Lynn Bonner

Prahl: Alright, let’s start out by having you tell me your birth scenario. Tell me- let’s have you state your name, and your birthday, and where you were born.
BONNER: My name is Lucy Lynn Guilbert Bergstrom Bonner. I was born on November 3rd, 1940 in Cleveland, Ohio. My parents lived in a small town outside of Cleveland named Chagrin Falls. There’s a story behind the name of the town. Two years later I had a sister (my sister was born), Jennifer Edgel [?] Gilbert.

Prahl: What’s the middle name?
BONNER: Edgel [?], family name. Our house was at the bottom of a hill that went around our house nearly 180 degrees, full of trees, and if I had gone outside to scream, or even shoot a gun, no one would have heard.

Prahl: Was it very rural?
BONNER: On the whole not, but my house happened to be in a- it was between that hill and the river. So yes, there were basically no neighbors, only my sister to play with.

Prahl: Great, and what kind of family was it? What did your parents do for a living?
BONNER: My mother had been trained as a psychiatric social worker, but she did not work after I was born, until I was in college. My father was an air conditioning and heating engineer. He had gone to Carnegie Tech, but he was kicked out; and he said they told him they couldn’t teach him anything more, which I assume was facetious because he was sufficiently arrogant and chutzpadik that he probably wasn’t a good respectful student.

Prahl: Were they religious people?
BONNER: No, and my mother made us go to Christian Sunday School because that was what was done, like wearing white gloves. My father had actually been born Jewish and had grown up Jewish in poor Cleveland, Ohio, but he walked away from all that. He and one of his sisters changed their names from Goldberg to Guilbert. My father added a “u” in there, to make it more classy with the French.

Prahl: Where’s the “u?”
BONNER: [Spells out “Guilbert”]

Prahl: Oh.
BONNER: So always, I had to spell my last name while growing up, since everyone would want to spell it G-I-L-B-E-R-T. So I know that a lot of people named Gilbert used to be named Goldberg. My father was quite anti-religious, but he acceded to my mother’s demand that we go to Sunday school.

Prahl: What kind of a church did you go to Sunday school in?
BONNER: Congregational. Sort of a nice liberal church where I learned social justice a lot.

Prahl: And your mother, would she have been going to the church alone, or was it just for the children?
BONNER: No, it was just for the children. It was actually just for the pride of it probably.

Prahl: Were your parents political people?
BONNER: My parents were the only Democrats they knew. Almost.

Prahl: [Laughs]
BONNER: And in the town of Chagrin Falls, they were probably one of- there were probably about 5% Democrats in that town, I suspect. The year Kennedy was elected the Democratic vote went up 200% from two to four.

Prahl: [Laughs] So, you’re father wasn’t active in his Judaism; how did you learn that he had been Jewish? Was it something that you talked about all the time?
BONNER: No it was never mentioned. Chagrin Falls was a typical 1940s & 1950s quite antisemitic community. I did not even know about prejudice against other religions. I knew vaguely about racial prejudice, but nothing about antisemitism. I don’t even know when I learned there were Jews in the world, still. I knew them from the Bible. But I came home from school, possibly in the tenth grade (I don’t really remember much, but I’ve told the story for years, so maybe it’s true), that somebody named Tom Aklin [?] called me a bad name, which probably was “kike.” And for some reason I went home and asked my mother about it, I mean I wouldn’t have known what it had to do with- I hadn’t heard that word. And she said “We don’t use that word, and we don’t tell people in Chagrin Falls that your father’s family was Jewish.”

Prahl: And you said, “We don’t even tell me!”
BONNER: [Laughs] The cute part of that, I think is, that Tom Aklin knew this because his mother was a sorority sister of my mother’s sister. And my mother’s family was very distressed that she was going to marry a Jew. And so she- Tom Aklin’s mother must have- and I was called Lucy Guilbert in those days- that Lucy Guilbert was partly Jewish.

Prahl: Do you have any knowledge that your father had been mistreated or the victim of some antisemitism that made him not want people to know he was Jewish?
BONNER: Only the usual. One of his sisters had to change her name to get into the Women’s College at Carnegie Tech. I think it was just he didn’t like religion, he didn’t like his father, he didn’t like the fact that his father spent all his time studying texts, and not earning money, and they used to have to move every month. Now he grew up as a poor Jewish ghetto man in Cleveland, Ohio, and that didn’t please him. The only sign he ever showed that he had any Jewish connections was that he liked halva.

Prahl: Did you have any connection with his family at all?
BONNER: We would maybe four, five, six times in my childhood, we would go and visit his mother, and we called her Grandma Guilbert, and that wasn’t her name. And we used to write letters a couple of times, and we said (whatever her name was) Jenny Guilbert, that wasn’t her name. Dad didn’t tell us that’s not her name.

Prahl: And she didn’t tell you
BONNER: M-mm. It must have broken her heart. He was her only son, and there were four daughters.

Prahl: And she never said anything to you about her heritage?
BONNER: No, probably my father, either explicitly or implicitly, let her know not to do that.

Prahl: So did it change your life at all when you were in tenth grade and you found out your father was Jewish?
BONNER: I don’t remember that it did. The only thing that I remember was I was very fond of the movie The Eddie Cantor Story, and I loved old Jewish people, and the Jewish element of that. I may have seen that even before I was told I have Jewish connections.

Prahl: So you grew up as a WASP-y kid in the suburbs of Cleveland, and did you do other Christian things?
BONNER: I went to church camp four or five summers. One of the summers there was a woman named Lilly Braverman who was there to teach us about Judaism. So I guess I learned about Judaism sometime in high school from her. But otherwise, no Jewish connections, although I wrote a term paper, junior year of high school, about the prophets, and my mother was anxious about that. She was afraid people would know I was Jewish because I was writing about the prophets.

Prahl: Wow. She assumed that Christian people don’t know about the prophets?
BONNER: She must have been more terrified than I realize.

Prahl: Did anything come of this boy calling you out as a Jew? Was it a changing thing in your high school?
BONNER: Not at all. But probably the 25th high school reunion, he was there and I told him about it, and he was quite apologetic about it.

Prahl: Well, that’s nice he grew up to be a nice person.
BONNER: I think I’ll tell you another story that’s kind of related. I told my father I was going to convert, he said “You’re crazy.” I told my mother, and she said, “Don’t tell your sister’s mother, because she-”

Prahl: I’m sorry, don’t tell your sister’s mother?
BONNER: Don’t tell your sister’s mother in law that you’re converting, because she might think that we’re all Jewish. And then she said (this is stuff I’ll take out) “People will think you’re an embezzler.”

Prahl: Oh my! So she was-
BONNER: Then she said, “Well, at least you’re not a Republican!”

Prahl: [Laughs] So it would have been worse to be a Republican. So, your mother married your father, even though she had these negative ideas about Jews?
BONNER: Yes, there was an irresistible attraction there. She said she never met anyone with so much gall, which she meant chutzpah. I don’t know that I have either. He was a very- he had a really strong ego, and I think it was generally strong because he had four sisters and a mother who thought he walked on water, excuse the expression.

Prahl: What kind of a couple were they, your parents?
BONNER: They were so opposite.

Prahl: Did they have any hobbies or things that they did together?
BONNER: They both cared a lot about the house; my father would do things for the house. He built my mother a kiln because she was doing clay work. I don’t really know. I suspect they would have gotten divorced if they were married now because it was clearly difficult. But my father was devoted to her, I thought. And I didn’t see so many signs in her devotion to him. I guess she had to have stayed very much attracted to him.

Prahl: Did you take family vacations together? Were you a typical 1950s family?
BONNER: We took some but not a lot. I suppose we went on weekend trips with other families. That was a really teeny part of our life though; I barely remember them.

Prahl: Were they sociable, did they have parties?
BONNER: They entertained. They had dinner parties and played bridge a lot. And they went to other people’s dinner parties.

Prahl: What were your parents’ expectations for you and your sister? Did they expect that you would go off to college, that you would get married right out of school?
BONNER: It was clear that we were to go to college, and we were to go to a college where we would meet the right man, and then marry him. God forbid we should have to earn a living. But my mother did make me take shorthand once with my sister one summer, in case our husband died and we had to work.

Prahl: Wow.
BONNER: And that was the best thing she ever did for me. It’s like teaching your children to fish. I did have a job as a secretary, I loved doing the shorthand, and I still use some of the shorthand symbols. I love shorthand, so that turned out well.

Prahl: Were you a good student in high school?
BONNER: Pretty good student.

Prahl: Were you in the popular set?
BONNER: No, I was not in the popular set?

Prahl: Did you date?
BONNER: I dated a fellow that I eventually married, and I dated somebody else also for a while. Toby, whom I married, went to a different school.

Prahl: And how did you meet him?
BONNER: He was a neighbor of friends of my parents.

Prahl: And did they approve of him? Was he the right sort?
BONNER: Well, they were probably ambivalent because he would have been a juvenile delinquent if he didn’t have rich parents. But he was- I think on the whole, they approved of him, because he was good to me, and polite, and considerate, and he had a Jeep, and he would help plow our driveway, and he would help pull down an old garage on our property. And my father liked him, I think. He turned out not to be so great, but in high school he was appealing an so on.

Prahl: What was dating like in high school? What would a typical date be?
BONNER: Mostly going to the movies I think, sometimes with other people, would be the typical date. Some dances.

Prahl: And how old were you when you married him?
BONNER: Twenty.

Prahl: Was that- had you graduated from college yet?
BONNER: In a sense.

Prahl: All right, let’s talk about college first, because it’s very important.
BONNER: Okay, but after that I will talk about marrying Toby. Eye-roll. College. Well, I went to Oberlin College. I went there because it had no sororities or fraternities, and because I knew somehow it was a good school, and I knew it was liberal, and I was impressed that it had been coed from the beginning and very open to black people, it accepted black students from the beginning, I think. All of which I knew, and later I learned it was a station on the Underground Railroad. But I wouldn’t study for the SATs, because I knew Oberlin was challenging, and I didn’t want to get in there if I wasn’t going to be able to do the work. So I said “I don’t want to study for the SATs.” If I’m not good enough not studying, I should not go. It was probably a mistake to go there, because I always thought I was stupider than everybody else. I don’t think I thought that in high school. I may have been as smart as other people in Oberlin, most likely, but I didn’t do any studying much. And I didn’t know how to learn things and study things, plus most important, I only cared about boys, so how could I be smart, if all my brains went to issues about boys?

Prahl: Did you know when you went to school what you wanted to study?
BONNER: I’m trying to think if I knew. No, I don’t think I knew.

Prahl: What did you end up with?
BONNER: I ended up majoring in government, which in other places is called political science. Every move I’ve made in life has been stupid, actually.
Prahl: [Laughs]
BONNER: We could have a thread about all the stupid decisions Lynn made.

Prahl: How could political science be stupid?
BONNER: Because that’s where the smartest teachers and the smartest students were, and I grew up in a household where if you argued, you were sent to your room. Half of them were New York Jewish students who had argued since before they were born.

Prahl: And you were intimidated?
BONNER: I was intimidated. I didn’t know how to argue, I really didn’t care about politics and government actually.

Prahl: In retrospect, would you have chosen something different?
BONNER: Now, probably I wouldn’t because I learned things I was able to apply- concepts that have come in really handy like in economics, “marginal utility,” which I figured out in college that the marginal utility of studying was very small.

Prahl: [Laughs]
BONNER: And realpolitik, that people do things for their own self-interest, and that’s an okay or even good thing. And numerous other aspects from studying foreign relations, and the budgetary process in politics. But it hasn’t served me well to think I’m stupider than everybody.

Prahl: Did you make friends in college who are still your friends now?
BONNER: No, I made some friends who were my friends for many, many years. And I was quite close to my roommate from freshman year, but she died probably about twenty years ago, that was a great loss.

Prahl: Did anybody from your school go to Oberlin with you?
BONNER: One person from my school went, I think she went as a transfer student in tenth grade, so I didn’t see her very often.

Prahl: You said you were crazy about boys, so you were not dating Toby exclusively then when you were in college?
BONNER: Right.

Prahl: Had a pretty active life?
BONNER: I did not date that much, but I still thought about boys a lot. I had a crush on a guy who was two years ahead of me, who looked like Fidel Castro and was very political.

Prahl: There were not coed dorms back then.
BONNER: No way, no. Twice a year we could invite men to our rooms, but there had to be three feet on the floor, and the door open.

Prahl: And there was a housemother who was in charge of you?
BONNER: Mhm.
Prahl: So at twenty, you were not finished with school yet?
BONNER: No, but I’ll go back to college for one thing. At least two of the boys I dated, and didn’t date very much, nobody asked me out very much. But one was Bob Jervis, who’s well known in political science circles now. He was the ugliest young man I’d ever seen. I saw him at the 50th Reunion, still really ugly, but really smart. I assumed he’d asked me out to see how someone as dumb as I could be at Oberlin. It wasn’t for twenty five more years that I said “Well, I actually was pretty and had a nice figure, maybe he asked me out for that.” And then another guy was Frank Holstein who became a D.A. in New Jersey. I have very fond memories of them, but there was nothing serious in either case.

Prahl: So when you got to college that was the first time you were socializing with kids who were Jewish? Cause they weren’t in your neighborhood.
BONNER: Yes, one Jewish guy said to me freshman year, “I can never be President of the United States” and I said “Why not?” and he said “Because I’m Jewish” and I said “What difference does that make?”

Prahl: Well. Did you make any distinction between those Jewish friends and those non-Jewish friends in college, or was it just?
BONNER: I had a good girlfriend who was Jewish- I was pretty much drawn to the Jewish ones. And one of my Jewish girlfriends taught me the shama [?].

Prahl: Did you tell people, then? Was it something you talked about, that your father was Jewish?
BONNER: I probably told this woman who’s name was Cissy Cohen, but it wouldn’t be something I would’ve told very many people because it wasn’t a big deal at that time I don’t think.

Prahl: Okay, so let’s talk about marrying Toby.
BONNER: I went home because it was only a two hour drive to come home, and Toby would come and get me, so I did not really completely immerse myself in Oberlin, which was a shame.

Prahl: You went home how often?
BONNER: Maybe once a month. I decided I wanted to marry him soon. Or possibly, he decided I wanted to marry him soon. So I started doing summer school. So I must have thought after freshman year “I want to get married” so I went to summer school at a Catholic university in Cleveland, where I took my English literature requirement, which is why I can’t read anything. I never learned to read literature. And then the second year I went to summer school at NYU. I can’t believe my mother let my go to NYU, and go to New York City, I just can’t believe it.

Prahl: What made you decide to go to New York City?
BONNER: For me, it might have been because Toby was in the army, and stationed at Fort Dix. So I might’ve decided to go there because it was near Fort Dix.

Prahl: And did you see him over that summer?
BONNER: Yes, several times.

Prahl: A man in uniform.
BONNER: Yes, he was handsome, I must say. He was handsome, and very smart. And capable. And I went on a date with somebody- couple of people. I think there were them Jewish boys there, but I can’t remember.

Prahl: So did two summers of summer school make it so you could graduate early?
BONNER: Then the last summer, Oberlin had a program of German study in Vienna, basically a summer school. So I got the last of my credits [tape fades out briefly] going to summer school, German school in Vienna. And by then, Toby was stationed in Berlin, which is undoubtedly why I wanted that particular summer school program. So I went to visit him from Vienna once and I went to tell him that I wasn’t going to marry him, but he said, “You should marry me!” and I said, “Okay, if you say so!”

Prahl: [Laughs]
BONNER: I did what I was told, especially if men told me, which was not a good thing.

Prahl: Why weren’t you going to marry him? What was wrong with him?
BONNER: Because he was a– By then, it was clear he was a- he was- I can only think of pejorative terms. [Laughs]

Prahl: Well, if it’s convincing you not to marry him, it’s not going to be good!
BONNER: Right. I’m sure he didn’t say these things before we got married, but he was somebody who before long was saying things like, “Keep your wife pregnant in summer and barefoot in winter.” I have always referred to him as a Coolidge Republican, because he thought the Vietnam War was a good idea, and Social Security was a bad idea.

Prahl: Oh.
BONNER: His family had a lot of money and he had all the worst elements of families with- newly rich families.

Prahl: What did the two of you talk about with such opposing ideas about the world?
BONNER: Well, it must not have been– My relationships with men are not based on talking.

Prahl: [Laughs]
BONNER: For the most part. So I don’t think we had very many discussions. He wasn’t somebody with whom you could discuss anything, I mean he was absolutely…

Prahl: But he wanted to marry you. Did he know your politics?
BONNER: Yes. Maybe he thought I’d get over it or something? I don’t think the politics were that important to either one of us.

Prahl: Mhm. So you finished school a whole year early.
BONNER: Yes.

Prahl: And then got married?
BONNER: We got married in Berlin. In September of 1961, a few weeks after the Wall was put up.

Prahl: Wow! Who married you?
BONNER: This- in effect a justice of the peace. And so our wedding- our marriage certificate is in German. Because all the G.I.s who got married there had to get married under German law. Then we could have our own religious wedding if we wanted, but we didn’t with that.

Prahl: So, did you have- did you talk about what the future would look like, and where you would live?
BONNER: We were twenty, we knew nothing. I assume we would go back to the Cleveland area, his father owned a company, and he would work there.

Prahl: Is that what happened?
BONNER: Yes, that’s what happened.

Prahl: And you had a child?
BONNER: We had a child. After about five years; we didn’t have a kid right away.

Prahl: And then, so what happened to end that marriage?
BONNER: Well, it wasn’t- uh [Laughs]- I decided that somebody who hated having money as much as I did had something wrong with them, so I went to a psychotherapist. Turns out the therapist I saw was a social worker who was very left; I don’t think he tried to influence my politics, but at some point we talked a lot about- I was seeing him when Kennedy was assassinated and Martin Luther King, we talked about that of course. But Toby was anxious about that. So one day at the dinner table, we were discussing, or he was haranguing me to some degree about seeing this therapist, and he said (I don’t know why he did this but he said) “Define ‘human being.’” And I couldn’t, and so he picked up the dining room table and dumped it in my lap.

Prahl: Oh.
BONNER: I was not a very swift person, but that particular action put me on notice. [Chuckles] Oh, he also was furious because I wanted to breastfeed Dirk, but Dirk- before he was six-weeks old, Toby said, “You’re starving my child.” So he made me quite breastfeeding.

Prahl: Wow.
BONNER: And he punched a hole in a door. I don’t think he was angry at me, but maybe. He was very physical in his expressions. He did not hit me, ever, I’m pretty sure. Although maybe he did…

Prahl: Yes, but dumping a table full of food on you isn’t good.
BONNER: No. I’m really impressed that I got the message though because at that time, I was so different from how I am now that it could have gone right by me.

Prahl: And was that the end of your marriage, that action?
BONNER: Basically, I went to go see an attorney who was friends with my parents. And he- well, this is not even Jewish history!

Prahl: No, but it’s interesting. We’ll go through it quickly.
BONNER: OK. That lawyer said, “You have to stay there, you can’t walk away.” Because, he was thinking in terms of “I insist that you get some alimony, and you get an agreement that’ll pay for Dirk’s college” which was of course, sixteen years down the road, so that was not very- I was not impressed by that objective at all. But I did stay there, and we would sit around and have drinks and complain about our lawyers.

Prahl: Wow. And then once you were divorced, did you and Dirk go live somewhere else?
BONNER: Dirk and I moved to a suburb of Cleveland. I forget why I lived there, but anyway, it was very Jewish suburb. I don’t know if I moved there because it was Jewish or just because…

Prahl: What was the name of it?
BONNER: University Heights.

Prahl: And then you had to get a job?
BONNER: No, because I had alimony.

Prahl: So what did your life look like as a single mother?
BONNER: It looked pretty much like the life of a not-single mother, because I did not really have to worry about money. I stayed home with Dirk that first year, maybe he was two, I forgot the ages but, the next year I took him to daycare. The first year he went to daycare he cried a lot, the second year he didn’t cry, and my theory has always been by the second year I figured he was old enough to be in daycare and he shouldn’t cry, so I was not as sympathetic to him. The first year I was guilty. Maybe I sent him to daycare even when I was a stay at home mom, just so I could have some free time.

Prahl: Mhm. Did you have ideas about how you wanted to raise Dirk? Did you think about your own family and if you wanted to raise him the way that you had been raised, or in a specifically different way?
BONNER: I doubt very much if I thought about it, but then he was a boy and I was a girl, so I raised him very different from the way I was raised.

Prahl: In what way?
BONNER: I was a very laissez-faire parent. Not quite to the level of neglect, but I didn’t do any more for him than seemed absolutely necessary. And my theory was, “He’s young and smart, and I’m old and not smart: he can manage everything. I need to protect myself.” And, I must have been a better mother than I sound.

Prahl: Because he turned out okay.
BONNER: He turned out very well. And it’s possible he turned out well because he could make his own mistakes. If he didn’t want to wear a coat, I said “Fine, don’t wear a coat; do not say a word to me that your cold.”

Prahl: At what point did you decide to convert to Judaism?
BONNER: That was when I moved to Portland, I was working on a political campaign. I was a paid staffer on a campaign for mayor. And it was a very painful thing, because it was required (as in many jobs) to exploit people, extract the most time and money from them as possible, and I just didn’t like that. And I thought, “There’s a place where they tell you it’s okay to be a good person. I think I’ll go to church.” So I went to the nice Congregational church downtown, for many months, probably only many weeks, and it was a nice church, and actually, that’s the beginning of my road to Judaism, I think I just now figured it out. They had a library, and they had a book called David the King by Gladys Schmidt. So I read about King David; I was much taken with him and I began to read a lot about King David and it moved me towards reading Jewish stuff. That minister, who was a very nice and well thought-of minister, when I said I didn’t think I believed in God, he said “Of course you believe in God,” and I said “Not of course I believe in God, I’m out of here!”

Prahl: [Laughs]
BONNER: But really, it was because I didn’t like praying to God through Jesus. I don’t any problem with God, even though I don’t believe in God; I don’t have a problem with God. However (and I don’t have a problem with Jesus), but I have a problem with praying to Jesus to get to God. So I said “Oh, there’s a place where they don’t have Jesus.” Because I had maybe been to a wedding at Beth Israel; I knew nothing about Judaism not withstanding the woman who had taught us about it twenty years earlier. I knew nothing about it except it didn’t have Jesus. And it’s interesting to me how many (maybe four or five years), how many years it took me to figure out, Judaism was much different from just “Christianity without Jesus.”

Prahl: [Laughs]
BONNER: But I could tell when I see converts, it takes them a while (some of them at least) to get past that, but also to get past the terminology, which they don’t know is Christian, but I know (I’ve been to both places) I know it’s Christian.

Prahl: Can you put your finger on some of the differences, and what makes Judaism feel different than Christianity without Jesus?
BONNER: Wow, what a good question. On a better day, maybe.

Prahl: [Laughs]
BONNER: I’m going to write about that.

Prahl: You can, you can write about that. I’m sorry, but my question led us to get to Portland very quickly. What brought you to Portland?
BONNER: Ernie got a job offer from Neil Goldschmidt to be the planning director here.

Prahl: Oh, so let’s talk about meeting Ernie and marrying Ernie; we skipped that whole part. How did you meet him?
BONNER: That’s a nicer story than my other marriage. I met him when I was a second-year student at the Case Western Reserve School of Social Work, I was studying, not clinical social work, but community organization and planning. And I had had a field placement the year before in a neighborhood house, to try and make neighborhoods better, and try to make the lives of people who live in poor neighborhoods better. It became apparent to me within weeks of being there that the problem was the city. So I said “I’ll get me a field placement at the City of Cleveland, where the real action is, and where you have to be if you want to make neighborhoods better.” So parenthetically, after two weeks into my field placement in the city, or maybe some months, after- Ernie was there, and after hearing people talk at a high level about city issues, I said “You can’t do anything in the city, you’ve got to go to the federal government, but I’m not going to Washington, D.C. I’ll have to fix the world from where I am.” So I got a field placement out in- and my field placement was in social indicators, which is a wonderful- I loved it. And my focus was “How Crime Should Best Be Measured” because the uniform crime reports based on police reporting are useless because for one thing, they only report crimes that are reported to them. And I learned about victimization surveys, which I was involved with for some years after that. But anyway, Ernie’s desk was up on the top floor, and it used to be an attic and it had a lot of skylights. So his desk was halfway across a gigantic room from mine. But I had heard that he had had a heart attack, so I said “Ok, good, there’s a man up here but he has no interest in me. He’s had a heart attack.” But he came over and asked me out, sat by my desk and asked me out, and I said “I’m sorry, but I already have a date,” and he kind of- maybe he said “OK, how about the next week?” So I said yes. Probably before that, he had come to social work school and given a lecture in one of my research classes in which he said, “It’s rational for poor people to by lottery tickets.” And he said a couple of other things that were really counterintuitive and really counter to everything I’d ever thought. And turns out he had a lot of those ideas, which I’ll tell about in a minute, because they are so awesome.

Prahl: [Laughs] It was attractive to you that he had ideas that were different from yours?
BONNER: Well, different from what I knew. I’m a sucker for anything that I didn’t know because I said, “Wow, that’s really interesting.”

Prahl: What was Ernie’s job with the city?
BONNER: He was essentially assistant planning director. He and his staff wrote something called the Cleveland Policy Plan, which is a landmark city-planning document; it got awards and things like that. Because its focus was equity, not land use; how to increase equity among residents of the city. And not to buy a new stadium with Cleveland taxpayer’s money that only the suburbanites ever use. Awesome ideas.

Prahl: Definitely.
BONNER: I went over to him after the class and said, “I’m going to be working on social indicators about crime, and I’d like the chance to talk with you.” And I don’t know what he said, but I walked away with “Ooh, this is a scary guy who can’t be bothered with me.” And I postponed going to talk with him for as long as possible, because he seemed to intimidating. So then he asked me out. Oh, we went for a coffee, and he talked in such an expansive way that it made me- maybe he said he wanted to ride off into the sunset in a motorcycle. Or at least that’s the sense I got about him and so I said “Good, this is not going to be a tempting guy.” Because I have a kid, I can’t just be marrying somebody just because they’re so cool. We went out to dinner at a place called Night Town, and in this video I say “I was in love with you before the meal was even served.”

Prahl: Was he in love with you too?
BONNER: Probably, because he went to California for a conference, and to see- and he saw his ex-wife there, and he told her, a week after we met that he was going to marry me.

Prahl: Oh wow!
BONNER: I don’t think he had told me that.

Prahl: So what was- how did a date with Ernie compare to a date with Toby? What did you do on your dates with Ernie?
BONNER: What did we do? Well, was I working? I had a kid, I was going to school. He had a lot of friends, we probably went to some parties where his friends were.

Prahl: Did he meet Dirk right away?
BONNER: Well, when he came to pick me up, he met Dirk. The front door was down at the bottom, I lived down at the second floor. The front door faced up some stairs. Dirk was standing at the top of the stairs, and when Ernie knocked and came in, I remember telling this story over and over, but I don’t remember this situation anymore but, basically Dirk said “Ugh” and that’s basically how the relationship went for the duration.

Prahl: Was it Dirk himself, or just children?
BONNER: Well, Dirk was a pain in the neck. I thought Dirk was the worst kid ever invented. It turns out most boys are like Dirk; self-centered and loud, inquisitive.

Prahl: And how long did you date before you married?
BONNER: We had our first date on October 16th, and we married on May 31st the next year, so way not long enough. But it would’ve taken me years before I figured out that it was a problematic situation.

Prahl: Who married you?
BONNER: Who- oh, oh that’s so cool! We were married in city hall on our coffee break by a black woman Republican Marine Corps Captain/judge.

Prahl: [Laughs] Just by the luck of the draw, who happened to be there that day?
BONNER: I think we probably picked her because that’s such an interesting set of qualifications.

Prahl: That’s great, so did you just get married and go back to work?
BONNER: We did. And then we told people that we just got married. And then we went out to dinner with a friend of his who was a witness in a nice French restaurant later.
Prahl: Did you take him home and introduce him to your parents?
BONNER: Yes, several times before we got married, yes.

Prahl: And had you met his family?
BONNER: Had I met his family? Possibly not.

Prahl: Were they in Cleveland too?
BONNER: No, they were in California. No I must have, I did meet them because (Ernie likes to tell this story on tape) that his mother would not let us sleep in the same room until we were married.

Prahl: Even though you had both been married before?
BONNER: Yes, and we were not waiting until marriage to consummate our love for each other. Which I think his mother said something about showing that she thought that if a man gets to have sex with a woman, he won’t bother to marry her.

Prahl: After you finished the social work degree, did you work in, what was it, city planning did you say?
BONNER: No, I got a job with a horrible entity named the Law Enforcement Impact Cities Program. The law enforcement administration thought up by Nixon in order to stop crime. It gave cities ten cities twenty million dollars for crime-stopping programs. Megabucks were being thrown around. So I got a job with them, and I forgot what my job was, but I remember drawing- coloring various census tracts with maps, probably to show how much crime there was. And it wasn’t long after I got that job that I said to myself, “It would do much better to effect crime if they just dropped twenty million dollars from an airplane on poor neighborhoods.”

Prahl: Probably. And at what point did the move to Portland happen? How long had you been married?
BONNER: We got here on the day of the Yom Kippur War, so 1973 we moved here, so we’d been married approximately three years I guess.

Prahl: So you married in ’70?
BONNER: I forgot, I don’t think so. Probably I graduated from SoS in ’72. So maybe it was only a year?

Prahl: And so, Ernie was coming to work in Neil Goldschmidt’s government. And did you work, when you landed in Portland.
BONNER: I got a job, because I knew people, I got a job having to with crime reports, going through police reports, keeping track- reporting the numbers of crimes or something.

Prahl: Working for the city? And Dirk, did he adjust to a new school?
BONNER: Yes, except for some kid who’s name he won’t even let me mention now.

Prahl: Well don’t.
BONNER: But this is the cool thing about parenting. When I told him we were leaving Cleveland, he was very sad about leaving his, it was probably his kindergarten. It was a very high-end private kindergarten. Very nice outdoor play structure, it was very nice, everyone wanted to go there. And so he was expressing some sadness about going and instead of saying “Oh, it’ll be great! You’ll love it at this new place.” I said “I can imagine that your sad. And I can’t imagine that the school your going to go to will be as good as this school, but it’ll be good enough.” And Dirk said “Yeah, it’ll be fine.” So that clued me into the merits of validating a kids feelings, if they’re all validated will, and certainly not- I never told him “Oh, you’re going to enjoy this.” Chris and Cathleen used to get very frustrated with me because Dirk complained a lot, and I knew he was going to complain about this or that thing, and so I said “Dirk, you’re not going to like this but you have to put up with it because were doing it,” or “I’ll give you five minutes to complain about it and then done.” They didn’t approve of that.

Prahl: How much older were they than him?
BONNER: Two or three years. A noticeable amount- they’re all really good friends all of them now.

Prahl: Oh, that’s nice!
BONNER: It is.

Prahl: Did you have a hard time with Toby when you told him you were leaving town with his child?
BONNER: Good question. Well I don’t remember it. I don’t remember. He only saw Dirk when I saw Dirk to visit him, he would never come here- well, he eventually got where he would come get Dirk in his ultra fast Corvette or something, and I just assumed… You’ve got to be careful who you marry, because if they’re going to be the father of your children, because I always thought that Toby had some rights even though he had done some of the things that he did. I didn’t feel it was right for me to interfere too much in that relationship.

Prahl: Did he continue to have a relationship at all with Dirk after you moved to Portland?
BONNER: Well, he’d go back to Cleveland and stay with my parents who loved having him, and then he would see Toby. But he wouldn’t have seen- once my parents died and they were not back there, Toby never came to see Dirk. Anyway, not much of a relationship, and Dirk is rightfully quite resentful. But Toby paid for his expensive Williams College education, which Dirk didn’t like. But that wasn’t Toby’s fault.

Prahl: So, we’re going to talk about the Jewish stuff now. I have two questions before- well, one question for two people before we start: did Ernie and Dirk have any interest in studying with you and in converting as well, or was it something you did completely on your own?
BONNER: I did it completely on my own. Dirk was fourteen and he was going to the Unitarian Church, and I liked their teen group a lot, and I credit that teen group with half of his ethics.
Prahl: Excellent. And Ernie had no interest? He would listen to you?
BONNER: Dirk would listen to me and try to learn the Hebrew alphabet; he can still say more of the Hebrew alphabet than I can.

Prahl: [Laughs]
BONNER: And I was dating a Jewish guy in University Heights, how can I forget that?

Prahl: Oh!
BONNER: His mother didn’t like him dating a schicksa at all. And I thought it was bad, I actually didn’t like him dating a schicksa either. I thought Jewish guys should not date a schicksa.

Prahl: It didn’t stop you from dating him.
BONNER: No it didn’t. So we did a Passover Seder and Dirk remembered parts of the blessings. Anyway, enough of that.

Prahl: But Ernie did nothing to stop you.
BONNER: No.

Prahl: He just wasn’t interested himself.
BONNER: I said to him once years later, “I really appreciate that you let me have time to let me be Jewish.” And he said to me, “Well, you let me play golf; why wouldn’t I let you be Jewish?”

Prahl: [Laughs] Everybody’s got to have a hobby.
BONNER: And I thought that was so funny.

Prahl: That’s wonderful. So, talk a little bit about how you found Congregation Beth Israel, and how it was to come to them knowing nothing and learn about Judaism from them. Was it a welcoming congregation?
BONNER: It must have been welcoming enough because I kept going.

Prahl: Who was the Rabbi?
BONNER: Michael [?] who was there for only a few more months. I loved the Union Prayer Book; it was the Union Prayer Book that drew me to Judaism.

Prahl: Did you know what it was about the prayer book that you liked?
BONNER: Several things on a different day that I could probably quote that I liked.

Prahl: So you liked the language?
BONNER: I liked the style and the language and the thoughts. And so, it was mostly that. I went on Saturday mornings, and there were very few people there most of the time. I didn’t go to Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. I wished I remembered a little bit better (than I do) the early days, but I went religiously, every Saturday morning.

Prahl: So it was a personal thing; you didn’t make a circle of friends that bore you along on this. You were doing it solely for yourself.
BONNER: Solely for myself, solely on my own. I didn’t understand that I could’ve asked- well, then [?] left and Rabbi Allen Berg came as the assistant Rabbi, and I interacted mostly with him. But I didn’t realize that I could’ve and should’ve asked to study with him. I did a whole lot of studying on my own for a number of months.

Prahl: Was he aware that you were interested in conversion?
BONNER: Well, you’d think so, but I might not have said anything. Or I might- because pretty early, I actually converted because I wanted to support the synagogue; I wanted to become a member, and to become a member you had to be Jewish. So I converted so I could pay synagogue dues.

Prahl: Wow, you might be the only person who’s ever done that.
BONNER: I think that should be shown in the records: I converted so I could pay synagogue dues. Before that I would give to tribute funds.

Prahl: And had you joined any of the activities at synagogue? Did you have friends among the congregants by the time you converted?
BONNER: I don’t remember that I did. One of my still close friends is Jewish; she and her husband were witnesses when I converted.

Prahl: And Rabbi Berg converted you?
BONNER: Yes.

Prahl: And did you have any contact with Rabbi Rose?
BONNER: Very little. When I converted, I invited a couple of my friends and early- I mean, I don’t know what conversions are like. Anyway, there was no big deed there was no mitzvah [?], it was a- I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. I imagine that conversions then were left to the converter to design or- signing a paper.

Prahl: So tell me how the ceremony itself was. How did you know you were Jewish?
BONNER: How did I know I was Jewish?

Prahl: Was there something that-
BONNER: There was a piece of paper.

Prahl: Oh, so you did sit with the Rabbi and sign a piece of paper.
BONNER: Or maybe I sat with the executive director. Anyway, it was very un-religious and unimpressive.

Prahl: Huh! Well, how anticlimactic.
BONNER: Well, I thought the little service that I had designed was the climax actually.

Prahl: And the service for whom?
BONNER: For me. I said the [?], and there’s a piece of the prayer in the Union Prayer Book who calls (and this morning I actually knew it)-

Prahl: Hold on I think we have one here. [Tape edit] Okay, we found the Union Prayer Book. [Flipping through pages]
BONNER: [Reading]: “Praise be Thou O God, who, in Thy love, has called the people, Israel, to serve Thee.” I love that passionately.

Prahl: So this idea of service has always been important to you; of being of service. That’s interesting because that’s one of Oberlin’s strengths too; they emphasize service.
BONNER: Maybe that was part of the appeal of Oberlin? I was quite active in a high school youth group, and I was probably chosen to be one of the people who wrote a Teen Sermonette. And my aunt kept a copy of it, which I have. And it’s clear that it still reflects my theology. I said, “Jesus is a nice example of being a good person. What God wants us to do; be nice to each other and improve the world.” It’s a really remarkably Jewish document for a non-Jew.

Prahl: It is. It is.
BONNER: And my favorite hymns, which I know by heart, are all, “Help me make the world better, help me help people.” Which I don’t do anymore, but I did have that as a lodestar.

Prahl: Did you find that as one of the focuses at Beth Israel as well? Did you plug into the social service things that they did?
BONNER: I was not active on the social active committee. I think that by the time I got to be Jewish, I was busy with Jewish stuff, and I did not do as many social action things.

Prahl: And when you say, “I was busy with Jewish stuff,” what was the Jewish stuff that kept you busy?
BONNER: Studying texts and-

Prahl: All the things that your father didn’t like about his own father.
BONNER: [Laughs] You know it’s ironic.

Prahl: It is. So, did your conversion and your new life as a Jew change your relationship with Ernie?
BONNER: Not till I noticed, but it probably changed some things about him. He was very uncommunicative about feelings and so, if he were distressed by it, I might never have known.

Prahl: Mhm.
BONNER: In retrospect, I suspect we might have had a closer life together if so much of my life hadn’t been Jewish, but he had the same politics and community action and community service and so forth, have the same pull for him that Judaism did for me. So even if I’d stayed home knitting, I don’t think we would have- unless I had become political, which I didn’t think was going to happen. Notwithstanding all my political jobs!
Prahl: Did you come home from or look up from reading your texts and have conversations with either Dirk or Ernie about what you were learning or- no?
BONNER: No.

Prahl: So, it was a very private endeavor.
BONNER: Very solo. I didn’t talk with anybody else either; autodidact. Oh, my conversion. Well, as I said, I invited a couple of people. My non-Jewish friend from Oberlin, actually said, “I’m worried that you will not be my friend anymore.” My Jewish friend said, “I’m so glad your converting because maybe your family will help us when the Nazis come.”

Prahl: Wow.
BONNER: When the anti-Semites come around.

Prahl: Everybody was happy for you. So, something must have felt missing from your life at Beth Israel for you to want to change synagogues. Tell me about starting at Havurah Shalom.
BONNER: I felt that Beth Israel was like eating Cheerios with no milk. I don’t know how I found out about- how I knew about Havurah…

Prahl: What does it mean, to eat Cheerios without milk?
BONNER: You know, you can live on it, but it’s not very satisfying.

Prahl: Not nourishing.
BONNER: Not nourishing. Not much emotional or spiritual content. I forget how I knew about Havurah; Havurah was a breakout group from Beth Israel, just a couple of years before I went to Beth Israel.

Prahl: Yes, tell me what year you converted.
BONNER: Probably 1980.

Prahl: I think Beth Israel was ’78.
BONNER: Havurah, you mean?

Prahl: Ah, Havurah, yes was ’78.
BONNER: Well, I just can’t remember anything about when I knew about Havurah. But what I do remember is that I was working for Federation, which is another thing to talk about. And I wanted to join Havurah, but I thought it would be very impolitic to join Havurah, and leave Beth Israel, where half of the supporters of Federation I assumed, were. I don’t think that was actually accurate.

Prahl: But if that’s what it felt like.
BONNER: It seemed I would be making a mistake, but when I heard myself saying, “I hope I don’t die before I can join Havurah” I decided I’d join Havurah.

Prahl: [Laughs]
BONNER: That’s kind of why I moved to Courtyard: I don’t want to die before I get to live at Courtyard.

Prahl: Did you have friends at Havurah? Do you have any Jewish friends Lynn? That’s what I’m asking you.
BONNER: I have a lot of Jewish friends!

Prahl: I know, but we haven’t talked about any of them!
BONNER: Where do they come from, when did they come? Well, I don’t know- I slept really horrible last night because I had too many things to do today. Or maybe a different day I would be smarter.

Prahl: No, I don’t think it matters when they came if you aren’t thinking of those friendships and those influences on your journey, then it was your own journey, and your friends came by the way.
BONNER: I don’t think I sought out friends. I have no idea.

Prahl: Did you find in Havurah a more nourishing environment, that met the needs you weren’t meeting at Beth Israel?
BONNER: Yes. The Rabbi at that time was Roy Furman, who was a very humane, soft, gentle person. And certainly he was plenty smart and knew a lot, but the feeling was much more spiritual and much more personal than anything at Beth Israel. But I need to mention Ari Hirschfield [?] at Beth Israel.

Prahl: Oh, OK.
BONNER: Because a good deal of the time I was at Beth Israel, at least initially, Ari Hirschfield would help Rabbi Berg lead services. And that was when Rabbi Hirschfield was more charismatic than he was later. So I don’t think I would’ve been drawn to stay at Beth Israel without Ari, because Ari provided sort of the heart and soul of my early Judaism.

Prahl: Sure. Those services that you were attending on Saturdays, were they in the chapel, or were they in the main sanctuary?
BONNER: Schimansky [?] Chapel.

Prahl: Mhm. And did Ari play guitar and sing?
BONNER: Yes.

Prahl: Nice. And did Roy Furman play the guitar and sing at Havurah, was there music there?
BONNER: Yes, because Ari did music for Havurah.

Prahl: Oh, did he leave Beth Israel around the same time?
BONNER: He was never employed by Beth Israel. They paid him some money to do some services. And he did lead one Friday night service a month also, which was nice. Havurah probably paid him like an on-call cantor, I really don’t know. But the songs that Havurah still sings are a lot of Ari Hirschfield songs.

Prahl: And you stayed after Roy left?
BONNER: Yes.

Prahl: And were you active in the leadership at Havurah, or were you just a congregant?
BONNER: For some reason, I let myself get put on the board, maybe as the vice chairperson, at Havurah. Was I active? I was probably more active than I remember, but I was only on the board for one term.

Prahl: And as far as your studying went, you continued to study alone?
BONNER: For the most part, but there were classes. I went to some classes, like at Havurah. The best studying I did, was at Reform Calot [?], which I call the Adult Jewish Camp; six days with the most marvelous and smartest Rabbis, and cantors and teachers in the entire reform movement. For sure they were. Top of the line. And that was the most thrilling.

Prahl: That does sound good. So, you were working at that time for Federation?
BONNER: No. Let’s see, I went to work for Federation pretty early in my Jewish life.

Prahl: Mhm. What did you do for them?
BONNER: Maybe I was like the assistant fundraising person? It was an executive director, and then there was me.

Prahl: Who was the executive director, was it Charlie?
BONNER: No. When I first went it was Bob Tropp [?], who had come from Cleveland, Ohio. Then he left and Murray Schneider came, and Murray Schneider has a whole different view of things. I think I was hired for Federation because the board (or some of the board, at least) and Bob Tropp, liked the fact that I was so bizarrely, gung-ho Jewish.

Prahl: [Laughs]
BONNER: And I had not contributed a lot of money to Federation, but I had contributed regularly. It was clear to anyone who looked that I was devoted to the Jewish community and Judaism. And so they hired me. Murray Schneider dis-hired me. He didn’t un-hire me; he cut my salary in half though. And I’m pretty sure it was because I didn’t know anybody. I mean, I didn’t know the people that I would have needed to know to have been-

Prahl: Because you weren’t connected or because he needed you to be more able to identify potential donors in the community.
BONNER: I think- for him I would have needed to have been more connected to those potential donors.

Prahl: Did he hire someone to replace you?
BONNER: Undoubtedly. There were whole bunches of people who were kept out of working for Federation. But one of my career goals as soon as I got to be Jewish was to work for a Jewish organization. So I met that career goal, and I never had another. I do not have any career goals for working for the Jewish community.

Prahl: [Laughs] So you never had another job working for the Jewish community?
BONNER: Nope!

Prahl: One was enough for you.
BONNER: The only thing I’ve never liked about being Jewish though, including Federation (that was not fun), but the conversion classes, I did not like.

Prahl: The conversion classes. You did take conversion classes at Beth Israel?
BONNER: I did. I had forgotten, but yes, I did. Because I had to do that to convert.

Prahl: What was not to like?
BONNER: I probably didn’t think they were spiritual and intellectual enough. They weren’t providing for me what I wanted from Judaism. And that’s not to say they weren’t good and important and everybody should go to them. I just didn’t enjoy them, unlike everything else I’ve experienced about being Jewish.

Prahl: It’s funny that you continued to convert, when you weren’t being taught things that you found useful. Yet you knew there was something beyond those classes.
BONNER: Oh, I learned things on my own. I don’t know how I learned them though, I can’t remember how I discovered stuff.

Prahl: Who taught the class?
BONNER: Probably different Rabbis

Prahl: Was it the introduction to Judaism class that you were talking about?
BONNER: Right.

Prahl: Yes, that wasn’t through Beth Israel, that was through the Oregon Board of Rabbis.
BONNER: That’s right it was. I think all the classes I went to were at Beth Israel though.

Prahl: Yes, that class is still going on.
BONNER: Well, that’s good. It’s important. I think I can remember from Havurah Shalom is that we had Torah Study at the West Hills Unitarian Fellowship in a room they had. And they had challah. And most Saturdays, Roy Furman would be sweeping the floor after Torah study.

Prahl: That is a humble Rabbi.
BONNER: Where in the world would you find a Rabbi or a minister sweeping the floor?

Prahl: That says nice things about him doesn’t it? You talked about the Calot. Where did you go? Were those Calot out of town or were they here?
BONNER: The ones I went to were all held at UC Santa Cruz. Nice place to be.
Prahl: So, you’d go down for a week with other Reform Jews, and spend the week studying and praying?
BONNER: High end studying. High powered studying and lessons and so forth.

Prahl: Was Dirk in high school then, or was he off in college?
BONNER: Probably he was off in college, at least for part of it.

Prahl: And then you would come back to your Jewish life in Portland, and did you apply any of the things you were learning?
BONNER: It certainly helped me learn more things, and the more I learned, the easier it is to learn things.

Prahl: Mhm. And when Ari came back to town to be the Rabbi at P’nai Or, were you immediately drawn to go there, or did you stay at Havurah?
BONNER: I probably kept my membership at Havurah, but I was pretty active at P’nai Or early on. I was at one of the very early meetings, and probably several early meetings about P’nai Or.

Prahl: Mhm. Were the people who were founding it people that you knew from other parts of your life in Portland?
BONNER: I must have known some of them maybe from Havurah, but I certainly didn’t know all of them.

Prahl: And how did you find it there at P’nai Or, comparatively?
BONNER: Eventually, I got tired of having to do so much work, like having to carry chairs and carrying the Torah around and doing shamas [?] work.

Prahl: Is that work that you didn’t have to do at Havurah Shalom?
BONNER: Not so much. I didn’t know why. But it was also the fact that there were only a few members of P’nai Or who had the financial and psychological wherewithal to be helping, whereas Havurah Shalom people could pull together, so that nobody had to do an extraordinary amount of work, whereas at P’nai Or, it felt like there were just a few people doing quite a lot. And it didn’t match the rhetoric about “community.” I remember thinking that. I don’t know what I mean that, I just remember… There’s some cognitive dissonance here for me.

Prahl: You felt it wasn’t your community?
BONNER: Well, probably I felt that the talk doesn’t match the walk.

Prahl: I remember one of the things that you told me at the time was that you wanted to do more social action, and to be more involved, and you felt like you had to invent that from scratch at P’nai Or, and plan it and lead it, and at Beth Israel, you could just plug in to a social action program that was already running.
BONNER: Huh, I would’ve said that about Havurah, I don’t know about Beth Israel, because it’s never seemed to me- when I was involved with Beth Israel, I didn’t feel very much social action.
Prahl: Oh, you didn’t. But when you left P’nai Or you joined Beth Israel again, not Havurah. Why was that?
BONNER: Probably because I liked reform Judaism and Havurah was not Reform Judaism by then. Or I liked Beth Israel because it was my childhood synagogue.

Prahl: Who was the Rabbi then, when you returned to Beth Israel?
BONNER: Must have been Manny Rose and then Rabbi Cahana came.

Prahl: And was it everything you had hoped it would be when you went back?
BONNER: Probably not. Nothing is.

Prahl: [Laughs] But at least you didn’t have to carry chairs.
BONNER: That’s right. And I never understood the talk about community, because I never really cared about community. Now that I’m old, I do, but I didn’t take advantage of the opportunities for really having a community life in my Jewish life. At least not as much as I could have, certainly.

Prahl: Well it’s hard to find community and be an introvert at the same time.
BONNER: That’s true. Well, it’s hard to find community when the only thing you want to do is study, and not that many people want to study, especially what I want to study.

Prahl: Right. So you continued reading on your own and taking classes?
BONNER: Yes. I took a lot of classes at Portland State once I was 65. Did I go anywhere else? I don’t think I traveled to other classes.

Prahl: You’ve been synagogue hopping your whole life haven’t you? So, when you realized it was time to leave Beth Israel again?
BONNER: That I only did so I could follow Josh Rose.

Prahl: Oh yes, talk about Josh Rose, when he was at Beth Israel, at the time that you were there.
BONNER: I kept thinking that he was as good as any of those Rabbis at the Calot.

Prahl: And he had just finished-
BONNER: He hadn’t even finished Rabbi school.

Prahl: Oh, he was still in rabbinic school. What made him so good?
BONNER: His ability to engage a large amount of people in a discussion in a non-threatening way, and elicit comments from people. His brilliance at looking at texts, how much he knew. But mostly it was his personality, and he seemed very forthcoming and giving.

Prahl: So when you heard he was going to be the new Rabbi at Shaarie Torah, you thought that you would go there because of him?
BONNER: Right, I remember I think I first heard it from Lorraine Rose, I think it was to her I said, “You must be smoking dope!”

Prahl: [Laughs]
BONNER: Because she said, “Josh is going to be a Rabbi at Shaarie Torah.” You must be smoking dope!

Prahl: [Laughs] How’d she take that?
BONNER: Okay.

Prahl: And the fact that it was a nearly Orthodox community didn’t deter you?
BONNER: I probably wondered about that, but by then I may not have been (it seems like now that I’m talking)- I don’t know what the word is, like this sucking feeling about Judaism was a little attenuated, so I figured I didn’t have to have everything I wanted from a synagogue. But it didn’t occur to me that Josh Rose, a Rabbi at Shaarie Torah, might be different from Josh Rose, as a student Rabbi at Beth Israel.

Prahl: And do you find that he is?
BONNER: [Non-verbal response]

Prahl: In all of your studying, did you ever consider having another conversion, a ceremony that did have a mikvah [?] and a [?] and that would have been more traditional?
BONNER: No, funny I made such a face.

Prahl: No, you were happy with it.
BONNER: It’s also that I am (I was thinking today), I would not convert to Judaism today because I would not feel that I was honest. But when I converted in 1980 or ’81, most of the Jews I knew were casual Jews, like I was from the outset. I would never be able to say I would observe any of the laws and rituals. The only law I try to observe is not to say mean things about people, and that’s hard enough.

Prahl: Well, people continue to convert in the Reform movement.
BONNER: Yes, but it’s a much more serious deal now. And they probably feel that they are taking on the yoke of the mitzvoth [?] much more than I ever felt. My theory is all the Reform Jews I know, or most of the Reform Jews I know are like me, so I don’t have to “de-convert.” I just would not convert now, probably. But I’m glad I did.

Prahl: Or maybe you would convert differently?
BONNER: Oh, I don’t think I would, I don’t- well, when Ernie was no longer in my life, I suppose I could’ve become more committed. But my Jewish way is committed to text study and to be as good a person as I can manage. I couldn’t have been a very observant Jew and maintained a marriage, I don’t think. Enough I was gone many hours a week, studying or doing good deed.

Prahl: So talk about the Jewish community as a whole in Portland, and how you’ve seen it change since 1980.
BONNER: A good and interesting question. Of course there are many more synagogues. It feels that Jews are more integrated in the general social life. I have no idea if that’s accurate. The Jews I know are a little bit more Jewishly knowledgeable than we were 30 or 40 years ago, almost 40 years, hm. There are many more Jewish things to do. Those are the things… Oh, Federation called itself the “Central Address of the Jewish Community.” And at least one Rabbi hated that. And then there was not very much (what’s the word I’m looking for); some nice long word that means “copacetic,” between the Rabbis and the Rabbis in Federation, and today I think there’s a much more cooperative feeling. And Federation acknowledges that there’s a religious element to Judaism, which I don’t think it used to.

Prahl: Where they used to talk only about the cultural aspects of it. Hm. That could be true. So, where do you see your Jewish identity going onward into the future?
BONNER: I’m pretty sure I’ll continue studying, probably mostly alone. Probably try to relearn some of the Hebrew that I learned. I will always be searching for my Jewish identity, and I probably won’t search for the right synagogue, because I’ve belonged to too many, and I can’t… I’m not a good Jew or a usual Jew, in the sense that I don’t have much of a Jewish community. Maybe I did for some years. But because I lead a half goyish life, basically I lead a half goyish life. Most Jews, actually the ones I know do too. But most of those Jews are not as kind of enmeshed and sucked into Judaism as I am.

Prahl: Mhm. Yes, after Ernie died, you did not go out looking for a Jewish man to replace him with?
BONNER: No. I found one though.

Prahl: Oh, oh that’s right! You have to tell me about Marvin. We didn’t even talk about him.
BONNER: Well, Marvin was the librarian at Beth Israel, and I had known him before Ernie died, and before his wife died. And the major thing I remember about him is that he had a zillion grandchildren, and six kids. I said, “I do not need anything to do with a man who has a zillion grandchildren and six kids.” It turns out that three of the kids were his wife’s kids whom he met when they were adults. So it’s not like- Anyway, and he talked to much, so I said, “Nah, nothing there.” But we began to date, and it was a really nice relationship. So to have a Jewish man and a Jewish family.

Prahl: How long were you with him?
BONNER: I think nine years. He was very Jewish, I liked that.

Prahl: Did you feel like you had more community during that time, like the two of you as a Jewish couple?
BONNER: Well, we actually had two other couples who were close friends of ours, with whom I’m still close, which I would not have had with a non-Jewish husband or boyfriend.

Prahl: You were with Marvin when you were at Beth Israel for the second time, right?
BONNER: Yes.

Prahl: And was he a member of Beth Israel too?
BONNER: Yes.
Prahl: So you had that. Did you do more at the synagogue because of that, because you were a couple?
BONNER: Yes.

Prahl: It’s funny we left him out completely when we were talking about community, when he seems to have been a big part of that.
BONNER: He was a big part of that, yes. I’m sure there’s more Jewish community in my life than I’m identifying right now.

Prahl: Oh, I’m sure there is.
BONNER: My mind is much more on the head part. [Laughs]

Prahl: The studying. Who do you think were your biggest influences in your life? Whether as a Jew, or just becoming the person that you are?
BONNER: Probably Toby, and Ernie, my Aunt Lizette.

Prahl: In what way?
BONNER: With her Victorian ways. She says, “Don’t tell Aunt Billie that your Jewish, she’s anti-Semitic.” And my Aunt Billie said, “Don’t tell Aunt Lizette you’re Jewish; because she’s anti-Semitic.”

Prahl: Oh, that’s great.
BONNER: I’ve got a great family. Great family stories.

Prahl: Are these mother’s sisters?
BONNER: One’s my mother’s sister, the other is my mother’s sister in law. I love that. Anyway, influential… Maybe my high school English teacher. Maybe my international politics professor, who talked about realpolitik.

Prahl: Mhm.
BONNER: No Jews listed in here.

Prahl: [Laughs] No, you were not drawn to Judaism because of someone who was Jewish who influenced you; you were really drawn to it on your own.
BONNER: Although Ari, I probably wouldn’t be Jewish, absent Ari, probably.

Prahl: Right, but you didn’t meet him until you started going to Beth Israel, is what I was saying.
BONNER: I was just escaping Jesus.

Prahl: [Laughs] Looking at the list: How Zionist would you say your life has been? Have you had an abiding interest in Israel since you started being Jewish, or before you were Jewish?
BONNER: I really didn’t have much interest in Israel before I was Jewish. I don’t think I read Exodus for instance until after I was Jewish. I was- A Zionist means (I don’t know what Zionist means)- I certainly never wanted to live in Israel. I certainly want Israel to thrive and survive. I can’t be a Zionist by a lot of people’s standards because there’s so many things happening in Israel that I find so problematic. I went to Israel for the first time- well actually, in 1989, so I’d been Jewish a number of years. I went with the Havurah program. I went because I thought converts should go to Israel. I hated every minute of it.

Prahl: What was it that you hated?
BONNER: Probably I didn’t like the fact that it wasn’t Denmark.

Prahl: It is definitely not Denmark.
BONNER: It was hot, probably.

Prahl: Maybe you had expectations. Why did you think every convert should go to Israel?
BONNER: I must have viewed Israel as such an important part of Jewish identity, and being a Jew. I couldn’t have imagine feeling like a Jew and never having trying to… I went back six or seven or eight times (I keep losing count).

Prahl: Oh my. You went six, seven, or eight times to Israel after you hated it the first time? Why?
BONNER: Well, I liked books like Exodus, and there’s another novel about Israel, The Settlers, by Meyer Levin. I forget why I wanted to go back to Israel, but for me it was kind of like Chagrin Falls and Berlin are. They’re like hometowns in a sense. Probably because I didn’t like Israel so much that it certainly took a big place in my psyche not liking it. And before I went I read a lot of novels and maybe some books about Israel, and when I came back I read omnivorously. And there was a time when I probably owned every item of Israeli fiction that had been translated into English, between 1940 and 1990 or something. Which isn’t that many, but it’s a lot of books, I read. And I didn’t even read them all, but I acquire all kinds of Israel stuff.

Prahl: When you went the second time, did you have a better experience?
BONNER: I went with Ari, and it was an entirely different experience, full of Ari, who was [?] stuff. Yes, it was a much better experience. I don’t have the same thing about Israel that I did; it does not draw me the way that it did.

Prahl: Mhm.
BONNER: I think of it as a different place than the place I visited. But I had a crush on Israel because of the period between about the first Aliyah in 1948, and I was especially interested in the period between 1945 and ’48, and read lots and lots about that. So it was a lot of…

Prahl: So a romanticized kind of vision of the pioneers.
BONNER: And most of what I learned about Israel- I read a lot of books about art in Israel, more than I did about the history of Israel. There was a lot of history of Israel to be found in reading books about art. So, I probably won’t go back to Israel, I wouldn’t have missed going. And even though I admit I didn’t go to all these other places that people talked about in the old folks home when they talk about their travels.

Prahl: Yes. People do like to talk about their travels. So, you said you’ll continue studying now, you’ll continue with- are you interested in being active in social action anymore?
BONNER: No, I wish I were. Super much wish I were. Anything’s possible, but I don’t think that’ll happen. I have too little energy.

Prahl: And you’re liking your life as it is now?
BONNER: I don’t want any pressure; I don’t do well (if I ever did), I don’t do well feeling pressured that I have to succeed and that I have to do stuff.

Prahl: OK.
BONNER: I’d like to find a way to do something for the community that would fit for me.

Prahl: Mhm.
BONNER: And I think I’ll work on that.

Prahl: Are you hopeful for the future of the Jewish community in Portland?
BONNER: Yes indeed. There are wonderful young Jews like you here. And the staff here and everywhere- I think the Jewish community is thriving.

Prahl: I feel like you’re a part of that.
BONNER: Thank you.

Prahl: I think we’ve covered everything that we wanted to talk about today, if you have anything that you want to add, I’m happy to add it. And we can add things later as addenda.
BONNER: OK. I’ve said more than enough.

Prahl: Well, thank you very much for doing it.
BONNER: Thank you.