A "Mixed" Jewish Marriage

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"I don’t know if my grandfather’s whole family came at the same time, but I believe he came in 1909 and he was the second of I think there were nine children, several of them died in fires and maybe there was a stillbirth, but I believe there were five that came to the United States, five or six. And they lived in the Lower East Side."

Editor’s Note: Jackie's grandfather and his family were Jewish immigrants from what is now the Ukraine. When the Shermans first came to the United States, they lived at 10 Rivington Street near the University Settlement House which had been founded by Stanton Coit and Charles B. Stover in 1886 to provide resources to recent immigrants. Jackie remembered hearing stories about her grandfather and grandmother spending time there as young people in New York City. When Jackie's father, Stewart, married her mother, Doris, it was known as a "Jewish mixed marriage" because his family was from Eastern Europe and more working class, and her family was recently arrived from a very cultured Western European upbringing, fleeing Nazi persecution. There were a lot of cultural differences between them.