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Show Joe l Sha pir o 6/ 9 / 82 tp 1 pg 10 one who had a litt le special cause or pr oject to solve . There were n o--we didn't have en ough books . So , some one would go out and he would cofTle bac K, '' :Simon , t he book fund neeos five dollars . " \my? The b ooks had disappeared , sc he ' d give him five dol l ars . I f he d i dn't give him five d ollars , he ' d give him two d ollars . Someb od y 's f a mi l y is i ll or sick , they need extra fTlOney . The fund hasn't got any . So , some one would go around and collect another ~50 . Now , this is the way this community subsisted or get alon g , and righ t up unt i l not very l ong a go . I t got to be less and less as the mana gement awareness and the professional Jew carre into the ma r Ket place . But , I think , this business of taking care of everything as it came up , and taking care of the needs , was very cl ose to the spirit of J ewish giving , or Jewish charity , or Jewish resp onse to need . I think it was a cultural part of the culture . People are always out collecting for this , and up until ver y recently , we had a man who used to collect a matzoh fund . I mean , even though we had centralized collecting , we still had some older member s in our community who never left that idea that a man ought to go out and collect for the needy that he saw , that he alone kne w, or a per ception that he had . We had a marvelous man , whose name escapes me, wh o , up until a few years (ago) , every year went out and col lected a matzoh fund . And he would go to a d imi nishing group who would recognize him , and everybody would give him $2 , $5 , for the matzoh fund . It became almost , in later days , odd , strange . 1 A joke? JS Yes , but , you see, you catered --that fTlan was doing what he had done all his life . He was collecting for the matzoh fund . And somebody else was doing this, and somebody else was doing that . And that ' s how those institutions survived . And this is , again , a youth memory , tnat the tale of which I refTlember very well , even going in t o not so l ong ago times. I remember going out , I ' m talking about the 40's and 50's, for example , in putting the bite on a half dozen men to send a worthy J ewish boy of about 17 or 18 , maybe it was i n high school, 16 or 17 , to camp in out of city here , because this l ad had wanted t o go , and his parents were immigrants , German re f ugee s, and they didn ' t have the few hundred dollars to get this boy out. And several of us thought we ought to get this kid out |
