Transcript of interview with Robert D. "Bob" Fisher by Barbara Tabach, January 8, 2015

AN INTERVIEW WITH BOB FISHER An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ?Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV ? University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Amada Hammar iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader?s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE Robert D. "Bob" Fisher is a Las Vegas, Nevada broadcast personality and lobbyist. He was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and moved to Las Vegas in 1994 when he was hired to be the founding president and CEO of the Nevada Broadcasters Association (NVBA). During his 22 years as head of the NVBA, he produced and hosted Observations, a public affairs program broadcasted on radio and television throughout the state of Nevada. Soon after, he began producing and hosting the only weekly live television program about diabetes in the United States; in 2015 his weekly live radio program The Diabetes Show was the only one of its kind to be aired over commercial radio in the U.S. Fisher helped bring the AMBER Alert program to Nevada in 2003, and served as its chairman and coordinator for ten years. His other lobbying successes include the classification of certified broadcasters as First Responders and the elimination of Broadcaster Non-Compete contracts in 2013. He served on the Nevada Homeland Security Commission for 13 years, the Nevada Crime Commission, and the Governor's Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. Fisher is a founding clergy member of Midbar Kodesh Temple in Henderson, Nevada and served as its cantor for over a decade. After his retirement from NVBA at the end of 2014, he established Bob Fisher Weddings to provide his services as a wedding officiant. In this interview, conducted shortly after his retirement from NVBA, Fisher discusses his childhood in Twin Cities, and the large role Judaism played in his upbringing. He speaks at length about his involvement with United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism over the years, including as regional director of the United Synagogue Youth Far West Region, which took him from Minnesota to California. He talks about his time in Los Angeles, and later, about his life in Las Vegas, including his broadcasting career as well as involvement with Midbar Kodesh Temple. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Bob Fisher On January 8, 2015 by Barbara Tabach in Las Vegas, Nevada Preface???????????????????????????????????..?..iv Talks about family history, who settled in Minnesota; growing up in North Minneapolis in tightknit Jewish neighborhood, eventually moving to St. Louis Park and becoming very involved in local Jewish life, including AZA, United Synagogue, Talmud Torah. Mentions serving as director of bar mitzvah and confirmation for Temple Israel in Minneapolis when attending University of Minnesota and implementing experimental programming?.???????...1-6 Describes experiences at Herzl Camp, as camper, counselor, and program director; music and drama director at Camp Interlaken. Mentions leading program on Soviet Jewry; rabbinical influences; leading a group of high school students to Russia, visiting Refuseniks, while regional director of USY Far West Region; first trip to Israel, with mother, subsequently a USY pilgrimage group leader. Shares significance of Israel in his life???????????.7-11 Reflects upon being raised valuing tolerance and inclusion; history of anti-Semitism in Minneapolis; moving from Minnesota to Southern California, and three incidents that led to his eventual move away to Las Vegas: Northridge earthquake, violent crime experienced by boss, and riots. Talks about what shaped his personal views of Judaism, balancing conservative religious doctrine with pragmatism??????????????????????..12-16 Discusses interview for job with Nevada Broadcasters Association, a position that brought him to Las Vegas. Lists his proudest moments with Nevada Broadcasters Association: establishing AMBER alert in Nevada; serving as national president of State Broadcasters Associations; and successfully lobbying for broadcasters to be classified as first responders. Talks about his television and shows, various guests interviewed, from politicians to actors??????..17-22 Talks about early connections to Las Vegas through USY, which assisted in relocating to city; serving twice as chazzan at Temple Beth Sholom for High Holidays for overflow service; involvement with establishing Midbar Kodesh Temple and role as its clergyman. Shares why he didn?t pursue rabbinical ordination. More about Midbar Kodesh; moving to new space; its special Yom HaShoah observance. Mentions conceptualization of local Hebrew High??23-28 vi Talks about founding members of Midbar Kodesh, including Barry and Amy Fieldman, Mark Goldstein, Macy Weldesveld Goldberg, Jerry Walt, as well as first rabbi, Jeremy Wiederhorn. Reflects upon the proliferation of congregations in city; his prediction that Judaism will split into two movements, eliminating the ?Conservative? movement. Returns to childhood memories of Minneapolis-area congregations; thoughts about orthodoxy versus flexibility in Judaism?s survival. Talks about current Midbar Kodesh rabbi, Brad Tecktiel??????????29-34 Shares anecdote about Louis Weiner?s funeral, where everyone was dressed like Cesar Romero. Discusses living with diabetes since adolescence; hosting live weekly diabetes show; involvement with American Diabetes Association; receiving gastric sleeve procedure. Talks about trip to Poland, visiting Auschwitz, and its impact on his life??????????.35-40 Index........................................................................................................................................41-42 1 1 This is Barbara Tabach. I'm in my office at UNLV Lied Library. Today is January 8, 2015. And I am with Bob Fisher. Would you spell your name, how you'd like it? Bob, B-O-B. Fisher, F-I-S-H-E-R, like Fisher Nuts. Oh, yum. That was a relative. Really? Yes. Well, let's just start there. Let's talk about Fisher Nuts. It was a very, very interesting family. These are cousins of mine. Sam Fisher had three children. One of them actually became president of John F. Kennedy University in San Francisco. The other side of?actually, the same side of the family, but the other part of the family, Ted Mann, who is the great theater owner, Mann Theatres, which for a while was also the Mann Grauman Theatre, the Chinese theater was the Mann Chinese Theatre; I went to meet him with my father in Los Angeles because I wanted to move out of Minnesota. He said, ?You do such good work, such good synagogue work. I'm not going to give you a job. You should stay in what you're doing.? So I moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles where I was at that time the longest serving regional director of United Synagogue Youth on the West Coast, which was Southern Nevada, Southern Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Southern California and, of course, my favorite, Hawaii. I like how that can get included in that regional category. You'd be surprised some of the Jewish history in Honolulu, but we're not going to go there in this interview. Okay. Let's start with your family ancestry. Take me back to where your roots begin. If 2 you?re doing your genealogical story, where would you begin? My father's grandfather was a cantor, which I am. I don't know much about that generation. I know that my grandfather married his cousin, my grandmother?[who] was somewhat younger than he was. I know they went through Ellis Island. And where were they from? In what was Russia. I'm trying to remember the small town that they moved to in Minnesota, which is where they settled. There were a number of Jews who lived in this particular small town. It's still a very small town probably an hour and a half north of Minneapolis. I know that he was in the dry goods business before he came to the Twin Cities where he, like so many of my relatives?my father, my mother, my grandfather, my uncles, my cousins?they were all motion picture theater owners. My grandfather in his retired days went to the synagogue every Shabbat morning. At one time, I was leading the...it was like a fifty-voice children's choir at Beth El Synagogue in Minneapolis and it was very exciting to be sitting in the front directing the kids and looking out and seeing your grandfather. I grew up in North Minneapolis and North Minneapolis is something, which is missing today certainly in Las Vegas or in Reno, and that is it was very closely knit Jewish neighborhood with an extremely closely knit business district that had a kosher butcher and a supermarket, Stillman's. It was a lovely place to grow up, but it was typical of this country where the neighborhoods where the Jews lived were in transition and the Jews were leaving the center of the city and moving out into the suburbs. St. Louis Park where we eventually moved, my mother and I, was known as St. Jewish Park. But we were one of the last to stay in North Minneapolis. The Jewish district at that time, in the '60s, was pretty much overrun and became an African-American 3 neighborhood, which, again, was very common around the country. And there were the riots and the burning, as there were in other cities. Our synagogue where I was very, very much involved and my family was involved, my brother and sister and I all sang in the choir, the High Holiday choir and the Friday night choir. Minneapolis was unique in the fact that it had the Talmud Torah of Minneapolis, which happened to be right across the street from my elementary school. In those days going to Talmud Torah [meant] you actually went four days a week. What is Talmud Torah? Like Hebrew school, but it was a very organized Hebrew school with a full-time director, a full-time staff. I still remember getting out of school at three [or] three thirty and going right across and standing in line, and for ten cents you got chocolate milk in a glass bottle and two big chocolate chip cookies. Years later it was so easy to understand why the teachers could never control the students because they were filling them up with sugar. Lots and lots of wonderful memories living in a Jewish neighborhood where you knew three-quarters of the people. I was a little bit?after, there was the Emanuel Cohen Center, which was a Jewish center of sorts, and right across the street from that was?I don't know what the technical name was, but where there were children without parents. So some sort of orphanage? Yes, exactly that's what it was. And there were a lot of synagogues, quite magnificent structures in those days. Beth El Synagogue was quite famous because of the fact that it was the first USY chapter that was formed in the United States and, actually, USY in Minnesota is older than USY International. The long time, fifty-plus-year rabbi who is one of the all-time great American Jewish rabbis, David Aronson. So I was very privileged to grow up with David Aronson and with 4 Kassel Abelson. Years later I would go to Israel with Rabbi Abelson and my mother on a Beth El Synagogue trip. But even Beth El...There were lots of mergers that were going on. Beth El never merged and ultimately built in St. Louis Park where it still is now. So mergers of synagogues? Yes. There were a lot of mergers of synagogues. Why was that going on? In the '60s, they were all losing members because everyone was moving to the suburbs and in order to sustain themselves. Even the conservative synagogue that was closest to Beth El, which is a conservative synagogue, had like three last names because it was three different congregations, which merged. But one of the things I used to love to do with the students that I would teach in religious school and even with my confirmation students [was to] take a trip to the old Jewish neighborhood. It was interesting to see churches that had Jewish stars on their foundation block. So there was a degree of nostalgia even living there because, like I said, we were one of the last people to move out and there were still a handful of Jews who were living in North Minneapolis a decade or two later. My grandfather worked, so he wasn't Shomer Shabbat. Our house was kosher. But typical in those days, our house was kosher, but every Sunday, as a family, before my mother kicked my father out of the house, which was right after my bar mitzvah and I always thought I was (my haftorah), we would go out for barbeque ribs. Pork ribs? Yes. What did I know? I was a kid. Right. Well, it was out of the house and they were pork ribs. 5 It was out of the house. It was years later when you came to the conclusion it's not the house that is (kosher); it's your stomach. My mother was born in Milwaukee. She was raised in a reform synagogue. Her father died when, I believe, [when] he was forty-nine and those were the days when diabetes...there wasn't insulin. So my mother basically did not have a father. She was very, very young. I think she was fourteen when he died. Obviously, I didn't know my grandfather. I was very close with my grandmother even though she lived in Milwaukee. My father was raised and born in Saint Paul and I think was always a Twin City guy. Of course, everybody at that generation is dead, but my father had three sisters. My father was the only boy. My father was very, very spoiled. My father as he grew up had wonderful tantrums. Our house was a very violent house. I remember when he beat my mother even though I wasn't in the house. He used to beat me physically and also used to do a lot of verbal abuse?you're above; you're never going to accomplish anything; you're never going to amount to anything?words that I still remember today. My mother had a brother and a sister. The brother happened to live in Minneapolis and I was very close with that aunt and uncle. My father had two sisters, one who just died towards the end of 2014. I think we had just celebrated her ninetieth or ninety-fifth birthday and she was sharp as a tack. I feel, and part of it may have been the fact that my grandparents and my aunts and uncles lived within walking distance of our house and it was a different era, that is what shaped me. I was president of my AZA chapter. I was adviser for my AZA chapter. My mother was working at the time and continued to work for over two decades for Rabbi Joe Wiesenberg, who was the head of United Synagogue in the Upper Midwest and in the Southwest. I remember that 6 when my mother retired because of an accident at the (INSA) region convention when she was putting her books away and she made the mistake of getting on an escalator. Ultimately, the accident took her arm out of the socket, which is a night I will never ever forget. And I will also never forget that her ending salary for a year was five thousand dollars as the secretary. There were, of course, no computers in those days. United Synagogue seemed to stay away rather than embrace my mother after the accident, probably thinking that they were going to be sued. It didn't sour me with United Synagogue because when I was in high school and then when I went to the University of Minnesota, I served as the director of bar mitzvah and confirmation for Temple Israel in Minneapolis. I did that for about a decade. I don't go from place to place; in terms of full-time jobs, I've only had four full-time jobs in almost seventy years. Wow. But I was the bar mitzvah and confirmation director, did a lot of experimental programming, like taking the confirmation class to Winnipeg. Now they take the confirmation class to New York, which I think is fabulous. We did bar mitzvah trips all over. We went as far as Colorado Springs. A lot of really good things. I loved being a Jewish educator. I think I was advanced. My bar mitzvah class read texts like Elie Wiesel's Night. They read The Stranger by Camus to try to tell a thirteen-year-old that when you look at a mirror, you've got to see yourself, not everything but yourself. Things like that. Let me interrupt you here. I'd like to know, what was your education to become that? Experience. So you didn't go to a special school or anything like that? No, I never had formal education. Yes, I went to the Talmud Torah of Minneapolis and that may have been a foundation. I think, like a lot of kids in the Midwest, I really flowered in my Judaism 7 going to Herzl Camp. Talk about Herzl Camp. Herzl Camp in Webster, Wisconsin. Herzl Camp today continues to thrive, absolutely thrive. I was a camper. I was a counselor in training. I was an assistant in training. I ultimately worked my way up to being director of drama, director of music and program director. One year I was Mr. Herzl Camp. I like it. It was a great, great camp. I still remember, just so that...as long as this is a historical document, when I went to Herzl Camp, it was a three-weak session and it cost one hundred and ten dollars. Astounding. Yes. How I remember that I have no idea. And you got fed, too. Oh. The cooks were my friends. I loved camp. Subsequently, I became the music and drama director at Camp Interlaken, which is the Jewish Community Center camp in Eagle River, Wisconsin. Spent a number of years there, too. I probably spent about maybe eight years being a staff member between the two camps. That's where I met my absolute Jewish mentor, a woman by the name of Ateret Cohn. You could look up her up on what we call today Google. She was just a phenomenal Jewish educator. She lived in Milwaukee. My family lived in Milwaukee. I spent a lot of time in Milwaukee and with my best friend who was in Chicago. What made her such a dynamic...what about that? She had a style. She had a passion. She was probably a legendary teacher of the Holocaust. She ended up becoming director of Camp Interlaken and JCC. Again, there's a lot of great memories and creating a very, very strong Jewish foundation. 8 But I think the fact that like when I point out that our house was kosher, but when we went out our house was not kosher. Beth El Synagogue was doing bat mitzvah ceremonies probably thirty, forty years, maybe even fifty years before the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism actually allowed women to read from the Torah at USY events. Oh, wow. Expand on that a little bit. Well, it's...as we get into the Jewish community, and you know on your letterhead of this project is (high), whether that's eighteen or whether it's life. I grew up with really conflicting Jewish life because of the fact that I still remember my mother would go to the beauty parlor in North Minneapolis and that's where I met Stanley because it was Stanley's Beauty Salon, but he had a tattoo on his arm and I didn't know what that meant. I think because of the Talmud Torah and Herzl Camp and the emphasis on Zionism, I think that's what really prepared me to be an educator as well as a teacher who ultimately did a personal mission to Poland and Soviet Jewry. I want to make sure I talk to you about Soviet Jewry, my connection, because I was a real activist when I was in college. I'll tell you one particular program that at Temple Israel we did for Soviet Jewry and then I ended up being the emcee at the University of Minnesota's major event on saving Soviet Jewry where Vice President Walter Mondale was the speaker. Ah, terrific. A great man. Yes, he was a great man. His timing was off just like Hubert Humphrey's timing was off. I also worked for two great, great rabbis, which gave me the opportunity?Max Shapiro, who became a rabbi later in life, was the senior rabbi at Temple Israel. He and I had a very close relationship. A very, very sweet, loving man. Bernie Raskas, Rabbi Bernard S. Raskas, from the Temple of Aaron in Saint Paul, who probably is compared on the same level with Harold Schulweis who just died from Valley Beth Shalom?both Rabbi Schulweis and Rabbi Raskas were 9 on the more liberal side of Conservative Judaism and the kind of experimentation that was done. That's probably which made me...I was always ahead of my time. I'm very, very proud of the fact that one of my students is the senior rabbi at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles. So get me from Minneapolis to the West Coast. But before we do that I do want to talk about...I was in college very, very active in the Soviet Jewry movement. And you went to college where? University of Minnesota. We did a really interesting thing. Temple Israel was on one of the busiest streets in Minneapolis, Hennepin Avenue, a major, major, huge congregation, thousands of members, reform. But it was in the center of Minneapolis on a major street. And one Hanukkah?and I'm sorry that I came up with the idea because Hanukkah in Minneapolis that particular winter was below zero and a lot of snow?we did the entire duration of Hanukkah...I don't know if sit-in is the right word, but we never left our gigantic hanukkia alone because it burned right on Hennepin Avenue. There was always someone there; there was always a group of people always there, outside in the freezing. Burr. Twenty-four hours a day. I know what those temperatures can be. That was a real commitment. That was just a wonderful, real, real commitment. But subsequently, one of my last years when I was the regional director of Far West Region, myself and Merrill Alpert, who is the current executive director of Far West Region, and Stephen Sass, who is involved in the Jewish community, we took nine high school students to Russia. That would have been what year? 10 Glasnost was just starting, but it was at the height of not knowing what was happening to the Refuseniks. We met with so many different families. I could spend hours telling you stories of the things that went on. But the thing that was really magnificent and may be one of my proudest achievements as the regional director, we were in the Soviet Union visiting Refuseniks both in Moscow and in Leningrad, which it was called at that time. Then at USY Regional Convention, which was a few months later, each aliyah at our Shabbat Mincha service was dedicated to one of the Refuseniks we had met. The following year I believe we had two or three Refuseniks who had immigrated to the United States who had the same aliyah at USY Regional Convention. The other thing is, which I guess I sort of left out because there's just a lot to talk about, when I was the USY director of Temple of Aaron in Saint Paul, I went to Israel for the first time with my mother on the Beth El Synagogue trip. Subsequently, I was a group leader on USY Israel pilgrimage for a number of years, in the summer, six weeks, sixty kids. One year I took my own Saint Paul staff with me, who were two rather outstanding young people. One of them is Steve Skadron, who is the mayor of Aspen. How fun. One of the things that I think I was known for was a lot of creating programming. I think I was one of the first group leaders that as the bus from the airport arrived at the city limits in Jerusalem, I got everybody out of the bus and we walked into Jerusalem and we walked to our base. Things like that. That experience of going to Israel alone, just in general is, I think, a memorable thing. And you went multiple times. So talk about visiting Israel over the years. How many times have you gone to Israel? I think I've been to Israel five times. At one time I figured out I had spent about twenty-six weeks 11 total in Israel. I have not been to Israel in a very, very long time. I'm not a fan of flying over the ocean. Especially the events in 2014, I'm really not a fan of flying over the ocean, but I do fly. I think that Israel is a very, very personal thing. At Herzl Camp there was a mural on our ulam, which was the main auditorium, and it was Theodor Herzl, who said (Hebrew/German? phrase); if you will it, it is no dream. So I know that it had an impact on me because if you look at the graduating class of Minneapolis North High School in 1965, surprise, surprise, the class motto was, ?If you will it, it is no dream.? I wonder who suggested that. But Israel is part of my fiber having spent time there, having had so many different experiences and so many extraordinary experiences and having been to Israel once with my mother and seeing her go up to the Kotel and to kiss the wall. We actually were accompanied by two rabbis, Rabbi Kass Abelson from Beth El?and I happened to sit next to him because I wanted to see out the window as we were landing and I think his arm was sore because I kept on hitting his arm as we were landing because it was so exciting?and also Rabbi Sylvan Kamens, who was a rabbi at another one of the conservative synagogues in St. Louis Park. It was just...you can't even describe a pilgrimage because...for example, one of the sayings that I would have is, and one of the kids came up with it, when you approach?and I said to the kids, ?When you are going to approach the Kotel, it is like meeting your oldest friend for the first time. And as we come back to visit again and again, you will get to know this friend a lot closer and deeper.? I've been at the Kotel in a raging blizzard and I've been at the Kotel in a raging storm in the middle of the night. So I really...it's hard to put into words. Israel is Israel. I'm not sure that I would ever be able to live in Israel. It?s certainly on my bucket list to go back to Israel again because I do have so many students and good friends who live in Israel and that stuff. If we talk about Israel and we talk about all the educational opportunities I've had, if we 12 talk about my commitment to Soviet Jewry, that really prepared me to move west to California and eventually that prepared me from Los Angeles to move to Las Vegas. So was there a job that prompted you to move to Southern California? I went to see my cousin Ted Mann. I wanted to work in the movies like all my relatives. I still have relatives...I've got a first cousin Bruce who has been with Creative Artists Agency from the beginning. I have cousins...my second cousin Adam?my father's sister's son is Adam Shankman, the great movie director who did such movies like ?Hairspray.? So there's always been that showbiz. So that's in your blood. That's in my blood. It was really interesting?and this is part of oral history?the Far West Region at least had the reputation for being the most liberally Jewish region because it was the West Coast, and New York had an accurate reputation of being right-wing with a capital ?R? and a capital ?W.? But they had known my work because I had been at Temple of Aaron for, I think, about thirteen years. So I actually had gone to Atlanta to interview for a job at Avavath Achim, which is the largest conservative synagogue in the country. In fact, when I was there I hired their next youth director, because I think I was applying to be program director. But I had a wonderful time in Atlanta. I was a little surprised at the racist comment that came out of one of the laypeople who I was picked up by and spent a lot of time [with]. I mean the people were lovely. But I was very uncomfortable hearing a derogatory comment about someone whose color was different. It was then that I realized?and this is probably important?that never ever out of my mother, my father, my sister, my brother, my grandparents, never was there a negative, racist comment about any minority. And so because of that and because of that example, I've always been color blind. 13 North High changed; I remember that the first African-American student in my elementary school when I was in sixth grade, the first African-American was in kindergarten; I remember that. My junior high school was certainly very integrated. My senior high school was certainly very integrated. My debate partner?I went to the National Speech Contest as a senior at North High. But my debate partner?because I loved debate and I think that also helped me to become a better broadcaster?all the debates we did...he was black. He dressed with the most magnificent suit. I don't know what it's called, but the antique watch that sort of was hanging. Oh, sure. Very distinguished. Very distinguished. We never won a debate and I didn't really want to think that we didn't win a debate because of his color. And the reason why I say that, and this is again part of oral history, people who know the history of the Jewish community in the United States should know that at one time Minneapolis was the capital of anti-Semitism of every city in the United States. I did not know that. Yes. There was a mayor elected by the name of Hubert H. Humphrey who put an end to anti-Semitism in Minneapolis. Growing up in a Jewish ghetto and then living in St. Louis Park, which was another Jewish ghetto...I had to move to Los Angeles to actually understand how Lutheran Minneapolis really, really was. I didn't know it. Kind of like Garrison Keillor. I didn't realize that all of a sudden when it was Rosh Hashanah in the San Fernando Valley, there was no traffic on the 101. I didn't realize that there was this real exhibition of Jewish holidays and Jewish celebrations and that. So I loved living in Los Angeles up until the time of three events, which happened at the same time. The first one was the Northridge earthquake, which absolutely destroyed me. There 14 were so many apartment buildings on my street that were red tagged, which means you couldn't go in them again. That was really, really tough. The second thing, which was very tough, was my boss who was just coming in as the director of United Synagogue because I was director of United Synagogue Youth on the West Coast, she and her husband who were activists in the Jewish community and, in fact, her husband worked for the Jewish Federation or out of the Jewish Federation in Los Angeles, they went to a movie in Westwood. They stopped at a drive-through ATM. They were robbed. Jerry got concerned when they wanted his wife to get out of the car. This is one of those stupid ATM drive-thrus that you couldn't see from the street. He gunned on the gas. They shot him from the rear window and killed him. That was number two. And then number three was just the riots and having Army National Guard on my corner. So it was time. The earthquake really did it and it was time. And then I got lucky. Paul Freedman and Jules Gutin, who were number one and two from the New York office of United Synagogue, called and said, ?Bob, we would like you to apply to be the regional director in California, but we can't say to those laypeople that we support it because if they know that this call took place, you probably wouldn't get the job.? So what happened is I interviewed and I did get the job. But before that happened they had to call the New York office to say, ?This is who we'd like to hire.? And they said, ?Well, I guess it will be all right.? For people who don't know what United Synagogue is, can you define that for us as we go forward here? United Synagogue, which is now the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, is basically the oversight of conservative congregations throughout the United States. Of course, the Jewish Theological Seminary has the rabbinical assembly. This is all part of the conservative movement, 15 which the word conserving is very important. If you went to a reform synagogue, the saying was, ?It's not as important what's on top