Sara Kruzansky

@ Yiddish Book Center

Yiddish Book Center (Yoshi)

Description

Sara Kruzansky, teacher of Jewish History, grew up in Chicago. Her parents, from a shtetl and a village in Poland, met in Warsaw, where they were married before her father moved to the U.S. at age 20 to avoid being drafted into the tsarist Russian army. He participated in the Gaviston movement, a push to move Jewish immigrants to places other than New York City. After a few years in various cities in the Midwest, her father, shoemaker by trade, followed the garment industry to Chicago. Sara describes her childhood as very poor. She grew up in a mostly African-American neighborhood, but her family was all Jewish. Her parents were religious and observed every Jewish holidayâeven the minor ones that some others might have skipped. She remembers being pulled out of school for every one, and picks out Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur as her favorites, perhaps because they happened around the same time as going back to school. Every shabbes her mother would cook raisin bread and clean the whole house. They were not too observant to not turn on the radio, though, and she remembers shabbes as defined by the candle sticks and the radio on the kitchen table, playing the weekly Chicago Jewish radio program. Sara always loved school. She remembers specific teachers from gradeschool, especially Miss Johnson, who taught her to read, which was, for Sara, âmagic.â She has been an avid reader her entire life. She went to religious school as well as public school,...

Type:

Video

Format:

Motion Pictures

Rights:

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View Original At:

https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/oral-histories/interviews/woh-fi-0000128