Seattle's Jewish Youth of 55 Years Ago Meet Again for Dance Reunion by ATHIMA CHANSANCHAI, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/SeattlesJewishyouthof55yearsagomeetagain1176933.php Seattle's Jewish youth of 55 years ago meet again for dance reunion By ATHIMA CHANSANCHAI, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Updated 10:00 pm, Sunday, June 26, 2005

IMAGE 1 OF 2

Al and Ester Lott dance to the "Sound of Swing" at Seattle's Hillel yesterday during a reunion of Jewish youth groups of the '40s and '50s. "We were born and raised on it," Al said.

Imagine Seattle without Microsoft or a Starbucks on every corner.

Go back about 50 or 60 years, when Jewish youth groups -- infused with the American-born sons and daughters of European and Mediterranean immigrants -- jitterbugged to big bands and performed community services.

Sunday afternoon, a reunion of those organizations at Hillel at the University of Washington brought back memories of a Seattle few would recognize now. "Seattle wasn't the kind of city it is now. Now we have all these wonderful theaters, but then there wasn't anything. Nobody came here to entertain. We had to make our own entertainment," said Kathie Alhadeff Barokas, the organizer of "The Way We Were," a program that drew about 300 people to a standing-room-only auditorium at Hillel.

"That period of time was different than today. Different ethnic groups had to fend for themselves for different social needs, more than today."

The 1940s and 1950s were the heyday for the (mostly social) clubs that sprang up near the dominant Jewish enclave in Seattle -- the Central area of Cherry Street, Yesler Way and Jackson Street. There, Temple De Hirsch offered religious schooling to the neighborhood's children.

The Jewish community at the time numbered about 13,000. Today it is about 40,000, said Doris Stiefel, president of the Washington State Jewish Historical Society, who fled Nazi Germany with her family before eventually settling in Seattle as a college student in 1948.

For the city-born children of first-generation Ashkenazim (European) and Sephardic (Mediterranean) Jews, these organizations provided the only outlet to meet one another. They did, and bonded with one another, creating lifelong friendships. Some even fell in love and married.

High school sororities such as Phi Delta Mu and fraternities such as the Ontarians acted as springboards for UW fraternities such as Zeta Beta Tau and Alpha Epsilon Pi and sororities such as Phi Sigma Sigma, giving those used to the youth groups a way to continue connecting as they got older.

"It gave me a sense of community, a lot of self-confidence and many, many friendships," said Lucille Almeleh Spring, Garfield High School class of 1950 and a Councilette (Seattle Council of Jewish Women member).

They swung and spun to the likes of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin at Sunday night mixers at the Temple Center. Then afterward they'd hang out at roadhouses and late-night restaurants.

But that's not to say it was all fun in those days. Anti-Semitism fueled the groups' existence and excluded them from socializing with their gentile peers. The Holocaust brought home the horror of the war's true cost.

Barokas, 75, a resident of Mercer Island, belonged to the Junior Sephardic League, or the JSL. The group was known for big dances such as the Heartbreakers Ball and the Snowball. She helped put together poster displays for yesterday's event, upon which she attached dance programs from dozens of such events -- including pages where she kept track of the boys she danced with.

At another display, Loretta Kuznetz leaned in and saw a picture of herself as a teen- ager, a member of the B'nai B'rith Girls (a high school group of the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization, which also had a boys group called Aleph Zadik Aleph or AZA) posing with some of her best friends as they ran for group sweetheart.

"That's me!" said the West Seattle resident, a born-and-raised city native and Garfield High School grad (class of 1947) who on Saturday celebrated the 55th anniversary of her marriage to husband Mort. He was a 1946 grad of Franklin High School and also a Sigma Alpha Mu -- a UW Jewish frat whose members were known as "Sammys."

"We had a ball," Loretta Kuznetz said. "The kids today don't have as much fun as we had. There was no TV then and we all got together as friends. We loved to dance."

As the 20-piece big band "Sound of Swing" kicked up yesterday, Kuznetz swayed to the beat.

It was, as Seattle criminal defense attorney Murray Guterson remembered it, a magnificent time to be young. In reminiscing about the era, he quoted from a Robert Frost poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay": Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.