Memoirs: Freda La Victoire
The Lando Theater
Hebrew Ladies Aid Society
Eruv
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Memoirs:
Freda La Victoire: "Who Sings and Springs"
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Interviewer: “What became your life’s work?”
Freda La Victoire: “Dentistry.”
Interviewer: “If you could live this part of your life over, what would you go into?”
Freda La Victoire: “I would write. And teach.”
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Freda La Victoire did write.
About a year after her oral history with the National Council of Jewish Women, she self-published a book called “Tsu zingen un zogen.” Or in English: “Who Sing and Spring.”
It’s a collection of poetry.
Some of the poems are what she calls “swiped and translated.” They are Yiddish versions of classic English verse. She translates William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lewis Carroll, and others, including ninety-seven stanzas of Edward FitzGerald’s “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.”
The rest are original, and they form a memoir of her family’s journey from Bialystok to the small town of Jeannette, Pa. at the turn of the century. It is a fragmentary and impressionistic account—an elderly woman sweeping together childhood memories of a family in transition: one half yearning for America, the other half clinging to Europe.
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Avigdor and Miriam LaVictoire residence, 618 Clay Avenue, Jeannette, Pa.
—Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress (online).
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In the poem, “And Goes There To Get It Ready For Us,” she recalls her father announcing plans to sail to America and work to bring the whole family over. |
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Papa sang us freedom songs taboo.
Mom said “Some HERO! We’ll stay, but you’ll skidoo!”
Pop said joyously, “You’ll join me soon
In Freedom Land, and safe, sing Freedom’s tune.”
Pop went and stilled me hung in void
Without mind-ken, inturned, but by hope buoyed.
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Open spread from Freda La Victoire's "Who Sing and Spring," showing typewritten pages in English and Yiddish and a reproduction of a photograph from her family archives. |
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Her childhood in Jeannette unfurls in a sequence of poems called “Town On The Other Side.” She means the other side of the Atlantic Ocean—our side.
Her family settled on 6th Street—south of the railroad, south of Clay Avenue, out by the glass factory. She recalls marching through the neighborhood singing, “Ou-ur Glass City-O, City-O, City-O, ou-ur Glass City-O, la-la-la-la-la.”
They were among the first Jews in town.
The synagogue was their living room, and all the necessities they needed for a Jewish life were miles away in the Ludwick section of neighboring Greensburg.
Thursday afternoons throughout her childhood, Freda would carry a live chicken on the trolley to Ludwick, where a shochet would slaughter it for the Shabbat meal. A gentile friend named Alice Holland accompanied at times.
In the poem “Going On An Errand,” La Victoire recalls:
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Alice says it’s a shame to go clear to Greensburg
just to kill an old chicken “her Pap could do.”
Tastes just as good when he chops off the head with an ax.
It’s lots of trouble to be a Jew!
We giggle and compare the pile of trouble
it’s to be a Holy Roller Evangelist!
And then we’re home, across the street from each other, smile-part. For a week, Thursday chicken doesn’t exist.
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Next week: Squirrel Hill in the 1940s
All year, the Rauh Jewish Archives is highlighting memoirs of Jewish life in Western Pennsylvania. If you would like to donate a memoir, or just chat about the stories you've read, contact the archive or call 412-454-6406.
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New Collection:
Lando Theater Posters [2018.0032]
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"The Girl From Warsaw" poster, 1941.
—Lando Theater Posters [2018.0032]
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The Lando Theater was a Yiddish playhouse and movie theater at 1851 Centre Avenue in the Hill District.
It was one of a small number of American theaters outside New York City dedicated exclusively to showing Yiddish plays and films.
Real-estate developer William Lando opened the theater in October 1928 and produced hundreds of performances over the next 14 years.
The Lando Theatre Posters [2018.0032] include two broadside posters from the final season at the theater: "The Girl from Warsaw" from November 1941 (seen here) and “Who Am I?” from February 1942.
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Research Tool:
Lando Theater listings
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The Lando Theater, 1928.
—Corinne Azen Krause Photographs [MSP 113]
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To accompany our entry on the Lando Theater, we’re making public our long-in-the-works database of every known event held at the theater.
The database lists approximately 640 theatrical performances, film screenings, benefit programs, and community meetings held at the theater between its opening October 1928 and its closing in April 1942. It includes the title, date and time for each production and occasionally includes expanded information such as cast and crew notes, performance descriptions, and ticket prices.
We are actively expanding this database. In the coming months, we hope to include information about Yiddish productions at other local venues.
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Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania:
Hebrew Ladies Aid Society
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Photograph showing 15 members of the Hebrew Ladies Aid Society on the steps of the Concordia Club on Stockton Street in Allegheny City, now the North Side of Pittsburgh.
—Corinne Azen Krause Photographs [MSP 113]
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The Hebrew Ladies Aid Society was the first charity in Western Pennsylvania organized by Jewish women. An early version of the organization was founded on June 4, 1855, but the group greatly expanded its operations and profile in December 1863, when it hosted a fundraiser to support the efforts of the U.S. Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. It eventually merged with the Hebrew Benevolent Society to form the United Hebrew Relief Association.
Our entry includes a photograph of the leaders of the society, articles describing its history, and a list of leading members during its early years.
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The Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania brings together numerous online resources into a clearinghouse for conducting research about Jewish history in this region. As we migrate information to this new website, we’ll be announcing new entries and resources in this section of the newsletter. |
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Jewish Chronicle, October 11, 1984 |
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Among the many inconveniences caused by the recent collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge is its impact on the Pittsburgh Eruv. Carrying outdoors is traditionally prohibited on the Sabbath by Jewish law, except within the boundaries of an eruv. Since its inception in 1985, the Pittsburgh Eruv has used the Fern Hollow Bridge and the hillside beneath it as part of its boundary.
For those interested in learning more about eruvin in Pittsburgh, the Rauh Jewish Archives has prepared a selection of historic documents about their use locally. Included are the 1978 feasibility study for the eruv, the original 1985 eruv guidelines, and a selection of newspaper articles about the establishment of the eruv and its impact on the Jewish community of Squirrel Hill—everything from the first brit milah (ritual circumcision) held in an Orthodox synagogue in Pittsburgh, to the ways real estate agents have used the eruv in their listings, to an art exhibit inspired by the eruv. A special document even gives a glimpse into religious life in the Hill District before the eruv. Also included is documentation of the establishment of the White Oak eruv.
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February 15
Black and Jewish Histories of the Hill District
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Rescheduled from January: Repair the World is hosting a panel on the overlapping and diverging Black and Jewish histories of the Hill District.
The Rauh Jewish Archives will join ACH Clear Pathways Director Tyian Battle, Multimedia Producer Njaimeh Njie, and Hill District community leader Terri Baltimore to communal institutions, partnerships and tensions, migration, arts and culture, racial justice uprisings, and more. The panel will be moderated by BOOM Concepts Co-Founder D.S. Kinsel.
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February 27
JGS Pittsburgh Presents: Laura Leibman
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An obsessive genealogist and descendent of one of the most prominent Jewish families since the American Revolution, Blanche Moses firmly believed her maternal ancestors were Sephardic grandees. Yet she found herself at a dead end when it came to understanding her grandmother’s maternal line.
In her talk "A Multiracial Jewish Family in Early America," Leibman overturns the reclusive heiress’s assumptions about her family history to reveal that her grandmother and great-uncle, Sarah and Isaac Brandon, actually began their lives poor, Christian, and enslaved in Barbados. Leibman traces the siblings’ journey around the Atlantic world, using artifacts they left behind in Barbados, Suriname, London, Philadelphia, and, finally, New York. While their affluence made them unusual, their story mirrors that of the largely forgotten people of mixed African and Jewish ancestry who constituted as much as 10 percent of the Jewish communities in which the siblings lived.
This is a virtual program. It will be recorded, and the recording will be made available for JGS-Pittsburgh members who are current on their dues.
This program is possible through the support of the William M. Lowenstein Genealogical Research Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation.
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Laura Arnold Leibman is Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College, VP of Publications (AJS), and the author of The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects (Bard Graduate Center, 2020) which won three National Jewish Book Awards. She held visiting positions at Bard Graduate Center, Oxford University, University of Utrecht, University of Panama. Her latest book Once We Were Slaves (Oxford UP, 2021) is about an early multiracial Jewish family who began their lives enslaved in the Caribbean and became some of the wealthiest Jews in New York.
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Dor Hadash calling for Bat Mitzvah photographs |
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Congregation Dor Hadash is asking the community for photographs of bat mitzvah celebrations past and present. The materials will be used as part of an upcoming celebration of the 100th anniversary of the first bat mitzvah in 1922.
The centennial weekend on March 19-20 will include speakers, workshops, and chances for people to share their personal experiences. To contribute or to learn more, contact the congregation at batmitzvah100@dorhadash.net.
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Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project |
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The home page of the new Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project website, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University Libraries. The redesigned website is launching this month. |
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By now, you're probably expertly zipping around the new Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project platform. But if you still need a little help navigating the features and tools of the website, the Rauh Jewish Archives recently contributed a brief explanatory article to the Jewish Chronicle. It provides some basic tips and techniques for conducting research using the new site.
We plan to provide a live virtual training workshop in the near future to review the website and its functionalities. Until then, we are here to help you troubleshoot problems. You can contact the archive or call 412-454-6406.
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[IMAGE: Marian Schreiber and employees at the Schreiber Trucking Company, c.1943—from Schreiber Family Papers and Photographs, MSS 846.]
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The Rauh Jewish Archives was founded on November 1, 1988 to collect, preserve, and make accessible the documentary history of Jews and Jewish communities of Western Pennsylvania. You can help the RJHPA continue its work by making a donation that will directly support the work being done in Western Pa. |
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Plan a Visit
Senator John Heinz History Center
1212 Smallman Street
Pittsburgh, Pa. 15222
412-454-6000
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A proud affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, the Senator John Heinz History Center is the largest history museum in Pennsylvania and presents American history with a Western Pennsylvania connection.
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