Mr GRIFFIN. What language was spoken in the home?
Mr. RUBY. To our parents Yiddish, you would call it.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did your parents speak English?
Mr. RUBY. Very little; very few words.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Are you willing to make this statement that your
conversations with your parents were always in Yiddish?
Mr RUBY. No, no; I can’t say that because my father spoke a little
English.
Mr. GRIFFIN. How about with your mother?
Mr. RUBY. My mother I would say in her conversations she threw in a
word here or there in English; about 95 percent was Yiddish. My father
picked up more English words because, in fact, he was working as a
carpenter, and being out among English-speaking people more than, more
so than my mother who was home all the time, he had an opportunity to
learn some English words.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Now, when the children got older, the family continued to
live together, as I understand it, there was a home where all of the
unmarried children and the parents lived?
Mr. RUBY. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. In that home up until the time that your mother died, did
you observe, were the dietary practices observed all the time?
Mr. RUBY. Oh, yes; sure. Every Passover we changed the dishes, and so
on.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Yes; but that is just once a year. What about on a daily
basis, did you observe every day the dietary——
Mr. RUBY. Well, you don’t observe it every day.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Well, some homes do.
Mr. RUBY. I don’t understand.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Some homes keep separate dishes for meat and dairy
products.
Mr. RUBY. Yes; we had separate dishes until my mother passed away.
Mr. GRIFFIN. How about the regularity of attending church services,
temple services, did you go every week to temple services?
Mr. RUBY. No, no; not all of us. I know I didn’t. My sisters did. My
sister did.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Which sister?
Mr. RUBY. Marion. My father did until he became ill, you know, and then
he passed away.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Was there any resentment in the home toward the practices
that were maintained by your parents there, failure to converse
regularly in English and perhaps their old world habits?
Mr. RUBY. I don’t understand.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Which is common in all families, I think, in which the
practices that are observed in the home are not the kind of practices
that you see on television or in the movies. Was there resentment among
any of the children toward the fact that here was a home in which a
foreign language was spoken, and practices were observed which did
not appear to be the same practices as the people who were on top in
American society?
Mr. RUBY. Yes; I would say so. However, my mother insisted that we
follow the lines of the Orthodox Jew.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did any of you object to that insistence by your mother?
Mr. RUBY. No; nothing because there wasn’t too much to object to,
because it was the same food. I mean there is really nothing—however,
if we would take the wrong utensil, you know, because there are two
separate ones, we would be bawled out for taking the wrong one.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Well, Jack during the time that he was in Chicago lived
for various periods outside the home, didn’t he?
Mr. RUBY. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. For example, I believe he lived with either Sam Gordon or
Alex Gruber in a separate apartment in Chicago in the early thirties.
Do you recall that?
Mr. RUBY. I know he lived with Gruber but I don’t know how long.