Bernice “Sis” Kazis
Bernice Gondelman Goldstein Kazis was born in 1924 and raised in Dorchester and Brookline, Massachusetts, in a close-knit Jewish family with longstanding ties to Congregation Mishkan Tefila. She attended Goucher College, graduating in 1945, and soon afterward married Leonard “Lenny” Goldstein, a World War II veteran and former prisoner of war. After Lenny’s sudden death in 1953, Bernice was left to raise their three young children and entered her family’s retail business. The following year, she married Rabbi Israel Kazis of Mishkan Tefila. Bernice pursued extensive volunteer and professional work in social service, including work with people with disabilities, children’s advocacy, Jewish community organizations, and Russian Jewish resettlement. She also served on the boards of several Jewish organizations and remained actively engaged in documenting and preserving Jewish community history.
Bernice Gondelman Goldstein Kazis talks about her childhood and family background in Dorchester and Brookline, Massachusetts; her education at Goucher College; her Jewish upbringing and connections to Congregation Mishkan Tefila; her marriage to Leonard Goldstein, his World War II service, and his death in 1953; and her subsequent marriage to Rabbi Israel Kazis. Kazis discusses raising her children, her family’s retail business, volunteer and professional work, and her involvement in Jewish communal organizations. She also addresses changes within Boston’s Jewish communities, the relocation of Congregation Mishkan Tefila from Roxbury to Newton, Jewish–Black community relations, social service activities, children’s advocacy, Russian Jewish resettlement, and Kazis’s later community and oral history work.
The views expressed in these interviews are solely those of the speakers and do not reflect the positions of JWA or its affiliates.
