Transcript of interview with Joanna S. Kishner by Barbara Tabach, January 10, 2017

AN INTERVIEW WITH JOANNA S. KISHNER 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 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 and Editors: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White 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 Joanna Kishner epitomizes the native Southern Nevada who was raised in both a Jewish and secular world of Las Vegas. A daughter of Ellen Neafsey Jobes and Irwin Kishner, she was born in 1964 and graduated from Clark High School in 1982. As she recalls, the halls of Clark High School witnessed a stellar cast of characters in the early 1980s, from future casino executives, to additional judges, to comedian Jimmy Kimmel. Judge Kishner earned a double major in Political Science and Psychology from Claremont McKenna College (1986) and graduated from UCLA School of Law (1989.) She remained in California and worked as senior counsel for Warner Brothers, a division of Time-Warner Entertainment Company and was also an associate with the multi-national firm Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker. In time, she felt the tug to return to her childhood roots in Las Vegas. She and her husband were married at Temple Beth Sholom, where she had her bat mitzvah and raises her own children in the Jewish tradition. Judge Kishner has been recognized for her legal work throughout the years, this includes pro bono work for disadvantaged children through the Children’s Attorney Project. When she set her sights on becoming a judge, she was joined by her young family as she knocked on thousands of doors to introduce herself and her passion for justice. In 2010, she was elected to Department XXXI of the Eighth Judicial District. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Joanna S. Kishner January 10, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Barbara Tabach Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………..iv Explains her judgeship seat and envisioning becoming a law career when she was younger, her father is Irwin Kishner, a non-practicing attorney, and several others in family are lawyers. Talks about being born and raised in Las Vegas and importance of Jewish tradition of tzedakah; L’dor vador; community service. Shares family’s Russian ancestral roots and research done by her son for a school project, landed in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia areas. Family migrated to Las Vegas later from Miami Beach where her father Irwin attended high school and University of Miami Law School; Irwin joined his Uncle Herman Kishner who lived in Las Vegas and was in development of apartments and retail centers……………………………………...………….1 – 5 Describes what it was like to grow up in Las Vegas: Jewish childhood at Temple Beth Sholom significant to her memories, BBYO etc.; the secular side of growing up in Las Vegas including desegregation of schools. Mentions Florence and Ronnie Frost, Kelly Kirschbaum; small town feeling; Chic Hecht, Leslie and Lori Hecht. Celebrating Jewish and Christian holidays; Hebrew school, Kolod Center at Temple Beth Sholom; Holocaust education in 1960s-1970s….…..6 – 12 Talks about working on a kibbutz in Israel after her freshman year at Claremont McKenna College; value of the experience; her sister Sharon; 1982 graduate of Clark High School, where several judges graduated from as well. Mentions Abbi Silver (judge), Kathleen Delaney (daughter of Joe Delaney), Hyde Park Junior High School, Catherine Cortez Masto (also Class of ’82), Billy McBeath, Stephen George, Jimmy Kimmel………………………………………….……13 – 19 Describes her 1977 bat mitzvah and party at Metro Club at MGM; raising her two children Jewish. How she met her husband; wedding at Temple Beth Sholom……………………….….….19 – 23 Talks about her career, senior counsel for Warner Brothers, being with her high school friend, Abbi Silver, through law school; interest in labor law. Mentions Paul Hastings, John Schulman, vi Shelley Presser. Decision to move back to Las Vegas. Steps to being elected a judge in 2010, knocking doors and keeping her maiden name, charity walks, Springs Preserve……….….24 – 28 AT THIS POINT the interview moves to the chambers of Judge Abbi Silver and the two women enjoy a name dropping session about their Clark High School Class of 1982 classmates. It’s a trip down memory lane as they reminisce and laugh about the joy of growing up in Las Vegas. Abbi Silver talks about her litigation experience when Jerry Lewis was stalked; Sayegh missing child case; Oscar Goodman, John Momot, David Chesnoff and other up and coming attorneys of the 1970s. This portion of the interview is also included in Abbi Silver oral history for the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project…………………………………………………….……….29 – 55 vii This is Barbara Tabach. Today is January 10th, 2017. I'm sitting in chambers of Joanna Kishner, a judge here in—your Las Vegas office. What exactly is your title today? I'm a district court judge, Eighth Judicial District, which means it's a general jurisdiction position that covers throughout Clark County. So everything from Moapa, Overton, Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson and Boulder City. So it's the entire Clark County area. We are the first level trial judges on the civil side for civil cases and also on the criminal side doing larger trials on those as well, everything from medical malpractice, breach of contract, construction defect—I have a construction defect specialty docket—as well as when people are part of the civil-criminal division. I'm part of the civil-criminal division, thirty-two judges in that and then there's twenty family court judges. We're considered all district court judges. But those of us on the civil-criminal don't handle family court matters in a routine practice with some small exceptions that don't really apply here. You'll be interviewing Judge Abbi Silver next. She is the first Court of Appeals judge. The Court of Appeals was just approved last couple of years. So prior to the Court of Appeals, appeals went from district court judges to the Nevada Supreme Court. You've interviewed Justice Cherry for the Nevada Supreme Court. And you're very busy it looks like…Looking at the hallway out here, there's a lot going on. We are all very incredibly busy. All morning I had about thirty matters on my motion calendar to handle before the lunch hour. I'm currently not in trial this afternoon so that we could meet. I have a trial starting tomorrow, a bench trial starting tomorrow. So we are constantly doing our motion calendars, our trials, and as you see around my chambers a couple of the binders for a couple of different cases on decisions. We write all of our own decisions as well. Wow. Before we get into the Jewish aspect of your life, did you imagine that someday you 2 would be a judge? Yes, actually, I'd be one of those few. I should mention my father [Irwin Kishner] was a non-practicing attorney. I've got cousins that are attorneys back East. My sister is an attorney. I've always had a passion for the law. In fact, when you speak with Judge Silver, she'll say it as well. When we were back in high school we actually did at that point—they call it like a Boy Scout, like Law Post. It was funded through, I think, either the Boy Scouts or some program. I'm not exactly sure. It was for people who thought they wanted to be lawyers. At an early age my parents said I liked to articulate my position and give back to the community. So I knew for a long time that down the road once I had the background experience of being a lawyer and the breadth and depth of experience that I wanted to give back to the community by being a judge. Now, that's a good point – giving back to the community as a judge. Why would you hold that feeling? Where does that come from? Well, I was born and raised here in Las Vegas and tzedakah was kind of synonymous. One of my first earliest memories is you trod off to preschool for your secular education. I went to Temple Beth Sholom for my Judaic education. One of the first things, the very first day you come back with a tzedakah box, the same tin blue and white or kind of soft white box that they still hand out today. For my family giving back to the community was something we did from the very, very beginning, and was instilled into us and something that we always felt. L'dor vador and tzedakah. So that transcends throughout my life. I have done a lot of community service. Then being a part of the bench, being able to actually resolve a lot of issues rather than just necessarily litigating them is an opportunity to serve our community from our (indiscernible) litigants throughout large multi-million-dollar cases. Wow. That's wonderful. So if we go back in time, what do you know about your Jewish 3 ancestry before your father, your grandparents? If you had asked me this question a few years ago, I would have known less, but actually my son had a project a while ago where he had to kind of pick an ancestor and trace roots. So we spoke with all of our family members to try and trace our ancestry and we actually then opened up an Ancestry-dot-com account. So now at this juncture I have had the benefits of tracing back. My father was born in Brighton Beach, New York. His father was actually born in Baranovich and it's pronounced a lot of different ways, Baronovitz, Baronovich. It's either Poland, Republic of Russia depending what time and now it's Belarus. So he came over—actually he was born Christmas Day, December 25th, 1898—came over on a ship called the Haverford via Liverpool. We researched all this for my son's project. This is great. Then we went back. He actually didn't come over with his parents. At least my understanding—this is a little bit unclear—I know he came over with a couple of his brothers and I think with an aunt. So they all pretended they were all the same family even though it wasn't his direct parents. The idea was pogroms and to have a new, better life in America. Eventually he brought his mother over. And his father, I believe, passed away before he was able to be brought over. So there was a whole grouping of relatives. That's my father's father side. In fact, his grandparents—so then Gershon would have come over and the same thing. They didn't actually come to New York. Now, who is Gershon? Okay. Let's walk it back. My father is Irwin, his father is Samuel, his father would have been Michael, and Michael's father would have been Gershon. And so they lived in the combined area, well, I would say New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia area of Pennsylvania all late 1800s, 4 turn of the century. So we researched all of that and then have gone back a little bit farther and then have branched out with their various brothers and sisters and who passed away. My grandfather Samuel that I mentioned came on the Haverford. So it was Baranovich. Then he had to spend three years in Liverpool and then they took the Haverford and they landed actually in Philadelphia. Originally my father had thought his family had come through Ellis Island because that was the family legacy, just oral history. But then when we researched it, the nice thing is you can actually go and find the ship's registry and we found it was the Haverford and they actually went into Philadelphia. He was with two of his brothers who are now deceased—this is Samuel's brothers; it would have been Herman who lived here in Las Vegas and with my father started Maryland Square and Nevada Square, the Somerset properties. So he was my great-uncle Herman. And then my great-uncle Benjamin also came over about that same time. They were all ten and younger at the time. He would have also worked for some of the properties. A variety of other relatives that all ended up in the general New York area. Then my father moved from New York, if my recollection is correct, around age thirteen, moved from Brighton Beach down to Miami Beach with his father, Samuel, and his mother, Ida. Ida had been born in New York, but her parents had immigrated, same general Eastern European area, but earlier on because she was actually born in the United States. That's at least my father's side of the family. How did they exactly end up here, one of the uncles? How they ended up in the Las Vegas area is my Grandfather Samuel, as well as his brothers and a variety of different cousins—this works out to be you end up with third cousins; I've got a lot of family here that I don't think is necessarily connected—were builders. So they built back in 5 New York. So first, some were grocers when they first came. I found an address of a grocery store where they worked at. Then they were in construction and then they became builders. So they built like an apartment complex, a couple of houses in New York, in Brighton Beach, in fact, what was called the Kishner Arms. It was there in the 1970s. I tried to go back and look at it at the end of the year and I couldn't find it. So I'm not sure if it got demolished with all the gentrifying of Brooklyn. So then the building and construction that's what they moved down to Miami Beach area for, at least my Grandfather Samuel did. He did some building there, built the home that they lived in, built some small apartments there. My father went to high school in Miami Beach. He went to college at the University of Florida, Gators; hence, I grew up a Gator. You see a Gator pendant in my chambers. And then he went to the University of Miami for law school. At the end of law school his uncle Herman who is my great-uncle, which was Samuel's brother—if this makes sense— It makes sense. I'm following you. —had moved out to Vegas to start doing some development. So my father, Irwin, went to join his uncle Herman and they started some of the various properties, such as Maryland Square, Nevada Square, Somerset Gardens, Somerset House Motel, Somerset Shopping Center, and the Monaco, which no longer exists, which used to be right next to the Desert Inn and a couple of other properties that I may be missing. So they came over 1959—well, late fifties for my uncle; my father was 1959, 1960 approximately. He could tell you better exactly. He married my mother. My sister was born in 1963 and I was born in 1964. So you are one of those rare genuinely born here. Born at Sunrise Hospital, yes. 6 What was it like to grow up in Las Vegas in general? There's two different kind of memories. I had my Jewish childhood because at the time we only had the one synagogue, or at least the one main synagogue, was Temple Beth Sholom when it was then located at East Oakey, 1600 East Oakey if I recall correctly the address. So that would take everyone from the whole community. And I should mention my parents divorced at an early age. So I kind of lived in two parts of town. But it would take people from the entire community. So we lived close to the Westside, Charleston and Rancho area. But it also drew from people who lived behind—Boulevard Mall existed then and exists now, another kind of large pocket. And then a lot of people lived right near the synagogue. So from a Jewish standpoint you knew everyone in the community. I went to Hebrew school with the Steinbergs, the Masons, the Macks, which are families still here in town, and the Angles, Freys, Freys, slash, Molasky before, the Franks, everyone. So we all went to the synagogue regardless of which part of town we lived in. So some I knew in my secular life going through elementary school, middle school, high school. Others we knew just through the synagogue because everyone went to the same synagogue. We went to Hebrew school together and did various celebrations together. That part was very nice. I mentioned tzedakah from the very beginning. It was a very harmonious group. We did different things. We participated. Different people had interest in whether it be BBYO or—I don't believe it was USY at that time. It may have been USY and others. We did things. We went to Jewish day camps, overnight camps out of town. So it was very harmonious and idealistic from a child's perspective, my early childhood, elementary school. On the flip side, at the same time Vegas was going through a lot of challenges that I was seeing really more on the non-Jewish side. What I'm talking about is...You may be aware of the 7 desegregation, the litigation, the Guinn case, first the Mason case and then it became the Guinn case. That started I believe around 1970, 1972, if I recall. It was the Ninth Circuit case. So that's the heart of when I'm in elementary school. So we all the sudden saw our elementary school, West Charleston Elementary right there on Palomino, right around the Charleston and Rancho area, all the sudden kids were starting to be bussed in, but then the schools closed down. So the parents took them out. Whether you call it boycotting, whether you call it the schools closed down, however you'd like to phrase it, we're taken from our elementary schools. My sister and I got put in a parochial school for a short time while things were getting resolved. So that was kind of a different but interesting challenge. What school did they put you in? Our Lady of Las Vegas, right there. Then with nuns we were a little bit of fish out of water there. Because in school, I should say, even starting in elementary school, you may or may not know Florence Frost. Yes. Well, Florence's daughter, Ronnie, and I have been very good friends since second grade. We met at second grade. So we still remain friends. In fact, I spent New Year's with her. Another gentleman, Ted Rosenstein—you may or may not know him—commercial real estate, still in town, still very friendly with, he moved from New Jersey in third grade. Kelly Kirshbaum, who now lives in northern Nevada, but her father was a veterinarian. We were all friends in elementary school, and there was a fourth person. So we were the ones from the elementary Jewish side. When Hanukkah came we brought our dreidels; let's give the explanation what Hanukkah is in school. This is at the Catholic school? 8 Well, no, I'm sorry. Oh, just in general. In general. In elementary school. Then when we short term get placed in parochial school, everything kind of goes different for a little bit. But it was a very short term because then they revolved it, schools opened again, and we went back to West Charleston at the time, which is now Howard Wasden Elementary School, went to the sixth grade center when that was time. So both before and after the short time we were at Our Lady, when we were in regular CCSD school for the Jewish holidays, they always asked the Jewish kids to explain what the Jewish holidays were, bring in a little something. So it was nice. It was very congenial. So the tensions were never—at least I was never subjected to any bullying or any issues like that that I recognized. No overt anti-Semitism. Not that I'm aware of that I have any recollection of. But at the same time, you had—because really the focus was all the issues that were going on unfortunately with Las Vegas' other challenge. It's a fabulous community, but at the same time it had its challenges. So people were kind of more focused on that challenge I think than really...Because all my friends, it really didn't matter if we were Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, Protestant, Baptist, Methodist; we just all enjoyed... It was a small town. It was a small town and it was very community based and there really wasn't...The only difference was we'd be out of school a couple of days. Most of our teachers were accepting of that. Yes, I had a few teachers over the years that would give a test and wouldn't let you make it up if you were out for Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah. But overall it was a pretty nice community. 9 I should mention Chic Hecht that we were friends with. Leslie Hecht is a year older than I am. So friends with Leslie and Lori Hecht. And Chic and Gail were good friends of my father. So it was a very small community no matter where you lived. East side, west side, it didn't matter. My understanding through working on the African-American Experience project and then the Jewish project, the idea to get the schools integrated was really surprising here when you think about it in the scheme of other places, how they were handling it. I look at it in a retrospective lens because as I was going through it, we had tons of friends. It didn't matter their race, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, disability. I had friends everything. Both my parents treated everyone exactly the same, as they should. That was one thing that was always—we were raised it's community; it's people. So none of that mattered to us. The fact that it was happening around me, for my sister and I it was surprising. Like, why is there an issue? It doesn't really make sense. Everyone gets along. Let us continue with our school days and enjoy ourselves. So it's only as I became older and researched it or people have given retrospectives on it and I look at it from a reflective standpoint that I am able to see that it did exist and I was somewhat rosy colored glasses possibly at the time or basically being a child and just enjoying being a child. Because, really, we would do things as large group and we weren't designated who our group was when we did activities or birthday parties. You can go back and look at birthday party pictures and it's a diversity, as it should be, and always has been. So it wasn't always just the Jewish friends. It was a very mixed group is what we're describing. Yes. And that was very nice. I'd go over to my friends' houses for all their Christmas holidays. I had friends that were—even at that stage—were of a very diverse race, religion, national origin. 10 It didn't matter and it still doesn't matter because it's all one big community. That was a really nice thing to have that perspective even though, like I said, retrospectively there was a lot more going on that I probably didn't realize. But that's the job of parents. They kind of shelter their child from that. I was fortunate. So Hebrew school, you had a Hebrew school experience? Sure, through Temple Beth Sholom. We mostly did Sunday school. It's a little bit different than what they do now. It was probably, I'm going to say, a little bit more informal. I don't remember what the Hebrew Academy started, which was the first full Jewish day school that people really went to. I did not go there. Like I said, I was in the public school system throughout my—other than my short little parochial experience. But at temple we went on Sundays. We went one afternoon a week. Then as you prepared for your bar or bat mitzvah—obviously, mine was a bat mitzvah—you'd meet with the rabbi and you'd meet with the cantor and it was very easily done. Now, the difference is at that time the girls had their bat mitzvahs on Friday night and the boys had their bar mitzvahs on Saturday. Yes, it was a little different. So we didn't do the full, whole Saturday service, at least at Temple Beth Sholom. Now, someone who is of a different generation may have a different perspective on that, but that's my recollection of the way it was. But otherwise, Jewish education. You had the basketball court in the back of the temple. You could just hang out there with your friends. You're talking about the Kolod Center. Yes, the Kolod Center behind Temple Beth Sholom. You went to services, of course. Most people of that generation, we had our little signals where all of us had to take our restroom breaks at the same time. 11 There's always high jinks, isn't there? Yes. But it was nice because we looked forward to going to religious service oftentimes to see our friends that we didn't see in our regular school days as well as appreciating the service. But, yes, sometimes you need a little bit of a break with your friend. I did have one experience in Hebrew school, which is a little bit different now. You mentioned parents shielding you. At a very young age, and I couldn't tell you exactly when, through Sunday school, Hebrew school, whatever you'd like to call it, they did show us Holocaust films. They did what? Showed us Holocaust films, which I remember at the time was a huge impression for a young child. I think it was the right thing to do. I'm not saying it any way from a negative standpoint. It made us really realize how fortunate we were. But it kind of reinforced the idea that you need to treat everyone the same and we're all part of a community. Remember we're talking late sixties, early seventies. So you had many people whose family members had been lost in the Holocaust or you had survivors and they thought it was very important to teach us from a very young age part of our history. While I wouldn't have done it probably as young for my own children, I don't think it's done as young as it probably was we were, I think it turned out to be an informative educational experience that I think helped each of us realize how important really our community is. It reinforced that whole idea of community involvement and appreciating everyone's diversity. That is a big topic: whenever I talk to anyone who is involved actively involved in the Holocaust education programs about when do you introduce this to children and how do you introduce it. When you were growing up it was still fresh. It was accessible history. 12 That's why I think it was a little different. Like I said, I couldn't tell you exactly. I know I was in elementary school and I'm pretty sure it was early elementary school. But I do remember the library. It was past the synagogue. It was like the first door on the right across from the gift shop. It was a bigger room, kind of like a library. We went in there to see a film. I don't remember honestly if it was there; I know it was in a school setting. "Hogan's Heroes," the actor who played LeBeau, who lost most of his family in the Holocaust, came and spoke with us. I know he did it in the school setting. I don't remember if he also did it at the synagogue setting then or later on. But they also had some speakers come and speak to us who were Holocaust survivors. I just remember that while it was a shock initially to see that—because it's a lot more vivid to see the pictures and the films, and we're not talking "Schindler's List," super-edited versions; it was pretty graphic; I remember it being black and white and graphic—it, I think, really did end up having for each of us a good remembrance of where we needed to be in our lives down the road and spurred me to want to go work on a kibbutz later on, which I did. Oh, you did. I did. Tell me about that. After my freshman year of college—so I should go back. When I graduated high school, I was fortunate my sister and I got to travel to Israel, Egypt, Greece and Turkey for the summer. I only got to go to Israel for a short amount of time, really wanted to do more. So the following year I worked with one of my professor in psychology. I was double majoring in political science and psychology at Claremont McKenna College. One of my psychology professors—he was not Jewish. But I said that I wanted to go to Israel and work on a kibbutz and do the comparative lifestyles and would he support that as an independent project. He said, "Of course. I never had 13 such a request." So the summer after my freshman year of college I signed up to go. At that time when you worked on a kibbutz, you signed up, you hopped on a plane, you showed up—I don't remember if it was Tel Aviv or Jerusalem; I think it was Tel Aviv—they put you on a bus and just sent you off to one of the kibbutzim. I wasn't there with any friends or anything like that. We're talking this is summer of 1983. So no formal group or support structure. You at this tender age are dropped off. Yes. But it worked out well. Sink or swim for me is a fact. I am fortunate to be independent, fortunate to have had a strong family upbringing. So it was my choice that that's what I wanted to do and my parents supported my choice. So, yes, I ended up at Kibbutz Ginegar, which was one of the original three kibbutzim that was near Afula, up near the northern border. It was right in the middle. If you recall, there was a lot of invasions going on at the time. But it was a tremendous experience and I say that because you take a kid from—well, first off, being from Las Vegas, showing up as a female on a kibbutz in Israel in 1983, five-foot-two, about a hundred pounds at the time—well, five-foot-three, okay—five-foot-two, five-foot-three, a hundred pounds at the time, a freshman in college and you show up. Shall we say initially they put me in the laundry doing cloth diapers because they kind of had a little bit of a stereotype about the Americans and women. By the time I had left the kibbutz I was the only female working in the plastics factory right alongside the men, packaging bags, running a forklift, et cetera. So it was very, very informative. It was one of the few kibbutzim that at that time allowed the children from people from Germany and Austria and some of the places that Hitler conquered that were not Jewish. So I had at the same time some students whose parents may or may not have had some ties. They were either the silent non-dissenters or could have had some active ties. It was an amazing experience to not only meet people from all around the world and all different 14 religions and different concepts, but you had some people there that were trying to find themselves, other people, such as me, who were students, because we were not on an ulpan where they place you as a group. We just got sent there and here's your little place, little cot to sleep on, enjoy, and get to work and here's where you're getting assigned. But there were people really from all over the country that were just really dynamite. I wrote a whole thesis on it, about the alternate lifestyles of basically socialism roots on the kibbutzim and whether or not it was effective in the early 1980s. As you know, they don't really have volunteers on most all the kibbutzim anymore. Did you draw upon that experience throughout the rest of your life? I did for a lot of things because after I finished working on the kibbutz, some of us traveled together around Israel doing some things, which I would never let my kids do, such as sleeping out on the beach in a lot. I've been fortunate. I've survived some challenges and things. But, yes, because it really...If you think of judge, Eighth Judicial Court, and most people know me for my pro bono activities, volunteering and things like that, they don't think someone who in 1983 was sleeping on a beach in a lot after just working in a kibbutz. So it's a great story to tell my kids. Although I'm very fortunate I have wonderful children, but if they were ever to express that they have it hard, I have that in my back pocket to say, "Good luck, I had it a little harder." But it was my choice. The easy thing for me is I could leave when I wanted to. Everybody else there was really working incredibly hard to insure survival and livelihood. Remember in the early eighties, it was before all the high tech in Israel. So we would hitchhike, something I would never let my kids do, but it was fine. I held an Uzi because there were soldiers everywhere we went, of course. So if you were going out and having a drink, and I mean like a soda, out in a