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Clip 1 from interview with Barbara Raben, February 24, 2015

Audio file

Audio file
Download jhp000186-001.mp3 (audio/mpeg; 1.59 MB)

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Description

In this clip, Raben talks about attending services at Temple Beth Sholom, and her son recognizing many students from Green Valley High School.

Digital ID

jhp000186-001
Details

Publisher

University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Libraries

Take me back to those memories of transitioning to Las Vegas. We had been coming back and forth and I had been doing it a lot. At that time, two of my kids were at UNLV. So that was fine. I was used to coming here. My youngest son, Marc, was going into his second year of high school. So for him it was going to be traumatic. That's what I was concerned about. He was on a summer teen tour, a trip around the United States for six weeks, and the last night before they came back to L.A. they stopped here. We met him here and took him out to Green Valley to show him that he was going to be going to Green Valley High School. Green Valley High School was about to open; it was the first year. I figured we'd move there so he'd be coming in new with everybody else. We came to the top of the hill to Warm Springs and you looked down to Green Valley High School, which was surrounded by nothing but dirt. He said, ?Are you sending me to prison? I'm in high school. It looks like a prison.? And it did. It was the school and nothing, nothing. The first couple of weeks for him were traumatic. He came home every day and said, ?The school is really nice, but there's no Jewish kids in school at all. I'm the only Jewish kid in the whole school.? Sure. When we came here we immediately joined Temple Beth Sholom because that was it and it was Rosh Hashanah. All day he kept saying, ?Every kid in school is here. I guess the whole school is Jewish.? He didn't recognize kids as?a high school kid doesn't say, ?Are you Jewish?? There was no way to recognize each other and all of a sudden it was like the world opened. Everybody was there that he knew.