"The Admiral and The Submarine: The (South) Hills Are Alive with The Sounds of BBQ" with Jonina Duker

BBQ? Brooklyn, Bronx, and Queens of course! When Admiral Hyman George Rickover awarded Westinghouse federal contracts to build the first nuclear submarine it was transformational. Many Jews, coming to work at the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory, settled in a few small towns in Pittsburgh’s South Hills – towns with large numbers of steelworkers and without any significant Jewish presence. (The newcomers’ speech patterns often signaled New York origins.) The families, the neighborhoods, the school districts, and as a few still believe even the State of Israel’s early nuclear program were transformed. The influx led to the founding of a small Conservative synagogue because crossing those Three Rivers was too far to go for services. Not surprisingly given the culture of Rickover’s Seven Rules and the impact of all those engineers, the synagogue’s historical records are “the most comprehensive” in Pittsburgh’s Rauh Jewish Archives.

Come hear this out-of-the-ordinary American Jewish story.