Arthur Goldstein, 2022-08-05

File — Box: 1, Folder: 11

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

From the Series:

This series contains the transcripts of the oral history interviews. The transcripts are organized by neighborhood, and then alphabetically by last name.

Dates

2022-08-05

Creator

From the Collection: Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center at New England Historic Genealogical Society (99 Newbury Street Boston, MA ) (Organization)

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for researcher use. Please contact us to make an appointment to view this collection at jhcreference@nehgs.org.

Biographical / Historical

Arthur Goldstein was born in Roxbury, MA, in 1936 to Ida (b. 1911 in Keene, NH) and Hyman Goldstein (b.1909 in Ukraine). He lived in Roxbury until 1946 when his family moved to Dorchester, MA. He worked as a CPA, and he and his wife, Edith, had three children. He now lives in Randolph, MA. Arthur’s oral history details the streetscape of Blue Hill Avenue and neighborhood life in both Roxbury and Dorchester; his family’s poverty; their desire to assimilate into American life; and their emphasis on education as the foundation for a successful and meaningful life. He describes his first neighborhood in Roxbury, like several other narrators do, as a “ghetto,” explaining his use of the word not as a derogatory term as a way of describing a concentration of Jewish families in one area. “It was just everybody together … basically, everybody you knew was Jewish.”