Disciplines

Jewish Studies

Abstract

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

Harold Aspis was born in 1954 to two American born parents. His father was a college professor of economics, and his mother returned to work as a secretary and administrator at Montefiore Hospital when Aspis was in junior high school. Aspis describes the movement of his family as “the Jewish neighborhood profession of the Bronx,” first living in University Heights and then in the North Bronx near the Bronx High School of Science, then his parents moved to Riverdale after Aspis had left the house.

Aspis attended PS 91, which he shares what a stable component of the larger stable community. In the summers, Aspis and many other Jewish families he knows went to the Catskills. It was a warm, exclusively Jewish environment with a strong sense of belonging. Everyone he knew in school, including his elementary school teachers, and the community were Jewish, despite there being Irish Catholics living there as well. He shares that the schools’ goal was to make them well rounded Americans, including reading the New York Times, going to museums and concerts in Manhattan, and wearing uniforms.

The strictness of school and unspoken rules of society would change as Aspis entered the Bronx High School of Science in 1968. Aspis describes the extraordinary teachers there, with a more diverse faculty and student population. The school, he says, was a “hotbed of political activism” then, including hosting a concert by Pete Seeger in place of a prom in 1971. Aspis himself served as the editor of the yearbook. Outside of school, from the time he was young, Aspis had a sense of freedom and independence, seeing movies with his friends and taking the subway alone. This was encouraged by the “tolerant, liberal” attitude of his parents, who gave him charge over his own life.

Aspis attended synagogue and Hebrew school, though he shares that the religiosity of his grandfather was lessened coming to America from Eastern Europe. Despite them not speaking much Yiddish, he describes his grandparents’ Jewishness in attending Yiddish theater and cooking amazing, Eastern European style food. Jewish culture, he says, infused New York.

Aspis went on the study economics at Columbia University, encountering antisemitism for the first time while studying abroad in London. He then went to Columbia Law School, working for many years as a lawyer before becoming an arbitrator in his retirement. He credits his happy memories of his childhood to the sense of security, stability, independence, and continuity of the community.

Keywords: education, University Heights, West Bronx, Bronx High School of Science, PS 91, NYU Uptown, gender, woman, Americanization, Catskills, security, Teachers Strikes 1967-1968, Vietnam War, Kent State, Pete Seeger, protest, independence, Israel, Holocaust, Irish, High Holy Days, Yiddish, food, Columbia University, London School of Economics, Riverdale, Kennedy Assassination

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