The Columbus Jewish Historical Society

Interviewer:  This interview for the Columbus Jewish Historical Society is being recorded on February 28^th, 2023 as a part of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society Oral History Project. The interview is being conducted at 1175 College Avenue.  My name is Cheryl Jacobs and I am interviewing Joel Schwartz.   Okay. First, tell me a little bit about your family’s history in Columbus.

Schwartz:  Okay. Well, my dad was actually born in Steubenville, Ohio to immigrant parents.  One came from the general Kiev area like a lot of our ancestors, and I think he came here in about 1908 as a child with his parents. And, my dad’s mother was born in Latvia and came here right before, well, really when World War I started. And they were all over the Midwest, in Chicago first and then went to the Pittsburgh/Steubenville area.   My dad was raised there.  He moved here when he was 15 and my dad was Otto Schwartz, an accountant here in town.  His brother Sam who was seven years older had come here to go to college and was married and had a baby and my dad was in the middle of high school and moved in with my uncle and his wife, Sam and Loretta, and so, my dad graduated from Bexley High School, even though technically I don’t think they lived in Bexley.  They worked it out and then he went to Ohio State.  He went in the service for a  while, and then came back, married my mom and stayed in Columbus.  My mom’s family is from Columbus.  My grandfather is Ben Cowall.  Ben was interviewed here back in the 80s, my grandfather, and he had a long Jewish history here in Columbus.  Some people will remember that he was a promoter.  He ran the Central Ticket Office.  He was the show guy back in 50s and the 60s and into the early 70s. And so, my mom was raised here, down in the South End.  They lived on a little street called Bide A Wee Park when she was a little girl and moved over to Whittier.  Driving Park which was the hot area, believe it or not, in the late 40s and early 50s and she graduated from South High School in 1949.  Then my parents were married in 1958 and I was born within a year so I’m taking their word for it on their wedding date, but who knows?  No, I’m just kidding.  Anyway, so I was the first of the kids and then my sisters, Toni and Steffanie were born shortly thereafter.  Toni’s about a year younger than me. I was born in December of ’58.  Toni was born December of ’59, and my sister Steffanie was born in June of 1962. And that’s a quick, quick synopsis of what went on, but I should say my mom’s dad, Ben Cowall, was the only Jewish fireman in Columbus before he became a promoter and I used to talk to some of the older guys, people my parents age and they would always tell me stories of how they would be on their way home from school and they would go in to visit the Jewish fireman over at, over down in the South End, back, I think he was on Fourth Street back then, down in the German Village area.

Interviewer:  What did your grandparents do for a living?

Schwartz:  Okay, well, as I said, my grandfather on my mom’s side was a fireman and then he got injured and left the fire department in the 1940’s and became a promoter.  He started doing promotions for the fire department actually, while he was still there, bringing a roller derby to town which was a really popular thing back in the 1940’s, right after the War, and then when he got injured and left the fire department, he started his own show promotions business which, at the time, he was the only guy in town.  He brought all the concerts to town and he used to host people at his house.  He lived on Broadleigh, 389 South Broadleigh, right off Fair Avenue and he had people like Bob Hope and Liberace and James Brown, all these people.  They’d come to his house for dinner and my grandmother was a homemaker and, you know, they would have all these people there.  I got to meet a lot of them, not all of those people.  I met Bob Hope once and [?] the Fair back then when I was a little kid I would go back in the trailer where the guys were and I remember meeting Johnny Cash, but the, and the Beach Boys and a couple of other people. You know, I was, like, eight to fourteen back in those days, you know, and when I was a little kid, the best was my grandfather took me to the big-time wrestling shows on Thursday nights.  My mom hated it because she was afraid I’d come home and body-slam my sisters or something, but I used to meet all the wrestlers, Bobo Brazil and The Sheik and all these people and it was a lot of fun.  My grandparents on my dad’s side, as I said they were immigrants.  My grandfather drove a laundry truck.  He was on the road from Wheeling to Steubenville to Pittsburgh during the week, and then he would be home on the weekends and he did that all through the Depression and the War and everything.  The interesting thing he had an eye removed from probably what they diagnosed back then was cancer. Who knows what they would have done today?  He drove a laundry truck on the road for 30 years after he had his eye removed and my dad used to say, he used to bump into everything.  He had no depth perception but he was a great guy. Both my grandparents on my dad’s side died when I was very young though.  My grandfather on my mom’s side, he lived to be 80, died in the late 80s.

Interviewer:  So, you mentioned your sisters, what was growing up like for you?

Schwartz:  Okay, so growing up was fun. You know, I don’t know how kids do it today.  We were outside all the time and running around and we didn’t have obviously computers and smart phones and all that kind of stuff   We lived on Bernhard Road kind-of, which today would be in the Walnut Ridge area, just outside of Whitehall and there were a million kids in that neighborhood of all religions, even a couple people, couple non-White families but mostly it was probably more Catholic kids than anything else because they seemed to have all the kids, We played ball in everybody’s yard.  We went in the streets.  We went to the pool.  My mom used to take us to the Jewish Center pool all the time in the summers.  I went to public school in kindergarten and first grade and then my parents weren’t too happy with the education they thought I was going to get so they moved me and my sister Toni to Torah Academy and I went second through eighth grade at Torah Academy.  There was no high school then at the Torah Academy.

Interviewer:  So, tell me a little bit more about why your parents chose Torah Academy.

Schwartz:  Okay. Well, I can’t quote my dad word for word but apparently, they went to a parent-teachers conference when I was in the first grade and he wasn’t too happy with the teacher and her assessment of me, although who knows?  It probably was right on, but he thought that they really weren’t teaching things.  Apparently, he thought I could already read and add and subtract when I was in the first grade.  That might be true. I don’t know.  Hard for me to remember back that far, but so he thought I wasn’t really learning quickly enough there and he thought I’d get a better education at Torah Academy and I think they wanted me to get a little bit more religious background, we, my sisters, too.  And we were members of Tifereth Israel which at that time was obviously Conservative shul and it didn’t matter at Torah Academy back then. Today it may be a little different story, there’s a little more emphasis on the Orthodox.  We learned Orthodox Judaism at Torah Academy but we had people of all ilks from all the different synagogues back then.

Interviewer:  Did your family regularly attend synagogue?

Schwartz:  Regularly, I don’t know.  I wouldn’t say that, but we went.  As I say, my grandparents died.  My dad’s parents died when I was young and he never missed a yahrzeit or anything and I always went with him even when I was a little kid and one of my great memories of going to minyan in the morning, which I still do sometimes, was when I was in the second grade and my grandfather passed away and my dad was going to minyan every morning and he used to take me and my sister Toni with him and then he would take us to school after and drop us off at school afterwards and it really has stuck with me all these years and I think it’s one of the reasons that I’ve tried to participate in minyans and still be involved significantly with Tifereth Israel.  The other thing I want to say about Tifereth Israel because I’ll forget later, was my great aunt, my grandfather’s sister, her name was Lottie Cohen and then she got married later, Lottie Lieberman.  She was Rabbi Zelizer’s secretary for over 30 years, from the 1940’s, well, maybe 25 years I suppose, from the mid-forties until about 1970. Interesting.

Interviewer:  Wow. So, my guess is you were bar mitzvahed at Tifereth Israel.

Schwartz:  So, I was bar mitzvahed at Tifereth in December of 1971 and that was a really big thing at Tifereth to have a Torah Academy kid.  They had a couple other ones, as I said, from Torah Academy at Tifereth, but, you know, we did the entire parsha, and part of the other service, and of course the haftarah and everything and that was not normally done with bar mitzvahs at a Conservative shul back then.

Interviewer:  Who was the rabbi then?

Schwartz:  The rabbi was still Rabbi Zelizer.  He had about maybe two or three years after that, I think.  He was there about 40 years. I think Rabbi Berman almost caught him, but Rabbi Zelizer was there a long time.

Interviewer:  As you grew older, how important was Judaism in your life?

Schwartz:  Well, Judaism’s always been important in my life, and I got really good basic instruction at Torah Academy and from my parents.  You know, we kept kosher in the house.  We were, but we’d go out to eat or we could bring treif in on paper plates, just, you know, we were typical middle class, Midwestern Jews, and, but, it was always in my head.   Now I’m going to be honest with you, from the time I was bar mitzvahed through college and law school, I didn’t go to shul  that often. I went on the holidays when I was home, and I would still go with my dad sometimes for his yahrzeits and occasionally we would go help out with a minyan which again, goes back to when I was a little kid, but I didn’t go regularly on Shabbos and neither did my parents, but we always knew we were Jewish.  We kept certain traditions and we always had seders and if we didn’t have seders at home we were at somebody’s house for seders and I’ll talk about that more in a minute.  Some of my greatest memories are some of the seders I went to, and you know, like I said, I still to this day, do I keep strictly kosher? No, but there’s things I don’t eat.  I’ve never had shellfish.  I don’t eat pork products. I rarely, if ever, have had milk and meat together.  Just, how I was brought up and it just stuck with me.

Interviewer:  So, your high school experience was Eastmoor.

Schwartz:  Correct.

Interviewer:  Tell me about that. How did you come from like, the Walnut Ridge area to go to Eastmoor?

Schwartz:  Alright. So, my parents for some reason just thought that the area where we were was starting to decline just a little bit and I don’t really remember that being so, although that area now is terrible, from my driving through there. I’m sure there are still nice pockets but that part of Columbus, is, but back in the late 60s and early 70s, Walnut Ridge was still a good high school, but I think my parents just thought there was more, I don’t know if it was just Judaism, but there was just more of a closer knit grouping of people, mostly Jewish in the Bexley/Eastmoor area.  There wasn’t quite the distinction between Bexley and Eastmoor back then. Eastmoor was an excellent high school and in fact, they even had a teacher that taught Hebrew there when I was there.  I didn’t take it because I had enough Hebrew, in my mind, going 2^nd through the 8th grade, but they, Eastmoor was an excellent school, produced a lot of smart kids but I think that’s kind of the area they wanted to be or where they felt we would have the best chance.

Interviewer:  Tell me about your friends growing up.

Schwartz:  So, I had a lot of friends, still do from childhood, Jewish and non-Jewish. As I said, when I lived out in the Walnut Ridge area, there were a lot of Jewish kids, but way more non-Jewish.  As I said, there were a lot of large Catholic families in the neighborhood.  Moving to Eastmoor, probably had a few more Jewish kids, and I am very close with Jewish, non-Jewish boys, girls, men, women, their parents still, the few that are still alive.  We’re all still really close. We did everything together.  We played ball daily.  We went to ball games.  We used to go to Columbus Jets games.  We used to go to Reds games, Indians games, all that kind of stuff. We weren’t shomer Shabbos.  We’d go to Ohio State basketball and football games and it was just a lot of fun.  Like I said, it was a mix.  The really interesting thing I can tell you from my childhood.  I’ll never forget.  I was still not at Torah Academy yet.  I was at Pinecrest and – it’s an elementary school that’s no longer there on the east side – I came home for lunch one day in the first grade and my mother had taken, took my sister to the hospital and we only had one car back then, so somebody drove her and took my sister to the hospital.  She’d had an accident and the neighbor was watching for me and came over and got me.  I was six years old, and brought me to her house for lunch and she served me a cheese sandwich while her other kids were eating meat, and she said – I found this out later from my mom told me the story later but I remember this happening – and the lady knew not to give me unkosher meat and gave me a cheese sandwich, and they were, again, the Larges [sp?] were their last name and they were Catholics and that’s just how it was. You know, everybody got along, like, back, there was no fighting about that kind of stuff.  There was other stuff, and then when I moved to Eastmoor, like I said, it was probably a little more Jewish but you know, I played baseball on the junior high team and played a little bit in high school, not much, and you know the kids were all different religions and we hung out altogether.  My best friend all through high school and my best friends were the Floxes.  People in this community, I’m sure, know Irvin and Barbara Flox and their son Martin, who was my age, went through Torah Academy and Eastmoor with me and his younger brother Brian, and as we got older, Brian and I became best friends.  Anyway, we, what I wanted to bring up earlier was, I had, we would go there for Passover seders for years as a young adult, from college age from when my parents didn’t have seders anymore, all the way through, gosh, up until I was maybe 50, and just so much fun, and sometimes my dad would come with me and, and just a ball.

Interviewer:  Wow. That’s terrific.  Okay, tell me about college and law school and what made you decide you wanted to be a lawyer.

Schwartz:  Okay. Well, as I said, my dad was an accountant.  I don’t think he loved it.  He had way too much personality for the typical accountant, and my Uncle Sam, his brother, was an accountant and he had a lot of personality too.  I didn’t mean it as an insult, but he was into being an accountant.  My dad wasn’t.  I always had kind of a head for math and that kind of thing and my dad used to always tell me when I was a kid, “You know, you’ve got a really logical brain for a kid.  You think things through.”  He used to say, “You’d always be, you’ll make a good lawyer.”  I don’t know if I’ve made a good lawyer.  I’ve made a lawyer, okay? Anyway, so, when I was in college, they used to have one night at the high school for all the colleges from around the state and some out-of-state would come to the school and you would go around and I went around and checked, checked a few of them out and decided the one that sounded best, interestingly enough, was Miami of Ohio, which, at the time, was fairly hard to get in for a state school. I don’t know if it is anymore.  I think, Ohio State’s tougher now but back then, if you could breathe, you could get in to Ohio State, and my dad didn’t want me to go to Ohio State.  He thought that I needed to get away and, you know, not be so dependent on my parents and the friends I had here and his big thing about going to college was not necessarily the classroom education that you got, but that you learned to live a little bit on your own and meet people from different places and he said, “If you lived at home, you’re not going to get that experience,”  and I think he turned out to be right, so, I went to Miami of Ohio.  To be honest with you, not a lot of Jews down there back then.  It’s a little better now but still not great, and I, made friends there.  I didn’t make a lot of long-lasting friends.  It’s weird, maybe one or two that I still talk to and I graduated almost fifty years ago, or forty-five years ago. Anyway, it was a good experience.  I think I got a good liberal arts education and while I was in school, I really didn’t know what I was going to do when I got out so, my junior year I decided I gotta’ go to grad school and I thought I’d either be a history or political science teacher or I might want to be a lawyer and talked to my parents and they encouraged me to go to law school and I’m glad they did.  I struggled mightily my first year of law school. Not sure that I liked it.

Interviewer:  Where did you go to law school?

Schwartz:  I’m sorry.  I went to Capital Law School here in Columbus, and as I started my second year, I took a Federal Income Tax course and I kind-of thought, well, you know, I know a lot about this stuff just from hearing my dad and my uncle talk all these years.   My mom worked for the Auditor’s Office for a little while here in the State of Ohio so I kind-of had an interest in that stuff and I was talking to my dad as my second year ended.  I said, “You know, Dad, they have these one year or one and a half-year post-law school courses at a few law schools around the country where you could get what’s called a Master’s in Tax Law.”  And my dad said, “Well, you’re going to have to borrow some money and I have no problem with that.  You’ll pay it back, so where do you think you’re going to go?  So, my choices were New York University and University of Miami, Florida, so I thought, well, I like the weather in Florida better, so I went there for a year, and I finished really a three-semester course in two semesters because I didn’t like it when it got really hot, so I wanted to get out of there in May and I had to do a thesis and all that kind of stuff, got my master’s in tax down there, and came back here, went to work.  I went to work for a firm for a while, a smaller firm, and after about six years I joined a couple other guys and then I went out on my own and I still have a tax bent to my practice  but it became mostly estate planning and probate and some business work.

Interviewer:  Do you feel like that helps you give back to the community?

Schwartz:  Absolutely. Absolutely.  That’s a great question.  One of the things I’m really interested in is, both the Jewish and secular community, is helping people out, whether it’s on a small basis or, or on a larger basis.  I taught for five years as an adjunct at Capitol Law School.  I taught a Tax Procedure course and enjoyed that and I’ve been involved as a board member at the shul and now I’m on the, they have, our shul at Tifereth Israel, has a Financial Foundation where we manage money and we try to get people to understand the long-term need for funds in the synagogue and I love doing that and my legal background helps me tremendously in understanding and conveying that.  I’m well aware of my ethical rules. I never push that on any of my clients – just thought I’d put that on the record – and I enjoy it.  I also for a long time was very involved with the Jewish Community Blood Drive.  I was either co-chair or chair for six years back in the 90s and think that has nothing to do with my law practice but one of the things I’m happy I was involved in and I still try to give blood occasionally.

Interviewer:  Your family has a history in this community.  If you say Sam Schwatrz or the Schwartz family, “everybody” knows.

Schwartz:  Right.

Interviewer:  How’s that to live up to?

Schwartz:  Well, first of all let me say, I’m very proud of my family in, both in the Jewish community and secularly. My parents had us all going to the Jewish Center when we were kids, playing ball and doing those kinds of things, but more than the Jewish Center and the shul, and Torah Academy, they’re just all good people.  They’re honest people.  They’re ethical people.  My father was known as the kind of guy who was a kind-of a joker and all that kind of stuff, but the kind of person that would give the shirt off his back to someone.  He never made a lot of money.  He kind-of told me that “You know what? There’s only a certain amount of money you need.  If you make more, great, but do something with it other than just, you know, be a chazer and spend it on yourself.” And those were, those were his words and he was like that.  If the client came in and was having a hard time, he spent time with him. He didn’t say, “Oh, you know, I gotta’ bill  x-amount of dollars an hour,” and I’ve kind of run my practice as a lawyer that way, and I’ll never forget. My dad did my, did my taxes up until the year before he died which is now 14 years ago and he would look at me every time he handed my tax return back to me.  He would say, “You know, every year you’re doing a little bit better.”  He goes, “I’m really proud of you,” he goes, “but I’m more proud of you that you teach at the law school and you’re involved with in the Blood Drive and I see you at shul in the mornings helping out with the minyan.” And that’s the kind of person he was.  Sam Schwartz, little different attitude and, of course, he wasn’t my dad.  He was the kind of guy that was a little bit more serious, although he could tell a joke, that’s for sure, but he taught me to take pride in my work. If he would sit down in his later years and talk to me a little bit about that kind of stuff, and I’ll tell you what, they also referred me a lot of business when I was young so I appreciate that.

Interviewer:  So, tell me about your own family, your kids, your wife.

Schwartz:  So, I don’t have any children. So, I’ve been married twice. I was married to a wonderful person Robin Brilliant and we just, it just didn’t work out for us.  We were married for five years. Robin was the only Jewish kid from Worthington High School back in 1976 when she graduated, she and her siblings.  There were no other Jewish kids back then.  Her dad was a dental professor at Ohio State and they lived in Worthington.  I met her when I was around 30 years old. I had never been married before and we were married for about five years. We lived in Berwick and in South Bexley and after we were divorced, I was single for another five or six years and I married Karen Dietch.  Karen is Jewish.  She went to Eastmoor a few years ahead of me.  She was actually my dental hygienist.  She worked for Mark Smilack for 33 years and I know Mark’s got a great reputation and then she left Mark after all that and worked another eight years for another dentist here in town on the east side. And, as I said, she was my dental hygienist from the time I was, she started being a hygienist when I was in college, so she was actually my hygienist and the big joke was, “I went in there to get my teeth cleaned. Next thing I knew I was standing in front of Rabbi Berman saying ‘I what?’” but that’s a joke. Karen’s great. She was a consummate professional when she was working. She’s now retired. Lucky her and that’s why I work every day.

Interviewer:  So, if someone were to come up to you and ask you, “Is Judaism still a part of your life?” what would you say?

Schwartz:  Judaism is still a very large part of my life. As I said, I try to help out with minyans. I read Torah at the shul a couple times a year [transcriber’s note: and haftarah.]  I am involved with the Foundation.  I try to get my two cents in whenever asked, I try not to butt in too much.  I have a history with all the clergy that’s been there for the last forty years which is mostly Rabbi Berman, then Rabbi Ungar, ‘course and now Rabbi Skolnik and Rabbi Braver and I was good friends with Cantor Chomsky, but mostly Judaism is important to me in that I am concerned that the younger people, and I’m sure this happens in every generation, don’t see the need for it in the future.  They don’t, they’re not pushing their children towards it and it’s not [recording skips] that our religion which is better or worse than any other religion, but I feel Judaism to me is something that has kept me going from an ethical standpoint and a professional standpoint and a family standpoint, all three of those things and that we take what we’ve learned in the past and we impart that on the younger people and it keeps us going as human beings and you could probably say the same thing in any religion but Judaism’s the one I know and I want to see it keep going.

Interviewer:  So, you kind-of just answered my next question, but what kind of legacy would you like to leave to this community?

Schwartz:  That’s a great question.  I don’t care if they don’t remember my name or who I was but people have said in the past, you want to leave this place a little better off than when you came in.  I really feel that way.  I want people to do the good that Judaism teaches and that good lawyers teach and good people in other professions teach and that is, to do the best you can and help the next generation to make it a little bit better for them.

Interviewer:  You have nieces and nephews.

Schwartz:  I do.

Interviewer:  Do you talk to them about the way you feel?

Schwartz:  I do and I don’t.  As I probably was, although not as much, when you get in to your late teens until you’re probably around early 30s, you tend to be really into yourself and so, that’s the age group where my nieces and nephews are. I have two sisters with kids.  My sister Toni who lives in Powell has three children.  One lives in Pittsburgh and I, unfortunately don’t get to see or talk to him, but her other two children live in Bexley and I don’t see them a lot but I do talk to them and yeah, I try to tell them some of that stuff.  Unfortunately, they’re not real into Judaism but they are good kids. Actually, my niece Samantha is 40 years old now and she’s got three kids of her own that are elementary school age.  My nephew Jeff who also lives in Bexley has got a pregnant wife so we’ll see what happens after they have a child. Sometimes, I think they like to see their Uncle Joel but Uncle Joel sometimes is a little bit, how shall I put it, blunt?  I don’t criticize but if asked [? recording skips] I’m not afraid to answer it. I’d be telling them because these things are important.  My sister Steffanie, who I think you know, Cheryl, she lives in Hilliard and she’s got two kids who I’m a little closer to in some ways.  One is a graduate of, also of Miami University and she lives in Atlanta now.  She’s trying to be an actress and I talk to her a couple times a year and always encouraging her and she’s a really good person.  I mean, she’s got a heart of gold and I think she’s got a lot of passion for what she does and whether or not she becomes an actor or not, she will do well in life. Steffie’s other son also goes to Miami.  He’s a sophomore and he’s probably the one I’ve been closest to in the most recent years because he’s got his usual struggles that young guys go through which has to do with schooling, social life and girls and I can kind-of remember all the struggles I had so I talk to him and we joke around and everything and I try to impart. Steffie is, she’s a little bit like me as far as, she’s got a more of a sentimental side and sense of humor and so she, I think, she kind of imparts that kind of stuff on her kids. So, there’s hope in our family.

Interviewer:  Anything you’d like to say that I didn’t ask you?

Schwartz:  I don’t think so.  I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Interviewer:  On behalf of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society, I want to thank you for contributing to the Oral History Project.  This concludes our interview.

 

Transcribed by Linda Kalette Schottenstein April 2023