Disciplines
Jewish Studies
Abstract
Summarizer: Sophia Maier
Lynne Mochon, born 1951, grew up on the campus of Maritime College. Her father, who left Warsaw in 1922, was educated in pre-state Israel and then MIT, before becoming a professor of science at Maritime. Her mother, born in Queens, worked at Maritime, and, as the only Jewish people working there together at the time, they got married, have Mochon and her older sister. Mochon describes Maritime as a small community of about 14 families, where the children were similar in age and played together by the water. She remembers some antisemitism among the staff, her father being the only Jewish professor until he became head of the department and was able to hire more. The surrounding area was a place she describes as unwelcoming to Black and Jewish people alike.
Mochon attended classes for intellectually gifted children in elementary school, participated in the SP program in junior high school, before going to Bronx High School of Science. She also went to Hebrew High School, which she loved for the things she was learning, though admitted she wasn’t a very good student there because of the pressures of Science. Her family attended synagogue weekly in Parkchester and observed all the Jewish holidays. Mochon herself became more religious, eating kosher and observing Shabbat, after attending Ramah camp as a young teen.
Mochon left the Bronx to go to Binghamton University, wanting to be more independent and tired of difficult commutes. She met her husband, a Sephardic Jew of Syrian descent, while getting her master’s in Israel. He went on to get his doctorate and become a professor in Mexico, where lived for 32 years. Mochon, who grew up only speaking English at home, now speaks Hebrew and Spanish, and describes the move to Mexico, with her own teaching position and surrounded by her husband’s family, to have been a happy experience. Now, on return visits or whenever she crosses the Throgs Neck Bridge, she remembers Maritime and the Bronx as still her home, a place she loves to be.
Keywords: Maritime College, Fort Schuyler, Throgs Neck, Parkchester, Israel, Mexico, science, education, antisemitism, teaching, SP, PS 72, PS 36, JHS 101, Bronx High School of Science, Binghamton University, Ramah, Sephardic, Ashkenazi
Recommended Citation
Scully, Patricia, "Mochon, Lynne" (2024). Bronx Jewish History Project. 78.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/bjhp/78
