“We were having a really good time,” he said. “We just chatted. It was not artificial in any way. I ignored the camera.”
Then the San Francisco resident started to reminisce about when he and his wife, Betty, were dating in New York, which brought to mind the musical “Annie Get Your Gun.”
“When I think of my wife, I think of the song from that show, `The Girl That I Marry,’ which I started to sing. But I got choked up,” he said. “Anita enjoyed that.”
It’s not that professional interviewers like Hecht adopt Barbara Walters’ ploy of inducing their subjects to tearfully spill their guts.
Instead, her goal is to establish a pre-interview rapport to “have a good conversation, where the person feels comfortable and safe and knows they are being heard by somebody who’s interested.”
Lichtman’s one-hour, 40-minute finished video, which he titled “Roots and Wings,” incorporates photos of him as a baby, of his high school graduation and his wedding. And, while “The Girl That I Marry” plays in the background, the film shows a poignant shot of his wife on the beach at Point Reyes.
“I enjoyed the process of making it. It was wonderful,” he said. “It made me think about the people in my life who influenced me and why I am the guy I am. It was like being my own psychiatrist.”
Hecht, a Madison, Wis.-based social worker, cut her oral history teeth by volunteering for Steven Spielberg’s Visual History Foundation of the Shoah.
Less than two years ago, she started her own business called Life History Services. Hecht was just hired by San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El and Montefiore Senior Center for two separate oral-video history projects.
Lichtman, president of the Montefiore board, was one of the first at the senior center to use Hecht’s services. A number of oral history packages will be offered. The deluxe package, with video, costs $2,600; audio and CD-only packages will be less.
“I’m concerned about the survival of Judaism and this is a way to tell my grandchildren about it and why it’s so important to me,” Lichtman said.
Hecht and local interviewer Yvonne Walter are working with videographer Bill Haber of Berkeley on the project.
Matty Blum, who is coordinating the Montefiore program, sees oral history as an extension of a Jewish tradition and as a valuable service for a nonprofit to offer.
“Our lives are much faster today and people don’t tend to live in multigenerational families anymore. Because families are spread out all over, handing down tales is harder to do,” said Blum. “But with technology, stories can be preserved.”
While the Montefiore program is geared toward creating personal and family chronicles, the Emanu-El project is designed to produce historical accounts for the institution and its members.
The timing of the project coincides with the synagogue’s preparation of its yearlong 150th anniversary celebration, beginning on Rosh Hashanah 1999.
Funded by donations, the project will obtain the oral-video histories of 20 to 30 prominent members of the synagogue, as well as those who made significant contributions in the local Jewish community over the years.
“We have the archives,” said Gary S. Cohn, executive director of Emanu-El. “But we wanted to get the flavor of seeing someone talk about their life in relation to the Jewish community.
The synagogue plans to incorporate the videos in its youth education curriculum. Also planned is an edited compilation for the 150th anniversary.
What drew Cohn to the project was partly that it reminded him of the Jewish tradition of creating “ethical wills, which have been done for thousands of years. It explains how someone thought about the Torah and lived their life ethically,” he said. “It’s a way of telling your children and grandchildren, `This is why I did certain things.'”
Hecht, who has recorded about 60 personal histories, has seen estranged families brought closer after viewing a family member’s tape. “All of a sudden, a son understood why his father was like he was,” said Hecht. “Families are often healed by this.”
She described her work as “a personal journey. I came from a secular family that left Judaism behind.” Her parents, who were raised as Latinos in Mexico, are the children of German Jews who left before World War II.
“Some of the most moving stories have been from Holocaust survivors. They have experienced the most evil and traumatic aspects of humanity and their message is one of love and tolerance. Just being in the presence of them, it makes me see the beauty and potential of the human heart.”