TRANSCRIPT

Interview with I. Freedman by R. Ormerod May 17, 2004

I. Freedman: At one time it was an Orthodox synagogue and the men and women sat separately. Now, because we did have an upstairs where in most synagogues there is [the women sit upstairs and the men sit downstairs]; we did not have that arrangement, it was all on one floor. So the women sat off to the side and the men had the rest of the synagogue, ok. And it was a curtain that divided us. It was just a railing and a curtain that divided us - it was a separation. The men had the pews, there were pews, but the men had the pews and they weren't curtained off.

And so, we got fewer ? we became fewer and fewer and it got to the point where it became kind of silly because most of us weren't orthodox. We decided that we would become conservative and that we would mix the families together.

Now, I think for Richard's Bar Mitzvah, I think that we were conservative. Because as I recall, my guests all sat together on the same pew.

As it happened . . . that very last year, Eddie Duke arranged to bring some? new? someone who was in the Rabbinaric?who was studying to be a Rabbi.

R. Ormerod: The Rabbinical College

I. Freedman: Yes

I think that he was from Cleveland; I do not know why that sticks in my head and he came up to see where he was going to be, and so he come and he was very unhappy because we had become Conservative and he was really into the Orthodoxy?so...anyway . . . because we were stuck and we needed someone badly, we converted back to, the women sat on the side and we put a curtain up or something like that?

So we went back to this and got through the high holidays.