Garry Kahn

Hochstein: Garry, thank you for joining me today. For the record, if we could have your name and place and date of birth.
KAHN: Garry Kahn. San Francisco, California. April 20, 1936.

Hochstein: Tell me a little about the makeup of your household growing up. Who lived with you?
KAHN: I was the oldest of three children born to my mother and father, Mildred Kahn, formerly Mildred Cooper — who had lived in Portland — and my father Wilfred Kahn. My sister was born about a year and a half after I was born. Then there was an eight-year lapse and a son was born. My sister’s name is Judith. My wife’s name is Judith also, so it made for some interesting mix-ups sometimes. My brother is Rick Kahn.

Hochstein: Do you know how your parents met?
KAHN: Yes, I do. My mother had grown up in Portland. Her mother and father lived in Portland. She went to Commerce High School, which is now Cleveland High School. She took a course while in high school, and for the year after high school, in doing clerical, secretarial work and even some shorthand. I think she realized those were the only kind of jobs she could probably get at that time. She and a girlfriend of hers, a very close friend, [Belva?], decided to take a trip to San Francisco and explore. The two of them took the train down to San Francisco, and I’m not exactly sure how they met, but they arranged a double date with two brothers, my father and his brother. Belva was going to be with my father, and my mother was going to be with my Uncle Ralph. Apparently, at some point, whether it was the next day or a few days later, my mother decided that she didn’t really care for Ralph but she liked Wilfred [laughs], and so that’s how they met.

Hochstein: About what year was that?
KAHN: The latter part of 1934, or maybe even 1935.

Hochstein: And what was your future father doing at that time?
KAHN: He was a house painter and worked for various painting contractors in the San Francisco area. He actually was one of the painters during the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. He, unfortunately, came from very humble beginnings. His father died when he was very young, he had four siblings, and his mother had a hard time making it for the family. He decided to quit school in the sixth grade and go out and work and help contribute to the family. He never finished any schooling beyond that.

Hochstein: What was Jewish life like in your home? Did you celebrate Shabbat, holidays?
KAHN: In my earliest memories, when I was four, five, six, seven, eight years old, we didn’t celebrate anything as far as I can recall. I know that I was born at Mt. Zion Hospital, and I think I was told that I had a bris. I would say that we were pretty assimilated, even at that time. We lived in a neighborhood where, to my knowledge, there weren’t any Jews close to us. We didn’t pal around, so to speak, with any Jewish kids. I did have a cousin who was up in Portland, who I met once or twice. And I had a cousin who I met at the world’s fair at Treasure Island sometime in the early ’40s [Golden Gate International Exposition 1939-40]. And I met a cousin, Ron Abrams, who grew up in Portland, who came down on a train with, I think, his mother. I remember going to the fair because there are some pictures of it.

Hochstein: What did you see at the fair?
KAHN: We saw all kinds of stuff. I was young, and I think they had things you could ride on, like a little kiddy train and stuff like that, to go around the park. But nothing that was so memorable that I can recall now. I’m 81 now, so I’m sure there are a lot of things that I would have remembered ten years ago [laughs].

Hochstein: What was your Jewish education like at that time? Was there any Hebrew school or anything like that?
KAHN: No. I didn’t attend Hebrew school. When we moved to Oregon in about 1945 — it was right after World War II was over — my mother missed her mother, and my dad agreed to move up to Portland even though he had been born and had lived his entire life in San Francisco. When I got here I was probably nine years old. I do recall, on a few occasions, having my dad or my mom drive me down to the old Jewish Community Center to attend Sunday school. I wasn’t a very good student. I would rather be doing something else. I went a few times, maybe half a dozen, but I didn’t stick with it. And I never went to Hebrew school; it was never even suggested that I go to Hebrew school. My sister was about the same. I think she went to Sunday school a few times too. In fact, as I recall, my sister Judy was confirmed after finishing Sunday school, and I think, I’m not positive, that was at Ahavai Sholom, which later became part of Neveh Shalom.

Hochstein: But that was not part of your life from age nine until you left home?
KAHN: Essentially, yes. Like I say, when I grew up in Portland, the first year we lived over in Southeast Portland, quite a ways out, near 68th and Foster Road or thereabouts. About a year to a year and a half later, my parents decided they wanted to move. That may have been motivated by wanting more Jewish people. I’m not sure, but I kind of think it might have been. We moved over to Northeast 31st, between Prescott and Skidmore, where at that time, I could go to Alameda grade school or Kennedy grade school, and Grant High or Jefferson High. I ended up going to Alameda and Grant because that is where my friends primarily were.

At that time, in terms of Jewish relationships, my folks, even though they were not traditional shul-goers, did occasionally go. There was a small synagogue in the Northeast part of Portland, on about 15th or 16th and Northeast Alberta. As you’ll find out later in the interview, my wife’s father was a cantor. But I didn’t know that at the time, of course, because I didn’t meet my wife until much later. They would go occasionally, on some holidays, not every holiday. I can recall going there on Yom Kippur and probably Rosh Hashanah, but I didn’t know anything. I just sat there like a sponge and could figure out stuff going on [laughs].

My parents were very active with about four, five, or six other couples. They were all Jewish. I’m not sure how they met them, but I think at least some of them were friends of my mother’s when she had lived here nine or ten years before. I can remember a lot of them: the Ettlingers, Lou and Doris — wonderful people — and Dave and Anne Cogan, and George and Evelyn Pearlman. They had a pretty close-knit group, and they would get together sometimes for holidays and other occasions. It was social more than anything else. And I got to know some of their friends’ children, of course. But other than that, I can’t remember anything specific.

Hochstein: Do you remember any of those children’s names or what you did with them?
KAHN: I remember Gary Ettlinger. I ended up being a friend of his, and we played handball together frequently. And his younger brother, Leon Ettlinger, and his sister Judy. We see her still from time to time down at the North Coast Shabbat, which is a get-together of Jews that live in that area. It was started many years ago. Between about April and October they have a Friday night get-together for Shabbat, and they always invite somebody to lead the service, either a rabbi or a cantor, or someone who is active in the Jewish community. So I remember them, and yes, we did do some stuff together, but I don’t recall specifically.

George Pearlman and his wife Evelyn had a son — I think he was their only child — Leonard Pearlman, and Leonard is still around. I see him very infrequently, but we do bump into each other once every few years. We chat and that’s about it. They’re gone in the winter for about six months down to the desert. The Cogans, who have a big family, we know one of their sons and his wife, who are very active at Neveh Shalom, but I didn’t get to know them until many years later.

One of my closest friends at grade school was Bob Kaplan. I don’t know whether we met at the Jewish Community Center or we just became friends at Alameda grade school. I started there in about the seventh grade. We were really good buddies. His parents, maybe recognizing that I should have more Jewish education [laughs], invited me down to their house frequently on Sunday mornings to have bagels, cream cheese, and lox. They were wonderful people. And he had a brother, Barry, who’s a lawyer here in Portland. His older brother Bernie died. All three of them went to law school. I became very close friends with Bob. In fact, I went to his wedding in California with a friend of mine, and we have a very active reunion committee from Grant High, class of ’53. We have a reunion every five or ten years, and we just received a notice that we’re going to have our 65th reunion — I don’t know how many people are still going to be around — this coming fall. Bob came up for the last one, which was five years ago, and we had a good time chatting with each other, catching up.

Hochstein: When you were at Grant High School, did you associate with other Jewish students, or were you completely integrated with the general milieu?
KAHN: I’d say both. I did associate with some Jewish students, Bob being the main one. Phil Nudelman, Rhoda Rodinsky, and Shirley Lessman — Semler now. So yes, there were a handful of Jewish kids there that I hung out with at school, sometimes socially after school or on weekends. Mostly I was with non-Jewish kids, but I did associate with Jewish kids too.

Hochstein: Who would you say was the greatest influence on your life growing up?
KAHN: When you say “growing up,” that could mean a lot of different things. I was still growing up when I got married [laughs]. I would say, in terms of my Judaism, that my wife was by far my main educator, so to speak. She was the daughter of a cantor and had been raised in a very Orthodox home — not Ultra-Orthodox, but Orthodox. And I might say, if I had to attribute this to one person, my wife Judy really opened my eyes and ears to Judaism more than anything that had ever happened in my lifetime. It has been a wonderful experience.

I’ve become very active in the Jewish community. I have four children who are all very well educated with either Hebrew school or Sunday school, bar and bat mitzvah, active in AZA and BBYO and all the organizations that kids joined at that time. I have a son who became a rabbi, which is hard to believe from my background [laughs]. In fact, my son Robert, who was our third child — we had three boys and then a girl — he became rabbi at a very large synagogue where he’d been the assistant for only a short time, and under unusual circumstances. The synagogue, which had about 1,500 members, petitioned the Rabbinical Assembly to let Robert become the head rabbi because they had lost their rabbi on short notice and they liked the assistant. And so he did. He didn’t have five years in, but he became the rabbi.

I went to an event honoring him becoming rabbi, and he gave a talk. My wife was in Israel at the time with an educational group — it might have been Melton, but I’m not sure — and I went to it. During his talk, giving the congregation a little more history about him, he looked down at me and said something like, “Dad, I realize that when I told you I was going to go to rabbinical school, you said, “Don’t bother. That’s not in the genes” [laughs]. And then he went on and listed a lot of things that he was grateful for, that I was his father. It was very nice.

Hochstein: Although my question wasn’t intended to limit it to your greatest Jewish influence, since you mentioned your wife as your greatest Jewish influence, what year was your marriage?
KAHN: We got married in 1959, which in June will be 59 years. It was a big wedding in downtown Portland at the Multnomah Hotel, which is now where the Embassy Suites is. A beautiful hotel with gorgeous banquet rooms. I can’t tell you exactly, but there were at least 300 people there, maybe even more. I was pretty nervous during the service. This was new to me; I don’t even know if I’d ever been to a Jewish wedding. But I got through it. We had two rabbis and three cantors because of my father-in-law’s being involved in the community as a cantor for many years. We had a great time. We had a band, a great big dinner. It was wonderful.

Hochstein: Had you at that time completed your college education? Where did you go to college? I think we might have skipped a whole section there.
KAHN: Yes, you did. After Grant High School, I started at the University of Portland, which is a Catholic university out in North Portland, because it was close to where I lived and I couldn’t afford anything else. After about two or three months, I realized that I wasn’t ready for college and college wasn’t ready for me [laughs]. I was hanging out with a good friend of mine from high school, Bill [Krintzmeyer?]. Bill and I were talking one night in late January or early February of 1954. He said, “I’ve decided to join the Navy.” I said, “That sounds like a great idea. I think I’ll go down with you.” I was 17 at the time. I had skipped a grade at some point in my earlier years. I think it was when we moved to Portland. The teacher decided that, “You’ve already studied this stuff, so we’re going to put you up into the next grade.” They used to have 6a, 6b, 7a, 7b, and I got shoved forward. I missed 6b and I went right into 7a, or something like that. So because I was born in April of ’36, I was only 17 in February of ’54.

Bill and I went down to the recruiting office and we took our physical exam, took a written exam, partly I think it was psychological questions, and we were told to sit in this room. The recruiting officer came in and said, “You both passed. Bill, we’re going to send you to some school down in San Diego,” because he had some special talent in terms of science and I didn’t. He didn’t really say anything to me, and I said, “Well, what about me?” He said, “Yes, Gary, we’ll find a place for you.” I said, “How long will it be?” He said, “It might be three or four weeks.” I said, “Three or four weeks, are you kidding? I want to go now.” I was ready [laughs]. I don’t know why I reacted that way, but I did. He said, “You can’t join the Navy that soon because we just don’t have a spot for you, but if you want to take your paperwork” — the physical, the test, whatever — “you can go down the hall to the Marine Corps because they use the same materials we use.” I said, “Okay.”

So we walked down the hall to the Marine Corps. There was a recruiting sergeant there, and I showed him my stuff. I said, “Can I go in the Marine Corps?” or something to that effect. He looked it over and said, “Yes.” I said, “How soon can I go?” He said, “We’ve got a plane tomorrow night.” It was February 5th, which was my mother’s birthday. I said, “Can I go the following night?” He said, “Yes, we can take you down the following night.” So two days after, I was on a plane to San Diego recruit depot. I had my mother and father sign the consent form because I was 17. My mother was very upset; she was crying. I felt bad about that. But my dad thought it was a great idea [laughing], so there I go, and I was in for three years. The benefit of joining there instead of the Navy was that the Navy was four years [laughing], so I got out a year earlier.

The Marine Corps was difficult at times, but I honestly believe it was one of the best decisions I made in my entire life. I learned a lot in the Marine Corps. I was just a grunt, a private in a supply battalion primarily. Went to three months of basic training in San Diego recruit depot and then a month of combat training. I learned a lot. I learned a lot about other people living with other people from different parts of the country, learned a lot of discipline. By the time I got out of the Marine Corps, I knew that I wanted to go to college, and I had the GI Bill, which paid my entire college education, both college and law school. Also, we had a GI Bill loan when we bought our first house about six months after we got married. On reflection, it was a very wise decision.

Hochstein: How did your experiences in the Marine Corps make it clear to you that you wanted to go to college?
KAHN: It was hard, and it was difficult, and I didn’t like having to follow orders all the time [laughs]. I was always sort of outspoken about stuff like that. If I didn’t think it was a worthwhile experience to do whatever they were telling me to do, I might have the tendency to suggest, “Why are we doing this?” Well, that doesn’t go very far in the service, as you probably already know [laughs]. Anyway, I just realized that the only way to really get ahead in my lifetime was to go to college and get a good education. Even my parents, especially my dad, who had never gone to college, he always would talk about that it’s pretty important that you go to college. My mom could have gone to college, but I don’t think they could have afforded it, and probably she couldn’t have gotten a better job when she got out anyway.

I did a lot of crazy stuff in high school. Nowadays you’d think about drugs and stuff like that; I never have used drugs, and when I went to high school drugs weren’t even a thought in people’s minds, at least the people I ran around with. But I did become somewhat of an obstructionist sometimes when a teacher was going into something that I thought was wasting our time. Why can’t we do this, or why can’t we do that. I had to take some trips to the vice principal’s office, and my mother on at least two occasions had to go with me and meet with the principal. I think they were thinking of kicking me out or something. But anyway, I was a good student in this sense: I could pretty much from memory know what went on in the classroom without taking notes and without taking books home. I achieved that pretty much all the way through high school.

So I passed and graduated, and then I went into the Marine Corps, and when I got out of the Marine Corps I wanted to get another semester at Portland U because they were on a semester schedule and the state schools were on a term schedule. So to get a better transcript situation, I wanted to complete a year at Portland U. That was also a wise decision because that’s where I met my wife [laughs]. We were two Jews on a Catholic university campus introduced by a third Jew, a friend of ours, Vic Levy. We both happened to know him; he went to Lincoln High School. He was a contemporary of mine, and I knew him from some occasions in the past. So while at Portland U, after I got out of the Marine Corps, that’s when my wife and I met. After that, I transferred.

I went to one term at University of Oregon, but I was just three years beyond most of the people that I was going to be in classes with. I wasn’t into the “rah-rah” stuff in college. But I did get a job. I wanted a job while I was there, and so I got a job washing dishes and doing other stuff at what they called the Sammy House [Sigma Alpha Mu], which was the Jewish fraternity on campus. That was just coincidental. I saw an ad and I went, and it happened to be that fraternity. I did that for a term at Oregon but then decided to switch to Portland State because it would be easier to find jobs to do in Portland State while I was going to school.

I didn’t finish college because I knew I wanted to go to law school, and at that time you did not need a college degree to go to law school, at least in Oregon you didn’t. I was going to go to night school. There was a downtown night school, Northwest College of Law. So I went and met with the administrator. This was not like a regular college. It was four rooms above a business on Southwest Park and Oak Street. Classes were Monday, Wednesday, Friday night from about 6:00 to 9:00 PM, or to 9:30 maybe. All the professors were either lawyers working in the law or judges who either had been judges or were judges. It was a wonderful experience. I could not have chosen a better experience. So the administrator said, “Tell me a little bit about yourself.” I did, and I had my transcript. He said, “You’re eligible, but I think it would be a good idea to take the LSAT,” which was an exam that most colleges did. They recommended it; it wasn’t an actual requirement. But I took it and I did fine.

So I started law school, and believe it or not, if I remember correctly it was $165 a semester — and there are two semesters a year — which was paid for by the government for me. I loved law school; I just thought it was great. And I did well. I took the bar exam in 1962 and passed. While in law school — if you want, I’ll just continue . . .

Hochstein: Please.
KAHN: I didn’t get married until, I think, the fall of ’58. I can’t recall whether I was actually in law school when we got married or was planning to go to law school, but it was right about that time. I met a person at law school named Roy Goodman. I didn’t know Roy from before. He was Jewish, but he was sort of secular Jewish, and he and I hit it off pretty well. He’d been going to law school off and on for five or six years, but he’d never had enough time to complete all the courses. The reason he didn’t have time is that he had gone to work for a law firm, the Posey office. Frank Posey was the head partner. This is something else that happened in my lifetime that turned out just perfect. Roy was a great, great guy, and he worked for the firm as an investigator. We did a lot of litigation cases representing people who had been injured in one way or another, whether it was an auto accident or a maritime accident. We represented labor unions and represented injured workers for workers’ compensation cases and the federal counterpart to that.

Roy told me one night at law school that he’d convinced the firm to hire another investigator because he was just swamped with too much work to do. He said, “I’d like to have you interview with them.” So that happened, and I got hired. I had worked my first year of law school at Caplan Sporting Goods Shop, which was a legendary sporting goods shop down here in downtown. That took too much time because it was six days a week. Then I went to work at a title company, which coincidentally was underneath the law school [laughs]. That was a good job because it wasn’t that demanding. Then in my third year, that’s when I started working at the law firm as an investigator, which was a wonderful, eye-opening experience. I was traveling a lot of places in different parts of Oregon to interview witnesses, to take pictures of things that might pertain, loggers getting hurt somewhere on equipment, or millworkers, or stuff like that. I did well at it. It was hard, but I enjoyed it.

What I would do was at the end of work I’d go home and have dinner, as we were starting to have kids, visit with the kids, and then go back to law school, which started at — it might have been 6:30 PM. Anyway, I would go back and go to class and then come home afterwards. I had to study a lot on weekends and things like that. It was hard, but because I enjoyed it so much it wasn’t that difficult. Then we started having children. Our oldest son, David, was born in July of 1961, so I was still in law school at that time. Our second son, Stephen, was born in January of ’63, and I had been out of law school a short time then. Our third son, Robert, was born in February of ’65. And then we had a daughter, Sarah, who was born four years after that in 1969. In the early years it was a lot harder on my wife Judy. She had the primary responsibility of managing the children and stuff like that while I was going to law school. I tried to contribute as much as I could, and did. She was a schoolteacher the first few years of our marriage, but once we started having children, she decided it would be important to stay home and take care of the kids.

Hochstein: Where were you living at that time, and did you associate with the Jewish community at all as you began to have children?
KAHN: Yes, I did. My wife, of course, had already been in the Jewish community all her life. We first lived, for about six months after we were married, out at a court apartment, sort of shaped like a U. We had a nice two-bedroom apartment. We were there about six months. Then we decided we’d buy a house, and we bought a house up on Northeast 39th near Fremont. It was a small home, but it was nice. It had a basement and a main floor and an attic that we actually ended up converting into a partial bedroom. Our kids, at that time, were starting to get older and starting to go to Foundation School, which took place up at Congregation Neveh Shalom, a wonderful school. The head administrator at that time, the principal, was Ethel [Schauer?], and she had an assistant, Erma Keller, and they were just terrific. Our kids really got about as much out of schooling as you could expect them to get between the ages of about three and five or six. But we had to schlep them, so that always took some time for at least one of us. We got into a car pool for part of the time, where our family didn’t have to be the driver all the time.

Hochstein: So there were other Jewish families living over in that part of Northeast Portland?
KAHN: The old Jewish community in Portland, of course, was in South Portland, which you might have heard about, but most of those people got displaced by urban renewal. A lot of the Jewish community ended up living in Northeast Portland. Grant High was a wonderful high school. Alameda was an excellent grade school, and there were other grade schools in the area that were very good. The other main high school that Jewish kids went to was Lincoln High School, and that was downtown. Just as an aside, I have a very good friend of mine that went to Grant with me — I’ve known him since the seventh or eighth grade — named Jim Damis, who also became a lawyer [laughing]. Whenever people were moving to Portland or asking about where their kids should go to high school, he’d always tell them, “You ought to go to Grant. It’s one of the best schools in the nation, and the only way to get ahead in Portland is either to go to Grant or marry into it” [laughs]. I always remind him of that. He was quite a “Grantonian,” so-to-speak. Anyway, there were a lot of people living in Northeast Portland within the Grant district that were Jewish, but a lot of other people too, of course.

Hochstein: So to the extent that you had a Jewish community, did you think of it as being over there at Neveh Shalom? Or was it the people in the Grant area?
KAHN: It was primarily becoming involved at Congregation Neveh — well, at the time we started it was Ahavai Shalom, but they merged a few years after we were married. They had to have their holiday services down at Civic Auditorium for a couple of years while they were constructing Neveh Shalom. Most of our friends at that time who were Jewish did go to Neveh Shalom, but we also knew people from Shaarie Torah. A lot of this was because of my wife’s friends growing up, and acquaintances. We’d see them on holidays and get together for things.

Hochstein: Did you have any affiliation with Tifereth Israel?
KAHN: Only when I attended as a youngster with my folks. My folks were members for a short time. They have their burial plots from their relationship to Tifereth Israel. It’s a cemetery that’s shared by — my wife grew up in Neveh Zedek synagogue, which was down in old South Portland, and their cemetery and the cemetery from Tifereth Israel, and there was another group, not necessarily a synagogue. Anyway, there were about three different organizations that share that cemetery. It’s out in Southwest Portland.

Hochstein: The only specific question that I had in mind was to ask you if you had any specific memories of Tifereth Israel.
KAHN: Only going to it a few times. It was in an old, small — it looked like it was a house that was converted into a synagogue. It was a place that held about, to my recollection, 50 or 60 people, but it might have been bigger. I have no real memories of it other than just attending services there a few times.

Hochstein: I wanted to follow back on some things you raised earlier. When you were in the Marine Corps, was there any issue involving the fact that you were Jewish, or was that a completely submerged fact?
KAHN: No. I knew I was Jewish from my earliest years of understanding. My folks told me I was Jewish and did a few things that were Jewish, and I was proud of the fact that I was Jewish. There was some antisemitism in the service, and quite frankly, on reflection, it was primarily from people’s ignorance rather than anything else. But if somebody said something, sometimes I would speak up and sometimes I wouldn’t. It would just depend on the setting. I didn’t go around bragging I was Jewish, so to speak, but I wasn’t ashamed of it either. There were times I can recall where something was said where I could have objected and I didn’t, where somebody made some generalized statement about being — and it was an anti-Jewish statement.

I did go to services a couple of times while I was in the service when I was overseas. During my three years I spent 14 months on Okinawa. I wanted to go overseas, but not Okinawa [laughs], which was a pretty dismal place. But I managed. And I have a lot of great, fun stories about being in the service. I did go to services once, probably because I was interested, but also because I could spend half a day not having to do stuff I didn’t want to do [laughs]. I met a chaplain in Okinawa — I can still picture him to this day, but I can’t remember his name — and he talked to me for a while about getting involved. They had services once in a while. I think it was fairly close to the time I was going to be shipping out back to the United States. He gave me a little Jewish Bible that you could carry around in your pocket. I still have it; it made quite an impression on me. I even read parts of it once and a while. But other than that, I don’t think my Judaism has ever been an issue for me in terms of people who are antisemitic. I think I’ve become more vocal the older I’ve gotten; if I hear something, I’ll object and say something.

I had an experience here in Portland — the Multnomah Club is a very beautiful athletic and social facility up on Southwest Salmon, right adjacent to the stadium up there. I used to play handball. I enjoyed handball a lot. Because I enjoyed handball so much, I’d meet a lot of Jewish people through handball. At the Jewish Community Center, most of the handball players were Jewish, not all of them but most of them. I played in tournaments and stuff like that, and I loved it. Every day when I was going down to work, I’d have to pass the Multnomah Club. I had some friends that went there, and they said, “You ought to join the Multnomah Club. It’s really great.” And they told me all about it. I think I’d even participated in a couple of handball tournaments where some of the tournament games were at the Multnomah Club.

I had a very close friend growing up, one of my closest friends, Joyle Dahl was his name. Joyle’s father was a lawyer and became a judge. Joyle was a talented person. Not only was he a good student, but he was a musician and played the piano and a couple of other instruments. When I was growing up in Northeast Portland, he only lived about five blocks from me, and we used to play baseball together and football and basketball out in the street and stuff like that. Joyle said, “You should join the Multnomah Club.” He was a member, and I think his father might have even been the president of the Multnomah Club one year.

So he got me an application. You had to fill out a bunch of stuff, and it asked for references. I got three references. One was Joyle’s father, one was another lawyer who became a judge named Bill Dale, who I knew from law school, and another was a lawyer who’d been a professor of mine at law school. And I didn’t hear anything for six to eight months. I said, “Joyle, what’s going on?” He said, “I don’t know. I’ll try and find out.” Well, then he didn’t even let me know. So I waited another three or months. It had been at least a year, I think, and I asked Joyle. I said, “Joyle, remember you were going to look into this for me and figure out why I didn’t get accepted yet into the Multnomah Club?” He said, “Well, I looked into it, and I really am embarrassed to tell you, but I was told it was because you were Jewish.” Which surprised me because I knew there were some Jewish members. So I never joined. I mean, if they don’t want me, I’m not going to join. It’s like a Groucho Marx joke.

I was at a bar convention down at the coast, probably in the 1970s, I’m guessing, and one of the firms had a cocktail party at their condominium or something. I happened to be invited, and I was there. One of the people who I had known over the years was Sidney Lezak. Sid Lezak became a US attorney in Portland and served for many years before his retirement. He was having some discussion with some other lawyers and mentioned that he belonged to the Multnomah Club and they had some great events there and this and that.

I said, “I’ve heard that it’s great, and I’ve been there to play handball tournaments, but I applied once and they didn’t let me in because I was Jewish.” He said, “What?” I said, “That’s the case. I was told that I couldn’t get in because I was Jewish.” He said, “That can’t be right. We had our own Jewish committee.” I said, “What?” He said, “The people who are Jewish apply through our separate committee.” It was Judge Solomon, him, and some other people, and they were supposed to screen people to see if they’d be good candidates to be granted admission to the Multnomah Club. Sounds crazy, but that’s what he said. I mentioned that to him several years later when we were having some kind of discussion. I said, “I’ve never forgotten that discussion.” He said, “ Well, I don’t remember that.” But anyway, that’s what I was told.

Hochstein: Very interesting.
KAHN: Yes.

Hochstein: So in the ’60s, when your children were young and as your law career began to advance, were there any related issues in terms of seeking employment at a law firm? Did you work independently? Did you seek to join a law firm? Were there any concerns about antisemitism in terms of getting employment in the law profession?
KAHN: Not personally, no. But it was a fairly well-known fact that most of the larger firms weren’t interested in hiring Jews. Some of them, there were some Jews that were hired from time to time. And as time went on that changed. But yes, there were organizations and law firms that didn’t accept Jews. I think the most noticeable one for me was the Waverley Country Club, a golf country club which is out along the river in the Southeast area. It wasn’t until about maybe even the early ’70s when two Jews, they had some friends who belonged to Waverley and they wanted them to join. They brought up the fact that Waverley doesn’t let in Jews. These friends of theirs that were members said, “We want you to apply, and we’ll make sure you get admitted.” They were the first two, to my knowledge, that ever got admitted into Waverley Country Club. One of them was Moe Tonkin, who was a great, well-known lawyer in Portland. The other was a dentist. I think his name was Sandy Wallen or something like that. They were accepted, and after that there’ve been several people who have gone to Waverley. It’s not my style.

I like to golf. I’m not a good golfer, but I enjoy golf. I did end up joining Tualatin Country Club at one point, which was primarily a Jewish country club at that time. Now it’s not. It’s been assimilated. But there are still a lot of the older Jews that are still out there, and younger Jews too. It’s a nice country club. It was started because of antisemitism. They couldn’t join other country clubs, and a bunch of Jewish men in Portland, and some of their wives too probably, wanted a country club. They ended up starting the Tualatin Country Club over a hundred years ago, I think [it was established in 1912]. There was a train that used to go from Portland right next to where Tualatin Country Club is, and part of the reason they chose that site is that they could take the train out from downtown to the golf club.

Hochstein: Mid-to-late 1960s, all sorts of social ferment here in the US. The Six-Day War. Let’s talk about those things separately. First of all, in terms of Zionism and Israel. Did you have a consciousness of that in the ’60s? Did the Six-Day War affect your awareness of that?
KAHN: Yes to all that. But before I get to that, I have to explain a little bit about — I have always been a person who fought for the underdog no matter what. I think that’s something my parents taught me, and some of the other friends that I had felt that way too, but I always felt that way. When I was in about the second or third grade, I was attending a school in San Francisco, Parkside grade school. I had a friend who was Japanese-American. His name was Arty. I still remember his name. During recess sometimes we’d hang out under some steps of a porch and just play little games or whatever, and one day he wasn’t there. I couldn’t figure it out. And he wasn’t there the next day.

Well, he wasn’t going to be there again I found out. My folks explained to me that his family had been placed in an internment camp. It was World War II. The Parkside School and where we lived was close to the Pacific Coast, probably not more than a mile away. I remember during the nighttime hours sometimes we had to keep our blinds down, we had to put tin cans out at the curbside that were picked up to build tanks, and things of that nature. And there was rationing of sugar and stuff like that. So I was really upset about that. I couldn’t understand how this friend of mine got hauled away somewhere just because he was Japanese.

During the ’60s, I did not become a Vietnam protester, but I certainly was living through it while it was going on. In terms of Israel, I did become very, very much a Zionist along the way. Not just all at once, but gradually. Yes, I believe in Zionism and I still do, especially since my son Robert lives in Israel with his wife and kids. They moved there ten years ago. He left a wonderful position as a rabbi. He and his family just decided — well, he and his wife decided for the family that they were moving to Israel. They thought it was a better place to raise their children, especially Jewish children. That’s where they’ve gone to live and they love it.

Anyway, the Six-Day War was a wonderful experience to live through as a Jew because everybody liked Jews. The underdog won [laughs]. I guess that’s because they liked Jews better than the Arabs. But we used to go to events. I can remember, for example, walking with a sign at Civic Auditorium — when the Russian ballet team was going to be here — saying, “Let our people go.” That’s when they were trying get people from Russia to move to Israel. Doing things like that.

Hochstein: That would have been in the 1970s?
KAHN: Yes, I think so. In 1975, another experience that cemented my feeling about Zionism and being Jewish. We decided to take our four children to Israel for five weeks. We hired a guide. Excuse me [choking up]. He died about two weeks ago. He became a very, very close friend. He and his wife and family lived on a moshav [a type of agricultural cooperative settlement] not too far from Netanya. We spent weeks with him. He was guiding us around, just our family. It was just him. He was a wonderful human being. He was about two months older than me, very close in age.

Hochstein: What was his name?
KAHN: His name was Gabbi Herz [spells out last name]. His family had come over from Germany, and he had lived on this moshav for his entire experience in Israel. I’ve been to Israel about 15 times. I think my wife’s been even more times than that. Every time we’ve gone, we made it a point to have lunch with Gabbi and his wife Miriami, or dinner. He was very secular. His idea of celebrating, or at least honoring, Yom Kippur was to go to the synagogue, walk in, say hello to a few people, and walk out [laughs]. So he didn’t enhance my Jewishness, but he was the epitome of a good Israeli. He was in the army. He fought in wars. Anyway, he passed away about two or three weeks ago. We just got a note last week from one of his sons. We didn’t even know about it. I don’t know yet why he died; we are going to try and find out. He was really a vigorous, healthy guy.

Anyway, that trip cemented my and my children’s feelings about Israel. Right now I have two of my grandchildren in Israel in a gap program. My son Stephen’s son Michael, not only is he spending a year in Israel with Young Judea, but they have a volunteer thing within Young Judea that you can join the army for two months while in Israel, and he’s in it right now. Then my granddaughter Hannah, who is my daughter Sarah’s oldest daughter, she’s working in a program with Israelis, Arabs, and Americans — or English Speakers, Canadians too — trying to solve problems. It’s very hard. It’s a draining experience to get into subjects and discussions and arguments, but she’s wonderful and she’s enjoying it. And Stephen’s oldest daughter, Rebecca, she’s at Brandeis now in her third year. She spent a gap program of six months in Israel. My son Robert’s children, Avi Noam is his oldest, he completed the army in Israel for the IDF about two years ago. He’s been traveling since. Their oldest daughter, Dalia, is in her first year of the army, and their other daughter is going in in the fall. They’re pretty special, really. I just can’t help getting emotional about it. Anyway, that’s probably the culmination of my really being a Jew and a Zionist and what have you.

I get a little upset sometimes when I get into discussions with people that think the Israelis are the cause of not making peace. I read the Jerusalem Post every day when I’m over there because I want to keep current and be able to discuss things with the family, and Robert bought me an international edition subscription, so once a week I get the Jerusalem Post international edition. It’s hard to keep up with them. There are a lot of articles and a lot of different viewpoints, as you can imagine.

But my wife and I — sometimes Judy has to do a little prodding, but not in recent years — we go to probably more lectures related to Jewish stuff, and movies, and programs, and activities, and events than anybody I know. It’s amazing how much we go to. If you’re in Portland, if you look at the calendar of events, you could be busy every night if you wanted to be. It’s a little too much. And I’m not interested in everything. I was at a lecture Wednesday night up at the JCC. Gill Hoffman, who’s the political editor for the Jerusalem Post, was speaking. He was an excellent, excellent speaker. Anyway, getting back to what we were talking about — well, I’ll let you figure out where we were. I’m not sure [laughs].

Hochstein: I’m reaching the point where I’d like to look over what we’ve discussed and summarize. If you look back at your experience in the Jewish Community over — how many years are we talking about?
KAHN: Well, we got married in 1959.

Hochstein: 1959 until now. If you were to characterize the community, how do you see that it has changed? From your early marriage and child-rearing days, or even earlier, to the present?
KAHN: Well, it changed to me personally as I related before. The community has changed from my perspective in some respects. I think the cohesion of certain communities within the community just doesn’t seem to be there anymore. I think people are too scattered out to different parts of the city or have moved out of the city. Portland has experienced a tremendous influx of Jews from other parts of the United States, which is great. I think it really needed that. They brought new experiences and new recipes. We go to things at the Sephardic synagogue because they put on programs and movies at their old, little synagogue on Barbur, and they always serve wonderful food [laughs]. So I’ve noticed that. That’s probably the main thing I’ve noticed about the Jewish community changing. It’s not as stagnant as it used to be, with the same people. We had three rabbis in Portland who each served more than 40 years at their congregation. That’s unheard of in most parts of the country. Rabbi Stampfer, Rabbi Rose, and Rabbi Geller at Shaarie Torah.

My wife belongs belongs to Shaarie Torah and Neveh Shalom because we live three blocks from Shaarie Torah. I like it at Neveh Shalom. Shaarie Torah used to be an Orthodox synagogue, but they’ve now joined the Conservative movement. We’re only three blocks away, and my wife wanted to go to minyan, but she didn’t like the fact that their custom was not to let women participate except sitting in a separate section. So she went to the rabbi, who isn’t there anymore, but he was here for a while. He said, “Why don’t you ever come to minyan?” She said, “Well, I’d come if you’d count me as one of the ten.” He said, “We’ll see about that.” Within two or three weeks he gives her a call and says, “You are now in the minyan, so whenever you come you’ll be like anyone else.” So she goes there Monday and Thursday mornings for minyan, and a lot of times if it wasn’t for her they wouldn’t have ten.

I think that’s the other thing that’s changed a lot, is that women have been more accepted into the Jewish community, and in many respects they’re the movers and the shakers, so to speak. There are really bright, wonderful women that are dedicated to doing stuff to help the community. We go to a lot of programs that are available which I don’t think were available 40 or 50 years ago. Just like I mentioned before, there’s always something going on. If you want to go hear a lecture, see a movie, be in an activity, or whatever — auctions [laughing] — they’re there. So that’s changed a lot. The community is much larger in terms of numbers, I think. Maybe the museum would have statistics on that. I also think there are a lot more secular Jews than maybe there were before, or at least they know now that they’re in the community. But they also, a lot of the secular Jews, support many of the Jewish activities.

Hochstein: It sounds like, and please correct me if I’m wrong, your family was one of the secular Jewish families when you were young . . .
KAHN: Absolutely.

Hochstein: And in some ways you evolved through your marriage to a different point of view?
KAHN: Yes, absolutely.

Hochstein: Do you think of yourself as secular now? Or do you think of yourself as . . .?
KAHN: Let me put it this way. I’m not a religious person. I love going to synagogue, especially when my children are participating [laughs]. I’ve come to realize that the ideals of Judaism, namely tikkun olam, repair the world, that’s one of my highest principals. And tzedakah is a very high principal of mine. I haven’t even mentioned some of the more important things in my life that have affected me in Jewish ways. All of my children have gone to Camp Solomon Schechter. All of my children have become junior counselors, counselors, program directors. They spent their summers at Camp Solomon for many, many years, and I think it was a valuable teaching lesson for all of them. They loved it and still do. We’ve been having a capital campaign for the last few years, and I’ve never been more generous than I have with Camp Solomon Schechter. Fortunately, I’m in a position where I can do it. I’m not doing without anything because of it. So camps are well attended. I think there are a few that have had some struggles in the Northwest, but I know BB Camp is still doing very well. My son still goes to men’s camp, my oldest son. He loves it.

Also something that I wanted to say that I didn’t say, and it’s really not a Jewish thing. I became very active in lawyer organizations: trial lawyer organizations, the Oregon State Bar, committees of all kinds. I always felt like it was my strength as a person and in my career to be active, and I was dedicated to my profession. I’ve been upset about the fact that my profession is now not what it was when I joined the legal profession. Understandably. Technology has just taken over everything, and I happen to be a person that’s — my son calls me a Luddite [laughs]. I don’t have an iPhone because I don’t want to walk around Portland looking at my phone; there are too many beautiful things to see and people to talk to. But also, I was active in the Oregon State Bar to the extent that in 1988-89, or 1987, I got elected to the Oregon State Board of Governors, which is from all over the state. At that time, it was a different government governing operations, but I was one of three from my area of, mainly, Portland. I became the Oregon State Bar president in 1988-89, which is a pretty high achievement in my career. It’s something that I’m very proud of.

I retired at the end of 2016 after 54 years of being a lawyer. I took a special kind of retirement as a member of the bar where I can still represent clients if they’re referred by Legal Aid. So I’m doing Legal Aid client work. I go out to some clinics two or three times a month for an afternoon or a morning, meet with three to six people or families. Usually I can sort of solve their problem while I’m there, but a lot of times I have to take it back. And my son Stephen didn’t want to add anyone when I retired — it was just Khan and Khan for 23 years — so he’s letting me use my office until the lease runs out, which is about another two years. It’s a great place to go during the day [laughs].

Hochstein: That sounds very nice.
KAHN: Yes, it’s a very wonderful thing. So I’ll continue to do that; I enjoy it. These people who are trying to live on their Social Security, 700 bucks a month, it’s pretty tough. Some of them, of course, get more than that, maybe 1,200-1,500, but still it’s not enough to do what they would like to do. So I feel I’m being useful.

Hochstein: That sounds like really good work. I’ve run out of questions, but I’m so grateful for all the stories you’ve told here. I really appreciate it. Is there anything else you would like to add by way of summary before we conclude?
KAHN: I made some notes when I got the email from Anne Prahl. I don’t know if I gave enough credit to my wife for being a wonderful wife and mother and probably the most knowledgeable Jew I know, maybe other than my son who became a rabbi. She really is special, and I think the community recognizes that when she’s become active in things and done things. And a great mother. Our children have all turned out fantastic.

My oldest son went to UCLA and later on went to NYU law school but didn’t want to practice law and became a sports management person. He became the assistant general manager when he was with the Indiana Pacers and then became the general manager with the Minnesota Timberwolves. My son Stephen became a lawyer and is a wonderful lawyer. And of course Robert in Israel. He is now a tour guide. About two years ago he started studying to be a tour guide, which is a very rigorous course in Israel. He just loves it. Right now as we sit here, he is managing and guiding a senior class of students from a New Jersey Jewish day school. He did it last year and is doing it this year, and they want to hire him on a permanent basis. They do this every year with their students.

Then my daughter, Sarah, lived in New York. I have not mentioned any of their spouses and I don’t need to, but her husband’s a Canadian. My daughter went to Barnard undergrad. Johnathan went to McGill University. I can’t recall exactly where they met now. I think it was when they both took their third year abroad at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Some of our other kids have gone there for that too. She lived in Brooklyn. After she got out of college, she went to school for Teach for America and worked three years in Bedford-Stuyvesant as a teacher. It was tough, and it burned her out as a teacher. Then she went back to school for urban planning and worked for the City of New York for a while in their transportation department or something. She was designing bike paths in Brooklyn [laughs]. Anyway, she and her husband moved out here about seven years ago now, maybe eight. She’s become so involved in the community it’s just amazing, and her husband has too.

So that’s another highlight of our lives. We’ve been very blessed. There are a lot of people that raise their children, at least from our observation the way we raised our children, and for whatever reason their children just haven’t made them happy. But we’ve been blessed with a great family.

Anyway, yes, I consider myself secular in the sense that — I don’t want to get into religion because there are things about religion that I feel strongly about. I’m totally opposed to the Ultra-Orthodox and the ultra of any religious group. Fundamentalists of any kind, to me, they cause more harm than good. They’re all so enclosed among their own people that they don’t know what’s going on in the world, which bothers me. And they’re really a drain on Israeli society, financially and otherwise.

If somebody asked me — for example, if someone is non-Jewish and says, “Do you do this or do that?” I say, “I’m secular, but I participate and I enjoy the culture. I enjoy the traditions. I enjoy the education.” I’m still learning things just because I go to Jewish events. I’d like to see more people become involved in some of the stuff. Some of the things I go to are not very well attended. But I don’t know what others are going to. Maybe they’re busy on Tuesdays when I’m busy on Wednesdays or something. I don’t know [laughs].

Hochstein: Well, I’m going to wrap it up there. Thank you. And I do want to get a few names written down, so let me just stop . . .