Judy Schreiber - February 1, 2013
Coming to the United States
So you came to the United States, you were, what year, how old were you now?
Uh, we came in, I think, May of 1948.
Okay.
And I was uh, either eight and a half or nine, something like that.
And why, you moved origi...your, went to New York and, um...
We went to New York then we moved to Louisville, Kentucky, I don't know why.
Mm-hm.
My dad was not a clear thinker by then, I mean, irrational moods that meant, I don't know what. And then from Louisville, Kentucky eventually we moved to Detroit.
Why Detroit?
I don't know.
Okay. And what did your uh, father do for a living?
Nothing.
Nothing.
You know what, he held odd jobs, and here's the interesting thing about my father. My father was extremely well read.
Uh-huh.
Um, he claimed he was a Torah scholar, that was his claim. He had some kind of a photogenic memory.
Huh.
He used to be able to recite pages and pages of like, Talmud and Komish and stuff that he said he learned when he was a little kid. Um, he was well read and a smart man...
Mm-hm.
With no self-awareness whatsoever...
Hm.
About what was wrong with me, what was wrong with me, what was wrong with my mother, what was wrong with anybody else. He was totally self-centered. And uh, you know what, I did not know how poor we were until I grew up. Uh, we, we, we, he couldn't hold a job, he couldn't work. He would work, he would find little jobs here and there and whatever, but, you know, we were, we were poor. We, we, we were on some kind of Jewish welfare when we first came here. That was the other thing, fear, fear, fear. My dad bought some kind of a television set and we had to hide it in the closet...
Hm.
Because you weren't allowed to have a TV...
Uh-huh.
If you were getting...
Uh-huh.
Assistance from this Jewish whatever organization...
Got it.
It was. So once again...
Yeah, fear.
Yeah.
And your mother was, did she work outside the house?
Uh, she eventually did when she got older. My mother was far more stable than my dad.
Uh-huh.
Far more stable, but she was so disempowered...
Hm.
Uh, by life, number one, and by my dad, number two. That uh, you know, I uh, I think that it uh, I feel like I became, ultimately, I feel like I became uh, a victim of his neurosis and what the war did to him.
Mm-hm.
And so did my mother. And to some extent, because my mother had a lot of frustrations and difficulties living with him, she took it out on me when I was kid. So uh, it was, you know, it was a hard uh, I think two things helped save me in my lifetime that I think of uh, post war.
Mm-hm.
And one is the fact that I began reading so early on psychology...
Ah.
And I got it.
Got it.
I somehow got it, and number two, religion.
Really?
Yeah. I, so to speak, re-found my religion as a young kid and I felt intensely and seriously and severely uh, sort of, sort of out of a need and whatever, connected to, I went to the yeshiva and I found solace there. I made friends with Rabbi Weinberg and his wife uh, Phyllis. He was my teacher and they would invite me for Shabbos, and I would escape through the school and through Rabbi Weinberg, and then their friends. Uh, it's like they became more my family...
Mm.
In a lot of ways that my parents couldn't.
Yes.
And believe it or not, my parents resented my friendships with them. They, they were so neurotic that they, they uh, "they just used you for a babysitter." They didn't realize how much happier I was at their, Rabbi Weinberg's house than I was at my own, but.
Right. Maybe they were jealous?
Yeah, they were jealous, they were angry. And I, religion and mm, I began reading about religion and about God, I mean, in an adult kind of way later in my life, and I've been doing that for twenty some years and uh, I, uh, you know, I, I have this strong feeling that I'm alive uh, sort, sort of to spite myself.
Hm.
And to spite the life that I led, I, I should, I've always been aware that I should not have necessarily survived. And I've always felt that I survived, A--because initially because of my dad, but B--because somehow I was supposed to. And uh, that helped uh, guide me at times, at various times uh, through uh, what for me were emotionally really, really, really difficult times, um...
Mm-hm.
Like, like this uh, intuitive sense, something like when they took my father with the train and I knew he was coming back.
Mm-hm.
I had this sort of intuitive sense that I was for some reason supposed to have survived and it was not due to uh, you know, anything that was materially done.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn