Disciplines
Jewish Studies
Abstract
Rebecca Schull, born in 1929, recalls her early life in the Sholem Aleichem Houses in the Bronx where her family lived in the predominantly Jewish community. Her father was a lawyer who later worked for the American Technion Society, and her mother was a dietician raised in Tel Aviv, who studied quantity cooking at Columbia. Many members of her family were Zionists, her uncle was the artist Nachum Gutman and her grandfather the writer Simcha Ben Zion. She remembers the pleasant communal atmosphere of the Sholem Aleichem Houses, where socialism, communism and Yiddishism was commonplace. Her childhood was marked by a culturally Jewish but secular upbringing.
Schull attended PS 95 and Walton High School, and upon graduation went to study English at NYU. Schull met her future husband Gene while living in Greenwich Village, a Jewish man who served in the Navy during WWII and had become a photographer. Together they had three children, a son and two twin daugthers. Schull remembers balancing her life, graduate studies and raising her young family. Gene started working as a salesman, and her family moved around frequently. After living throughout Europe, they returned to Dublin where Schull began to pursue acting at the Focus Theater and was trained in the Stanislavski method. Later, she returned to New York to continue her career as an actress.
Recommended Citation
Bazrafkan, Negin, " Schull, Rebecca" (2024). Bronx Jewish History Project. 61. https://research.library.fordham.edu/bjhp/61
