|
By Donald H. Harrison
 SAN DIEGO--Sometimes we Americans forget how difficult a matter it is to immigrate. Raised on civic lessons emphasizing freedoms and opportunities of the United States, we are tempted to believe that for all those who land on American soil en route to citizenship—for all who see the torch of the Statue of Liberty—it must be one of the happiest days of their lives.
What we forget is that, for the most part, immigrants have families left behind in their native countries; that whatever be the magnetism of America, the immigrants' native lands exercise a counter-pull. Home countries constantly pull immigrants' thoughts back to family dinners, the conviviality of old school friends, familiar customs and a sense of absolute belonging.
If you visit Dr. Franklin and Jean Gaylis in the Del Cerro neighborhood of San Diego, you will find their home filled with South African artifacts, nostalgic reminders of their childhoods in Johannesburg. Their swimming pool, pictured below, was designed to resemble the Boulders, a favorite place for vacations at the Cape, where one could loll on the rocks.
Now in San Diego for twenty years, both Franklin and Jean have become successful San Diegans and fully-involved American citizens. Franklin is a urologist in a private practice that Jean administers. Many people in the Jewish community know Jean as a knowledgeable and committed volunteer, who has served on many major community boards and committees and who is considered to be the founding ‘grandmother’ of the highly successful Shalom Baby program.
Nevertheless, pulling up stakes from South Africa and moving to the United States left some wounds that are not far from Jean’s surface. She winces when she recalls how members of her family including her late father denounced her as a “traitor” when she decided in 1981 that South Africa, which then was still in the thrall of apartheid, was not the place where she wanted to raise children, and made her way to America, with Franklin,
Although her father was not involved in politics, philosophically he supported the ruling National party, whose members believed in strict separation of the races. Jean grew up in Linksfied, a Johannesburg suburb where the only blacks she met were household servants. From kindergarten through twelfth grade, she walked a few doors away to the spacious grounds of King David School, where she and Franklin met as young teens, started dating, and never dated anyone else thereafter.
Her life, at least through high school graduation, was one of privilege, living in a golden ghetto that was filled with talk of Jewish holidays, simchas, and family get-togethers.
One major break in this pattern was a four-month-long school trip to Israel where she and other Jewish South African teens lived in relatively Spartan quarters in Sde Boker, the Negev desert kibbutz of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, whom they got to see every now and then in his retirement.
When 19-year-old Jean was starting studies in psychology and early childhood education at the University of South Africa in Johannesburg, there was armed confrontation between white police and the black population of the Johannesburg township of Soweto.
What had started as a peaceful march to protest the requirement that blacks learn both English and Afrikaans—the latter considered the language of the oppressor—devolved into a riot in which 23 persons were killed the first day, including Dr. Melville Edelstein, a social worker who had devoted his life to black welfare, and around whose neck was left a sign warning Afrikaners they may suffer a similar fate. (Although Jean’s family had the same surname, they were not closely related to Dr. Melville Edelstein if at all.)
The next day 1,500 police marched into Soweto, with Reuters reporting 500 fatalities and many more wounded. While causes and casualty figures have been disputed, clearly this was a turning point in South African history. Blacks had started on a bloodied road to liberation.
The opinions of Jean’s family diverged sharply in the aftermath of the Soweto cataclysm. Jean, exposed to more liberal thought at the University, said she believed that a country based on a white minority oppressing a black majority could not last for long; that eventually the oppressive white government would be overthrown—deservedly. If she did not leave the country—even though it be against her parents’ wishes—then someday her own children would feel forced to leave, she believed.
Her late father and a sister, Megan, who remains today in South Africa just as vehemently believed that whites had developed the country and needed to keep their place secure, whatever protests the blacks mounted. When Jean told her family about her liberal ideas, her father dismissed them contemptuously: “Acchhhh, college students—what do you know?”
“I’ll be the last person to switch off the lights in South Africa,” her father further declared.
None of the family members, of course, could foresee that in 1989 the African National Congress’s leader Nelson Mandela would be freed from prison by an Afrikaaner President, F.W. DeKlerk, with whom he would later share a Nobel Prize for their joint efforts to end apartheid.
Notwithstanding their political battles, Jean and her father had affection for each other. In fact, when her father, Eli Edelstein, and mother, the former Zelma Kopinsky, were divorced, Jean—then a high school student –couldn’t bear the idea of him living alone, without anyone to take care of him. She moved out with him, coming home after school and preparing her father’s dinners. After a year in which her father settled into his own routine, Jean moved back to her mother’s home, where she continued to live with her three younger siblings.
**
Jean's maternal great-grandfather, a blacksmith, followed the 13 children who had made their way to South Africa from Lithuania by 1923. Thirteen children in her grandmother Millie (Saffer) Kopinsky's generation, who themselves had large families, meant that for Jean, Saffer family get-togethers which occurred nearly every Shabbat, involved hundreds of relatives.
The prolific family was also pragmatic; while many made successes for themselves in business, surely some member might someday be in financial need, or come upon bad luck. So the Saffers founded a family foundation to which any member could go and ask for a loan to finance a business venture, to pay doctor’s bills, or to be tided over between jobs. The board that made such decisions did so in strict confidentiality. No family member need fear being embarrassed before the others.
At the King David School, where she grew up, children wore uniforms –for primary school girls, “a cute little blue and white checkered dress, white socks that folded over, and black Mary Jane shoes—everyone exactly the same—and the sweater was maroon and it had a crest with the school’s logo,” Jean recalled. “The boys wore what were called ‘safari suits’; khaki colored shorts with a matching khaki top in the summer. In the winter they wore gray flannel and wool pants with a white shirt and maroon blazer.” In high school, the boys’ uniform remained the same, but girls now wore "a blue skirt, white shirt and a black blazer or sweater.”
Boys wore their kippot at religious services or while studying Jewish texts, but otherwise had their choice of wearing it or carrying it in their pockets.
“There was a strict dress code; you didn’t dream of not wearing the uniform,” recalled Jean. “’Where we would get into trouble was when the girls tried to make the skirts more like miniskirts and then the teachers would measure. If it was X-amount inches over your knee, you got into trouble. We wanted to make them mini-mini skirts, we were hormonally raving teenagers and we pushed the limit, and we got into trouble.”
The school day was divided in half between Jewish and secular studies—a formula that Jean said is perhaps closer to that followed by Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School than by San Diego Jewish Academy, which her own children—Greg and Jackie—attended. On the other hand, she said, boys and girls through the upper grades studied together, they weren’t separated by gender as they are for some classes at Soille, but are not separated at San Diego Jewish Academy.
Although the school taught the Afrikaans language in addition to English, “we spoke English at home, as did I’d venture to say almost everybody” in the Jewish community. “I speak more Afrikaans here in America than we did in South Africa—for the same reason my grandparents spoke Yiddish, so that the children wouldn’t understand what we were saying," Jean confided. "Eventually, they came to understand it, same as we picked up Yiddish.”
The Edelstein family’s synagogue in Linksfield was Orthodox with women sitting up in the balcony and men on the ground floor. Some years ago Jean and Franklin—who has become quite interested in genealogy—visited Lithuania and Latvia to trace their roots. “Every shul that we went into, and we went into lots, had women sitting upstairs,” said Jean. “So it was really a transfer of the customs of the shuls of Eastern Europe to South Africa.”
Jean said when she thinks of the women’s section, she thinks of the women chatting up there. Although her mother was religious and “prayed all the time,” the women’s balcony was more a place for socializing.
Zionist Youth Groups were another part of her life. She belonged to Bnei Akiva; Franklin belonged to Habonim. The groups had summer camps and weekends that were “pretty much what they do in USY (United Synagogue Youth) today: you go to somebody’s house for Sukkot or for a swim party, but there’s also an educational component. We benched after meals: I know the Birkat Hamazon by heart, and also Hatikvah; I don’t need a sheet, I’ve known them since I was a little girl.”
Franklin and Jean debate exactly how old she was when they met –13 or 14—but they agree that it was at the King David School and that one of them—they can’t remember which—was upstairs, the other downstairs, and their eyes met. Two years her senior, Franklin asked Jean to go with him to a social, and before long they announced themselves as steadies. Married for 29 years, they’ve really been together for 39 years.
As Franklin tells it, Jean was the more courageous one. Though he eventually would be graduated cum laude from medical school, he was a slow starter and an indifferent student in high school. That she believed in him and was willing to take a chance on him—someone who at the time showed no prospect of being a good provider—still brings a catch to his voice.
Jean remembers that Franklin was a water polo player with “a lovely physique and the most lovely face, and he had personality and character to match.”
Franklin’s father, Hymie, was a vascular surgeon; while his musician mother Rhoda was very involved in the Jewish community, particularly in matching the performing arts to charitable causes. Eventually the senior Gaylises followed Jean and Franklin to the United States. They now live in La Jolla and Rhoda is organizer and conductor of a Jewish men’s choir, while
Go to the top of next column
|
|
Hymie, as a volunteer, makes rounds with young surgeons at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital.
As a young man, Hymie Gaylis had furthered his medical education in Boston—where Franklin spent a few years of his childhood—and he encouraged Franklin to also study in the United States following his graduation from medical school.First, of course, Franklin and Jean needed to get married, which they did at the Great Synagogue of Johannesburg. The Chief Rabbi of Johannesburg, Rabbi Bernard Casper, interviewed them before their marriage—an encounter that went well until he asked where they planned to have their reception. Jean explained how large her extended family was, and said they had engaged a kosher caterer to come into the only place they could find large enough to accommodate the reception – the social hall of the Reform Synagogue. Rabbi Casper was aghast, saying he would not personally set foot in such a reception. But, cried Jean, the wedding is only weeks away, where could it be switched to? The rabbi pointed to a building across the street, saying there was a fine social hall there. It was a Greek Orthodox Church, which was more to Rabbi Casper’s liking than a Reform institution.
They complied with Rabbi Casper’s wishes, later moving to Minneapolis, where Franklin was hired as a researcher in a urology laboratory That was a job for which there were no suitable American applicants at the time – a condition for a foreigner to take a job in the United States. Having such a job entitled Franklin and Jean to be sponsored for U.S. citizenship.
They were almost deterred, however, by the weather— insufferably hot in the summer, unrelentingly cold in the winter by their South African standards. Franklin was away from the house from morning to night, Jean never seeing him during daylight hours.
Jean worked to support herself and Franklin. Having taught both in secular black schools (while training in college) and at the King David preschool in Johannesburg, she was able to get a morning job at the preschool at Beth El Synagogue in Minneapolis, an afternoon job at a cheder, and a weekend job at Beth El’s Torah school.
The couple was exposed to Conservative Judaism for the first time in Minneapolis—and for Jean the opportunity to sit with her husband during services won her allegiance. Franklin took a little longer to be convinced; it was not until High Holy Day services “when they sang Avinu Malkenu the same way we know it in South Africa—the same tune” that Franklin felt he had a spiritual home. Today the Gaylises are members of Tifereth Israel Synagogue in San Diego, a Conservative congregation, although they also frequently attend with their son Congregation Adat Yeshurun, an Orthodox congregation in La Jolla.
In Minneapolis, the Gaylises began a process of helping other members of their families to immigrate to the United States, Franklin becoming something of an expert on the rules and regulations. While this brought them some of home, it also caused more problems with family members who remained in South Africa--bad enough they had left; now they were taking other members of the family away too.
Vacations to South Africa were always tense affairs, practically guaranteed to end in arguments with Jean's father and sister, and to cause a great deal of sadness for Jean's mother, who never could bear to drive them back to the airport for their flights home.
From Minneapolis, it was on to Chicago, where Franklin did his residency in urology, and the couple pretty well lived off Jean’s salary as the director of early childhood education at the JCC in Chicago.
Arriving on the West Coast in 1989, where Franklin went into a private practice, Jean enrolled Greg at the preschool at Tifereth Israel Synagogue, and eventually served as a substitute teacher for that pre-school. Otherwise, she spent her time as a volunteer, gravitating to the Women’s Division of the United Jewish Federation where some South African women who already had established themselves as Jewish community leaders became her role models: Claire Ellman, Jackie Woolf and Mal Smiedt.
After being part of a Women’s Division lunch club for several years, Jean was asked to co-chair with Sharon Schuster and Anne Nagorner the “Options” luncheon that featured Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and attracted over 1,000 women. Not long afterwards Jan Tuttleman asked Jean and Judy Friedel to chair a women’s seder.
“I struggled with that decision,” said Jean. “I remember calling Jane Scher and saying ‘Janie, in South Africa we don’t have women’s seders; how am I going to do this?’ She replied, ‘you can do it, you’ve got the skills.’ I struggled with it because of my Orthodox background.”
Over the years, Jean served on such other UJF committees as the outreach committee, day school allocations, and Israel Center.
From 1997 to 1999, Jean served in the position of president of the Women’s Division of United Jewish Federation, a position that also entitled her to serve on the general board of UJF.
Her involvement with UJF led to invitations to serve on the Agency for Jewish Education Board, where one of her assignments was to co-chair with Jeff Ressler the first-ever Limmud (not yet called the Yom Limmud). “I concentrated on what I’m good at, getting speakers and people there, and that led to other things.”
She also was among those chosen as a Wexner Fellow, enabling her to attend with other San Diego Jewish leaders intensive courses in Jewish history, culture, community needs and leadership.
At one point in her life, Jean served simultaneously on six Jewish boards: those of UJF, AJE, the Jewish Community Center, Hillel, San Diego Jewish Academy and Tifereth Israel Synagogue, as well as on boards or committees of auxiliary organizations such as the Tifereth Israel Sisterhood. She also served on an advisory committee of the Foundation of Grossmont Hospital, with which Franklin’s practice is affiliated.
What makes a good board member in Jean’s opinion? She responded that while she is willing to advocate for a minority board position—such as when she argued strenuously on the San Diego Jewish Academy’s board against the closure of the school’s San Carlos branch—she believes it is an obligation for board members to be civil, not confrontational, and when disagreeing, to do so respectfully.
“I don’t believe in embarrassing people; I am uncomfortable when people raise their voices or throw daggers (with their eyes) at each other,” she said. “I don’t respect people who blow up at board meetings.”
When her son Greg had his bar mitzvah at Tifereth Israel Synagogue, then Cantor Alisa Pomerantz Boro suggested that Jean and Franklin both read from the Torah. “I said ‘I cannot go on the bima, I cannot touch the Torah’ – I had this Orthodox upbringing; I would love to do it, but cannot. At Simchat Torah, when they pass the Torah I could not hold it. But I made Cantor Alisa a promise at Greg’s bar mitzvah, that I would read at Jackie’s bat mitzvah. I figured she’d forget it, but she didn’t. She reminded me. ‘You said you would read from the Torah’ and I did. I studied, I did trop, spent Sunday mornings learning trop with her, and I did it, did it well, and I felt an accomplishment, and then I did it two more yomtovim and I really enjoyed it!”
Of all her accomplishments, there is none of which Jean is more proud than the start-up in 2001 of Shalom Baby in San Diego. She said she had reflected back on the time when she was a new mother in Chicago, where she had a good support system through her service as director of the JCC preschool. But suppose Greg had been born shortly after she and Franklin had arrived in Minneapolis, before they knew anyone? she thought. Franklin was working from early morning to late at night; upon whom could she rely?
Jean pushed for a program that would reach out to parents of newborn Jewish children, a program for which Judy Nemzer eventually became the director.
Shalom Baby instantly had an impact. Jean told of a Camp Pendleton mother who “had no Jewish connections, no Jewish friends; she had nothing, but then a Shalom Baby basket arrived at her doorstep at Camp Pendleton (with little gifts for the baby) and she was invited to join a play group and she instantly had ‘family’ – 12 other moms with babies the same age. And these moms had husbands with whom her husband – in the limited time he had to leave the base – could enjoy social activities like poker night or soccer clubs.” These play groups often matured into friendship circles (chavurot) and some eight years are still meeting.
How did Shalom Baby find the Camp Pendleton mother? “Everything with Shalom Baby is pretty much a referral,” she responded. “We had cards in all the ob-gyn and pediatric offices saying ‘are you Jewish and pregnant?' Or 'do you know anyone who is pregnant, expecting a baby and who is Jewish?’ She picked up such a card at her ob-gyn or pediatrician. Also we relied on word of mouth; a friend might tell us that so-and-so is having a baby, or the shuls would phone and tell us, or the schools – it was really word-of-mouth network.”
In the eight years since its founding, Shalom Baby has been a factor in the lives of “thousands and thousands of children,” Jean said. “It has been amazing, and you know what, we have kept those families Jewish because we have programming for them. There was a professor Rosen from Brandeis University and he did a study with a Professor Wertlieb from Tufts and they did an early childhood study on Jewish agencies and what they need to do to foster engagement. They came to interview us at the JCC, and they put us into their study, and then it appeared in the Jerusalem Post and in academic things here… I feel that was the greatest joy in my life, to be the grandma of Shalom Baby.”
Now an empty nester with Greg at UCSD and Jackie at Emory University, and also administering her husband’s urology practice, Jean now is cutting back on her board involvements, saying she believes veterans like herself should be willing to step aside for new leadership.
But she did share some prescriptions for the San Diego’s Jewish community. She said she hopes that it will always be inclusive, taking into consideration the needs of Jews wherever they live in San Diego County, whether in the more populated North County or in the older and less populated central, southern and eastern portions of the county. Further, she said, she hopes that all community agencies will try to accommodate people of divergent Jewish beliefs. So that anyone can eat at a community function, she said, all such events should serve kosher food—the idea being that someone who observes kashrut would feel excluded from non-kosher events whereas someone who doesn’t keep kosher won’t be harmed eating kosher food.
To attract and involve youngsters, she said, the Jewish community “has to get with the times. You have to Twitter, You Tube, Face Book – that is what our kids today relate to. So get Face Book pages for preschool fathers, Torah school mothers, day school parents.. Make interactive groups where kids who are sitting at their desks in Carlsbad, Santee and Chula Vista can interact, and do something with technology. I am not a techno-buff, but I know you have to go to the constituents; they are not coming to us.”
|
|
