Browse Items (305 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…

Sara Wagner is a Louisville, Kentucky native and the current head of the Jewish Federation of Louisville as of 2017. Wagner reflects on her Jewish upbringing, the traditions her family observed (such as keeping kosher), as well as her family’s roles…

At the time of this interview, Zach Sippy was a high school student in Lexington, Kentucky. In this interview, he discusses his family history and Jewish background. He talks about the various places he has lived throughout his life, including…

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…

This interview with the former Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky, Jerry Abramson, discusses his life and the effect Judaism had on it. The interview goes in chronological order, starting with his family coming to America and his childhood in…

Rabbi Sharon L. Cohen was born in 1969 in Miami, Florida. While her parents are both from the United States, her great-grandparents emigrated from Russia. Growing up, Cohen’s parents raised her in a Jewish home with strong values that eventually…

Rabbi Moshe Smolkin was born in Atlanta, Georgia in the late 1970s, though he grew up in Clear Lake City, Texas and Albuquerque, New Mexico. As a child, he practiced as an Orthodox Jew, but he experimented with both other faiths and Hasidic Judaism…

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…

Robin Michler, owner of Kentucky Native Café in Lexington, discusses his experiences as a businessman, international traveler, and Jewish man. He recounts how his maternal family changed their name from Katz to Kane upon their immigration to the U.S.…

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…