Browse Items (50 total)

Joel Gordon was born on January 5, 1929, in Crofton, Kentucky. Both his mother and father were Jewish, and he was raised with a Jewish foundation. When Gordon was a child, his father owned and operated a general store. Gordon briefly describes his…

Yarmuth describes his family coming to America from Russia in the early 1900s. Immigration officials who greeted his family when they entered instructed them to change their name from Yarmuck to Yarmuth. They settled, initially, in New York in the…

Anne Edelstein Shapira was born in Ottawa, Canada in 1914 and her parents were immigrants from Manchester, England. She visited the United States in 1934 and 1936 to see her Aunt Rachel in Louisville. Rachel was married to the eldest Shapira brother…

Annette Mayer describes the circumstances in which she and her family moved to Lexington, Kentucky following the attack on Pearl Harbor. She describes her parents' relationship to Judaism and her upbringing as a young Jewish girl in Lexington,…

Ben Baker describes his family's history, primarily focusing on his mother's side. His maternal grandfather, who was originally from New York, owned a clothing store in Lexington on the corner of N. Mill Street and E. Main Street, which remained open…

David Shraberg describes his family's immigration from Lithuania to Somerset in 1900 and how his grandfather worked as a peddler to bring his bride-to-be over from Lithuania. His family eventually moved to Lexington in order to be part of a larger…

In this interview, David Weinberg reflects on his involvement in Judaism and the Jewish community throughout his childhood, college years, and adult life. He begins by delving into his family’s background, explaining how his grandparents came to…

Rabbi D. Wirtschafter is a religious family man, who was raised with three other children in 20th century United States. His father, Dr. Jonathan Wirtschafter, was a doctor and founder of the Ophthalmology Department at the University of Kentucky…

Elizabeth Bronner Crane was born on September 14, 1984 in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and was raised briefly in Charleston, SC though she later moved to Louisville, Kentucky. Due to the name change of her paternal grandfather at Ellis Island, she…

Erle Levy discusses family lineage in Lexington, Kentucky and Europe. He discusses his childhood school life in Lexington, and his childhood life in relation to Judaism and family traditions. He talks about the Jewish businesses that existed in…