Oral Histories
Emia Oppenheim
Interviewer: We’ll get going on the interview and then I’m going to get the recording. (recording in progress message from computer comes on) Okay, so, this interview for the Columbus Jewish Historical Society is being recorded on November 18th, 2025 as part of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society Oral History Project. The interview is being recorded via Zoom. My name is Yvonne Bury and I am interviewing Emia Oppenheim and so, we’ll start off with your full name.
Oppenheim: Emia Oppenheim.
Interviewer: Okay. No middle name?
Oppenheim: No. I have no middle name but it’s “eh.”
Interviewer: Do you have a Jewish name?
Oppenheim: Emia.
Interviewer: Okay and do you know who you were named for?
Oppenheim: Emma, um, what’s her last name, Emma Grunenbaum.
Interviewer: And who is that person in your family related to you?
Oppenheim: She’s my great-grandmother.
Interviewer: Okay. Mother’s side? Father’s side?
Oppenheim: Mother’s side.
Interviewer: Mother’s side.
Oppenheim: Oh, I’m sorry. It’s my father’s maternal side.
Interviewer: Okay, your father’s maternal side. Great. Can you tell me about your parents, like full names and maybe your mom’s maiden name?
Oppenheim: Yeah. My dad’s full name was Yost – J-o-s-t Oppenheim, and my mom’s full name was Elizabeth Kaynor Oppenheim.
Interviewer: And, did your parents tell you stories of their family history?
Oppenheim: Yeah. My dad actually, wrote it down when he was twelve, and so we…
Interviewer: Oh, my gosh.
Oppenheim: …have a really nice diary from, he was a hidden child, um, in Holland during the War, so similar to you, although much of my dad’s family is gone but my dad’s my Opa and Oma before their kids were born moved to Holland because they felt that Holland would be safe.
Interviewer: When did they move there? Roughly? Late ‘30s?
Oppenheim: Um, I want to say 1933.
Interviewer: Oh, so relatively early then. Things were just really, kind of getting going.
Oppenheim: Yeah, it was before my dad was born so it was like, yeah, they moved to Venlo in 1933 and then he was born 1934 in Venlo…
Interviewer: Okay.
Oppenheim: My Opa had been a veteran of World War I, so, they originally, they hid the children, well, they had a space for my Oma and Opa to hide in Amsterdam, but they knew that it was a very small space, and after my brother, after my dad, came, four years later my uncle came, so he was quite young when my Oma and Opa went into hiding and they knew that, you know, a small young boy would be the end of them all, so they ended, they found a home on the Belgian Dutch border with a Catholic family that pretended my dad and my uncle were Rotterdam orphans, so they were hidden during the War. My mom’s family, they’re part of the Klatzky family which I’m weaker on. We didn’t have a lot of contact with them, but they emigrated, I think, around the time of the Pogroms through Canada into Wisconsin. They were probably, like, one of two Jewish families in Superior, Wisconsin.
Interviewer: That, that happened a lot.
Oppenheim: Yeah, so, yeah, I think she was her parents were, she was born in the U.S. Her parents emigrated when they were quite young.
Interviewer: Okay so, and we’re talking almost a whole generation difference in time when the two halves of your, or your parents’ families came to this country.
Oppenheim: Yeah.
Interviewer: Okay. So, one came through Canada probably the slow way, right? They lived there a while and then…
Oppenheim: I don’t know.
Interviewer: Okay.
Oppenheim: I don’t think so. I’m weaker. I’m really weak on her history. They were from Latvia and Lithuania.
Interviewer: Yeah. Up there.
Oppenheim: I don’t know how long they were in Canada. We just, we were always told that’s how they came in.
Interviewer: Okay, and then your father and his brother and parents then emigrated after the War?
Oppenheim: So, my, my Opa was killed in Auschwitz. He had diabetes so, it wasn’t long after, being a veteran, they were, they were given up, so they were transported to Theresienstadt because he had been a veteran of World War I, but because of the diabetes, you know, he became ill and they said, “Oh, get on this hospital train. ch ch ch…”
Interviewer: Yeah.
Oppenheim: My grandmother, however, thanks to, you know, the community there and many people telling her not to get on the trains that they said, “Oh, come. You can come to your spouse at the hospital now,” you know. You’re just saved by so many small chances, you know? And anyway, she survived Theresienstadt, was liberated when the Russians came in and then after a very long journey from Theresienstadt to where my dad and uncle were, you know, she found them. They, I think, lived a few more months before they got everything they needed, and then they, they flew over…
Interviewer: M-kay.
Oppenheim: …and my Oma’s family, so when, in 1933, when my Oma and Opa went to Holland, her, she had two sisters that said, “No way. There’s no way. This guy’s a madman and we need to get much further away than that,” and so, they came to the U.S., the two sisters with Grandma Emma who I’m named after. So, then, when my dad and my uncle and my Oma came over, there was a family here.
Interviewer: Where were they?
Oppenheim: They were in New York City.
Interviewer: Okay.
Oppenheim: Yeah.
Interviewer: Do you, do you remember stories that your mother and father told about their youth?
Oppenheim: Yeah. I mean, my, my dad especially. I guess, my dad is a very dominant person as you can probably tell but, yeah, I mean, my, my Oma worked really hard, you know, to survive and have the kids thrive and they ran a boarding house for, like, disabled Jews. It might, like, sometimes it seems like, it was maybe depressed but, I don’t know, but something, they were on, there was some sort of disability there, and so, my, my dad would talk about sharing a bed with my uncle. Both of them were, I mean, they shared a bed until my dad went to medical school and they’re both like six…they were both like, six-four, six-five. They were not small. Yeah, and then, you know, my dad, my Oma just emphasized that everything was education, you know. It was the key to life. My uncle, he ended up being a truck driver and, you know, in hindsight, we realized, like, he had dyslexia. You know, they didn’t know what it was. When they, there was a test, my dad would talk about them taking when they first came there, when they had, like, learned enough English and it was a oral test, so it didn’t require any reading, but it had math skills and analytical skills. My dad would always talk about how my uncle did way better than him and, and he was a smart guy but his dyslexia he was treated like phff…nothin’ you know, so he would talk about that. I mean, they certainly talked about stories during the War, you know, close encounters that just make the hairs on your arms stand up, like, the things they endured, the things that, we’re so lucky didn’t mean the end of my dad and my uncle.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Oppenheim: So, they have stories about that, stories about when the Allies came in and that experience. So yeah, we were raised with a lot of, a lot of stories. My mom, less so, I mean, she was, her, her dad and her uncle ran a landfill, like, so many Jews in the Midwest, it seems like.
Interviewer: So, landfill? They were like, they did scrap metal and stuff like that.
Oppenheim: I feel like that’s not the right word, but I think you know what I mean.
Interviewer: Recycling?
Oppenheim: Recycling. I think it was, yeah, and my mom, my mom’s mom was a dressmaker, and she had three brothers. She was raised Orthodox.
Interviewer: In Wisconsin.
Oppenheim: Yeah, I mean the best story from that was, like, apparently my, my grandma and grandpa on that side who I never met because they died when I was very young. Apparently, they had relations before they were married and had a child, and that child became my mom’s uncle, right, ‘cause it was raised by my great grandmother, and it was not until my mom was in her, like, mid-twenties that she found out and I think, my uncle was in his forties, like, it wasn’t until they were pretty old that they found out that they were not uncle and niece, but siblings, yeah.
Interviewer: Uhn-hn.
Oppenheim: So, it was, like, you can imagine it was a very tight Orthodox, from what my dad would say, very overbearing, controlling family.
Interviewer: So, let’s see. You…
Oppenheim: Also education was, like, a through line, you know, and even though she was female, her dad made sure that she went to Stephens College, a finishing school. Then when Wisconsin University said she had a place there and they would pay for her, you know, her brothers made sure she went, you know, so, it’s…
Interviewer: Yeah. So,that’s very important. If we look at your mother’s and your father’s family, let’s look at the siblings of your parents and maybe you can name them and say where they are now or if they’re deceased? You know, just kind of run through…
Oppenheim: All deceased.
Interviewer: Oh, all deceased. Okay.
Oppenheim: My dad, my mom, all their siblings, yeah.
Interviewer: Okay, so, um, then I don’t need to ask you where they’re living now because that’s sort of a moot issue.
Oppenheim: None of them are in Ohio. I’m the first to be in Ohio.
Interviewer: Do you have contact with relatives in your parents’ countries of origin?
Oppenheim: Um, my mom, I don’t think we know anyone who’s left there. My dad, for the most part, there, I think there was one sister of my Opa who escaped, but I don’t, we don’t really have any information on her and she escaped to the U.S. Who we do have a relationship is the Catholic family that adopted my father and my uncle, so we are still quite close. There’s one remaining, sibling, you know, uncle to me…
Interviewer: Uh-uhn.
Oppenheim: …from that generation and then the cousins that we’re connected to and they’re all in Holland and Belgium.
Interviewer: Okay.
Oppenheim: …and we actually, we got our German citizenship back.
Interviewer: Okay. What about your parents? How did they end up meeting?
Oppenheim: Um, they both were at Columbia. My…
Interviewer: And was that graduate school because you’ve mentioned a couple of colleges?Oppenheim: Yeah, so, my mom like I said, she just was an excellent student, and she was accepted into the teaching college at Columbia and they were set up on a blind date by somebody.
Interviewer: And then when did they get married? When and where did they get married?
Oppenheim: They got married, um, in Seattle. My dad had residency there. Let’s see, year, 1961. So, he, he went to Columbia, Physicians and Surgeons…
Interviewer: Okay.
Oppenheim: …and he had his year, his clinical internship medical training at King County Hospital in Seattle, Washington…
Interviewer: M-kay.
Oppenheim: …and um, they ended up getting married out there.
Interviewer: And then what did they do? I mean, your father then was a physician and went through residency then probably?
Oppenheim: No.
Interviewer: No. Oh. Okay.
Oppenheim: So, he went to study psychiatry ‘cause he’s, like, I’m going to figure out what drives people to do things, like what the Germans did…
Interviewer: Yeah.
Oppenheim: …and to understand that and then he just felt like it was total voodoo. Um, you know, in the 1960’s, there weren’t a lot of tools in psychiatry and he, he didn’t last long. He’s like, “Forget it. This is just not for me,” and, I don’t know how, I guess, he started doing some research while he was at the hospital or something. I don’t know. Somehow, he connected to researchers, and he ended up, 1962, they moved to Washington, DC and he was, became a researcher at the National Institutes of Health…
Interviewer: Okay.
Oppenheim: …and he spent his life dedicated to immunology research.
Interviewer: And what about your mom in terms of a career?
Oppenheim: So, she was a teacher for a very short period of time and then after she had us, she became an editor for The Journal of Biological Chemistry – not an editor like content editor, but, I don’t know, copy editor maybe?
Interviewer: Yeah. Style as much as anything just to get the research papers into the proper format for the publication.
Oppenheim: Yeah. Yeah. Now it’s all, you know, computerized…
Interviewer: Sure.
Oppenheim: But, back then I can remember sitting. She’d sit at the table and go through, you know, figures and yeah.
Interviewer: Mm-hm. And how about, you said, “us,” so that means there were some siblings. Tell me about your siblings.
Oppenheim: Yeah, I have three older brothers who are all still alive. Two of them are in the DC area.
Interviewer: And can you give me names and birth year?
Oppenheim: Birth year. Whoo.
Interviewer: Well, guess, it’s close enough.
Oppenheim: 1961, 1962…
Interviewer: And give me names, too, please?
Oppenheim: What?
Interviewer: Names.
Oppenheim: Oh. 1961, actually, was he 1961 or 1962? 1962, Meers, 1963 Monty, 1966 Matthew.
Interviewer: And then you.
Oppenheim: And then me in 1970. Yeah.
Interviewer: And you grew up in the DC area?
Oppenheim: Yeah. I mean, we did a, we did a Sabbatical year, year plus in Israel…
Interviewer: Mm-hum.
Oppenheim: …and then I lived in Israel again when I was a teenager a couple times, but mostly in DC.
Interviewer: And your brothers? Did they also go to Israel for a while?
Oppenheim: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: And you lived on kibbutzes?
Oppenheim: Yeah, I, I did. When we went there, we were there in 1974 and ’75 and we lived near Tel Aviv. Um, they had a, they have an NIH type facility there called the Weizmann Institute.
Interviewer: Yes.
Oppenheim: …and back then you could live at the Institute and so we lived there and then I went again in 1986, 1988, 1989. I was on a kibbutz then. Yeah.
Interviewer: And then everybody’s back in the States sort of?
Oppenheim: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: And all over the place? Are you all over the country now or still in the eastern part?
Oppenheim: No. My, two of my, Monty and Matthew are not far from where we grew up, like ten miles from up there…
Interviewer: Oh. Okay.
Oppenheim: And, my dad was there too until he passed away and my oldest brother has been in Boston because of work for a very long time.
Interviewer: Okay.
Oppenheim: So, yeah, not too, too far apart.
Interviewer: Okay. Alright. Let’s shift a little bit over and talk about you…
Oppenheim: Okay.
Interviewer: …and so, we’ll start with you growing up and that was in the DC area mostly.
Oppenheim: Yeah. Yeah. Oh.
Interviewer: And then college, high school, college, sports, arts, whatever you want? Talk a little bit about you.
Oppenheim: Oh, yeah, I went to, so my oldest brother went to Cornell, and my second brother – this is relevant. stay with me, but my second brother went to McGill and had a relationship gone awry, gone poorly, had a broken heart and transferred to Cornell, and then my youngest brother went to Wisconsin but then for grad school went to Cornell. Then I started kind-of around the same time that the second brother was finishing. he first brother had graduated and come back to Cornell for grad school. The third brother was now there for grad school. I had started college at Maryland and was like, not very, not challenged, and so I thought, “Well, heck, I better go to Cornell,” So, I joined my brothers there which was really lovely and fun ‘cause, if you’ve ever been to Upstate New York, it’s really beautiful…
Interviewer: Yes.
Oppenheim: So, you know, I was in this great learning environment and then I had my family there and it was beautiful, so I graduated undergrad only to leave for a little bit and come back and go to grad school also at Cornell.
Interviewer: In what subject?
Oppenheim: Nutrition.
Interviewer: Okay.
Oppenheim: Yeah. I also studied immunology. I actually did, in between undergrad and grad, I worked with a colleague of my father and managed to get a master’s in that field which was fun to kind of work in my dad’s area. Yeah, and then I, I met my husband in Ithaca and as I was, I had finished my PhD and he had an opportunity to work abroad and this was around that time that Bush was a President. 9/11 had just happened and we had declared war and we just felt like we wanted to look into other countries and leave and timing felt really right and so we moved to Edinburgh for several years and, I guess, around 2005, we had to, so we’d been there for three years and we had to make a decision, about did we want to stay and get residency. Did we want to come back and, you know, I think, like a lot of ex-pats, like, the pull of family really brought us back, so, we moved to Ohio, Columbus, in 2005, thinking we’d be here for like, two years, maybe three, yeah, and…
Interviewer: And here you are.
Oppenheim: Here we are.
Interviewer: So, do both you and your husband have jobs here then?
Oppenheim: Yeah. Yeah, my husband is at OSU and that was the original pull for us. You know, when we knew we were coming back to the States he cast a wide net all the way out to the Midwest and, you know, this was kind-of the best option for us, and…
Interviewer: Okay. Tell me your husband’s name.
Oppenheim: What?
Interviewer: Your husband’s name?
Oppenheim: Mike.
Interviewer: Okay.
Oppenheim: Mike White. Um, yeah, and I worked at the Department of Health for a while. Now I work for an organization that’s nationally focused, so, it’s just remote.
Interviewer: Mm-hum. So, you’re one of those absolutely-work-from-home-kind-of people.
Oppenheim: Yeah, for good and bad, yep.
Interviewer: Do you have children?
Oppenheim: Yeah, we have three children.
Interviewer: Do you want to do names and ages? That’s optional if you care to protect that.
Oppenheim: Probably just leave it. Yeah.
Interviewer: Okay. Alright, so three children. School age?
Oppenheim: Um, no. Two are done and launched, although one’s living here at our house and then one in high school, hopefully finishing up, knock on wood.
Interviewer: Okay. Tell me just a little bit more about what you do professionally and then we’ll kind of move on to some other things.
Oppenheim: Yeah, I’m a, I’m a public health nutritionist. I’m in public health so my work focus is really on increasing children’s access to food, but primarily fruits and vegetables, ideally local, fresh, but really the focus of our work is just to food access, and we do that through working on the food system. It’s not, and it’s not just Ohio. We work across the country like helping states figure out how to make their food system better so that young children can have more fruits and vegetables, and access good healthy food.
Interviewer: Sure. Yeah. I know, it’s a noble goal, right?
Oppenheim: Yeah, shouldn’t be, but…
Interviewer: Well, I know, but it is, you know, it’s kind-of counter to the American style of eating sometimes, too.
Oppenheim: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Interviewer: And how ‘bout hobbies or things that you do in your free time?
Oppenheim: Um, let’s see. I swim a lot. There’s a masters swim team. There’s actually a few in Columbus, Ohio. I swim with one of them. We have two dogs. We obsess over them and hike with them and walk with them. I volunteer a lot with Special Olympics and the Franklin Board of Developmental Disabilities and I love to read, and I volunteer for the library. What else? I don’t know. I like to bake. Yeah.
Interviewer: Hm-hum, yeah, and all that stuff. Alright, so, let’s talk a little bit about religious involvement…
Oppenheim: Okay.
Interviewer: …and so, this will shift us over into KSS [Kehilat Sukkat Shalom] and you can talk a little bit about religious background and how you got involved with them and when you joined that group and so on and just kind-of turn you loose on that for a while and then I have a few specific things I’ll ask you as we’re going along here for a while.
Oppenheim: M-kay, um, well, I grew up in what we called Reconformodox. I think we just called it that. I don’t think it’s a thing. There’s a kehilla in DC called Kehilla Chadasha and my parents were one of the thirteen founding families. You know, I think the story is that just we were going to a Jewish group, a synagogue there, but it was, my dad sort of objected to the deification of God, you know. I think, really he didn’t believe in God and it was not God-optional. I mean, if I were to boil it down.
Interviewer: Mm-uhm.
Oppenheim: He believed in Judaism. He believed in being Jewish. He believed in our scholarly heritage, um, and he wanted a home for that, you know, where it’s God-optional.
Interviewer: Okay.
Oppenheim: Um, I think honestly, he would have been good in a Conservative. I don’t know. Maybe it was just the community but, so they started that community. I think it’s an odd upbringing, ‘cause I don’t, I often feel, like lost, and like when people talk about, “Oh now we’ve got to do…” like they’ll talk about the different parts of a service and I don’t have that vocabulary. I’ll have the songs and the prayers, but, I think we kind-of broke it up like a puzzle and put it back together the way that the community felt was right for them. So, I sometimes feel like I’m a little bit put on, put on backwards and, but I still appreciate Judaism a lot and we had a Jewish community in Edinburgh, but you know, we, obviously, we left there so we knew when we were coming to Columbus we needed to find something. We did some shul-shopping in the first year that we were there, that we were here and nothing fit very well for us. I think between my upbringing and also marrying a non-Jew, Reform didn‘t feel right to us ‘cause that was too Reform, like there was too much English…
Interviewer: Uhm-hm.
Oppenheim: … too much flexibility that was, like, not a right, the right match for us. My husband too, because he had gone to enough services by this point, but then Conservative he always felt kind-of mad about because none of the Conservative rabbis we knew would marry us…
Interviewer: Uhn-hun.
Oppenheim: …so, yeah, so we kind-of, we were wandering Jews, and then our friends.. I don’t know if you’ve talked to any of the Getzlers in our community?
Interviewer: Uhm-hm.
Oppenheim: …but, one of the Getzlers is a very dear friend of ours, actually, from Ithaca, and they said, “Hey, we think we might have found a home, Jewish home,” and so, yeah we checked it out. We thought, “this, this feels right,” so, yeah.
Interviewer: And when was that?
Oppenheim: I think 2006 for us.
Interviewer: Oh, okay…
Oppenheim: We, I should look back.
Interviewer: …so, that’s really right at the beginning.
Oppenheim: Yeah, it was really right at the beginning, like we were at some of those first meetings where we were talking about the name, like we were talking about, should we call ourselves The Little Minyan, and yeah.
Interviewer: Can you talk a little bit about how the group was organized and the split from Beth Tikvah?
Openheim: Probably not. No, not…
Interviewer: Okay.
Oppenheim: …I was not at all connected to Beth Tikvah. I think that was one of the shuls that we shopped at…
Interviewer: Oh, sure. That would make sense.
Oppenheim: … and we, I remember for us, this was before we had met anyone at The Little Minyan, we went into the Sunday School and I remember opening the door to the classroom, and this was like a first-grade classroom ‘cause we were looking at it for our, our oldest, and there was like a list. I mean, it was bigger than my arm of all the things they weren’t supposed to do. Don’t, Don’t… Don’t… Don’t…Don’t…Don’t…Don’t… and I thought, “God…
Interviewer: Oh.
Oppenheim: …I don’t want to go in this room, like, why would I put my kid in this,” like I just, not the vibe for us, you know.
Interviewer: Okay.
Oppenheim: Yeah, I, and I think, so when they were saying they were leaving that community I thought t “Oh, well, maybe that there’s a parallel, like, you know, looking for something warmer. I can say, in the beginning, I was very heavily, until my kids were older, I was very heavily involved in the education, the children’s education.
Interviewer: And did, did all your children get bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah through…?
Oppenheim: Yeah.
Interviewer: Okay.
Oppenheim: I would say the last, so, yes, although Avi, our youngest, that, it all happened kind-of during COVID, so, we ended up, actually, our rabbi from Kehila Chadasha in DC had this place outside of DC where we could have a small gathering of family, like we did this kind-of COVID bar mitzvah and he, he was willing to come in person and yeah, so yes. The last one was a little weird ‘cause of COVID.
Interviewer: Yeah, but you did do that. Can you talk a little bit about how the congregation has evolved over the years from sort-of Reform to the Reconstructionist?
Oppenheim: Yeah. I don’t know if I’d ever say we were really Reform-ed. I don’t know. Maybe we had an affiliation with Reform, but didn’t feel super Reform-ed in the beginning. Um, yeah, I think we went through a period in the beginning where we were, um, really trying to figure out how to function as a lay-lead community initially, and we had actually, two people in the community, um, Jessica Shimberg and another man whose name I’m forgetting. He was actually a rabbi for the prison system, and he, Jessica and him would both lead services and they were, they were wonderful, both of them. Jessica with her voice and him with just like, his ideas, and then we, we also for the kids, then I don’t, that came and went and then meanwhile we, the parents were trying to do the kids programming which was kind of bumpy, but then we ended up bringing on the shaliach at the time, I’m pretty sure. I don’t have the greatest memory, but he was wonderful. He was young, attractive, like, the kids loved him. You know, the girls thought he was really cute. The guys thought he was really, like, hip, so he really kind-of injected this lovely energy into our Sunday program and brought wonderful ideas and music and then, of course, he left, being a shaliach, and we ended up having, Rabbi Wendy Ungar came in. I think that was her last name at the time. I don’t know if that’s still her last name and she you know, I think, some services but really focused heavily on the children’s programming and really created kind-of a cohesive, consistent nice children’s program and then Jessica started the process of ordainment, Jessica Shimberg and became more involved in the children’s program and became kind-of the rabbi for our group and then, again COVID, you know, around the time of COVID she left and we moved to this lay leadership again and I think, I actually think in some ways we’re more dynamic and vibrant than we’ve ever been because it feels like everybody genuinely has a voice, and a role and a place, and yeah, it’s been interesting. I don’t know if that’s what you are looking for.
Interviewer: No, this is good. What roles have you played as the congregation has evolved?
Oppenheim: Well, I really did the children’s programming heavily, like, I was the director for probably almost eight years and I got kind-of burned out. I think I was secretary for many years, not that that’s a very taxing role, and then I took on the role of doing the newsletter for a few years. That was something distinct from secretary, but I did that for several years. Now, I’ve been more kind-of a congregant and just, you know, cooking and showing up and trying to participate as much as I can. I have over time played kind-of an advisory counsel role, different from the board, like, when we hired Jessica as a paid rabbi, I was on an advisory council kind-of supporting that position. Now, Jodi is a paid, kind-of director. I don’t know what her official title is, and I’m on a four-person council supporting that position.
Interviewer: What does KSS bring to the community or the community to it at this point?
Oppenheim: What does KSS bring to Central Ohio Jewish community?
Interviewer: Yeah, or maybe just the community even beyond the Jewishness, the everybody, right?
Oppenheim: I think, well, first of all, I think, you know, we do bring that alternative to Reform, Conservative, Orthodox. You know, I think if you’re looking for something with fluidity, you know, really wrestling with a lot of deep questions, then we’re a great home for you, for that part of Judaism. I think we’re incredibly welcoming in that respect. I think we’re incredibly welcoming in general. You know, people of all different spectrum of experiences can, I think, be at ease in our services and our community. I think we also, in this particular day and age, we’re quite willing to have the difficult conversations around Israel and we’re open to the spectrum of opinions on Israel, on Palestine. You know we’re not, we’re not shutting doors on people. We’re having those talks. I think there’s a really politically active group. You know, there’s members that have started their own environmental group called CORK where they, two of our members basically have coffee shops all around Central Ohio using recyclable cups in this pilot program, like they started that all by themselves. We have another group called Central Ohio Jews for Justice and they’re very active in providing a place for discourse around really hard subjects and political activism and connecting with our Muslim communities in the area. So, I guess for me, my Jewish identity and political identity are, they’re totally intertwined. I mean, I don’t know if you feel like this, being the child of Holocaust survivors but I, like, everything is through that lens, right?
Interviewer: Absolutely.
Oppenheim: So, what’s happening politically in the U.S. is tied right into my Jewish identity. So, if I were in a community that was just reactive and not participating and trying not to be silent, I couldn’t, that wouldn’t work for me. It’s good to have community, like, I’m going to a protest. I know people in my community are going to be there and I can get a ride. I can be with them, you know. Yeah.
Interviewer: What else do I want to ask you? Oh, yeah, this is, this is kind-of an interesting question. Uh, you have a Torah. Where did it come from?
Oppenheim: I, we, don’t have anything.
Interviewer: That’s, that’s kind-of the hard question to ask, right, because maybe, maybe there’s still some seeking of clues to that? I don’t know. You’ve told me a little bit about your Jewish journey. Did being part of this congregation change it dramatically? Or, let’s say, how did this group affect your Judaism or the way you practice?
Oppenheim: I mean, I think because of the make-up of the community there hasn’t been a huge cohort for my children. I think it’s not just the congregation. It’s sort-of also Columbus. I don’t think, you know, it’s not a huge Jewish population like the, growing up in the DC area, so I think the things that connect me to the Jewish community are less about the relationships of my children’s friends or my children’s experiences in the community and more about, you know my personal participation and more about my being politically active.
Interviewer: Well, let me ask you a little bit about children because a lot of the people who are in the congregation now are of similar age, not entirely, but a lot of them are and you have children and you’re raising your children and they’re finishing their childhoods and becoming adults. Are they staying around here? Are they staying part of the congregation? You know, what does that mean for the next generation of the congregation?
Oppenheim: So my oldest is in New York City, probably will stay there, or stay close to there. My second child is active in the congregation, would not be active in any other congregation because of their politics. I don’t know if they’re going to stay in this area. I don’t know. They’re still kind-of like the cusp, so it’s hard to say, and then my youngest is, I don’t know where he’ll end up, but I think the younger two have a strong Jewish identity. I don’t know if they’ll stay in KSS, but I think they’ll find a Jewish home somewhere.
Interviewer: Yeah.Well, KSS is twenty years old. What about the next twenty years?
Oppenheim: Well, I think, I can’t think that far ahead really, but I think we have five years ahead. I think, you know, I really do think we’re at a really great vibrant point. I mean, we have the same issues all congregations do, with, maybe more so with burn-out and stuff like that since we are a lay-led community, but I think people are seeking us out. I think we’re kind-of getting our footing, and feeling more confident about ourselves, almost like a twenty-year-old.
Interviewer: And growing?
Oppenheim: Yeah. I mean, we, we, our membership has grown like twenty percent in the past few months in part because people are, because of what’s happening in the political landscape. they’re, They’re looking for a community where they can talk about everything. So, yeah, I mean, I can look five, ten years ahead. You know, I think we have a rich time ahead of us to be a community – enjoy each other and learn from each other.
Interviewer: And what do you value most about your time with the congregation?
Oppenheim: I mean, I think, it’s people I love, people I respect. Creative people and I think, I appreciate being able to connect back to my roots. But, I also love that it’s a group of people that push me, you know, that, I can do more. They’re doing more, I can do more.
Interviewer: M-kay. So, we’re almost at the end of our time to talk, and I sort of open it up now, as sort of an open-ended thing. Are there any ideas that kind-of went scurrying through your head as we were talking that you didn’t get a chance to say something or any further thoughts that you have that you’d like to put in here at the end?
Oppenheim: I don’t know. I guess I really appreciate where we are maturing to, KSS and I guess we’re not afraid to lean into the ambiguity of the value and place of Judaism in people’s lives and I think that can be kind-of scary, but I also think it can make us more open to kind-of innovation and change. I guess that’s the only other thought and I might have articulated that, but just, yeah.
Interviewer: Okay. Well, on behalf of the Columbus Jewish Historical Foundation (Society), I want to thank you for contributing to The Oral History Project and this concludes the interview. Thank you very much.
Transcribed by Linda Kalette Schottenstein
February 17, 2026