Abby: So I remember hearing that your father, Joseph, owned a printing press in Seattle.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Marlene: Basically what I think happened is that he was schooled in a German school in Istanbul and he learned a trade, and what Professor Bunis had said --
I took a class with him in 2013 when he was here the first time -- and he was saying that the beauty of these
Alliance type schools is that they provided a trade in addition to an education.
So I'm pretty sure he learned the trade of printing in this German school.
And he was fluent in German, in addition to, I think, four or five other languages.
So when he came to the US, his first job was working in a tailor shop.
And it could have been for lack of English.
And then I know he did take some sort of schooling in the US because he didn't know English and he was an apprentice somewhere.
And there's a picture that I own from the UW archives of him at a printing shop.
And after becoming an apprentice, at some point, he became self-employed and opened up his own printing shop with the Hebrew typeset.
And the beauty of that was that he had a very strong position in the community.
He was in demand. So he did a lot of printing for people in the community when they needed something in Hebrew or Yiddish or English.
He had a really good reputation because he could communicate with them.
And when he died in 1974, my mother said she donated the Hebrew typeset to the UW.
I never pursued that. If it's if it's still there, I'd be surprised.
But somewhere along the line. Well, he sold the business in '65 to a gentile who couldn't do
Any Judaica printing at that point.
So he had no use for it and then must have held on to it because like I said, in '74, maybe my mother already had it.
In '74, she got rid of it. Yeah.
So yeah. So he did a lot of printing for the synagogues and there are some plaques in some of the Sephardic mahzors that have.
He did a plaque in memory of his father. And the special prayer that's gone around Rosh HaShana time.
He did that. And that appears in some of the older Sephardic books that have probably been replaced by now.
Abby: Yeah. So did he work mainly with this departed synagogues or with Ashkenazi also?
Marlene: Both. He worked with both. I think there may have been a shortage of Jewish printers.
There was another man, Victor Scharhn, who also did it.
They were kind of competitors for the same business.
But my father also did printing for non Jews.
So he had the whole gamut. In fact, every year, the end of the year, he would send a present out to all his customers.
And we got the pleasure of wrapping them and sending the cards out.
And it would be like a happy holiday, Merry Christmas kind of thing.
So he had a lot non Jewish customers as well.
Abby: That's really fantastic. And the typeset, was it specifically meruba, or black Hebrew letters, or was it rashi?
Marlene: I think was meruba only, I'm guessing because he'd use that for.
He did have some stylized letters as well.
I don't remember now the font, but I know the meruba for sure,
because when we would have the privilege of going to help him sometimes hanging out at a shop,
and he would let us put the little script together and ink it up and make the tablets of paper and stuff.
And after I started Hebrew school, I recognized the letters.
So I'm pretty sure was mostly meruba. But I. But I don't know.