Back to bread

It’s good to be eating bread again.

The New Jersey Jewish News article on the Trenton Jewish Project continues to draw new e-mails and even a couple of phone calls from people interested in what we are doing here.  

A couple of the highlights...

Lou Gordon, who lives in California had a memory of Passovers past in Trenton.

“I remember spending them on Greenwood Avenue as a kid.  My parents are coming over for the seders so I will be telling them about your project.”

As noted in a previous entry, Carol Angstreich Zimmerman in Alabama contributed a number of pictures.  The one from the 1946 Community Seder at Adath Israel as well as one from the Parker School and others from the newspapers.   Among those identified in the pictures, Sybil Friedlander, Eddie Silver, Ina Slossberg, Rayna Nochumson, Ellen Tauber, Linda Albert,  Adele Slossberg, Jerry Sykes, Barry Pitasky, Paula Sass, Marcia Kamingger,  Eddy Bernstein, Rene Fletcher, David Hodes, Barbara Coleman, and Charlotte Nochumson.

David Weinstein and I have been trading e-mails from Wellington, New Zealand.  We are going to set up an interview with his father, Sol, who wrote James Bond parodies, for Network TV shows, and a hit song for Bobby Darrin, among other accomplishments.  He sent along a number of pictures that I will use in the interview piece with his father.  He reports that he moved to Wellington in 1981 and that “it is the best and sanest place in the world!”.  

Carol Knopf reached out from Rhode Island.  Carol’s great-uncle was Louis Waldman, who owned the barbershop on Market Street.    If you want to know more about the barbershop and what it meant to the community, click here, and watch a sneak preview of the video that I am working on.  

“On my way home, I would stop in the barber shop and all the customers knew me and would tell my grandfather to "watch out, here comes your grandaugther".  That was because he would give me a dime and I would go around the corner to the newstand on Market St. to buy a comic book.  My parents (Sid and Ann Harrison) had a grocery store on Lamberton.  My father's sister, Eva Vegotsky and family, lived down the street.   Another sister, Jean Silverstein and family, lived over their produce store on Market Street.  I still think Ben's Deli had the best corned beef sandwich I've ever had.” 

She reports that she is still in touch with David Zeltt, whose family owned Kunis’ Bakery.  Carol is looking for some pictures from the barbershop.

 On Wednesday, I interviewed Edie (Hafitz) Gordon at her home.  Her father owned one of 7 Kosher Butcher Shops in Old Trenton.  Now, before you write and say that I'm misspelling her name, hold on.   Her uncle, who had a Kosher Butcher Shop two doors down from her father's store spelled it (HA-FETZ).   I will be writing more about her and her family in future blog postings. I have added a couple of pictures that she supplied to the picture gallery.

Please, if you have some memories of Trenton, post them directly to the blog, by making a comment.  Just click on the word comments under each entry.  This way, your remarks are shared automatically and you don’t need to e-mail them directly to me.

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Thanks for all the good wishes.

Ed