Author Archives: Leora Freedman

Joseph Baum was a Zionist who supported every attempt to revive the Hebrew language.  He insisted his children speak Hebrew even in Brooklyn.  Every summer he hired a young Palestinian Jewish “governess” to accompany the family on their vacation in … Continue reading →

 Flora used to say that no one should sentimentalize extended family life.  The whole time she was growing up, her grandmother (her father, Joseph’s mother) lived with them in their house in Brooklyn and made an otherwise good life unpleasant. … Continue reading →

In the late nineteenth century, many Jews stopped keeping the Torah’s commandments, and Joseph was one of these.  As he was growing up in Nasofke, a shtetl in Ukraine, he became “enlightened,” or secular.  One Shabbat, a neighbour saw him … Continue reading →