Carol Kane Chestler

Weil: Carol I want you to tell me about your early life. I want you to describe where you were born and what your house was like and who lived in that house.
CHESTLER: I was born on September 16, 1935 in Cleveland, Ohio. My parents were Mary Kane and William Kane (Bill). And I had a brother who was ten years old at the time that I was born and his name was Marvin Kane. And we lived in a little one-bedroom apartment in the city. When I was five years old, we bought a house with my aunt and uncle and cousin. It was a two-family. We lived upstairs and they were downstairs and it was in the Heights. So, we were moving into the suburbs. It would have been 1940 and I started kindergarten and I went to one elementary school, one junior high school and one high school—all in Cleveland Heights.

Weil: Did you live in that same house?
CHESTLER: Yes, I lived in that same house that whole time. We had a lot of extended family because my mother was one of ten siblings—five girls and five boys, plus one who had died when he was ten years old that I never knew. But we used to go to the cemetery to visit his grave at least once a month. And I remember that all during my childhood. Most of her siblings lived in Cleveland and they had kids. I had lots of cousins on my mother’s side. My dad’s side, he was one of eight and so there were tons of cousins and aunts and uncles. 

My dad had been born in Germany and they were Orthodox Jews from a little village called Storndorf. After my mother and he got married in 1922 they moved to Akron. She tried keeping kosher. But she gave up on that and they moved back to Cleveland. My father’s side of the family were still practicing a lot of Orthodoxy and they belonged to the little Orthodox shuls and they kept Kosher and everybody was happy with everybody else. It was a very, I don’t know, warm, embracing type of extended family.

Weil: So all of those relatives lived in Cleveland?
CHESTLER: There were a few that didn’t, but a good part of them did.

Weil: Where did your mother come from?
CHESTLER: My mother was born in New York and they came to Cleveland when she was, I don’t know, like 22 months old. So she doesn’t remember much about New York. My grandma and grandpa, her parents, were from Hungary. They had come to the United States in 1895, or something like that, or maybe a little earlier. They met on the boat. My grandma was 15 when her parents sent her over to look for an older uncle who had come to America. They never saw him again and so they sent her to go find Uncle Pincus. But, instead of that, she met my grandfather and she went back to Hungary but he saved up his money. She was supposed to get married to somebody in Hungary but she got out of that. She came back and I think he was maybe 20 and she was 18 or maybe she was 17 and he was 19, but they were pretty young. And then they had these 11 kids.

Weil: Wow!
CHESTLER: Yes, (laughs). Quite a story.

Weil: Tell me about your religious education in Cleveland.
CHESTLER: First we belonged to Park Synagogue, which had moved up to the Heights. It was just basically down the street from where we lived, so I could walk there. I went there for first and second grade and I didn’t like it for some reason. So, we switched to Heights Temple, where my grandparents were members. That was also a few blocks away and I could walk there, too. I went there to Sunday school, never Hebrew School, I don’t think. No bat mitzvahs, of course, at that time, but I was confirmed in 1950 and I think I may have gone on to maybe a year of high school.

Weil: So, these were Orthodox?
CHESTLER: No, they were Conservative. And we celebrated all the holidays. My parents went to, we called them the Temples then for High Holidays. It was a big social experience. The kids would go to meet all their friends and get dressed up. It was that kind of a situation. Being Jewish was easy because we were surrounded. When I got to junior high school, there were sororities and fraternities in junior high in the seventh grade. And they were divided into Jewish and gentile. They had reinforced the Jewishness because they were all Jewish girls. We only were interested in the Jewish boy fraternities. That really was our entire social life in junior high school.

Weil: Did you have dances and stuff like that?
CHESTLER: Oh, sure, we did. In fact, in the ninth grade, I became president of the sorority. There was a movement to abolish them and to have us affiliate with a B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, or something of that sort. There was an old house that was kind of a little center for teens, and I think they called it Teen House or something. We did that. I was elected on that basis and the gal who turned out to be my sister-in-law, was defeated, because she wanted to keep it the way it was. The person who was the staff person at this place was Morrie Tiktin, who ended up, years later, coming to Portland; he was the director of the Jewish Community Center.

Weil: So there were no youth groups through the synagogue?
CHESTLER: Not that I can remember.

Weil: OK. We sort of skipped over your parents’ professions.
CHESTLER: My mom stayed home. She was a house person-lady and didn’t drive a car. My dad with an uncle, his brother, (he lived downstairs in our two-family) had a little men’s furnishing business. It was like a wholesale, between the manufacturers—ties and shirts and some jackets and stuff. Retail small businesses would come to them to buy their product, their stuff. So, that’s what my dad did.

Weil:  OK. Tell me about your brother.
CHESTLER: My brother, as I say, was ten years older than me, so he was a built-in babysitter. He went into World War II. I was six when World War II started in 1941. He turned 18 and graduated from high school in 1943 and he went into the army and he was shipped overseas. He ended up in Germany in the infantry and we were scared to death, of course. I remember writing him letters—little V-mail things on that real thin paper. When he came out we were all so grateful. 

But we shared a room. The couple of years he was gone, I had the little bedroom that was smaller than the room we are in now, all to myself. And then he came back and we had to share the room again, because the house was small. It was just a two-bedroom house—the upstairs where we lived. He got married, I think he was twenty-four, in 1949. So, I was a bridesmaid at age 14. They had their kids right away. He worked for my dad and uncle. It wasn’t a very good relationship for him, as far as the business went. In 1953, January, I was supposed to graduate from high school. My dad went on one of his business trips driving with my uncle to New York, which they did a few times a year to buy stuff. I said to him, ”Dad, remember I’m graduating Thursday night and you better be home.” Because he would always go and stay an extra few days. And he said, “Don’t worry.” So that was on a Sunday. He left on a Sunday morning, and that Sunday, later in the day, there was an accident and he was killed. He never made it to my graduation. You know, we were all devastated. That was a big turning point in my life.

I had already met Sy. In fact, I had invited him to the senior prom, which was the Saturday after the Thursday graduation. Of course we didn’t go. So my brother had trouble with my uncle and he ended up working somewhere else. My mother sold the top of the house to my uncle and then she and my brother bought a bigger house together. And I lived with them for three months and then I got married.

Weil: How old were you when you got married?
CHESTLER: 19, just turned 19.

Weil:  So all of these cousins and siblings– did they all have Jewish life? Did they all have Judaism in their day and year? Did they all raise their children Jewishly?
CHESTLER: On my father’s side, yes, because only one married a gentile man, but she still maintained being Jewish pretty much. All of them were very Jewish and the cousins maintained Kosher and everything like that of my generation. On my mother’s side of the family, only one of the brothers married a Jewish woman. The rest, I hate to say the word—it’s not my favorite word—schiksa. I hated that word but that‘s what they called them back then. 

Weil:  And, did they have Jewish homes or not?
CHESTLER: No, not the brothers—just the one, but he lived in California. But the sisters all married Jewish and they, pretty much, were Jewish. I mean they weren’t super religious Jewish, but they knew they were Jewish. 

Weil: When you were growing up, did you have seders in your home?
CHESTLER: Oh, absolutely! That was something I looked forward to even though they were long. My dad always led a seder and sometimes my uncle did. We got whoever could sit around the small dining room was there. My mother, Friday was pretty much Shabbat day. We cleaned the house. I would wash the kitchen floor and had to spread newspapers down. Did you ever hear of that thing? Oh, God! It used to drive me crazy! Saturday we would pick the newspapers up because they would be all mushed about. Anyway, my mother always made roast chicken, chicken soup, and baked. She was known for her lemon meringue pie. So we always had a lovely…And challah. My grandma and grandpa only lived one street away and I used to ride my bike over there and pick up a challah that my grandma made. And take it home so we’d have challah. Yeah. [And we] lit candles.

Weil: When did you go to college?
CHESTLER: Well, I graduated in January ’53, a mid-year class so I didn’t start school until the following September, so I had six or eight months between. My father had just died. I got a job at Allstate Insurance. Sy and I were dating but he was also dating another girl. My best friend Rachel was engaged and ended up marrying Sy’s best friend. And that’s how we got together. She and I worked at Allstate and she would report to me because they would go out on a double date on Friday night and he then would take me out on Saturday night or vice versa. So, this went on for the time until I went to Ohio State, which was in September. I thought I was going to start a whole new life and I got down to Ohio State and there were three letters already from Sy and then he came down to see me. It was all over before it had even started. I went there for two quarters and I pledged a Jewish sorority, but we got pinned, I think in December. He gave me his fraternity pin, which I wore on my bosom, and then in April, we got engaged. And so I quit school and came back to Cleveland, went back to Allstate. We got married in December of ’54, and, I guess the rest is history. 

Weil: When did you do college?
CHESTLER: Well, I did two quarters then when I was 17 or 18, and then I did college at Portland State, in 

Weil [interrupts]: Many years later.
CHESTLER: yeah, in 1975 and got my undergraduate degree in ’78. I was 40.

Weil: Did you ever go to camp as a kid?
CHESTLER: No. I always felt bad about that, because a lot of my friends went to Camp Wise, but I don’t think my parents could really afford it. They just told me they didn’t believe in it, so I never went to camp.

Weil: How long were you living in Cleveland before you came out to Portland?
CHESTLER: We had gotten married in December of ’54. We had all our kids. Stuart was born in ’57; Bob in ’59; and Larry in ‘62. We came out to Portland in the very beginning of 1967. In fact, a couple of weeks before New Year’s Eve.

Weil: What brought you out here?
CHESTLER: Sy took a job with White Stag. He had been with Bobbie Brooks for all his…except for his first year right out of college. He was already working in Bobbie Brooks when we started going together. That was also a garment business, junior sportswear. 

Weil: And in what capacity was he working?
CHESTLER: Oh, he was, you know, production, management, forecasting. Anyway, whatever it was, it was time for him to leave. He got offered a job by White Stag. He came out to interview and they offered him the job but he insisted that they would have to bring me out to look at Portland. A few weeks later, I went out there with him in October and we were kind of wined and dined over the weekend. We didn’t want to leave Cleveland. We didn’t want to leave all our friends and family in Cleveland, but he had to leave Bobbie Brooks and this was a nice job offer.

Weil: It must have been very hard on your family. You were leaving so many…
CHESTLER: Oh, yeah…yeah, yeah, yeah. And my mom was a widow. And Sy’s mom was a widow. That was Grandma Goldie; you probably remember her.

Weil: I do.
CHESTLER: Sy’s brother had already left Cleveland and gone to New York; his sister went to California. So we were her lifeline and we left. But, you know…She took it well. Then the two grandmas would come out a couple times a year to visit with us and then they moved here in 1973, the same year.

Weil: What did you do here religiously when you moved here?
CHESTLER: We immediately joined Temple [Beth Israel], because Stu was nine and Bob was seven. We had belonged to a Reform temple in Cleveland as young marrieds. When our kids started we joined Silver’s Temple, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver’s Temple in Cleveland, so there was no hesitation. We were going to connect up immediately. We wanted the Reform because that is what we had just been doing. Probably within the first couple of weeks we made that connection. We started the boys there. Larry was still in nursery school; he was four. We found out about what’s now called the Foundation School at Neveh Shalom. We lived out in Beaverton temporarily in a rental house. Harriet Maizels lived not far away and she had Terry who was about Larry’s age. So we carpooled to Neveh Shalom. Harriet was already very active in the National Council of Jewish Women, Portland Section. Her aunt Lois was president at the time, so she immediately got me involved. They made me assistant Bulletin editor. So, I got in with a group almost immediately. We joined Temple in January of ’67, in February, there was some kind of adult ed program at Rabbi Rose’s house. He invited us and that is where I met Berta Delman and Elaine Weinstein. Berta has passed away unfortunately, but they just embraced us and we clicked and we became friends immediately. After about a month in Portland, we both felt that this is great! We like it here.

Weil: How long did you belong to Temple?
CHESTLER: We joined in ’67. Our kids had their bar mitzvahs there. They were confirmed, and we were there until…We didn’t quit. We joined Havurah in the very beginning in 1979. But we maintained a dual membership because we weren’t really sure Havurah was going to make it long term. Most of our friends were at Temple and our boys had grown up there. In 1979, Stuart was in college, Bob was just starting college, and Larry was in high school. It just turned out that in 1980, Stuart and Mandi got married. They wanted to be married at the Temple. We still were members so that was no problem. But then, around 1982 we were ready give up on Temple. We were tired of paying dues in both places and Havurah was solid in our minds by then. So we finally wrote a letter of resignation. Eve Rosenfeld was the director there at the time. Sy mails the letter. Bob calls and says he is engaged to Patty and they wanted to get married at Temple. So, we called Eve Rosenfeld and said, “Tear up the letter. Pretend we never sent it.” So, we stayed at Temple and Bob and Patty were married there. Maybe sometime in the following year we did drop out of Temple.

Weil: What was so appealing about Havurah that would take you away from Temple after all those years?
CHESTLER: That’s a good question. You know, I think that I never would have done this in the middle of the boys’ time there, because that is where they went and that’s what they were comfortable with. But they were already out of the picture. It was just Sy and I; we could do whatever we want. Right? We didn’t have to worry too much about them anymore. I knew you and a few other people, probably through NCJW. I am not even sure. I knew Lesley. And I knew Margie Rosenthal had done some guitar music at Temple. I just liked the idea of something new and hands-on and informal but accessible. I never really loved the services at Beth Israel even though the sanctuary remains beautiful beyond words. I thought the services were a little bit stale and more like a performance. People were just there to witness, not to really participate. You didn’t sing, the choir sang, the organ played. I just liked the idea of a different way of celebrating being a Jew.

Weil: Well, I remember that you were involved from the very beginning. I remember that you were doing things for the first High Holidays. So, do you want to talk about that?
CHESTLER: Absolutely. We didn’t get involved in the very, very pre-stuff that happened at Neighborhood House in the summer of ’78—picnics and all that. We weren’t involved in that. We were called to this meeting at Lesley and Ken Isenstein’s home. I believe it was in March 1979 where plans [were being made]. A discussion had already taken place with Rabbi Alan Berg, who was on a sabbatical from Temple, (who we knew, of course) to work with this group into starting a new community. I don’t think anybody wanted to call it a congregation or certainly not a synagogue. So, the idea was that they needed more people to join the original small nucleus (I think you were part of the small nucleus), in order to pay him enough money so he would work with us and help us get this thing started. So we came to that meeting, and we did. Immediately, we raised enough money in dues. I thought it was $500 a family, but I was reading some old materials and it was just $200 a family, do you remember?

Weil: I think it was.
CHESTLER: OK. So we had him for part time from March until October and then we would have to renegotiate, if we could. During that time there was a feverous amount of activity. That summer things were really happening all kinds of things. There was adult ed, and there was all kinds of stuff going on. I ended up on planning for the first High Holidays committee. On the committee was Rabbi Berg, Elden Rosenthal, Dave Weil, Joan Rosenbaum, I think Lesley, not sure about Lesley, Enie Faveluke, which is a name out of the past. I was working by that time at Jewish Family and Child Service. I had graduated from Portland State in history in August of 78 and Alvin Rackner hired me. I started November 1, 1978, at Jewish Family and Child Service as the Russian Resettlement Coordinator. It was downtown (the office was) and Elden was downtown and it was convenient for us to do our meetings at my office at least once a week. Alan Berg probably did the most remarkable thing or the most memorable thing he could have ever done for us because he insisted that we plan High Holidays not just for ourselves, we had grown to maybe 35 families or maybe 50 families by then, but, no! We had to have a huge, big, open-to-the community celebration of the High Holidays. He said, “You just have to do it this way.” He was absolutely right and he set us on that path. That has been one of the major legs of our existence. That is how people…over the years it has been the entryway for people who were maybe not sure, or were looking around, or maybe not ready to commit, to come to our High Holidays and not have to buy tickets and not have to make a commitment. That was brilliant on his part. And we thought, I can remember, in the beginning, we argued with him because we thought he was crazy. We couldn’t pull something like that off. But we did.

Weil: Where was it held?
CHESTLER: It was at MJCC. At that time, I think we were still meeting… Oh I know, we were meeting at West Hills Unitarian Church on Oleson Road, but that wasn’t big enough for that kind of major High Holidays. I believe that the JCC allowed us to rent the space at a very favorable rate. They were very welcoming. That first High Holidays I think we had Aryeh Hirschfield do the music with Alan and a lot of people participating both with in leading the services and in making it all happen. So, yeah, I was very involved with that. We had a lot going on because at sometime, Alan did renew with us, and he worked for us for, I think he may have left around, I’m going to say February or March of 1980; he went back to Temple. I guess I really, I can recall, maybe you don’t, feeling a little bit betrayed almost when he left. Looking back at it, he never really made a long-term commitment to us. I think he was just out on sabbatical from Temple and he went back. 

When we had the rabbi we had this flurry of activity and we were getting new members. Shabbat School was going, and lots of things were going. Here we were without a rabbi. That’s when we started meeting about affiliating with a movement because in order to get a rabbi, a new rabbi, you had to get it through either Conservative or Reform. So we worked on that and we ended up joining the Reform Movement. We interviewed rabbis in 1980 and nothing panned out. So I think we went for about a year and a half without a rabbi and did everything ourselves. It worked. By that time, we had developed a lot of good camaraderie and working relationships. We all pitched in whatever was needed, whether it was here, there, or somewhere else. We were all there to make it happen. So we made this happen as well, without a rabbi. I think it was 1982 that we started up again [looking for a rabbi]. I was on the Search Committee that ended up with Rabbi Roy Furman. In fact, I remember we made him an offer sitting around my dining room table at a Sunday morning brunch. I think he accepted. Or we told him we were about to present him with a more formal offer. And he more or less told us, Yeah, he would look very favorably on it. I don’t remember exactly when that was, but I believe it must have been in 1982.

Weil: You’ve had a lot of leadership roles and responsibilities in Havurah. Do you want to talk about some of those things…like the fundraising?
CHESTLER: Okay. First, I’ll say, I went to graduate school from 1982—1985. And that was very intense. I went to the Graduate School of Social Work and I was still working at Jewish Family. I was up to my earlobes in work. I had to pull back from some of my Havurah stuff during those couple of, during those three years. In June of 1987 we left for California. White Stag, long story short, they moved us down to LA. We didn’t know how long we were going to be there. We kept coming home for the holidays and we would go to Havurah for the High Holidays. I think we kept up our membership at a reduced rate because we were out-of-towners. When we came back in 1991 Larry was engaged and Joey married them. We didn’t have a building, so Larry and Melody got married at the Portland Art Museum and Joey officiated. That was lovely. 

Starting in about 1992, oh, I got my job back at Jewish Family, by the way, but by now I was a counselor. I didn’t do Russian Resettlement, even in the last few years in the ‘80s. Margie Rosenthal was president and by 1992, it was becoming a little more obvious that we needed to say the “B” word out loud–Building. That had been something that I am very glad that for the first fifteen years or so of our existence we didn’t worry about a building. Because we had to develop our philosophy and our programs, and what the role of the rabbi was in relation to this upstart, participatory, inclusive, egalitarian, all these things. Some people thought we should never have a building, that we should always be wandering Jews. But, by ’92-’93, we were having all our services and our Shabbat school at the JCC. They were nice to us but they were running out of space themselves. There was just no room for us. They kept giving us leases for one more year, but “you better start doing something.” I also think that maybe some of the other rabbis in town didn’t like the fact that we were getting to have our whole congregation at the Center and that they felt that we should have our own place. But we needed our own place. I was on the task force, the facilities task force. We looked at various churches and, I don’t remember who else besides Margie, but there were a few of us.

Weil: I remember going and looking at places after you had found some.
CHESTLER: I think I was asked to come back to the Steering Committee. I think I had been on it earlier, in the first days I had been on the Steering Committee. This time as a vice president in waiting. Jay Moskowitz was President. Layton Borkan was next in line and then I would become president. We started fund raising and I wasn’t involved in the first fund raising committee. I don’t remember, I think maybe Mimi was the chair of that. They started raising funds among their own committee and then they went to the Steering Committee and then they started doing visits among the whole congregation. But in between that, we had looked at some things. 

It was very hard to start fund raising. We were so frightened of it, to mount a capital campaign. We thought people would leave us in droves or we would lose our egalitarian nature if some people can give a lot of money and others can’t. The culture had been so completely, “let’s avoid this.” So we had to do a mass cultural change. Noam Stampfer and a few people had worked on focus groups and large meetings for a couple of years to try to prepare people for the idea and I think they did a pretty good job of that. So, little by little, people were won over. It was a matter of necessity. So we tried to make a virtue out of necessity by looking at it in a positive way. I was involved. I became president. We bought the two warehouses in December of ’95 when Jay was president. We worked on trying to figure out whether it would be feasible to do the renovation that would be necessary to transform these ugly buildings into some sort of synagogue. And thank goodness for Pam Webb because she found them and she convinced us; she was very forceful and she convinced us, “Oh yes, it will work, trust me.” And we did; we trusted her. But by that time we were used to trusting each other. We just got on board. We raised…During my presidency the building committee refined everything. They kept coming back and more money was needed. We had two fund raisings during Phase One. The big building was Phase One and the little building we put off and that was going to be Phase Two. But we had all these campaigns and you worked with me. When I was president from 1997 to 98, the main thing that happened was that we finally joined the Reconstructionist Movement, in June of 97. The person who followed me was Deborah Robboy, Herzberg now. We moved into Phase One of the building that fall of 1998. We had a great celebration. We took the Torah from the Neighborhood House, do you remember? We marched in the streets, had a police escort on a Sunday morning and had a huge celebration when we dedicated that.

Weil: I want you to explain just a little bit about the fund raising, that we made a decision not to take out loans?
CHESTLER: We made the decision. In that first round, we started fund raising before we had a building. And we had about $80,000 in a Reserve Fund from some property from Detroit Lake, or something. We didn’t have enough money to buy the building, which was costing around $350,000. So, the difference, we had about $180,000 between Detroit Lake and what had already come in from our capital campaign and what had come in in actual dollars. We had about half so we borrowed the rest. But we didn’t go to a bank. We decided, that was a very good thing that we did, we decided to borrow money from whomever would loan us money from our own congregation. I think it ended up about forty different families did that. We set up a program and, in those days, about ’95, we paid 6% interest rates. If we had borrowed money [from a bank], we would have had to pay about 10 or 11% interest rates. We were saving money and it was another way for the people making loans to have skin in the game and to feel like they were really doing something for the cause, which they were. It was a great thing. I mean the loan program was a great thing. And we did that for every successive pledge drive because pledges would come in over three years but we needed the money immediately. The loans covered, we could pay our bills to the contractor, to the architect and all that and collect the pledge money as it was coming in. We had many drives, and many meetings. That whole process was a very exciting time. It brought us even closer together as a community and we were so worried that people would leave us in droves, but it didn’t turn out that way. They actually flocked to us even more.

Weil: Where does that Loan program stand now?
CHESTLER: I think it is pretty much done. I think one person in our congregation who wants to remain anonymous, I believe, took over that. I don’t really know for sure. Sy would know.

Weil: The building is almost paid off
CHESTLER: Oh, the building is paid off for sure. When we did a survey we had a member, I don’t remember her name but she was a member at that time, a professional fundraiser, and she told us that based on that first survey that we did in 1995, based on members’ incomes and stuff like that, that we could probably raise $450,000. And Pam [Webb] said, “Sure, no problem.” She sort of underestimated what this thing was going to cost. But, very soon it became very clear, once we bought the building, the building committee said that the whole thing (both buildings) was going to cost us $1.2 million, based on architectural estimates and contractor estimates. Well, that’s what the first phase cost was $1.2 million. So, what it ended up, when all was said and done, when we did Phase 2 and joined the ugly little building and made it into one, I think, all our expenses, including servicing the loans, came to $2.2 million. But, we did it and we paid it off. The building has exceeded everyone’s expectations for how it has worked for us. I know there are some problems now with space, but it has been a wonderful, inviting, cozy, welcoming place—not formal, multi-use. It was amazing that Pam Webb had that vision because without her, I don’t know that we would have ever done something like that.

Weil: Are there other things that have happened that you took part in that you want to talk about?
CHESTLER: Let me think. We’ve had auctions. I’ve been involved in many auctions—maybe eight or ten of them. I chaired one at least. Were you co-chair?

Weil: No.
CHESTLER: That was another way of paying off our debt and enhancing the synagogue. The auctions were great. I was involved in a couple of the long range planning committees, but we have had so many that I couldn’t even begin to tell you which one it was. Empty-nesters is another thing that a lot of us, you included. I think we started Empty-nesters in the early ‘90’s. It was for empty nesters. There weren’t so many of them then, but there are a lot of them now. We used to…It was a social thing and we used to get together maybe every two or three months and go to plays, go to movies, go out for pizza. I don’t know what…you probably remember what we did, but we had a lot of wonderful experiences, I think.

Weil: Changes you’ve seen in the congregation from the time it started to more recent times.
CHESTLER: Obviously we’ve grown in numbers. We’ve become a little more, I don’t know if institutional is the word, but we’ve become a little less ad hoc and a little more having to ask staff to do some things because of the way we have grown. We hired [Rabbi] Joey in ’87. I think we got our first secretary in ’91 or 2. We had to get office space before we had the building and that was across the street from the Jewish Community Center. We hired Joan Liebreich as our first, I don’t even know what to call her because there was so much resistance to even having a person like that. She called herself the administrative coordinator and volunteer coordinator. 

I don’t know what we called her but she was a good person to have in that first job because she had such a warm personality. She built a rapport instantly with people. She won over people without even trying. It’s just who she was. She helped us with so many things in so many ways. When we moved to the building, she was there and helped make that move a little more smooth. It was chaotic anyway but it would have been even more chaotic. She stayed with us. She started in ’95 and she left in 2002. We had a huge party for her when she left with skits and songs and dances. I don’t think we’ve done that for any of the subsequent people in that position. She was one of a kind. I was involved a lot with that. I don’t know, Oh, I did a b’nai mitzvah in 2006. There were 13, maybe 15 of us. We studied with Deborah Eisenbach-Budner for two years and then we had our b’nai mitzvah in, I think it was December of 2006, but I could be wrong. I learned my Hebrew much better during those two years, but I didn’t really keep up with it and I feel bad about that. I’m glad I did it anyway. It was a great experience. Deborah was fabulous and she still is. And, that’s another thing. When we hired Deborah, that was a huge boost to our organization. And, more recently, when we finally paid Ilene [Safyan] to be our music coordinator, that was a long time coming. We had been so lucky with our music over the years. There is no way to define what a gift that’s been and how important Margie, Ilene, Emily Gottfried, Barbara Slader, and in more recent years Liz Schwartz and Beth Hamon, Andrew Erlich. We are just blessed with incredible musicians and now at least there’s a little more dependable… with Ilene, at least, in the position, we know that the music is going to be there. She’s just a phenomenal resource. 

But how else has Havurah changed? I think, it’s only natural that as more and more people have joined, that we don’t know each other all as well as we used to. There is some of that strong sense of camaraderie that we had by necessity to build the whole idea of it in the first place and then to do the building. It took ten years before we were all finished with all of the stuff that went along with that. There isn’t anything in any great urgency that make you feel…, other than High Holidays, fortunately we still have High Holidays. I think that that is a very unifying element and something that everybody comes home to, sort of. I don’t have my finger on the pulse of things the way I used to for a long time. So, I don’t know exactly what people are seeing as the major issues. I know we are faced with a huge change when [Rabbi] Joey leaves, in a year and a half. The process of figuring out who to hire for our next rabbi may bring us all together again. 

Weil: That leads me to the question, where would you like to see the synagogue go?
CHESTLER: I want it to continue. We’re what, about 36 years into it. I like it the way it is. I’d like to rekindle some of that early excitement and sense of community. But I don’t have a prescription as to how to make that happen. Portland is an in-migration city. People are coming here in droves, Jewish people included. We’re going to grow; all the synagogues are going to grow. I hope we don’t have to get a new building, but, down the line, I wouldn’t rule it out completely. I love this building. If anything, I would like us to buy the house behind it, or the building next to it and use that for Shabbat school and whatever else we need the space for.

Weil: To finish out your story, do you want to talk about some other involvement in the community, either Jewish or otherwise, that you have been involved with?
CHESTLER: I did talk a little bit about that but I’ll go into it in a little more detail. When we first moved to Portland my entreé into meeting people (we didn’t know anybody other than the one person from White Stag who had convinced Sy to take the job) was National Council of Jewish Women, Portland Section. At that time it was sort of in its heyday. In the late’60s and all through the ’70s it had about 800 local members and it was involved in a lot of advocacy and community service projects and the Thrift Shop and the Angel Ball. It was sort of like the Jewish women’s Junior League, kind of. Council was the place to be. The women’s movement had already happened, or was happening in the early’70s, but a lot of the Council women were older and were married and had kids and weren’t necessarily working full time the way young people do now. So NCJW became a very good outlet for energy and for working together on what we thought were important issues. I remember going down to Salem. Oregon passed the Abortion Rights Legislation about a year before Roe v. Wade. So we were involved in that. We had other projects. We had the Senior Citizens at the Jewish Community Center and we had all kinds of projects. It was an opportunity for volunteering. It was an opportunity for social interactions and for making friends. That’s where most of my friends were. 

I was a little involved in Temple, just because the boys were in Sunday school. I taught Sunday school there for two years, the first grade. I didn’t really love it so I quit after two years. The Sisterhood never really turned me on that much. I did stuff there—not too much. But it was NCJW very, very much. I was president from 1973—75. I had been vice-president and had done all kinds of stuff—Thrift Shop, and membership and the works. And then Stuart graduated, my oldest son graduated from high school. I took him to college. He went to Oregon and I drove him down and I cried all the way home. And I enrolled in Portland State. The reason I did that was because Berta Delman had already done that and she sort of encouraged me. I was only going to take one class, just for fun. I ended up with a full schedule and before I knew it, I was a full-time college student. All my credits from Ohio State, and I had taken a few classes in Cleveland, I had about a year’s credit, so I had to go for three years. That was when I was 40. I graduated in ’78. 

It was because of NCJW that Alvin Rackner hired me for Jewish Family because we cooperated on a lot of projects and he saw me in action. So he said, “OK, I’m going to hire you.” And he did. That was the most wonderful job I could have ever had. I loved those Russians; they’re a trip. But they are and they were great people. I just loved getting involved and helping them. It was a perfect job for me and yet I didn’t have to have a graduate degree to do that. So, I sort of withdrew a little bit from NCJW because I had done it for ten years and most of my friends had moved on. We were either in school or were working by that time. 

When Havurah came along, I had all this volunteer and organizational experience. It was sort of very natural to get right in and work with committees and plan and organize and all that. It was what I did. I felt comfortable doing that and it was very organic and it was very dynamic. I did go to graduate school. When the Russians stopped, when they ended letting people out for a while Alvin couldn’t justify keeping me on full time. He figured out a way to keep me half time and I still worked with Russians. It was very natural that I should go to graduate school that time. So I stayed at Jewish Family half time, I did graduate school half time for three years instead of two. I did field placement one year out in St. Helens and one year out at the Tualatin something Center out in Beaverton. By the end of that three year period I no longer did Russian Resettlement. I did counseling, therapy. Ronni Baderman was my supervisor. You needed two years of regular supervision weekly and so many hours in order to get, it wasn’t even a license, it was certified then in Oregon. So, I got certified and then we moved to California. I worked down there for a developmentally disabled regional center and I did private practice. 

I was working about 50 hours a week in Los Angeles but I loved it. Sy hated his job at that point as far as his profession was concerned. But we reconnected with Cleveland friends and with some of my cousins that lived in LA. Four years down there was a good time for me but we were happy to come back. By that time we had grandkids. Sy retired. He didn’t work anymore after we came back here and we bought the house we are in now. Within a few months, I went back to Jewish Family but I worked part time and that was fine because Sy wasn’t working. Most of my work was in the Jewish community. I was involved with Federation in the earlier years. I always worked on the [Jewish Federation] Campaign, but not so much.

Weil: The Jewish Museum?
CHESTLER: Now? Oh yeah, that’s a big part of my life now. Rose Rustin told us the other day we’ve been volunteering there for ten years. It seems like only yesterday. It started because she was able to…out of some crazy storage facility in Tigard where NCJW, you know, we sold Neighborhood House in the year 2000 and they had stored whatever stuff they kept. They kept everything and it was just in boxes and Rose was the one who wanted to salvage it and create archives for NCJW. It’s a good thing she did because we closed the section about a year ago. We ended up giving a lot of money to the Museum and the gallery has our name on it. The other half of the money went to the Kehilla House at Cedar Sinai, which is a wonderful project, too. All the stuff was taken to Rose’s basement. I think she and Anne Prahl, who is the curator at the Museum, went through all kinds of stuff and sorted it out. Then Shirley Rackner, Sharon Tarlow, and myself and Rose would go to Rose’s house and start the process of what comes to the Museum. We culled it down that way. Then we eliminated more stuff and then we worked at the old Museum, which was in Chinatown on Davis. Then, we moved over to the new building. We finally finished the archives for NCJW and got it all organized, and then they gave us our new project, which we’re still working on, which is the Beth Israel archives. As irony would have it, Stuart Chestler was president a couple years ago when Beth Israel agreed that the Museum could take over and develop their archives. He drew up the papers and signed the papers. So, there you have it—full circle.

Weil: Ok. Is there anything else you think you want to add? It seems you have been involved in every aspect of Havurah Shalom from its beginning until now.
CHESTLER: Well, not so much now any more but we’ll always be here. Oh, we were the first people to buy our plots at the cemetery. We have that distinction. That was probably in 1981, I’m thinking. It’s very important that we made that decision. I remember that well. Whether we would ever have a building or not, we didn’t know, but Elden [Rosenthal] and Dave [Weil] convinced us that if we were going to be a congregation, we had to have a cemetery. Boy, was that ever…Unfortunately we lost a lot of people in the early years, some of the kids, some of the adults, and that cemetery was and remains a very, very important thing. David Weil is very instrumental in having made all of that happen for a lot of years.

Weil: Ok. Well this has been a wonderful time spent with you and if you think of anything later that you forgot or want to add in, we can always do that.
CHESTLER: Alright then. Thank you for doing this with me. It’s really been fun—especially because you and I had shared so much of these times together.