maybe 80% Jewish.

11:17 That everybody was Jewish and, and the ones in the building who are not sure, which was certainly familiar with Jews, because the way that all live in the same building, the apartment house, always had a wonderfully brightly lit Christmas tree and it would serve, you know, we all enjoyed seeing you and Nora. And I think so, I add my school, like, I was

11:59 I'm guessing I would that I would describe that has as half Jewish and half Italian. Also the interesting thing about that description and I'm giving you is,

12:12 Back, then, I would not have thought of the neighborhood as half Jewish and have Christian. Do I have tuition have Roman Catholic, which I might say now again, depending who I was talking to, and why that Snapchat even came up, but it was like, not even

12:35 As as an elementary school-age, kid artist in cineamerica and had promised and see what they lost with. A dominant group in America is always something. I can't the cognizance of it, maybe junior high school and high school and it was maybe intellectual knowledge that they were Irish Catholics. Because they were certainly a prominent group in the in New York, group. Maybe the police will probably why the Irish Catholics when I was a kid, but, but emotionally and instinctively it was half-jewish, half Italian.

13:21 And would you have thought of them as Italian or were you thought of them as just like the people who aren't Jewish?

13:27 No, I think I knew they were Italian. I knew, you know, what are they saying? It's when you look back and then, even when I took the people, my age are the similarities in the group and the differences in the group that did the strongest similarity, was the grandmas the grass Italian.

13:48 Italian, grandmas and Jewish Grandma's, were identical. And I just wanted to feed their grandchildren different thing but very important activity and worrying about them and you don't want to take care of them and be safe and so on, correct, but I think it'll be okay.

14:17 Come to the sort of realization that maybe in our country.

14:24 Most of the minority groups, have a lot of things in common, you know, I feel like the Jews on the Italians and the Greeks and the Hispanics on the blacks. Also, like my grandmother always cooked for us. I have some more food and, and, and we were allowed and we talked with our hands and, you know, like, all of these minority groups, have that image of ourselves. That's how people are people eat and enjoy them were loud. And we talked with our hands and it, we just happen to live in this country where the dominant culture is West culture and that's the culture that's unusual and being quiet and decorous and you know, eating tasty little tidbits.

15:09 British, I think the British are more contains within themselves, and stress less emotion, and so on in the rest of Europe,

15:23 Early, if you can bear the British and the French majority-minority is just so much more expressive whatever it is. It's always wrong to categorize make sense generalities as though their statements of truth. But but like the schools where I was growing up, and on how the ethnic composition was similar and different to what you're describing, but I'm going to jump ahead to when I got to college, which was really for me. My first time meeting white Anglo-Saxon Protestants with, with the exception of very few people mostly teachers when I was in school. Well, I'm one thing is, you know, that I'm very bad at face is so

16:15 You know, people will talk about like, you know, any white people have trouble telling blacks apart or have trouble telling asian-americans apart. But I was, I was the white Jewish, girl, from Long Island to had trouble telling all these blond-haired blue-eyed. Guy is my friend's roommate, that the remainder of the Jewish friend of mine from Hillel and you know, and every time I saw a blond guy, I thought it might be Josh because I'm so bad at faces. So I would just sort of smile in case it was Josh and

16:58 The story that my Jewish friend told me about his roommate Josh's that, you know, like so my Jewish friends would be on the phone with his parents and you know, things might get kind of heated and there might be some arguing and maybe some yelling and then at the end of the conversation, he'd be like, okay. Love you. Bye. Talk to you soon as great. I love my family and Josh would like what was that? You said where I've sort of had the opposite conversation. Like I remember my friend John and I immersed

17:37 So we were in Amherst, Massachusetts and his parents were in Boston, which was like 2 hours away. And he would see them like once a year at Christmas and it was 2 hours away and he would only see them once a year. And, you know, you'd call them like every couple of months and I call you, and Mom like every 3 days that he would call his parents every couple of months. And then I asked, two months. I said they could spare frictions between you and your parents know. Everything's fine. That's just, you know, different cultures can have different ways of relating that seem normal to them.

18:10 I'll roll a die. Cultural shock is to struggle. We stayed with me since I was a freshman in college, but I, I met some of the very first week of school and not someone I came to know at all, but we was talkin to this was probably during freshman orientation, and he said something about having God to dinner with his family and the weekend before just before coming to campus service celebration sending him to school kind of thing and they went to a nice restaurant and he said that my father, let me choose the wine. I never heard of such a thing. You know, I never been in a restaurant where, where my parents bought a bottle of wine.

19:10 I thought he said it like it was a rite of passage enough and wise enough and mature enough to be the one to choose the one.

19:22 So in my schools on how Hollow Hills School District growing up, I guess I would say there was more diversity than you were describing. But but still the same phenomenon of of really not being aware. That white Protestants were the majority culture in our country.

19:42 And because that the tracking system was, was not.

19:50 Balanced and say that and you know, in the advanced classes and the fact that I was in the racial mix that I saw was not necessarily reflective of the mix in the school, but in my classes, I would say about 40% of the kids were Jewish and about 40% of the kids were Asian-American.

20:17 Which included a mix of Muslims and Hindus and Protestants, so I didn't know Protestants, but they were Asian American Protestant.

20:27 I got a lot of a lot of Big East Asian, but a lot of the families from the East, Asian countries, particularly, the Koreans went to Protestant churches. And then there were a lot of Southeast Asians from a mix of India and Bangladesh who are, who are Hindu or Muslim and

20:47 And then the other 20% I would say we're Italian Catholic and Irish Catholic.

20:57 And then,

20:59 It was, It was kind of sad cuz, you know, we would be at these lunch tables that were kind of like the UN and we would talk about how our parents only socialize in group.

21:13 And we were aware that we were having this very different experience than our parents and we would say like I do a little it'll be different when we grow up and it hasn't been for the most part largely, we grew up and wound up also, socializing in group.

21:35 And I actually I had a conversation about it over Facebook with my friend, nimish, who now lives in Rochester New York, but we didn't overlap there. He he and his wife didn't move there till after Jason and I were gone. And she said that,

21:52 You know, he had never been religious growing up.

21:57 But he and his wife had joined a Hindu. I guess I Hindu temple live. I'm embarrassed. I don't even know the correct word, but they joined a Hindu community.

22:09 Because in Rochester, they felt kind of conspicuous as

22:15 Being of Southeast Asian Heritage, and it was a comfort to get to spend time someplace, where everybody looks like them, and wouldn't when we were having this conversation was right at the time of the Trump election, which was, you know, what time of a special discomfort for any sort of minority of any kind in this country.

22:39 I want to have, I grew up as opposed to how my grandchildren, like to something. You said, to have you started talkin about.

23:08 You're not knowing that wasp nest with its majority culture, majority population. And that that was absolutely true that they will majority population. Well up when I was a kid. I'm not sure there's still a majority population. Certainly if your children are going to throw up and I wear when they reach when they reach you earlier, I hate 30-40 years from now and almost certainly it won't be a majority. It might still be a plurality. I'm not even sure where that stands but I think you had a heart attack during class is

23:46 It is not majority-white.

23:50 As soon as the word white is now used as where people of color is this is now used in the people of color. Just wasn't wasn't an expression. Wasn't a label was a grouping. I'm not too well until you're until he is probably. So it's in the country and the makeup of the United States from. And I I say my growing up, I think of as the 50s and the 60s, depending when you, well, Point View my point, you wanted, and the growing up in the beginning of young adulthood, but just let you know. It was just, it's just so totally different nose and Ellis way.

24:41 And I think the the in group, not in group.

24:49 Then that's it. It's a big, big Topic in a difficult topic because of the difference between mostly in group with.

24:59 But friendships and social connections and family connections, that work and relationships with other groups at large. I know such relationships.

25:13 And I think that the

25:20 If you grow up in early.

25:24 Childhood through your formative years in a family that has strong traditions of family tradition, cultural tradition religious tradition.

25:36 It's often become such a familiarity and comfort with those things that you act. You want to hold on to them in my two years that it. I just, I think, you know, that mommy and I are going through all of covid-19 in the neighborhood. Very mindful of the the main Rites of Passage in life was a major life events birth death, marriage, child, birth control holidays, not as of Passage rite of passage by the major major event in life. Are celebrating Christmas at the Italian Italian Catholics celebrate Christmas differently.

26:36 Fishes Christmas dinner for instance and I think people, they like to hold on to that and it's kind of annoying, ways weird. Why a burial why is there such a thing as a Jewish cemetery? But it's overwhelming. I thought about that time cuz especially, you know, my husband and my kids are

27:06 You know, much more liberal than me. And a lot of ways and much more auntie tribalist. And you know that there's a station like my like even when you're dead like why like, why would you, you know, I have to be buried in group. Next two, people of the same religion with me, but then I think about like well,

27:24 Cuz if someone comes to my grade, if I don't want them to leave flowers, I want them to put on a stone. That being said, I think there's going to be a major shift in cemeteries cuz like after your generation half of the Jews have non-jewish spouses and people are still going to want to be buried with their spouses so that you know, I don't I don't know what form that's going to take if there's going to be an intermarried section of the Jewish cemeteries or just more secular not religiously Affiliated cemeteries, but there's this huge number of couples who are going to die and want to be buried together. Just a Jewish thing that runs through. So many aspects, people who

28:21 Jewish intermarriages or Edward, Jewish Jewish marriages, but where the Jewish observance or not? I want to be married by a rabbi in the family or the parents of the Jewish, the Jewish person eager to have a rabbi present and it's I think it's a very deep thing. It's it's very puzzling. It's very puzzling. It's puzzling to me every time the data for me filled out yesterday for this for this story or discussion. One of the day, two categories that everything was optional on the whole swarm. But one of the categories was race and

29:08 The race is a model very muddled concept and is always going to become more. So and and I mean, increasingly most of the rights of intermarriage in the rights of a people who have mixed heritage.

29:25 It's just going to keep going. Let me know in the next 30 to 50 years ago. When, when I was younger and stay in group marriage, it would extend to nationality Greeks, have very strong feelings. Greek parents may be graced by generation. Show me a generation older than my very strong feelings that their children should marry Greeks. I mean, I hear this from my from Creek friends who did not know how she liked, never forgave her for marrying, their Greek son, that the Greek family was much more upset than the Jewish Family about that in her marriage and, and Chinese families often a very thrilled when they're Chinese children into marrying on Chinese.

30:25 Family said to him. So his dad was.

30:30 A Chinese immigrant married to an Irish immigrant Irish Protestant, just to mix things up a little more.

30:40 And he wanted Justin to marry Chinese.

30:46 Or to be a doctor, a doctor. And I, you know, I think ideally he would have liked Justin to do both to marry Chinese and be a doctor, but he knew he hadn't married Chinese himself. So he said, you know, well,

31:01 Okay, I didn't marry Chinese but I'm a doctor like, you know, you have to do one or the other, you can't totally overthrow your entire Heritage. I do not believe that either of those things.

31:19 I forgot what I say about about that. The question of intermarriage that that that's the way in which your childhood was very different than mine. I think that you grew up in an era where there was a strong Assumption of Jews, marrying other Jews and wearing intermarriage. You know, what's really a John Doe is really a scandal. A parent might even sit Shiva and then like in, you know, you and you and Mommy were parents of young adults sort of right as the tide was turning and we're definitely Karen. And I had been brought up knowing that it was your expectation or your hope for us that we marry Jewish and when Karen didn't you know that Mom still thought like, okay. Well, what do what do I say or do to make sure that this doesn't happen to Debbie? And you know. Did we not discourage caring enough where we

32:13 You know, I know, I know, I kind of feel like I hate that ship has sailed. Like, if if anyone, my age said to her kids, like we expect you to marry Jewish. They would like to laugh at us. I mean, not not a not in the Orthodox Community but in an unorthodox community that that ship has just sailed. I want to make sure we're not leaving any person or you're not leaving. Any impression that there was any opposition suggest. There was never any Jeff was a son-in-law, even though he's not Jewish just beginning to today. There was never said it was an expectation that you would marry someone Jewish but when she met someone started dating someone who is not Jewish. That wasn't that wasn't a difficult, the problem or something. We fought against to a privately said, oh my God, what's happening? Not at all.

33:13 Karen said herself to Grandma, Selma.

33:17 She said, do you know?

33:20 I believe it's good for Jews to marry Jews, but I fell in love with Jeff soap before we run out of time. I really want to say a few words about what I thought, the original topic was. This topic, has been everything. You said, has been fine, but different different. The world is for Ben and Sam and Talia and love than when I was growing up. And I think growing up in Bensonhurst.

33:50 Are all of the ignorance, one had as a child. And all of the naivete one has a child.

33:57 It was such a simple of time then and now, you know, it's a very it was a great place to grow up in a lot of kids around your friends were on the Block. There's no such thing as a play day to just walk out of your building and they were people to play with. It was just it was never any organization.

34:23 And I'd life is pretty simple. I think life was.

34:28 I saw this as I'm sure selective memory and forgetting. I mean, I'm sure they were precious intentions and stresses and so on but life is much more difficult for you and Karen and Tim both sex and drugs will be coming options for high school. Kids when you were when you were younger compared to those just any one of my friends would have ever thought about it. Something might want to do how long does it? Where one would do it? It just they just wasn't it was outside and was just outside the recognition and in the world and even your world growing up with those things were present, but almost, maybe I'd say,

35:22 That was all done with less stress in the world. I think the world is a more stressful. It depends who you are by everything, depends who you are and it is it's much easier to be in lgbtq teen today then.

35:37 25 years ago or 50 years ago.

35:41 Yes, we Have No. Oh, yeah, and otherwise the society is certainly more polarized now and it wasn't the 50s and 60s.

35:55 My family reality that it does.

36:13 Papa and Grandma Rose Democrats, my grandparents were even more literally Democrats. So I can remember by the first election. I can remember is is Stevenson first Eisenhower. A little bit in the 52. I was 7 years old once on 56, but none of the nine of them. The animosity of

36:37 Of Elections. Starting with starting with bush, die, in 2009, result of all of all, of all of that.

36:58 The race riots of the late sixties or some of, you know, some of

37:05 The tension of the civil rights movement in the 60s. It didn't come from no, where it came from simmering resentment over oppression in the thirties and forties and fifties. So I thought I believe that in your childhood, innocence it all felt very simple to 69th in particular. I should go back to 16 and 19 and generally here ya go back to Cain and Abel Galaxy how to say.

37:46 I apologize. If I sounded like I was throwing my brother-in-law or my mother under the bus.

37:56 It just fits. And the reality was a little different than it sounded

38:04 Well, I love you and I'm really excited that you're coming to Baltimore in a few hours and I'll get to give you a hug and person which after 15 months of covid still and excitement. It won't be our first time. It will be our first time seeing each other and it's still we still have some time to make up for it. And I'm used to it. It's funny. I was about to say, I'm good Shabbos cuz I'm with your with your

38:44 Grandchild too. Has a new short haircut and is experimenting with all sorts of

38:49 Clothing and gender presentation. And, you know that whole other type of diversity that we didn't get up to talking about, but

38:57 Everyone.

38:59 Everyone is very much themselves for a for whatever other aspects of our identity. We play with an experiment with their whores of Personality that stay the same. And you have been a very steady core loving personality through my life. So thank you for being a great dad. Love you.