Freeman Shore and Wini Freund

[00:01] FREEMAN SHORE: My brother.

[00:04] WINI FREUND: Hi, Wini my sister. I am Freeman shore. I am in New York City right now. I am 82 years old. I am doing this recording with my sister, Wini Freund, who is actually in Philadelphia right now. But, Wini why don't you introduce yourself?

[00:28] FREEMAN SHORE: Sure. So I'm Wini Freund and unfortunately, I have to admit that Freeman is my young, my younger brother. I'm two and a half years older than he is. I don't need to say the age, you can figure it out, but I pretend that he's my older brother. But clearly, if you look at us, you know, who's older.

[00:49] WINI FREUND: So although I was born in Brooklyn, I lived my, my parents had already moved to Greatneck in 1940, so I grew up in Greatneck, Long island. And when I, shortly after I finished or started working, I moved into Manhattan, which was in 1964, I believe, and I've been in Manhattan ever since.

[01:17] FREEMAN SHORE: And I was born in Brooklyn. We were both born in the Brooklyn jewish hospital. And just amazingly, when my oldest grandchild moved to Brooklyn and we went for a walk from his first apartment, around the corner was the Brooklyn jewish hospital with a big name on it and on the. But it's become condos, so what goes around comes around. That's where I started and that's my grandchild ended around the corner was absolutely amazing.

[01:49] WINI FREUND: So, Wini why don't you start off with some of the history of our family, our grandparents.

[02:00] FREEMAN SHORE: Yes, I was born in Brooklyn. My grandparents had emigrated from my maternal grandparents. Our grandparents had emigrated from what's now Belarus, from a town called Smolovich outside of Minsk. They had come here in 19. Oh, 319, oh four. When my grandmother came by herself with her two younger children, my grandfather had already found a job as a presser in a factory. He had been quite a successful businessman and was sent out to the outside of the pale of settlement to start a factory to make, as I believe I understand, they were making leather boots for the tsar's army. And when a pogrom happened, he said, we've got to get out of here. He escaped. He didn't want to go back into the tsar's army where he had been. And as a tall man, unusual for a jew, he ended up being the trumpeter in the tsar's army because he was tall and he was called back, didn't want to go. He left. My grandmother eventually made her way to Smolovich and came later. And our mother was born in this country along with her younger brother. And the story my grandmother tells of arriving in New York in the sweltering heat of summer. And going to. It was a Friday, and going Friday night to a Shabbat dinner at the cousins who had employed my grandfather. And they came in their shirt sleeves, and she was horrified that they were dressed like that, of course, no air conditioning. Then at a Shabbat dinner, I'll never forget that wonderful story. And they lived in a tenement on the lower east side. They lived on various places around St. Mark's place. They moved to the Bronx. They moved back down to the lower east side. And ultimately, they ended up in Flatbush, where my grandfather and grandmother started, the Flatbush Jewish center, conservative synagogue that still exists in. In Brooklyn today. And there our mother went to school and eventually met my father. She was. I guess she was about 18 or 19. She was at some jewish organization. I can't remember what it was. They were performing something, and she was there, and my father saw her and said, I want to get to know her. I. They met each other. They got engaged when they both performed in a play, lived in Brooklyn for a couple of years, and then moved to Great Neck in 1940. They moved to Great Neck because it was the only suburban town that they could find within driving distance, that had a thriving reformed synagogue with a young, wonderful rabbi, Jacob Philip Rudin, who went on to become one of the leading rabbis, reformed rabbis in the country.

[05:01] WINI FREUND: That was Temple Bethel. Great Neck.

[05:03] FREEMAN SHORE: Yes, Temple Bethel still exists and still thriving in those days. Great Neck was not what people later think. It became a jewish town. They were definitely a minority. There were places where Jews could not live initially, that lasted, of course, until the sixties. The same thing happened to us when my family moved to Port Washington, and we were told that we couldn't live in certain areas, which was shocking. It was a wonderful town to grow up in at that time. It was, you know. No, actually, the first televisions came out when I was a child. I don't know if you remember Freeman uh, when they started building televisions. And the first one that I saw was at a friend's house.

[05:56] WINI FREUND: Yeah, the late forties.

[05:58] FREEMAN SHORE: Yeah, yeah.

[05:59] WINI FREUND: It was huge, gigantic console. It was a Philco, and the screen was about, uh, six inches square or eight inches square, but the console was huge. And we put a magnifying bubble in front of the screen to make it larger so you could see it from a chair across the room. So I'm going to come in and talk about dad's family. So my dad was born here in Providence, Rhode island, actually, 1903, but his father came in the 1880s from the Ukraine. And the. It was the. They went to Providence for whatever reason. I don't know. But for some reason, there was other family that had moved to Providence, not New York. They came and they went to Providence. So he went to province, I think, just.

[07:06] FREEMAN SHORE: I'm sorry to interrupt, but the reason was they evidently had been in the jewelry business, and Providence was where the jewelry business was centered in this country, which. Who knew?

[07:19] WINI FREUND: Right? So our dad was the middle child of five, and his father passed away when my dad was only. Our dad was only two years old, and the family lived above a grocery store. And so there was this young widow with five kids. They had no money. And my dad worked. Had a newspaper route before school, and he worked in a factory after school, made $2 a week and gave $5 a week to his mother. We don't know where he got the other money, but he was a jewish kid in an irish catholic neighborhood, and there was a lot of anti semitism there. And when he was a young man. Yes, 18 or 20, the family moved to New York. I think he was about. Yeah. Or, well, to the New York area, to Brooklyn. And the story of our grandparents was a typical jewish immigrant success story. Our maternal grandma had nothing in the beginning, and they ended up building a very successful sweater manufacturing company and. Knitting. Knitting company. Yes.

[08:50] FREEMAN SHORE: I'm going to interrupt. So my grandfather was still working in the garment industry, and my grandmother and a neighbor started knitting things, little booties and sweaters and things. And somebody suggested that they start a business. So these two women started a business. They rented a space down on the lower east side, and they started a business. So my grandmother was really the one who started the knitting business. Very unusual in those days. And my grandfather, as it got going, my grandfather left his job and became, you know, the business leader. And my mother's oldest sister was left to take care of the three younger children, which she resented till the end of her days. But my grandmother started this thriving business and became this wonderful sweater manufacturing that grew and became quite successful.

[09:52] WINI FREUND: So our dad, although he was brought up jewish, had no real. Had no jewish training. They didn't go to services, but he definitely identified as a jew. And when he met my mother, he began to really get his jewish identity. Our father was a very good athlete and was discovered running on the beach one day when. Where he was with his older brother by the track team from the city, the New York athletic club. And so he sort of raced them down the beach, and he beat them, and he said, hey, you ought to go see our coach up on City island. And this guy was the famous coach of the New York athletic club, track club. And these were guys who ran in the Olympics. So our dad became a sprinter, but the coach said, hey, you're really good. I want you to join the New York athletic club because you would be one of our best runners. And my dad had no training. But he said, well, you know, the new York Athletic Club is restricted, and I'm jewish. And the coach said, well, he said, you don't have to say that. Just mark down that you're protestant or something on the thing. I won't tell anybody. And our dad would not do it. So he never joined the New York athletic Club. And he just sort of trained on his own with no. No formal training, and ended up racing against a lot of the guys who were featured in that famous movie Chariots of Fire, who ran in the 1924 Olympics in Paris. Had my dad or dad joined the New York Athletic Club, he probably would have been on that team. So it was quite something. So.

[12:12] FREEMAN SHORE: He ran in. In meats. He was. Joined the National Guard. And he ran in meets.

[12:19] WINI FREUND: Yeah, he ran the Millrose Track association.

[12:22] FREEMAN SHORE: Yeah, he ran in Park Avenue Armory.

[12:27] WINI FREUND: Yep. Yeah. We have newspaper clippings of his winning races and running against some of these athletes who were Olympic champions for the US in 1924. So it was quite something. So our dad, who came from nothing, ended up fortunately doing pretty well for himself and well enough for them to move from Brooklyn to great Neck. And that begins chapter two of the story. You want to take over a little.

[13:05] FREEMAN SHORE: Bit to chapter one. He talked about. He wrote kind of an autobiography, and in it he talked about how during the twenties and early thirties, he needed a job. He would apply for jobs, and they would say, no jews allowed. So he would leave. And at one point, when he was pretty desperate, he was waiting on a whole line of people to be interviewed. And he got up there, and he finally decided to say that he wasn't whatever he said he was protestant. And he worked there for a while, but he didn't go to work on jewish holidays. So after a couple of years, they figured it out, and that was the end of that. So then he started, as Freeman said, a variety of businesses, and he sold ladies underwear.

[14:00] WINI FREUND: He was a sales agent.

[14:02] FREEMAN SHORE: Yes, he was the ones giving a speech. So our parents were very involved with Israel. My grandparents, they knew. I think they knew Ben Gurion when he came to Brooklyn, and they became ardent Zionists. And in 1948, actually, when we were living in great neck, and the undead took the vote in the Security council to recognize Israel. I'll never forget it. My parents brought. They were there with friends, and they brought everybody back to our house and had a big celebration that Israel was the state. Yeah.

[14:42] WINI FREUND: And after that, and I remember when you and I put up a sign in the foyer that said we won. I remember that.

[14:50] FREEMAN SHORE: Yeah.

[14:51] WINI FREUND: And Israel had become a state, and the un was in, like, success at that time.

[14:56] FREEMAN SHORE: Right. Yeah. And so that was so much a part of our lives, the. The connection to Israel. And our. Our father first went to Israel, I think, was on a UJA mission very early in 1950, I think.

[15:15] WINI FREUND: And it was either 49 or 50.

[15:18] FREEMAN SHORE: Yeah, yeah. And he had a 16 millimeter movie camera, and he started taking movies of Israel. And they went on subsequent trips, quite a few, and he continued to take movies of Israel. My mother was on the national board of Hadassah, and she was the liaison to the United nations for Hadassah, to the NGO's of the United nations. And she would bring ladies in hats and gloves, and they would have lunch in the delegates dining room, which you can no longer do. So they visited all the Hadassah installations. They became friendly with the head of Hadassah hospital. They became friends with Freeman. Do you remember the school Helen Kittner ran a school for, from Afghanistan?

[16:12] WINI FREUND: But they became good friends of. With Abba Eben and his wife Suzy.

[16:18] FREEMAN SHORE: And when he was the UN ambassador.

[16:24] WINI FREUND: Yeah. And dad used to play golf with Abba Eben.

[16:32] FREEMAN SHORE: And I remember.

[16:33] WINI FREUND: Do you remember when he came, we had gold of meir in our home, as we had Abba Iban in our home, and a lot of other prominent Israelis. So our dad was also one of the founders of AIPAC.

[16:50] FREEMAN SHORE: But he would roll over his grave right now.

[16:53] WINI FREUND: Yeah. I don't remember when it started, but it must have been in the early fifties, because the State Department back then was virulently anti semitic and anti Israel. They were all Arabists. And the feeling was that Israel needed some advocates in the congress.

[17:17] FREEMAN SHORE: And Abba ebay told him, if there's one thing you can do for the state of Israel is to start a lobby, to start a group that will lobby in Washington for Israel. Abba Ivan said, this is the most important thing that you can do right now for Israel. Which he did.

[17:37] WINI FREUND: It proved to be. I don't think he'd be happy with a lot of what a PAC is.

[17:44] FREEMAN SHORE: Doing today, for sure.

[17:45] WINI FREUND: Right. But at the time, it was an important, important organization.

[17:52] FREEMAN SHORE: Yeah. The first, the founding executive director. I am Kenen something like that, wrote wonderful newsletters. I remember reading them when I wrote a report on Israel when I was in high school. And I remember reading those wonderful newsletters that he wrote. And, of course, in those days, the story we were told was all positive about how Israel had come to exist and what happened in the wars and whatever. And we've since learned that there are a lot of things that we didn't know at the time that make it a little more complicated than the wonderful exodus story that we saw in the movies.

[18:33] WINI FREUND: But, Wini I want to get back to the movies that dad took, these silent 16 millimeter movies. So our dad spliced together a movie sized reel, movie sized reel of all his movies. He spliced them together from all the trips they had taken. And of course, it showed the arrival of a lot of the Jews coming in in the late forties and early fifties and going into these tent cities, a lot of jews of color. It was amazing. But he developed a talk and would narrate the film. And they traveled through the entire country as a husband and wife team, showing this movie to schools, to church groups, to synagogues, literally from coast to coast. And he would narrate the film and. Go ahead, Wini

[19:36] FREEMAN SHORE: Well, sometimes it would be a benefit for Hadassah. Sometimes it would be a UJA event. Sometimes it would just be an educational event in a church. But they renowned fundraisers for Israel and jewish organizations.

[19:55] WINI FREUND: So our parents were very involved citizens, not just in jewish affairs, as Wini said. They were active. Mom was on the board of Hadassah. Our dad became president of Temple Beth Ellen great Neck in the early fifties or mid fifties, I forget. Yeah. And they were also involved in, you know, you name it, they were involved with it. The PTA. Our dad was involved with the founding of North Shore Hospital in great neck. So all these things our mother used to say, she would always give the preamble to the movie. And one of her favorite quotes that she would say before every talk was she would quote Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was a Supreme Court justice. And the quote was, a man must share in the action and passion of his times lest he be judged not.

[21:05] FREEMAN SHORE: To have lived at peril of being judged not to have lived.

[21:09] WINI FREUND: Yeah. And so that was sort of the mantra in our house growing up. You know, every night at dinner, there would be talks about what was going on in the world and political issues, you name it. And so we were sort of brought up with this mantra in our heads of being involved.

[21:35] FREEMAN SHORE: And our father was elected in Great Neck, he was elected park commissioner. Most of the elected officials in Great Neck and the town of North Hempstead and Nassau county at the time were certainly not jewish, but he was elected and reelected as park commissioner and is still. He founded the public pool in a park in Great Neck that is still considered one of the big pluses of living in the community. And my mother was head of the Red Cross along with. During the war, she worked at the Red Cross and then became the head of the chapter of the Red Cross and Great Neck. And, yeah, when. Yeah, she would march in the parade. One of the funny stories when they, when they were living in, in Florida, in their eighties, I guess, and they were having dinner someplace, and there were a lot of people from Great Neck who had moved to Florida, they still kept a place in, in Great Neck. Somebody came up to my father and said, here's the king of great Neck. I remember when he was in the hospital once, Freeman, we were there and somebody was giving him something that hurt him, and he said, stop. You can't do this to me. I'm the king of great neck.

[23:00] WINI FREUND: I forgot that. I forgot. So, Wini perhaps you might want to talk about one of the experiences you had when you were at Wellesley College involving Israel.

[23:16] FREEMAN SHORE: And so when I was a freshman, I went to Wellesley College, where there were other jewish students, not a huge number, but, you know, it was the. Our class happened to have a larger number of jewish women than previous classes, and somebody had invited an arab speaker to come. There was an organization called the Forum where, you know, speakers of public affairs leaders would come and talk, and this. Somebody invited this arab man to come. I can't remember anything about who it was or where it was from, but I knew it was anti. I mean, he was anti Israel in his talk. So I immediately called my mother and said, we've got to get somebody up here to counter this. And I spoke to the president of the forum. She said, fine. My mother contacted Mordecai Kidron, who was the consul general in New York, and he said he would come up. And the day came and an announcement came out that the meeting was canceled. And I immediately called my mother and she called his office, and they said, he's on his way there. It turned out somebody had called the president of the forum and said, we're canceling this meeting because the consul general is unable to come. And it was total lie. And by the time we found this out, it was too late to, to have it again. He came up, and luckily there was a friend of my mother's on the national board, who met him and told him what happened. But it was horrifying that even then, and to this very day, I was on a Zoom yesterday at Wellesley, where there has been an anti semitic situation that was terrible.

[25:12] WINI FREUND: Anyway, so I had something. I went to Lafayette College. As you know, Wini and I majored in international affairs. And in this spring semester of my junior year, everyone who was in international affairs major, we traveled down to Washington to have meetings with people who were in the state Department. And so I had this meeting with this. This man who. And we're talking. And, you know, I was intending to go into foreign service or the civil service because I cared about that stuff. And somewhere along the line, it came out that I was jewish. Just in the course of conversation, and his whole expression changed. And he said, can I talk to you off the record? And I said, yes. Now, this is 19, spring of 61. Now, he said, I don't know whether you know this or not, but the state Department is very anti semitic and very anti Israel. And I said, well, I knew it had been, but I didn't think it was still the case. He said, oh, yes, is still the case. This is 1961. And he said, I just want you to know what you'll be up against. I'm not telling you not to pursue this career, but if you come, it's not going to be easy.

[26:49] FREEMAN SHORE: Yeah.

[26:49] WINI FREUND: And, you know, to this day, I've always wondered, should I have just ignored it and gone ahead and done what I wanted to do? I actually wish I had, but it scared me off. And so I did not pursue that career and always regretted it. So I want to fast forward. So it was interesting because our dad was president of Temple Beth Ellen Greatneck, and in 1971, I married a woman named Tony Stone, Tony Stone Strauss, whose father, Jacques Stone, was at the time president of central synagogue, and he had been confirmed in central synagogue in 1923. When I married Tony, that, of course, began my involvement with Central, which has been one of the great joys of my life. It's really one of the great jobs. You want to say something, Wini

[27:59] FREEMAN SHORE: Yeah, I'm going to say a little bit about my life after college. I immediately got married. I married somebody who was a doctor just finishing medical school. I went to Boston, where he did his internship. I got a master's in education, thought I was going to be a teacher, hated teaching, and immediately got a job in a political organization, which was the thing I was most interested in when I was a freshman in college. It was the year of Adlai Stevenson's campaign against second camp, second Eisenhower campaign. And there were very small band of us who were Democrats, and we went out and collected money for dollar 1856 on the Boston common. And I was always politically active. And one of the people who did it with me was the person who became my closest friend, Madeleine Albright. And we were a minority at Wellesley for sure as Democrats in those days. After Boston, my husband had to go into the army, as doctors did then. We lived in Germany for two years, and we had a wonderful housekeeper who could not understand how we could be american and Jewish. She couldn't understand that we didn't have a Christmas tree at Christmastime. And this was a total mystery to her. She was an absolutely wonderful woman who had come from Hamburg, Germany, who lived now near the base in Kaiserslautern Germany, where we lived, and was just. Could not believe it. But living in Germany in the beginning, I'll never forget, our mother was horrified that we were. We had to go to Germany for the army. And I remember the first time I heard the clacks and horns of german police and the high boots of the german police. So living there, it took a while to get used to it as somebody who obviously had grown up with newsreels and the horror stories of Germany, to live there and hear the sounds that I associated with Nazi Germany. After Germany, we came back. My husband finished his training in Boston, and we moved to Port Washington, Long island, where I lived for 50 years, brought up our two daughters. We were members of community synagogue there, but always went to worship at Temple Bethel because that's where our parents belonged. That was where we were affiliated. And to be able to come into Manhattan six years ago, 1916 2016, and become a member of central has been a total joy. I became part of the social action committee, which Freeman had been a part of for a long time. And it's just been a blessing, a mitzvah to be part of it. I have wonderful new friends from central, and it's just made my life in New York so rich. So it's a blessing.

[31:20] WINI FREUND: I'm glad you're part of it, too. So the career I ended up having was on Wall street, where I did well. But as I mentioned, it never really spoke to me. I never identified by my career. I never found it emotionally satisfying. And so when I retired, I was fortunate to be able to retire in 19. Oh, I forget, I was 61 years old. Whatever it was no big give up for me. It sort of freed me up to do things I wanted to do. And originally I became a big apple greeter, where I volunteered to take people from out of town around New York City to different neighborhoods. And I would give them self, I would give them guided tours. I would do the narrating and the showing in the city because I love New York so much. But then my wife, Tony, got ill with cancer, and she was ill for three years before she passed away. And it became increasingly difficult for me to go on these tours because I wanted to be with her. And when she passed away in January of zero seven, I think Peter Rubenstein sent this young rabbinic intern to talk to me just about Central. And in the course of the conversation, she said, you know, is there anything you're not happy with at Central? And I liked Central a lot. I'd been on the. I had been on the board for nine years. I think I left that out, but had sort of disengaged after my time on the board. I was on the board when Peter became rabbi. And I said, yeah, there is one thing that bothers me. I grew up in a synagogue, Temple Beth El and great neck, where the rabbis were unafraid to speak out on the social issues of the day. They were real activists. Jacob Rudin marched in the civil rights marches back in the early sixties, and they would speak about things from the pulpit, even if it would make some congregants angry and upset. They took stands. And I said, central doesn't do any of that. There is no, nothing that involves the larger community. And I think it's wrong for the largest, largest, one of the two largest congregations in New York City to be so insular. And to make a long story short, that led to my starting a social action group at central Synagogue, which has really morphed into something else, into really a fabulous thing. And it's because of Angela, who this was really important to her. And so it's now become important to central, and I'm proud to say that.

[34:45] FREEMAN SHORE: Central.

[34:45] WINI FREUND: Yeah, go ahead.

[34:46] FREEMAN SHORE: I just want to say a little bit about my career. So when I moved, when we moved to Port Washington, I began, I became very involved with the League of Women Voters, and I then taught a course in the schools on local government. And then I worked briefly in the corporate center, a corporate world hated it, and then became very involved in the work of child and family policy. I became the president of an organization called Women on the job, which worked on women's issues, which led me to work on early childcare. I worked for a variety of not for profit organizations as a consultant as a speaker. So I spent most of my career, professional career, as a policy wonk on family issues and also became the president of our Women's Fund on Long island. So this has been the passion of my life, has been these issues of family, children, of course, the women's issues of abortion and sexual harassment. We developed sexual harassment policies for the local governments on Long island. And so it was a natural move for me to become part of the Freeman's social justice committee. And again it's been the joy of my life to be part of this and to continue my activism.

[36:20] WINI FREUND: Yeah, so I guess our parents, what they said and did rubbed off on us. It was drummed into us and I'm happy to say that I think we've both sort of carried on that mantle. Certainly makes me feel good cause I feel I'm honoring them as well and it's part of jewish tradition. We were told this is, this is, this is central to being jewish to, to care about the other. Um. Yeah. Do you want to talk anything else about great neck, Wini growing up together or.

[37:05] FREEMAN SHORE: Well, great neck was um, it again, it was a wonderful suburb to grow up in. I think port Washington as where my kids grew up was again a wonderful suburb to grow up in. Just you know, being able to go out on the street and play. And Freeman, do you remember the big rock behind us? There was kind of a outlet from Long island sound, Manhasset Bay, and there was a huge rock and one of our big activities was to climb glacial.

[37:38] WINI FREUND: Rock, what, 20ft high at least.

[37:42] FREEMAN SHORE: Yeah, I mean we were, it was a different, a different world where you spent your time outside. I mean I think social media unfortunately has destroyed a lot of the free and open lives that we and even our children led growing up.

[38:03] WINI FREUND: Yeah, that's true. There used to be farms on the way to our house in Kings Point, uh, with cows. I mean I remember that there was, this was before the big, big housing boom in Great Neck and uh, yeah, after the war, by the time we were both out of high school, great Neck had become a predominantly jewish community. But it wasn't that as we were, as we were growing up. Uh, and it changes now. It's uh, it's morphed in the.

[38:38] FREEMAN SHORE: And I. Yeah, in terms of our, my children, one of my daughters married, well both of them married men who were not jewish. My older daughter's husband converted and Judaism is very much a part of their lives. My younger daughter's husband didn't convert but they became part of a Havara of interfaith couples in San Francisco became very active in Temple Emanuel in San Francisco, and their daughter sings at high holy day services. So it's continued.

[39:11] WINI FREUND: Right. So I think we're, our time running out. We're about to wrap up.

[39:18] FREEMAN SHORE: And I just want to say that.

[39:20] WINI FREUND: Great.

[39:21] FREEMAN SHORE: To have my brother as an important part of my life, my whole life has been, you know, I'm very, very lucky because we have remained the best of friends and as close as both are. And we love each other's children.

[39:38] WINI FREUND: We do. Yeah. It's been a blessing. There's so many broken families, and we're blessed to be as close as we are and have our, our kids be.

[39:47] FREEMAN SHORE: As close as they are, our children and our grandchildren. Yeah.

[39:54] WINI FREUND: I guess that's it.