The Columbus Jewish Historical Society

This interview for the Columbus Jewish Historical Society is being recorded on May 19, 2010, as part of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society’s Oral History Project and the Beth Tikvah History Project.  This interview is being recorded at the home of Rose and Manfred Luttinger. And I, the interviewer, am Helena Schlam and I will be interviewing Manfred Luttinger.

Interviewer:   Manny, how long have you lived in Columbus?  And when you tell us that, tell us where you lived before coming to Columbus.

Luttinger:  Hello, Helena.  I came to Columbus in June of 1957.  I was actually born in Manheim, Germany in 1932 on October 15, 1932.  Because of the Hitler, Nazi regime, my parents and I were fleeing Germany in 1939.  It was already after the outbreak of the war.  We were able to go into Switzerland and I lived in Switzerland until 1948.  My father had passed away while we were living in Switzerland from natural causes, and we came to the United States to my mother’s family in New York in August of 1948.  I then went to high school and eventually to college and got a degree in chemistry, worked in New York for about 3 to 4 ½ years and then went on to take a job at Battelle in Columbus, Ohio.  As I said, I came here in June of 1957, brought my mother over, and my mother and I lived here for a while.  And that’s how I got to the present point.

Interviewer:  Well, tell us a little bit about your family and your Jewish experience while growing up.  But to begin with, perhaps you can tell us about your father and mother?

Luttinger:  Yes, both of my parents were Jewish.  They had been born in Chernowitz, in the Bukovina, and at the time that they were born that was the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.  After the first World War, Austria was dismantled and Chernowitz became part of Rumania.  It eventually became part of Russia or Ukraine after the Second World War.  My father had been in the Austrian army after the first World War.  They ended up in, both my parents ended up in Manheim, Germany, where they met, were married.  They had a photo store in Manheim. Germany during the Hitler years, already the early years of the Hitler years, ran into a lot of difficulties, too lengthy for us to go into at this point.  Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, my parents and I were able to get out of Germany.  We fled into Switzerland illegally, where we spent the war years.   My father passed away there in Switzerland.  Both my parents were Jewish.  My mother was Orthodox, deeply religious, kept a very kosher household.  My father was not all that much involved in the Jewish religion, but we regularly went to High Holiday services and fasted during Yom Kippur.  And that’s our early background.

Interviewer:  And what about your grandparents?  Had they lived in Germany before or where were they from originally?

Luttinger:  Both of my grandparents would have been from either Chernowitz itself or the surroundings of Chernowitz.  My mother, for example, was born in Sadagora, which is on the outskirts of Chernowitz.  Her parents lived there, all of a Jewish background, highly Orthodox.  My father’s parents, he was orphaned when he was about two years old.  His mother died.  He had a very large family, and so his father was not able to take care of him, and he gave him up to an aunt and uncle.  So he grew up with that aunt and uncle until he was about 16 years old.  At that point he left for Vienna on his own.  A couple of years after that he went to Zurich, Switzerland, and after living in Switzerland for many, many years, and learning how to be a photographer, which was his profession, he went into the Austrian army during the first World War.

Interviewer:  That’s quite a history.  And certainly your childhood was not such an easy one, but perhaps we’ll skip to your coming to the United States.  You can tell us about where you went to university of did you go to school in America before you went to university?

Luttinger:  When I came to the United States, I wasn’t quite 16 years old yet.  I still had to do some high school. I started out for a brief time in Tilden High School in Brooklyn, and then we moved to Manhattan.  I went to George Washington High School from where I graduated with an academic degree and entered City College of New York in 1952 I believe.   No, actually it had to be earlier.  It had to be in 1950.  Yeah, 1950.  And then I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in chemistry from City College.  That was in 1954.  I went to graduate school at Brooklyn Polytech, took a number of courses but did not get a degree.  I went to evening school at Brooklyn Poly while I was on my first job in New York.

Interviewer: And what was your first job?

Luttinger: The first job I had in New York was for the Daniel Products Company.  It was basically working in the field of organic coatings and additives used in coatings technology.

Interviewer:  When you arrived in America, were you able to speak English already.  I’m sure you had studied it.

Luttinger:  I had had about a half a year of English instructions in the secondar schule in Switzerland which is the equivalent of our high school here.  I didn’t speak a lot of English but as I went to high school, they put me into a German class so while my compatriots in that classroom who were learning German, they were translating it into English, it gave me an opportunity to learn the English so that was my entry into learning English in Brooklyn.  And from then on, you know, you go to school and you keep learning and eventually I caught on.

Interviewer:  I would say so.  That’s an interesting way to learn English.  Well, let’s get to the years in Columbus.  How did you meet your wife and how long have you been married?

Luttinger:  Well, as I said, I was in Columbus since 1957 and I had, I started to take some dancing lessons with Arthur Murray and there I met a young woman by the name of Mary and we went out social dancing.  We weren’t very much involved.  At least, I wasn’t.  I got the feeling after a while that Mary might have thought that there was more to it.  So when my mother got wind of the situation, she came to the rescue, and she made sure that I went to the Young Adults in the Jewish Center.  And that was a group of young people in their late teens and early twenties.  Rose was there.  I was there and that’s how we got started.  We were married then in 1962 and um…

Interviewer:  Where were you married?

Luttinger:  We were married by the Agudas Achim rabbi, Rabbi Rubenstein, in the home of Rose’s aunt, Aunt Rose and Uncle Abe, in their backyard.

Interviewer:  So Aunt Rose and Uncle Abe were, their last name?

Luttinger: Wolman.

Interviewer:  Aha.  So then, you had a garden wedding?

Luttinger: Yes.

Interviewer:  Very nice.  And after you were married, did you attend Agudas Achim?  Or you weren’t involved until you became involved with Beth Tikvah.

Luttinger:  I was never involved with Agudas Achim.  Rose was through her family.  My mother and I attended Tifereth Israel up until that time.  And after Rose and I were married, it seems to me that we even attended Tifereth Israel yet the first year.  Perhaps, I think that’s the case, but then very shortly thereafter, we became aware of a new congregation forming on the north side of Columbus, not that far from where we lived.  And we became involved in Beth Tikvah.  Are you interested in the details of that?

Interviewer:  Very much.  You must have been involved with Beth Tikvah from the very beginning.

Luttinger: Not from the very beginning, but from about 1962-63 on.  I had heard that there was this congregation on a rented house the corner of High Street and East North Broadway.   I was coming, I was driving down East North Broadway and I looked over to where the house was, and I saw some people working in the back yard.  So I parked the car and then went over to see what was going on.  And they were building a sukkah.  There was a man, who I later discovered whose name was Milt Lessler.  He said, “Oh, welcome.  Are you Jewish?”  I said, “Yes, I am.”  And he said, “Well, here’s a hammer; let’s build the sukkah together.”  And before I knew it, I was a member.

Interviewer: That’s a wonderful story.  So were you already working at Battelle by that time?

Luttinger:  I had worked at Battelle from the very beginning when I came here in 1957.  So I’ve been employed by Battelle from that time on to the present.  Although I’m now retired for I think close to a dozen years or so, I’m still working part-time at Battelle.

Interviewer: We’ll return to Battelle.  Please let’s continue with BethTikvah.  Can you tell us about your experience in general and then your specific involvements with the congregation.

Luttinger:  Well, when I joined Beth Tikvah, it was around 1963 roughly, or 1964.  The exact date is vague because Rose and I attended Beth Tikvah for a while without considering ourselves members.  But then I was asked by the then president, Harold Chern, whether I would join.  And I said I wasn’t quite sure yet whether we were prepared to make that kind of a commitment, but I would make a contribution.  And he asked me what that contribution would consist of.  I said it would be $100, and he said, “Well, that’s enough to be a member.”  And I was a member.  And I remember very shortly thereafter I graduated to the full-membership dues of $150, and it’s been going up ever since.

Interviewer:  Well, that is also a wonderful story to begin with.  And do you recall how large the congregation was approximately at that time?

Luttinger:  You know, I’m not entirely sure how large.  It seems to me it may have been as little as 30 families, perhaps 30 or 35 families or so.  It depends on when you start. We started no later than ’63, and were members certainly no later than ’64.  At the time when I started, as I said, Harold Chern was President.  We did not yet have a rabbi.  We organized to have a student rabbi come from HUC in Cincinnati.  That was Rabbi Rayner.  Rabbi Rayner, it turns out, was already was a fully ordained rabbi in England.  In fact, he was a rather significant rabbi there, but he had come for additional studies at HUC.  And we were very lucky to have such an experienced gentleman come and be with us every two weeks.  That lasted for a couple of years, perhaps, until he left his position.  And we then had another student rabbi by the name of Bennett Hermann.  Actually, Bennett Hermann joined us before he graduated and became a full rabbi, and I still remember going down to Cincinnati with a group of Beth Tikvah members and being at his ordination in Cincinnati at the Plum Street Temple, which was exciting and memorable.  So he became our full rabbi after that, and in fact, I remember Harold Chern asking a number of the members at the time, myself included, whether we would make a commitment to be prepared to spend up to $1000 if necessary to pay Rabbi Hermann’s salary in case we fell short.  And everybody who was asked, I think it was about ten people, said that they would do so, and it was never necessary because we kept growing and the dues commitments were enough to pay Rabbi Hermann’s salary.

Interviewer:  You don’t happen to recall what his beginning salary was approximately?

Luttinger:  If I remember right, I think we offered him a rather low salary of $10,000 a year.  Now he hadn’t been married (he was married) and he thought it was an opportunity to be at a brand new congregation, close to Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, so he accepted that starting salary which I think was rather low, even for that time.  But as time went on we started increasing that substantially.

Interviewer: That is a very nice historical bit that you were recalling.  Well, what were the ways in which you were involved in the congregation?  Did you participate in Services, lead Services, I should have asked?

Luttinger: You know, with a very young congregation like that, going to Services was like participating in a family.  People felt, I think Rose and I also did, it was an obligation because with a small group we never knew if there would be a minyan or not.  So we went because it was a mitzvah.  Before very long it also became a friendship circle.  So we loved going.  We went quite regularly, which I can’t say is what we have been doing in recent years.  So yes, we went quite often and I was very much interested in Adult Education and I asked for us to start such a group.  And already Rabbi Rayner started with some lectures.  And then during Rabbi Hermann’s student years, officiating every two weeks, we started with a couple of books. I could probably even remember what they were but not right off hand.  Maybe later we’ll add this on.

Interviewer: Good, so you had an active Adult Education program from the very beginning.

Luttinger: From the very beginning, yes.  The second book I do remember it was by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver.  It was called “Moses and the Original Torah.”   But we also did a book before then that dealt with Jewish History and I can’t recall the name of that one.

Interviewer: Well those are special recollections.  When did you begin to have an office, before you became President of Beth Tikvah? Did you hold another office, or what can you tell us leading up to your time as President of the congregation?

Luttinger:  I don’t recall how long it was.  It was a very, very short time only when I was asked to become a Board member.  Beth Tikvah had just undergone an internal conflict.  There were people at Beth Tikvah who wanted the congregation to be Conservative, or more traditional.  There were others who wanted the congregation to be Reform.  In fact, there were people in the congregation at the very beginning who wore yalmukas to Services and others who did not.  I wore a yalmulka because I was used to that.  An election was coming up and the person who was standing to be elected as President was Sandy Shapiro.  He was with the group that wanted to go Conservative and wanted to keep the practices on the Conservative side.  Even though I wore a yalmulka, I had spoken out repeatedly in favor of moving into a new form of Jewish practice, Reform practice.  I was intrigued by that.  There were people there who had been there from the very beginning.  They were rather influential, I’m thinking specifically about the Slonim family.  They approached me, I’d been at Beth Tivkah a very short time, I think two years at the most, maybe even less. And they asked me whether I would stand for election side-by-side with Sandy Shapiro so there could be a contest between the Reform wing and the Conservative wing.  Well I thought this was wholly inappropriate.  For a small congregation like that this was not the way we should be pulled apart.  I refused and I think until this moment not too many people know that I was asked to oppose Sandy Shapiro.  Sandy was duly elected.  We went forward and we made changes from time to time in one direction or another.  I don’t remember how many years, again it couldn’t have been very long, maybe at most two years or possibly three years after that, I was asked to run for President.  Everybody at that time was running for President unopposed.  I was elected as President to the one year term which was typical for that time.  Just prior to my election, I remember that Walter Loeb was President.  I do remember that, after Harold Chern, Morris Ojalvo was President.  Perhaps Sandy Shapiro came after him.  Perhaps somebody else was in between there as well, I’m uncertain.  But then Walter Loeb was President and then it was my turn.   After me came Bill Gilbert, after Bill Gilbert, came Marty Seltzer. But there is a story I would like to tell you about my period as President.

Interviewer: Good.

 Luttinger: Because I was, I’d barely been elected President when Walter Loeb, the immediate Past President, came to see me.  I remember distinctly, he and I, he was at the University.  He came to Battelle.  We met in the lobby and he was saying that his wife, Lori, felt very unhappy with Rabbi Hermann.  She didn’t think that he was responsive to the things she was interested in.  A lot of people in the Sisterhood didn’t like Rabbi Hermann for one reason or another.  I never really fully understood what their complaint was because I thought he was doing a really good job.  But they wanted for us to fire Rabbi Hermann and to look for a new rabbi. And that’s what Walter Loeb was there to ask of me.  It came as a thunderbolt.  I had had no indication of that until that moment.  And he must have seen this on my face because he started to back track and say, “Well, of course, if you feel strongly against it, maybe we won’t do that.”  That’s what I told him.  I said I would have no part of this, I would oppose it.  Walter didn’t do anything more about that except that it came to a head during Bill Gilbert’s year and the relationship between the Sisterhood and some members of the congregation and Rabbi Hermann deteriorated and he finally had to leave and we were looking for a new rabbi.  That’s a different story under Marty Seltzer’s year as President.

Interviewer: That is an important historical vignette and very interesting.  Was the Sisterhood established, do you know, from the very beginning?

 Luttinger: The Sisterhood was established from the very beginning.  You’ve got to remember that in the 1960’s, we’re talking about the mid ‘60s, a lot of women were not yet working and even though they may have had small children at home, and we had mostly young families with a few exceptions, women were very active in the synagogue doing all kinds of work that we were unable to pay for.  Basically they were unpaid help.  The Sisterhood, also in addition to having those functions, like for example taking care of the kitchen and Oneg Shabbats and on and on and on.  In addition to all that, they very often also helped with fund raising and we had some major fund raising events that they had organized.  So they were a very important and absolutely necessary part of Beth Tikvah from the very beginning.

Interviewer:  I’m glad I asked about that.  What do you remember as the most significant things that you dealt with when you were President of Beth Tikvah?

 Luttinger:   There are probably two things I should relate here.  One of them, you know we  had been in that rented house on High Street and East North Broadway and then we moved from there to a new facility that we were able to buy with the help of Mr. (Jack) Resler, who already became involved in those early years at Beth Tikvah.  So we were on Indianola Avenue in our own facility but it was a very small facility and it was quickly becoming inadequate.  So we were looking for a way to sell that building and we were looking for moving into a new facility.  Mr. Resler was very much involved in advising us and also making a significant donation in that direction.  Well Mr. Resler, based on his involvement, he was a long-time member of Temple Israel, based on his involvement he became a member of the Board, the Beth Tikvah Board while I was President.  Well we were running the Board the way a bunch of young people who knew nothing about that sort of thing were running the Board.  We were discussing things of interest to us and he was practically tearing his hair out because as far as he was concerned we should be talking about financial issues and solvency and things of this sort, the business of the congregation, and not philosophy of one kind or another. I remember that he took us to task quite frequently but we stood our ground because to us it was very important what we were discussing at the Board meetings.  The other event I need to relate is Bill Gilbert had been the Treasurer right up to the time that I was elected President.  And then Rabbi Hermann, who had asked me to be President and solicited me, he convinced me to become President because he said, “Look, I also have some other officers who are very, very capable and therefore  it’ll be easy for you to take on that responsibility.”  The then Treasurer was a lawyer from the east side, also a member of Temple Israel, I believe, Mr. Irv Barkan.  Irv Barkan joined the Board as Treasurer.  He made a very nice contribution to the congregation as part of his membership.  But he was not used to being a Treasurer with the responsibilities of sending out letters to people and collecting funds from people, funds that were in arrears very often, and he went the better part of my year there without collecting any funds.  And as you can well imagine we were on the point of bankruptcy.  But Mr. Barkan, who had a very lucrative law firm downtown, while he wasn’t doing his job as Treasurer very well, he bailed us out with his own personal money.  So Bill Gilbert was called back in again to try and straighten us out late in my term when we realized just how badly things had gone.  And Bill was able to turn this around and Irv Barkan continued as a valued member of the congregation and we got back on an even keel.  But there for awhile, while I was President, it looked rather bleak.

Interviewer:  That was a challenge.  Were there other challenges that you had to face?

Luttinger:  These are probably the main things that come to my mind.  As I said there must have been some conflict between the Sisterhood and Rabbi Hermann.  I was not fully aware just how bad they were and they came to a head after I left office.

Interviewer: Let me ask again about the type of Service.  Since Rabbi Hermann was ordained at Hebrew Union College, did he represent a Reform Service or was the congregation still thinking in Conservative terms?

Luttinger: We definitely had a Reform Service but we were still using the Conservative prayer book that had been given to us perhaps, I believe, by Tifereth  Israel.

And there were members in the congregation, even though we had voted as a congregation to allow people to make their own personal decision whether they were going to wear a kippah or not to wear a kippah.  There was a lot of personal decision making.  The congregation did not make final rules.  But there was a minority of people who were opposed to a change in prayer book.  So while Rabbi Hermann was officiating, early on in the congregation, we were still using the Conservative prayer book, but he prevailed on us. He had some meetings and he was teaching us what was different about the two different prayer books.  And as the more Conservative membership declined relative to the newcomers who were more Reform, we then made the decision, I don’t remember if it was during my year as President, but somewhere those early years, we decided to move over to the Reform prayer book and basically the Services were Reform, although we used quite a bit of Hebrew from the very beginning and continued doing that.

Interviewer: And do you remember whether you read the whole portion of the Torah each week or just selections or do you remember anything specifically about how you did the Service?

Luttinger: We had a small Torah Scroll.  If I remember right, I think it was Bill Gilbert who was the source of finding that somewhere among his acquaintances in Chicago, I believe.  And he brought that to the congregation and we used it regularly to read from the Torah.  But how much we read, or didn’t read, I don’t recall.

Interviewer:  Well, what about your accomplishment as the President? 

Luttinger: I would say the main accomplishment was that we continued. (Laughs)

Interviewer: That’s an accomplishment.

Luttinger:  Given some of the circumstances I’ve already related, it could have easily gone the other way.  But we held together and we moved forward in a regular way.  The congregation kept growing.  I believe by the time I was President we had at least 50 families, I think more like between 50 and 70, thereabouts.  I’m guessing at the numbers. I don’t have that at my fingertips.

Interviewer:  At that time did the Northside Jewish Community group exist or were you aware of such a group?

 Luttinger:  The Northside Jewish Community Association had existed already from the    late 1950’s, I believe.  In fact, Rose and I were members of that group before we came to Beth Tikvah.  Beth Tikvah grew out of that organization.  Once we became members of Beth Tikvah, however, our membership at the Northside group ended because we didn’t have such close relations with them.  We had made a commitment to Beth Tikvah and we were no longer members there.  They continued on for quite a number of years and I’m not sure for how long that went on.

 Interviewer: Well what else can you think of that would be important for the history of Beth Tikvah to remember?

 Luttinger:  Well the main other point after my presidency, as I said, Bill Gilbert was next in line and after him came Marty Seltzer.  At that point, Rabbi Hermann left.  We started interviewing some rabbis and again we were very young and inexperienced.  We didn’t know how one does that.  So we had the whole congregation come in and talk to every rabbinic candidate and they saw what we were doing and I think they wanted no part of us.  It took us a long time to make a decision in the first place and when we finally did decide on one of these, Marty Seltzer now was President.  He gave him a call and that particular candidate already had another position.  So he made another call and again that candidate had another position and we very quickly realized that we’re not going to have a rabbi that year. Marty Seltzer, I think, panicked.  Most of the rest of us who had been there earlier, before there was a rabbi, knew that we could continue quite comfortably.  We had people who knew how to lead the Service.  We could continue and look for a rabbi and that would work out fine.  But Marty had not seen the congregation, I think, without a rabbi and he was really very concerned.  Being responsible for the congregation, as he felt, he thought for sure we had to have a rabbi.  Somewhere along the line, we found another rabbi who had been a rabbi in Michigan (in Niagara Falls, he went to Jackson, Michigan).  That was Rabbi (Alan) Ponn.  We interviewed him, this time just a small group. I was part of that group of I think six or eight people. The answers Rabbi Ponn gave made it crystal clear to me there was no meeting of the minds whatsoever.  What he wanted from a congregation and the way he was officiating was in no way related to who we were.  So we left that meeting and I thought we’re going to get together and make a decision about Rabbi Ponn and I was quite sure that Rabbi Ponn would not be our rabbi.  The next thing I heard was that Marty had talked to one or two other people and they decided yes we need a rabbi and they hired Rabbi Ponn.  I was amazed.  The argument that I was given was that they hired Rabbi Ponn, they thought that even if it didn’t work out, because he was single, it wouldn’t be that difficult for us to find a new rabbi and he could leave a year afterwards.  But for this year Rabbi Ponn would be our rabbi.  And of course, when the end of the summer came along and we were getting ready for the High Holidays, Rabbi Ponn came to town to get ready.  He brought his newly married wife with three children with him, which is something we were totally unawares of.  She actually turned out, I think she made a wonderful rebbitzin. But all my fears were realized.  He was not a rabbi for Beth Tikvah.  There was a total disconnect.  We didn’t relate to him, he didn’t relate to us.  Just think of it this way, we’re a university group, mostly young people.  He was used to wearing a black gown to Friday evening Service, okay, that should tell you something. You know, that’s basically the story of Rabbi Ponn.  Beyond that we went forward from there.  Our next rabbi was Rabbi (Marc) Raphael. He was a part-time rabbi.  Things worked out very well after that.  Marty Seltzer, turns out because of the problem with Rabbi Ponn, he was the first President to take a two-year term.  He took a second year.  I have a lot of respect for what he did even though I thoroughly disagreed with his decision to hire Rabbi Ponn.

Interviewer: That is a wonderful story that’s important to be part of the history.  Before I move on to asking you about Battelle are there other things that would be good to record about Beth Tikvah?

Luttinger: Well probably nothing of a deep or fundamental historical significance.  You know the congregation kept changing.  Our practices kept changing.  For example we went regularly on Retreats every spring.  They were very successful.  Rose and I were deeply involved in organizing the Retreats for many years.  The rabbi was an important part of organizing the Retreat and being with us at the Retreat.  We also had an agreement, and that was Harold Chern’s doing, we had an agreement that, when we went away to a Retreat, typically in southern Ohio, that weekend Beth Tikvah would be open to people who were not at the Retreat and they would have a Service at Beth Tikvah, even if it was without the rabbi.  We did that for many years and Harold Chern saw to that.  One can talk about Beth Tikvah literally for hours but I think, from a historical standpoint, I’ve told you everything that’s significant.

Interviewer: I have one question about the Retreat.  Was there always a theme or a subject of study?  How did you, since you say that you and Rose were involved in organizing them, what was the organizing principle?

 Luttinger: Yes, there always was a theme for the weekend.  We would meet Friday evening at one of the southern Ohio parks, the state parks.  We would meet there and we would have individual cabins and we would meet in one of those cabins and have a Service.  Then we’d have a discussion on the theme that we picked.  On Saturday morning we would have another Service, usually out in the wild, weather permitting.  We were usually quite lucky in that regard.  We’d come back and we’d have a picnic.  We’d have some light lunch together.  We’d have an evening discussion in the cabin and then again a Sunday morning discussion.  Then everybody would leave.  The way this was organized was that the Adult Education Committee, already some months before the Retreat, would get together with the rabbi.  We would pick a theme.  We’d find some other members who would also participate in the Retreat.  They would participate.  They would help us lead the theme, the discussion.  It was an Adult Education program basically, including families with their children and a family outing combined with that.

Interviewer:  It sounds like a very rich experience and that leads me to the question about your son because I know you have a son, David.  Did he attend the Retreats? Also what was his Jewish experience in Columbus like?

Luttinger:  David was born in 1969.  We had already been members of Beth Tikvah for five or six years, or seven years even.  We had been very active.  Many times people become active when they have children.  We were active and then had our child. So yes we brought him with us, as a toddler, to Services.  We brought him with us to the Retreats when he was quite young.  I think my mother actually came to some of the early Retreats with David and she was babysitting him while we were doing our thing, our adult thing.  So he went to Sunday School at Beth Tikvah and he was Bar Mitzvahed in the new facility by Rabbi Gary Huber.  I got it wrong.  It was Rabbi Tony Holz who Bar Mitzvahed him.  He was with Rabbi Huber in the Confirmation Class.

Interviewer: He went to high school in Arlington?

Luttinger: He went to high school in Arlington, yes.

Interviewer: There weren’t so many Jews at that time?

Luttinger:  There were a few Jews.  He actually experienced some anti-semitism but he had Jewish friends (from his Hebrew School car pool) who were pretty big.  When they found out about it they stepped in and this anti-semitism ended fast.  The kids got away.

Interviewer: What kind?  Did they call him names?  You don’t remember what it was?

Luttinger: No, he was never very communicative.  I just found out, I think, after this had already been going on for awhile.  I don’t know, that they made anti-semitic remarks to him and he was getting into fights and that’s when he got the help of some of the older kids, the older Dritz boy, Greg.

Interviewer:  He also attended Arlington High School?

Luttinger: He was a little older, at least by a couple of years.  When he became aware of that, he stepped in and he shooed these anti-semites away and David never had any more problems along that line.

Interviewer: That’s a touching story.  Well I also want to ask you about your experience at Battelle, and as part of that, how did being Jewish come to play during your career?

 Luttinger:  I started in as a research chemist in the laboratory.  I enjoyed the work immensely, had a great deal of individual initiative that we could employ.  The work was fascinating and stimulating.  There was always something new.  You never did the same thing twice.  I got more and more responsibilities as I was there longer and longer.  After a while I had some people assigned to me.  My religion never really became an issue.  Nobody ever raised the question.  I still remember the very first year I was there.  That’s long before I was married.  High Holy Days came along and I went to see my supervisor, a name, can’t even remember the man’s name now.  Went to see him, I said, “Look, High Holy Days are coming along and I’m Jewish, I’m going to take off.  I really think that should not count against my leave, my vacation,” which was unheard of.  But I think I took him so by surprise.  I can still remember how startled he looked. First of all, he probably didn’t know I was Jewish.  My name is not Jewish.  And he looked so startled, he said “Okay.”  After I realized how things were being done, I took vacation the way everybody did when I took off for High Holy Days.

 Interviewer: So you were saying that you took vacation like everybody else for the High Holidays after the first time?

Luttinger: Yes.  There were not very many other Jewish people in my department, actually there were two, two other Jews in my department.  I had never heard that they experienced any anti-semitism.  I certainly did not.  I ran into somebody in management who was very hostile.  I don’t think it was because of anti-semitism.  I quickly became known as having a liberal outlook on politics.  This guy was an ultra Conservative.  I think he had a French Canadian background.  So there were some frictions between us but I don’t think they were religious and they didn’t amount to a whole lot either.

Interviewer: Well how did you choose to live in Arlington which hasn’t always had a reputation for being welcoming to Jews?

Luttinger: Well when I first came to Battelle and interviewed here and then took a job here, I looked around for a place nearby.  It seemed to me you go to work and you come home every single day and whatever time you spend going back and forth is lost time.  So I wanted to live close to Battelle and, therefore, actually my first place where I lived was in Grandview Heights.  Also after Rose and I were married we then moved to a place in Grandview Heights.  From there it was a natural to buy a house in Arlington, again in each case, close to Battelle so my driving time to and from Battelle was never more than ten minutes.

Interviewer: But you never encountered anything like a covenant or any problem in buying a house.

Luttinger:  I never encountered anything like that.  I heard about things like that but I never encountered that.  Of course by the time we bought a house, which was 1969, much of the Civil Rights Movement already was in full swing and I think there was less and less of this covenant business.  In fact some of those were already in court.  At any rate, I have never had a problem with that.

Interviewer:  Tell us how you’re currently involved with both Beth Tikvah and the Columbus Jewish community?

 Luttinger: Well of course Rose and I stayed very close to Beth Tikvah in all these years.  We were asked in more recent years to take the Chair of the Adult Education Committee and the Social Action Committee and I switched back and forth from one to the other.  And Rose stepped in and she took Chair of those committees from time to time.  I was asked to join the Board, of course as a Committee Chair I was on the Board. So I was on the Board at the time we were discussing moving to a new facility.  And we ran into a lot of problems not being able to do so financially and there was a lot of conflict within the congregation.  My interest never changed.  Adult Education and Social Action concerns were central to religious concerns.  We went to Services on and off, not as regularly as we used to at one time.  But we were always involved in these activities. Whenever there were some Social Action activities or Adult Education activities, we always participated regularly.  I had been, from the very beginning, I mentioned in the rented house back on High Street, when we started this Adult Education program, it evolved from there as an every two-weeks Sunday night program, from way back then.  And Rose and I were constant participants throughout all these years.  We never stopped and it’s been extremely rewarding to me.  We still go regularly.  It continues to be of great value.  Now in Social Action, I overlooked that.  Let me back up because in the early years, I think it was before I became President, there was a Columbus Area Civil Rights Council and Beth Tikvah was invited to participate.  A Board member, and I wasn’t on the Board yet so it was before I was President, a Board member went down to see what they were doing.  He came back and reported that they were a worthwhile group to join and it was alright for us to participate.  I was one of the people who strongly recommended that we participate.  There were a few others as well.  There was a Seymour Goldstone who was Chair of the Social Action Committee and he was pushing strongly that we join that Civil Rights Council.  I became the representative to that Council.  Unfortunately, as time went on, in a very few years it became obvious that only the people who actually came to the meetings were active and the congregations that they came from really were not.  So there was a separation between the congregations and the Council.  I ended up as President of the Civil Rights Council when Beth Tikvah was no longer all that active in it. Well now back to again to more recent times.  I think about, during my time as Social Action Chair at Beth Tikvah, just a few years ago, I already had been aware that there was another organization in town known as the BREAD organization.  I asked the Social Action Committee that we should join. The committee had, that’s before I was Chair of it, the committee had voted to join but the Chair at the time apparently was not comfortable with that and the way he carried the word to the Board, the issue dropped and we did not join in spite of the committee vote.  So when I became Chair, I made it clear when I was asked to serve that this would be my first objective.  And Mike Fliegel, who asked me to join the Board and become Chair of the committee, he said this was fine with him and I should move ahead with it.  I brought the issue again before the committee.  The committee agreed for us to join the Bread organization.  I took it to the Board and the Board also voted for us to join and we have been active members ever since.  And I have been the representative from Beth Tikvah to the BREAD organization and still am.  I’m deeply involved in both BREAD and Beth Tikvah and trying very hard to get everybody involved, yourself included, Helena, in some of the BREAD meetings.  Again, Adult Education and Social Action remains a major interest of mine, a religious interest.  I think it has religious foundation, both of them.

Interviewer: Well from that, let me ask you, in your years here in Columbus have you seen the Jewish community change in ways that jump to mind?

 Luttinger: You know actually I haven’t thought about this for a long time, but now that you mention it, there have been radical changes with regard to Social Action.  When I was on the Civil Rights Council, occasionally from time to time, it didn’t take very long before I became President, you know if you’re a regular attendee and you open your mouth too many times the next thing you know you become President, when I was President of the Civil Rights Council, in that capacity there were some city-wide activities that were being organized and it became my job to call the other Jewish congregations, major ones like Tifereth Israel, Agudas Achim, Temple Israel.  They were the major ones at the time and it was my job to call them and see if they would participate in those events.  And I was amazed and shocked how little interest there was.  Only one other congregation even had a Social Action Committee and it was inactive.  I got the name of the Chair of that committee and I called him and he said, “Well they hadn’t been doing anything for a long time and he wasn’t able to bring anybody to any activities.”  I talked to, not having Social Action contacts in these congregations, I talked to the rabbis.  I had cooperation from Tifereth Israel at one point.  The Chazan, (Jack) Chomsky, did come to one of those events.  He actually sang a religious song.  It was an excellent presentation, an excellent presence of the Jewish community, but it was the only one.  The rabbi at Temple Israel, I’m sorry to say, he actually got mad at me that I dared call him on a matter like that.  So I had a rather bad experience.  Now, more recently, now remember this is the mid 1960’s, more recently Beth Tikvah turns out to be only the fourth, actually we were the third congregation to join the BREAD organization.  Tifereth Israel was in the lead.  They were there to help organize the BREAD organization.  Temple Beth Shalom was already a member and quite active.  So for a while there were three congregations, Temple Israel came in shortly thereafter.  And for now there are four congregations.  Agudas Achim was right on the verge of joining.  Because they had a change of rabbis, they were without a rabbi for a while, that slowed them down but I believe they’re likely to join before very long.  So from that standpoint I believe there was a radical change in the outlook of congregations on the east side of town towards Social Action of one kind or another.

Interviewer:  Very interesting perspective.  Well I have come to my last question as to what you consider your most valuable contribution to the Columbus Jewish community?  It puts you on the spot a little bit but what do you think matters the most in your experience in the Jewish community here?

 Luttinger:  You know after literally decades of involvement, constant involvement with Beth Tikvah, involvement in Social Action activities at the Civil Rights Council and more recently at BREAD, coming up with a single item is next to impossible.  As I already mentioned, Adult Education mattered a great deal to me.  Both Rose and I have in recent years been very much involved with the Scholar in Residence activity at Beth Tikvah.  We worked very closely with Rabbi Huber who is the one who makes the selection. He actually calls the scholar to come, but we’ve been deeply involved.  And those things mean a great deal to me but there’s no single event because that’s a yearly event.  Again, with the Civil Rights Council there was not any one single event.  The fact that Beth Tikvah voted to join as a young congregation, before we were fully established, did not shy away from that which really is not surprising if you consider the university membership and the professional membership that we depended upon.  But it was unique at the time as compared to the rest of the Jewish community.  That we joined was a very important event for me. But other than the fact that we joined there was not much to that event.  It simply, it’s an ongoing process.  In fact let’s face it, religion as well as social action, as well as education is a process.  It’s not a single event.  So while we can think of any number of events that are memorable, it’s that process that counts and it’s not any one single event.

Interviewer: I like the way you have formulated that.  To conclude I would ask if there’s anything more you would like to add to our interview?

 Luttinger:  You know, nothing else at the moment comes to mind.  I’ve been asked by my family once to write the history of what happened to us in Germany and in Europe and how we came over here and that’s still on my agenda.  And one of these days, when I do that, I may come back to this interview to see if there are things that I missed and maybe add this on to my write up if and when this ever happens. The only other thing I want to say here, sort of off line to the interview, I already mentioned it up front.  Because I was very forthright in mentioning names and a rather delicate subject that went on at Beth Tikvah, it’s because many of these people are still living, even though they may not be in Columbus.  I also made reference to a rabbi who people can identify if they look at the dates that I mentioned, and even though he’s no longer here, I think it would be appropriate if this record of my interview were not made public for the time being.  And we can decide after discussions with the Historical Society and Beth Tikvah when might be a good time for making it public.

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

Luttinger:  Thank you, Helena.

 

Transcribed by:  Helena Schlam and Rose Luttinger