Hill: My name is Karen Hill, this is the Oral
History of Social Work in Canada project,
a project of the Canadian Association of Social
Workers. Today is the thirteenth of June,
1984. I’m in Montréal interviewing Mr.
David Weiss, who has long experience at the
Baron de Hirsch Institute, in Montréal. To
begin, Mr. Weiss, I wonder if you could tell
us when and where you were born, and a little
bit about your background?
Weiss: I was born in New York City on the
East Side, just before the First World War.
My parents were immigrants from Russia, and
I was one of seven children who survived.
I was educated in the public schools of New
York City, and when my family moved to the
Bronx, I had a very important experience as
a youngster, namely falling into the hands
of the Bronx YM-YWCA, a community centre movement.
That experience, my encounters with professionals,
group leaders, was a very dynamic one, and
steering me into social work, first on a volunteer
basis and then during the Depression in terms
of professional training. I fell into social
work so to speak by virtue of falling into
where I wanted to play pool and bowl.
My education actually was at the College of
the City of New York, in those days what was
the poor man’s Harvard, a highly competitive
university where you need at least an average
of eighty percent to survive. I managed, I
even played football and track. From then
I went on after a year or two, trying the
business world, in the Depression, the middle
thirties. I decided to go to social work and
started part-time at the New York School of
Social Work. When they thought I was ready
for job they discovered I needed an advanced
degree and I Was admitted. It was hard to
get into the New York School at the time.
Hill: Excuse me, so, did you get a Bachelor’s
degree from the City College of New York?
Weiss: Yes I got a Bachelor of Social Service.
Hill: Okay and then you moved on.
Weiss: And then I moved on, and went to the
Graduate School of Social Work, the New York
school on a part time basis first because
I’d been married in the meantime. I also
went to the Jewish Theological Seminary to
equip myself ot be better trained for Jewish
Community Centre work where I had grown up,
first as a member, to leadership, and then
to more professional functions. At that time
I couldn’t become a journalist, there were
no jobs open. That was my first love, writing
was, so I went into social work because jobs
could be plentiful during the Depression.
We were very haunted in the Depression, and
when I went to the New York School of Social
Work, it led me into the field of casework,
which was probably [most highly technically]
developed as compared to group work or community
organization, or social reform, which were
[a contingent] but not the centre of the New
York School. I took [to it like anybody] trained
or educated with biblical [unintelligible]
[which] [unintelligible] [casework is a form
of interpreting] or reinterpreting the meaning
of [unintelligible]. I took to it like a duch
to water and I very quickly moved into family
casework, and at the New York School I had
the unusual experience of being trained in
a diagnostic or psychoanalytically oriented
school, but placed in the Jewish Family Service
Agency in Brooklyn, which was highly Rankian,
and if you remember the old days of ideological
theories, the Rankians were antagonistic to
the psychoanalytic people, and I was caught
in the middle.
Hill: How did that work for you?
Weiss: Well I was fortunate. I was hired even
before I graduated by the agency for which
I was doing field work, that was a great accolade.
I was highly excited about this, and I realized
that instead of preparing myself for writing,
which was my initial interest, I could, by
living with people, not only find personal
satisfaction in the craft that had artistry
about it, but I also could be seeing life
as it was really lived, you know.
Potential material, and then I discovered
that I had committed myself to a secular priesthood.
I’m really jumping, in a sense, from my
initial motivation, which seemed contingent
to the situation of difficult employment prospects
in journalism, in the writing field, to continue
with the nature of the competition to get
a job, I took voluntary interest, leisure
interest, and made it into a career. And,
of course, being married helped. Also, I needed
the money.
So that’s how I got to the New York School,
that in itself was a story. I who had been
a Jewish communal worker most of my life,
was not accepted by the Graduate School of
Jewish Social Work in New York, which was
interesting because I wasn’t considered
reliable for the long haul. And they wanted
to get people from other parts of the country.
Later on I had the satisfaction of being asked
if I wanted to go, by that time I had my graduate
degree, and I said thank you, no. And I have
stayed longer in Jewish Social Communal Work
than anybody else, though I was trained in
a Protestant school.
Hill: I’d like to go back for a minute,
if I might. Your interest in writing fascinates
me because of my own interests. What commonalities
of purpose had you thought there might be
between writing and social work? What similarities
were there?
Weiss: Well, social work dealt with the poor,
the bewildered, the unhappy, that was my theory.
The people who otherwise were deprived. They’ve
always been the subject of great literature.
“Hunger,” for example, by (inaudible),
which was one of my earliest reading that
had great impact, or the writings of the Russians
and the Germans, dealt with outcasts, or havenots.
So, going to work with them and for them gave
me access to material which my own life provided,
but which I was too close to recognize was
the substance of which dreams can be made,
or fantasies.
So it sort of coincided; I think I was also
motivated by the fact that despite my social
science degree, I majored primarily in literature,
particularly German literature for some reason,
this was before Hitler’s time, and I was
terribly impressed by a short novel by Thomas
Mann, Antonio Prugo (?) is supposed to make
a decision between committing himself to art,
and denying life, or living life at the sacrifice
of art. It’s a false duality, as I think
now, but I chose life.
It sounds dramatic, but these were some of
the things, the fantasies, the ideas, that
were prevalent at that time. And so I couldn’t
sell insurance, no one to buy it, I couldn’t
get into newspaper, too many people looking
for a job, so I went into this part-time and
before long it grabbed me full-time. And I’ve
been at it for over forty years.
Hill: At the time that you went into social
work on a paid basis, it must have been shortly
after the time that the Social Security Act
passed in the Sates.
Weiss: No, it was the summer before. Actually,
I was doing social work on a part-time basis
or volunteer basis, I would say, from the
year 1933 at which time I held five positions
in New York City Jewish Community Agencies,
on a part time basis, earning a substantial
sum of eighteen dollars a week.
Hill: Five positions at the same time?
Weiss: I worked at the Bronx Y, in the Bronx,
the Ninety-Second Street Y in Manhattan, the
Astoria Jewish Centre, in Astoria, and somewhere
in Far Rockaway. And from all these people,
and organizations, as a part time itinerant
group worker, I earned eighteen dollars a
week, and got married on that. And I was lucky
that I got a full time job at seventy-five
dollars a month, from the Greater New York
Fund to work with Cellar Clubs. This was 1938
when I was married and I then started to attend
the New York School full time.
Hill: What kind of clubs were those?
Weiss: These were the Cellar Clubs, where
so-called young adult delinquents behaved
and we were able to socialize them. This was
the turf where you had gangs, violent gangs,
shootings, there have been some novels written
about that, and I was an outreach worker,
the first such one that the Greater New York
Fund subsidized through the Jewish Federation
of New York. As a result of that job, I was
a cellar club worker, the day camp operator,
and directed the intermediate youth division,
all for seventy-five dollars a month.
So I can tell you about the vim and the vitality
and the excitement and commitment I later
learned was a great attribute in putting up
with the other hardships that faced me along
the way.
Hill: Right right. When you finished getting
your master’s degree at the New York School
of Social Work, where did you go then?
Weiss: Well, it wasn’t the master’s degree,
at that time the New York School wasn’t
recognized as a graduate university, it later
associated after I left with Columbia. I had
a diploma of social work. I received that
after I already started to work full time
as a caseworker in the Jewish Family Service,
where it was doing my casework, field work
placement, that was the functional agency.
Hill: Oh I see, alright.
Weiss: And the education there was tremendous
because at the time Herbert Apthekar was writing
his book on Basic Social Casework, and I was
one of the “guinea pigs” through whom
and with whom he tested out all his concepts
and material, and that was an education in
advanced functional social work. At the same,
I was doing other part time work in the Jewish
centres, and then started to work as a volunteer
in the Selective Service Board. The war had
broken out, and I was responsible for a sector
in Williamsburg, New York, in terms of those
who requested special exemptions. So I was
a social worker on the Board, trying to establish
the validity of requests for exemptions. That
was a very painful task.
Hill: You were helping to decide…
Weiss: Who went and who didn’t go. And that
was a very fearsome situation, because the
war had broken out, you remember 1939, the
Poland invasion by the Nazis. It spread throughout
Europe, though I think it was 1941 when Pearl
Harbour finally broke the American passivity
and full World War broke out. I stayed with
the Jewish Family Service as a caseworker,
intake worker, with the people with great
skill, who I was fortunate to know, like the
late Bob Gomberg Sherman, and Dr. Ackerman,
great minds, and my supervisor Ruth Fizdale
was a great person. I think she’s still
around New York, and I think I’m sitting
here because Fizdale took me on as one of
her students and then workers. And she helped
me to discipline myself.
Hill: Did she give you some help in reconciling
the functional and diagnostic schools that
you were being exposed to?
Weiss: I don’t think she helped me. I had
a sort of struggle with that, I don’t think
I ever solved that either/or situation until
I came to Canada. I found the solution in
Canada, and of course I’ve written about
this extensively. I moved beyond eclecticism
to existential casework. And I think I’m
one of the pioneers in that, not yet recognized,
because I’ve written extensively. A friend
of mine has written a book on existential
social work, but I think we’re more [unintelligible]
in the [breach] than in recognition. Although
Frances Turner has a whole chapter on that
in his book, on Theories of Social Work.
Hill: Mr. Weiss, I’m not a caseworker, and
don’t know much about it, if anything. Can
you explain briefly the difference between
the two kinds you’re speaking of?
Weiss: Well, in the diagnostic approach, the
so called Freudian dynamic approach, we deal
a great deal on understanding and diagnosing
how the past influenced the present behaviour
and relationships. It became a form of archaeology
into the past of the individual, very deep,
very extensive, eventually to result in the
transference between the patient and the therapist
or caseworker which would lead to the recognition
inside of the [pod] of the patient or client
as to what had led him to behave this way,
or her, and they would renounce the negative
childish behaviour to become more mature and
live greatly on their own. I’m not opposed
to that idea, it’s a re-educative tool,
however it encouraged dependency, a great
deal of transference, and it took an awful
long time.
The functional approach says what was, was,
and the past is only useful as it is determined
by how you say it’s been determined. We
know it’s there but we want to know where
you’re going. This led to brief service
casework, the ego casework, in other words
the I is more important than the Id and the
Superego at the moment. All of which were
Freudian concepts.
I’m into a field which says people are what
they are because they’re responsible for
themselves and must consider how much of self-deception
and group deception has blocked or perverted
their awareness of their realities. And mine
is a re-educative tool, but it assumes paradoxically
when you’re in need of help, you’re also
capable of helping yourself if I can release
that energy. It may sound the same, but at
best all of us are trying to understand other
people and we are mirrors. And I like to call
casework backward fortune tellers.
Hill: You mentioned earlier that you’re
writing a script about that?
Weiss: Yes, well, I’m writing really a fictionalized
autobiography which attempts to say what Soren
Kirkegaard, the famous existential philosopher,
who said, in effect, life is lived in the
present, but only understood looking back,
just as my discussion with you will have much
more meaning when it’s over and I begin
to think, what happened, what ought to have
been said. Now this backward fortune telling
is just what we do in casework. You come in
need or in pain, and I try to understand,
and I ask you to fill in the gaps, how did
you behave in a similar circumstance, what
was it like with your parents and your siblings
and your other partners, in your work life,
in your love life? We’re looking backwards,
and based on that, as one client said, you’re
telling me my fortune for the future. We say
if we understand the past, why you feel the
way you do, now we can say what might be the
best way of going on, quote unquote. I would
say that’s casework. You know, sort of oral
sense. Hope it’s clear.
Hill: Yeah. It’s clear to a certain extent
in my mind, but like you I’ll have a lot
to think about after the interview is over,
too. I’m struck by the extent to 
which you apparently have combined direct
service work with clients with a philosophical
look at what you’ve been doing.
Weiss: Right.
Hill: I’m not even quite sure what to ask
about that, but I find it a fascinating combination.
Weiss: I think if you recall, I was interested
primarily in literature, and even as a child
I had the experience because of a great friendship
I had with another person, a friend of mine
who is a self-taught writer of great breadth
and width. He’s now writing in New York
on of all things aviation.
Dick and I used to write. At the age of ten,
I had written a book of poetry called “Pots
and Pans”, which I tried to express the
feelings I had. I find that I have that cast
of mind, and to a great degree, my Canadian
experience helped me think through a lot of
these things, because I went into social work
really as I said, on a contingent basis, necessity,
opportunity, by being there it happened. Fine.
Then I recognized it was more than a career,
a means toward earning a livelihood, I don’t
think I’d ever done as well in social work
as in business, so my business leaders told
me, but I found in that the ability to integrate
my search for truth with a sense that I had
really embarked upon a secular priesthood.
You see, in my family background, there are
religious functionaries, rabbis and so on,
and though my mother never thought I would
turn into a rabbi, I was such a modernist
with the latest information of the new world
that she had come to, and which bewildered
her. Nonetheless, I find in what I do, the
kind of work that a prist was supposed to
do. In short, what I’m saying after forty
years in the field, that we are moral philosophers,
in action.
And I’ve tried to say some of this, by the
way, and that’s perhaps why I’ve published
a number of books; I have one book on this
not as well said perhaps as I’d like to,
but I put it out in 1975, at a point in my
career when I had felt I to sort of integrate
some of these points. So I wrote Existential
Human Relations, which tries to say this in
some narrative form, and then I’ve written
four books of poetry to explain this emotionally
through image. And perhaps some day I’ll
have the opportunity of having it read by
social workers generally. A few have used
this in their courses, and I was fortunate
to try on some of these ideas at a number
of seminars, where Swithin Bowers of the St.
Patrick’s School of Social Work invited
me to talk on these subject, and I’ve published
extensively in the Journal, both in the Canadian
Association of Social Work and in “Intervention”
of the Québec Corporation. So that I met
the minds and the fields of interest here,
and because Montréal is at the crossroads
between North America and Europe, particularly
French philosophy, I came here and through
being here, met Jean-Paul Sartre, of the whole
post-war Existentialist School, and becoming
absorbed with that, trying to understand why
human problems are not really solvable. There
are no problems of life that are solvable,
they’re only endurable, we say that’s
how we solve it. You learn to endure, and
minimize the pain. We never solve any problem.
Hill: So is that the job of a social worker,
then, is to help people endure?
Weiss: Well, I would say that coping is endurance,
if you stop to think, and without playing
games of semanticism because we see people
in great pain, suffering who manage to endure
beautifully. Look at the post-war holocaust,
victims who made new lives, however the pain
is there. Look at people of all kinds of functional
organic difficulty, who are quite creative,
they’ve sublimated pain, they’ve endured
it.
And the philosophy of existentialism says
that, in a sense, and I moved from, let’s
get back to the first thing, diagnostic psychodynamics
through to functional Rankian ego psychology,
to Existential psychology, or social work
which integrates it. Now you can move from
any one of those methods or perceptions, really
how we look at information that comes in,
find a way of relating to people comfortably,
if you feel that your role is to listen carefully
and to heed what’s being said, publically
and implicitly, and respond to it in a way
that’s appropriate sometimes paradoxically,
sometimes with amusement, sometimes with empathy,
sometimes even with resentment and rejection.
That talks about a lot of the modern theorists,
in the field
J. Haley talks about that, some other existentialists
talk about that, I think we’re in a very
changing theoretical approach. It’s a reality-based
and philosophically-based approach. I found
that very positive and helpful in enduring
the role or roles I thought I had here, in
my bob in Canada and the imposition of roles,
that I didn’t realize I was assuming when
I came here. If not for that philosophy, which
integrated my own approach to my responsibilities,
I don’t think I could have endured. I think
I tried to sort of put it together. Maybe
it doesn’t sound integrated, but it helped
me cope.
Hill: No, it sounds as though you’ve quite
consciously searched through philosophy and
looked at your practice as a social worker,
and made the two fit together with your responsibilities
as a professional.
Weiss: Yes it was essential, and then it was
desirable, and then I enjoyed learning it,
so that I looked for the great code that animates
human relationships, the kind of great code
that Christopher Fry (Mr. Weiss corrects after
the interview to Northroo Frye) did recently
when he wrote on the Bible as the great code
for language and fantasies and storytelling,
and not only man’s relationship to God and
God’s relationship to man, but man’s relationship
to other people, cause we’re all really
groping for a moral and ethical lifestyle
that makes it possible to accept and be accepted,
to live and let live. And what is social work,
it’s not only integrative thing or an entrustive
or the trust of thing, it’s really a lesson
plan for life.
Hill: Social work as a lesson plan?
Weiss: As a lesson plan. It’s a guideline,
not only to help those who have fallen by
the side, but also give you a mental health
approach, also give a kind of understanding
of yourself and others that makes life more
pleasant, less painful. We say, there but
for the grace of God go I, what do we mean
by that? Well we’re saying there is the
lesson, if not for that, I might be there
and so by being involved with people, again
the reason for social work being a highly
desirable field of practice as I got older,
was that I could say to myself, what if things
had happened differently?
What would have happened had my parents stayed
in Europe, and the Nazis had overrun their
village? Would I be a survivor, or have been
one of the victims in the concentration camp?
What if I had not had this education, and
this experience, would I have been a merchant,
and enterpriser, this that or other, who knows?
It’s not a question of what if, by seeing
others with whom I emphasize I can wear their
shoes even temporarily, and itch where they
itch and scratch where they scratch, and I
can feel that humanity.
Take for example, being involved in taking
care of other people’s children, being involved
as I was with an adoption program of the Institute
in the Jewish Child Welfare Bureau. We not
only played God in deciding who was to get
whom, a very terrifying experience that you
have to learn to cope with, but I literally
was a godfather, or for a time the substitute
parent, because in law I was the surrogate
tutor for all these children, so legally I
was considered to be the father substitute.
Well, damn it, I wanted to know what happened.
I felt involved, though I only had unfortunately
only two children, by extension I had several
thousand children in my career, and everywhere
I go, former clients, former colleagues or
students, I’m involved with a lot of people’s
destinies. I don’t need to know how they
turned out, only one person might know that
himself, but I have feeling it’s continued.
That’s been my gratification and perhaps
less material than it might have been, had
I been in the business of helping persons
to make profit, well, you can’t have it
all.
Hill: But this understanding of why you did
your work and the way in which you did it,
providing not only a rationale for the way
in which you did your work and whatever effect
it might have on people but also it sounds
to me as though it helps you understand your
place in the world, not only this world, but
the broader spiritual world as well.
Weiss: Yes, and my place in the history of
mankind. I think, frankly, that helping others
primarily however objective we are, it helps
us.
Hill: Have you seen the title of my latest
book?
Weiss: What is that?
Hill: Helping You Helps Me?
Weiss: Oh, well, there you are. We all come
down to the same understanding, if you’re
kind, and you’re sharing, it tends to come
back. I’d like to say this sort of catch
phrase. You remember there was a stone in
some graveyard where the saying was, “What
I never had, I never got; what I never got,
I never shared; what I never shared, I never
kept;” a sort of solemn resignation at failure
and being left out. I’ve converted that
to say, “what I got I had; what I had I
gave; what I gave I shared; what I shared
I kept;” and that’s the positive way of
making a monument for yourself. And I think
in the still silent recesses of the social
worker, or any professional that is, in the
end, the thing that makes all the other pain
and discomforts bearable.
You notice the verbs, the adverbs of bearable
and endurable right? And that’s the purpose
of social work, to help people endure better.
Hill: You’ve given me a lot to think about.
I want to return to more specifics about your
work if I might.
Weiss: Sure.
Hill: You worked in Jewish Family Agencies
for a number of years, what 1937 to 1947,
was it actually?
Weiss: Interspersed with two years in the
Jewish Community Centre. I left Brooklyn in
1943, I had been through case work as a student,
’38, ’39, ’40, ’41 at the Jewish Family
Service of Brooklyn, very experienced but
not well-paying. My daughter was already here
and the only opportunity to improve myself
was to go from an eighteen hundred dollar
a year job, to a three thousand dollar a year
job, which at that time, was tremendous. That
was offered by the Rochester Young Men’s-Women’s
Hebrew Association. And I very comfortably
moved over back to group work.
I came from group work, and I had become a
therapist in casework, and I worked for two
years in the Jewish Young Men’s Hebrew Association,
in Rochester, a beautiful town, and I was
in charge of day camp, and I was in charge
of the youth division, I was in charge of
dormitory residence program, and ran the first
trial by youth, which was written up and (inaudible)
where the children, the young people at the
time having trouble with repressive attitudes
of adults. We ran a great big public trial
by youth, in which we challenged the adults
to give proof why they resented young people.
It was a great way of acting out, as Marino
was to say, a group therapy thing on a mass
scale.
My group work experiences has always been
helpful in this, both in teaching and in saying
(?) in front of public, and trying to facilitate
interchanges. It also gave me a great deal
of experience at standing before an audience,
it helped me as a teacher. Because when I
started my career, I used to stutter, believe
it or not.
Hill: It certainly isn’t apparent now.
Weiss: No, no, no, now I’m supposed to be
impossible to stop.
Hill: (laughter) I’ll see.
Weiss: Especially you ask. Well in any case,
right there I decided group work was not my
baby, I wanted casework, I loved the hermeneutics
of casework exegesis and interpretation, and
the local Jewish Social Service Bureau had
a job for supervisor, I went into that. And
I loved it. And then I had another child,
and three thousand dollars a year was not
enough, even during the war time, it was just
during the height of the war, oh just about
when it was over, and I started to look around
for better positions.
The war ended, and the Council of Jewish Federation
and Welfare Fund, which is the international
placement agency, for various field of social
work, asked me if I’d be interested in going
to Montréal. Now, I had studied sociology
and read a book about the Baron de Hirsch
by a professor. I was fascinated with the
name of the organization because I used to
write to discover absconding fathers, and
husbands who would go to Canada, to avoid
some of their responsibilities. It had an
illusion in my mind of being something which
wasn’t. But it was something unusual, so
I went. I was enamoured of the people who
interviewed me, and we made an immediate rapport,
and I was hired. I saw them thirty-seven years
ago, today, and I was here on July 1st.
Hill: That’s really a coincidence.
Weiss: And one of the great reasons was another
Jewish social worker from Texas by way of
Cleveland, the late Don Horowitz was here,
and he persuaded me to come.
I came here with my family, ostensibly for
three years. I stayed here for thirty-seven,
although not with the Baron de Hirsch Institute
– Jewish Child Welfare Bureau, which I merged
in 1950. They are two agencies in one, really
five, because I went on to take my part in
Canadian life. That was a turning point.
Hill: Coming to Montréal?
Weiss: Yes, I came at thirty-three years of
age, a young family, I was on my way up finally,
in the executive ranks of Jewish Communal
Service, but I was young and other people
in the field would maybe be a few years older,
and the opportunities would not become available
for the next ten, fifteen years. I was ambitious,
and my ambition blinded me to some of the
problems that were staring me in the face.
Hill: What were some of those problems, when
you came to Montréal in 1947?
Weiss: A different culture, value system.
We came from New York, highly developed, cosmopolitan,
Rochester where professionals and Eastman
Kodak, Xerox, were recognized as the skilled
experts. Where the formed Jews, a very modern
form of Judaism were in the leading elite.
I came here, the professionals were questioned.
The laymen, the self-made men and women, were
in charge of everything. There had been an
experience in Montréal where, for about forty
years, there was no professional Jewish Rabbi,
there were some problems. They were just getting
into understanding modern technology, in the
marketplace, in the factory, in high furnace
industries, and of course in merchandising.
And here I was full of beans, a New Yorker
full of energy, and I saw the old habit of
giving relief directly, operating a clothing
room where people would be lined up, and clients
would have to be paraded. Case committees
that knew the names of the clients, the unmarried
mothers, who made decisions on adoptions.
All of which meant condientiality was questionable.
Hill: And these were case committees of volunteers?
Weiss: Volunteers, and I walked into a situation
where some people were trained, some weren’t.
There had been an interregnum of leadership
where you had a split set of agencies – the
Baron de Hirsch Institute, which had fallen
into disrepair, because it was the relief
giving arm of the Federation, which it had
created. Side by side with the Jewish Child
Welfare Bureau that prized itself on being
modern, because it had closed the Montréal
Hebrew Orphans Home, it was using foster care,
but didn’t want to deal with the family
agency. I came to coordinate both, and integrate
them, with all the rivalry and factionalism,
and I walked in you know, like into the Augean
stables, like it wouldn’t matter, I could
do it overnight.
It wasn’t that easy. And laypeople who wore
different hats but controlled, the same tycoons
and business leaders ran everything. They
just went from meeting to meeting with different
agency names, but with the same leaders. And
had different interests. If they were a fundraising
body, they wanted to same money for the service
agency, how could we do it with less expense,
or how could we do it differently? It meant
I had to start professionalizing, a very painful
thing, because there weren’t very many professionally
trained Jewish social workers. The good ones
had gone elsewhere, gone to the States, there
was a big brain drain. I’m the first time
of the reverse of the brain drain. Or the
school was not considered on the same par
as Chicago, or Pennsylvania, and New York.
Hill: The McGill School of Social Work?
Weiss: That’s right, it had also fallen
into a slump, it was sort of a sidewater,
the great changes weren’t to come until
the next ten years, when Montréal and Québec
[unintelligible] itself to the post-war world,
the winds of change. I was part of the winds
of change. I was as Alvin Toffler said, I
understood later, part of the future shock.
And so from a personality point of view, I
am a gung ho character full of energy, I’m
accustomed to breaking through the line, my
football scrimmage experience. My commitment,
my I would say perhaps bravado, I wasn’t
afraid, I had such confidence, that I, you
know, sometimes pushed instead of followed.
Or sometimes made demands that weren’t yet
accepted because of the emotional blocks people
had. Nonetheless, a crisis of such overwhelming
importance unfortunately came to pass, and
it helped create the circumstances, the life
experience where we had to dial (?) our professional
laymen, resolve conflicts, learn to accept
each other. We had to deal suddenly.
I came in July, and was then notified with
the agency, that we had been appointed by
the federal government through the Canadian
Jewish Congress, to act as the reception agency
professionally for the release and reception
of twelve hundred war orphans, refugee youth
from the post-war world. Well that was like
Moses descending from Mount Sinai with the
new commandments for cooperation, modernization,
administrative house cleaning. Suddenly I
was given if not carte blanche, I was given
the freedom, go ahead, and do what you think
is necessary, because in two months we set
up reception centres. We trained, we hired
untrained but positive people, conducted our
own, what was to be later done in community
college, paraprofessional training. I wrote
the manuals, I trained a group foster home.
I had done this kind of work, we lined up
lay people into teams for mass foster home
finding, and we received I think it was September
3rd, the first shipment by plane of forty
refugee young people. We were to receive twelve
hundred of these people, five hundred out
of whom stayed in Montréal.
But between ’47 and ’52, then there were
adult refugees: tailors, furriers, our whole
agency went through such modernization to
cope, to know how to deal with it, systematically,
administratively, record keeping, supervision,
working not in a customary way, but reaching
out, having to learn different languages,
having to cope with the whole gamut of life.
Well, our position as a leader in the community
was refurbished. We had fallen to a slump
too, because the most important agencies in
all of the Institute had a very honourable
experience in history, which I came to write
in its centennial year, 1963, and the book’s
available. Suddenly the agency and its leader
were accepted. The proof were in the children,
really adolescents, who had come and been
within two years, absorbed and integrated
in the Jewish homes here, and throughout the
country. One of our greatest refugee children
is the great John Hirsch of Stratford, and
he will tell you what the experience meant.
We were the first to receive all these people.
Hill: So when that occurred, just after you
had been here a very short period of …
Weiss: Three months.
Hill: This was a new function for the agency?
Weiss: Well it was part of a so-called old
function, doing child care, the Jewish Child
Welfare Bureau, which was merged and which
required all social workers, it was no longer
you did this function and that, you were a
caseworker, this was a priority. And in doing
that priority, they learned to carry mixed
caseloads, which was the multiple function
approach. And which later led to the integration
of the agency, with just departments. And
actually, I had been brought here on a salary
that was at that time great, five thousand
dollars a year, they absorbed two separate
directors at three thousand each, it was a
bargain. See five for six, or six for five.
Hill: Good idea. They got a deal.
Weiss: I learned that later, oh they had a
deal.
Hill: Yes. (laughter)
Weiss: Things changed rapidly, because in
dealing with this reality, we had to cut corners
and see what was superfluous, dead wood, stupid
ways of operating our capground that had come
down from the past. For example, it was a
clerk in the federation who counter-signed
relief cheques. Who was that person? Very
quickly I showed him techniques of how to
proof and secure your cheque lists, so that
we exposed stupidities without finding too
much resistance. And with the help of other
professionals, like Don Horowitz, I mentioned,
a new director came with the Jewish vocational
service who was trained. We developed a core
of trained people who reinforced each other.
And then the lay persons began to realize,
this was good administration that could be
adopted to their own operations. And the accountants
were interested in the systems we introduced.
And even the mechanization, very shortly on,
I got rid of individual Dictaphone machines,
for example, things that were taken for granted
now in hospitals, by introducing the PBX system,
where you pick up a phone and dial yourself
into a machine, and talk at ease, just like
in hospitals you’re talking into these machines
wherever you are.
Well all these little developments were taking
place, and we integrated a personal practice,
we developed case committees with functions,
we revised the bylaws, we changed the name
of the organization, and we became on for
five, because all of them had funds, and bequests,
who were known as the Baron de Hirsch Institute-Jewish
Child Welfare Bureau.
I discovered, for example, that I was responsible
for the discretion of the community cemetery.
Now unless you’re a secular priest, this
is foreign, and unacceptable to any trained
social worker anywhere. Anywhere in the world,
no social worker is responsible for the operation,
administration of community cemeteries. There
are fifty-three different helping groups that
own their property, we administer the free
burial program so that Jewish [unintelligible]
have proper Jewish burials, religiously approved.
I was responsible for that, so I got involved
with the spiritual religious problems, and
that’s a story in itself, it’s fabulous
if you’re interested.
Now, being able to show that what I recommended
and stood for made sense economically, expeditiously,
it accomplished these goals, and in two years,
you absorb twelve hundred kids, unthinkable,
and by comparison, with the European Jewish
Children’s Aid in the United States, for
whom I had been a caseworker in Rochester,
they got about less than half as many, we
were as effective as them, with all their
technology and all the highly trained, paid
people. And we showed we could train partly
educated and mature people, and we land the
foundation working with McGill School of Social
Work for what now is case aides and community
college things. So we pioneered, of necessity,
and demonstrated in practice. That built good
will, and I think also a support system for
myself.
Hill: Yeah, that was certainly one of the
questions that occurred to me. As the new
man in town, you’re a foreigner, brash perhaps
or with bravado, I think is the word you used
to describe yourself. Was it tough at some
times to keep going?
Weiss: I forget the name of the systems writer.
I was the cosmopolitan, they were the locals.
Now in any community, any organization and
corporate body community, the cosmopolitan
is the disturber, the locals have customary
grooves to work in, you come in as the outsider.
Not only in fact, but from linguistic, cultural,
technical sense of the word. I realized that,
but I figured I was only here for three years,
my colleagues in the States were very impressed,
lots of them had thought I was foolish to
come here. I quickly published in the journal
of social casework. I published here, I was
always publishing what I experienced, and
good or bad, understand what I did, and I
was getting some recognition, because I was
invited to the executive committee of this
conference, that conference, and very quickly
was accepted by my colleagues, fortunately,
in the protestant and French communities.
They saw me not as a threat, but as an asset.
And I was involved in inter-agency work in
the Council of Agencies at the Red Feather.
Québec looked upon me with great interest
and acceptance. Some of your present ministers
were vetted by me to go to the graduate School
of Social Work.
Jean Claude Morin, for example, was (inaudible).
I represented Columbia, the agency for which
people were interviewed for entrance. And
I suddenly became very active within the Québec
government of social welfare and so on. And
was able to get grants and recognition and
led the agency to a very very critical decision,
which was of great anxiety producing things.
This happened somewhere toward the end of
the fifties.
Weiss: I had recognized that as an agency
without walls, we received from the Québec
government and the Montréal welfare department
one third of the relief we gave to clients.
We were an institution without walls, there
was no public assistance agency, it was all
from the church or voluntary agencies, if
you recognize, unlike today’s things. And
all Jews were protected, we lived in somewhat
of a ghetto. That was a part of the problem,
they were inward looking, they had learned
to adjust to Montréal’s deep cultural freeze,
but interacting and sharing and utilizing
public services is a frightening thing. That’s
why we had our own institutions, our own free
school, our own free library, our own tubercular
sanitorium.
I came along and said, “look, we have a
lawyer on staff, these clients are getting
basic welfare, the caseloads are so large
we have to begin to specialize, why can’t
we take those who are getting basic maintenance
relief from us, and being used as a vehicle,
go back to the city and say here, carry them,
and the casework part we’ll do?” Well
all the big shots, all the leaders said, “My
God, risk sending these people to the unknown,
to the government.” See the idea of the
government in the first generation is, in
Russia, they can throw you into jail, they
could punish you, and so on. I said, “why
not, we’re here, if they need casework and
consultation.” They move into public service
agencies, public welfare which was coming
anyway, was so anxiety producing that I trembled
to see whether my support system would support
me. They did, because nothing really happened
that was adverse.
Hill: I’m sorry, did you say they did support
you?
Weiss: They did support me, because the people
went, got their relief, and if there were
other casework problems, came on with us,
but we didn’t have to do that mechanical
job.
Hill: Can I ask a question of clarification
here? Relief is often used in the sense of
being unemployment assistance, are you using
it in that sense, or in terms of welfare?
Weiss: Yes, I’m using it in terms of money,
money to live with.
Hill: Not only for the unemployed, the unemployable,
but all?
Weiss: That’s right, where they have a need,
sometimes supplementation. We supplemented
the low income people, elderly, single parents,
refugees, immigrants, people who had remember,
been impoverished by very expensive medical
care. You remember til the middle seventies.
Everything was voluntary, and if you didn’t
have the means to buy your medial services,
and hospital insurance services, whatever,
you had to borrow til you were terribly impoverished
for more than one generation. I found that
to be the cause for a great deal of poverty
among the Jews of Montréal.
Anyway, this move which took place toward
the end of 1950, was of course not done automatically,
or without apprehension as I mentioned, but
it brought a number of self-studies and outside
experts. And we had the famous Silver Report
of a colleague from Detroit, who was brought
in, a very knowledgeable savant in the field
who went the agency’s operation and said,
“yes, that was a good move.” And the reason
for that move is we were going into family
counselling. We had to get professional people,
as you know, highly trained people don’t
want to touch money, don’t want to give
money. Hard core problems are not for them,
they need ego satisfaction, and so we moved
in, unloaded this caseload, and moved into
the other caseload. This is part of the professionalization.
And they quickly, they began to recognize
that psychiatry is part of the helping process
as a tool we developed with the Jewish hospitals,
community psychiatry department, joint training
for their psychiatrists in the agency as field
work, and also to have immediate access to
diagnosis and treatment facilities and placements,
we developed the first group foster home in
Canada.
Having given up the institutions we innovated
in the late fifties a program for group care,
which is now fairly common, and we have of
course built up our visiting homemaker service,
which had been a trial run financed by the
National Council of Jewish Women. We gave
up our summer camping programs, because we
no longer had a congregate institutional group
of kids for whome we needed summer camp. We
gave our money by sale to the community camps.
In fact, this was the important role of Baron
de Hirsch Institute over the years, and we
can spend some time on that if you like.
But on the whole, I would say by 1963, the
hundredth anniversary of the agency, which
required tremendous social, public planning
observances, a great great show we put on.
There were newspaper ads, a book published,
outside visitors, it’s really a classic
piece of celebration. Remember we observed
our hundredth anniversary four years before
Confederation observed its centennial or centenary.
Well by that time, I understood where I was
coming from, what I wanted to do. By that
time, I had highly trained supervisors, professionally
trained people, had become an agency to come
to, and I’m pleased to say a number of my
former students, field work placements, and
colleagues, are working in all the agencies
to this day, and have really carried forward
and accepted what they’ve learned from us.
It was a very meaningful experience. Now,
as I stayed on and I stayed on because, if
you were to ask, I met George Davidson, in
Ottawa, great man, also interested in literature,
Dr. Davidson, he had his PhD in literature,
and was an important mover and shaker in the
field of [unintelligible] Family Allowance
for example, the Department of National [unintelligible]
and Wefare, was a Deputy Minister for many
years. One day in the fifties, he said to
me, because I was busy with [unintelligible]
Council. What was his name?
Hill: Dick Davis?
Weiss: Dick Davis. I was one of his [unintelligible]
wrote [unintelligible] would you like to represent
us at the United Nations [UNESCO]? Terrific,
I’d like that, I thought I would move now,
[unintelligible] circles. He called [unintelligible]
citizen David. [unintelligible] I naturalized
myself. PS, the party lost toDiefenbaker.
Hill: (laughter) Cause and effect, right?
Weiss: Cause and effect. But the decision
to naturalize myself, was not just to become
politically acceptable, but also because I’d
reached the stage, this was going to be the
place.
Hill: Can we talk about that for a minute?
I’m a former American myself, and have some
interest in how people came to the decision
to make that change, but thinking about the
time at which you came to Canada, 1947, and
the subsequent decade probably, that decade
of the fifties where there was tremendous
repression, political repression. What was
that like in Montréal at the time, for you
as a Jew and as an American?
Weiss: Well, I’d come out of the East side
of New York. I’d come out of the cosmopolitan
experience in my university and graduate training,
and especially in Rochester. I’d seen different
lifestyles, and been in the homes of different
people. I decided very early on that all this
was out there, I never had an experience face
to face that I couldn’t cope with. I used
to walk through Harlem on the way to City
College, on the way home to the Bronx, never
was afraid, maybe because of my size, my cockiness,
my bravado, I’d learned always to stand
up and fight back, that was inculcated in
me, to survive. When I came here, I broke
the ghetto. I reached out in order to find
other people to learn from, and to share so,
[G. B.] Clarke at the Federation – at the
Family Service, his successor Gwyneth Howell;
at the Council, Dick Davis, people and Stewart
Button, Eric Smit, they were very accessible
if I reached out. I reached out to Québec
City.
My first experience as the secular rabbi,
I was told by the religious people, the board
of Jewish ministers, that a very serious sin
was being committed against the Jewish dead.
It was up to me as the leader of the Institute
to correct it. What was it, Jewish men and
women or children who died intestate, without
anybody to claim the body, would be according
to the Coroner’s Act, turned over to a graduate
school of medicine as for anatomical studies.
This is a sin against religious scruples.
I went to Québec. I found out who the deputy
minister was, had a long chat with him, explained
that you’re Jewish or Catholic in life,
as in death, for the afterworld, and to cup
them up is a sin. [Bure] we had the exception.
I came back, they said how did you do it,
magic. I did, I wasn’t afraid, I went and
explained it, and they were reasonable, and
so the undertaker was advised whenever a hospital
or institution or whatever, ever a [unintelligible]
Jew, or a Jewess, they would be called and
we would provide the burial at cost to us
[unintelligible]. To this day, that rule exists
even through Jewish [unintelligible] are angry,
not enough bodies available.
Now, that was an important internal way which
I demonstrated to my leadership, and I was
able to break through those walls. Because
of these things with Québec, I became a persona
grata, because I was not an Englishmen, I
was not a Protestant, Catholic, Protestant,
English, French, I was a Jew who spoke different
languages, and was also part of a minority
that wanted to express itself. In nineteen
hundred and, what was it, ’58, when Israel
was proclaimed, they saw themselves as seeking
their own Jerusalem, I was very much persona
grata. So they called on me to help them in
departmental matters. I reciprocated by making
demands of them, and in later years, you see,
I became a member of the Superior Council
of the Family, the only Englishmen Jew of
nine commissioners for many years, because
I was persona grata for other things, and
then when the Social Aid Appeal Board was
created in 1969, again I was one of nine commissioners
appointed by Castonguay and Bourassa’s government
because I had the civil service connections.
Now that means that while other things were
happening, we had some kind of middle ground
position.
Hill: We, you as an individual?
Weiss: I and the agency I represented. It’s
true when it … came to taking then the Canadian
Québec problem arose, I’d never realized
that existed by the way, that’s a part of
my naïveté that I learned after becoming
a citizen of Canada, that I ought to have
thought about, or maybe I should have thought
about it differently, because until 1975,
I never had to learn a French word. All my
French colleagues and friends spoke English,
were happy to speak English, would write or
talk to me and visit me, and I’d visit,
only in English, it was only after Bill 22
of Bourassa’s and then Bill 101 that I suddenly
died and they died to me because I was not
Francophone. But until that time, I was, as
I say, persona grata. I think finally that
they were responsible my getting awards, the
Centennial Medal, the Queen’s Coronation
Medal, came from being nominated by them.
No one in the Jewish community nominated me,
that too was part of my credibility I guess,
it was nice to get but I never thought I would.
Hill: It’s fascinating for me to think about
how your uniqueness allowed you and I think
that’s the right word, allowed you to make
a contribution to Canadian society. It was
not because you were a native born Montréal
Jew that you were able to get these things
done, and it wasn’t because you exhibited
many of the qualities that social workers
hold dear, facilitating, understanding, listening,
self-effacing perhaps, that you were able
to get things done, it was because you were
different that many of these things were possible.
Weiss: I think you’re right. My difference
coupled with my know-how.
Hill: Indeed, yes.
Weiss: They wanted that know-how, and I was
very glad to share it. I got more back in
return, I learned a great deal. As a matter
of fact, I started to teach the things I learned
doing these things. It gave me information
I did not necessarily have in this specialized
area of agency. But you’re right, but that
helped me also integrate in the community.
I never felt unwanted or alien, I felt welcomed,
people wanted to talk to me, wanted to get
my opinions, I was on a million committees
at one time. I didn’t mind going to the
committees. I didn’t mind listening and
that’s how I learned about Sartre and about
the French philosophies after the Second World
War. And you remember I said earlier on, I
have this split between diagnostic-functional
and so on. I started to read and study and
talk with people in that community, they were
very knowledgeable, they read it, and I was
able to test out these things, I reached out.
Of course I was lucky also to hear Will Herberg
on one of his visits in Montréal at the Hillel
House, one weekend when he opened my eyes
to Martin [Buber]. I didn’t follow Jean
Paul Sartre. It led to the third great rabbi
in modern history, Martin Buber. The other
two great rabbis are Freud of course and Karl
Marx, and I think Martin Buber is for social
work the great connection from Freud, though
from [Maimonesdes] to Freud to Martin Buber
historically speaking are the three great
seminal lines for social work and any healing
profession. That’s how I found out, and
this work and this interest I think finally
propelled me to face up to whether or not
I would die on my job the Baron de Hirsch
Institute.
Hill: Okay, perhaps we can stop there. [pause]
Hill: Okay, Mr. Weiss, when we left off, you
were talking about your experience at the
Baron de Hirsch Institute, and during the
coffee break, you were mentioning to me a
number of things about the way in which you
saw yourself as a social worker, and your
role at the Baron de Hirsch. How did you see
yourself operating during those years?
Weiss: Well, at the beginning, I saw myself
as developing a system of operation with system
management, clarification, organization, and
dealing with crises brought about by these
historical changes, war orphans, merging two
somewhat antagonistic agencies, establishing
the identity of the agency as a service agency,
not only for the poor or the outcasts, but
for all members of the community, in other
words a post-war rehabilitation job.
When that job was accomplished by the middle
fifties, and I had determined that I wanted
to make other changes, I realized that the
Institute represented more than a technical
expertise historically, it always played the
role of community leader, social action, social
change, and when I prepared for its centenary
in 1963, a study of the history in the archives,
I realized I was in the footsteps of laypeople
like Lion Cohen, of great grandfather of the
singer-troubadour Leonard Cohen I realized
that people called upon me, I couldn’t hide
behind professional one-on-one practice, or
one-on-group internal practice. I had enough
confidence in the people who were working
in the agency and their dependence or independence
from my leadership. I can move on, so I worked
with the council on agencies I got involved
with governmental committees and commissions,
I even got involved in television work. I
became a public speaker on behalf of the agency,
it’s program, and other related courses,
and before long with my Chutzp [sic: chutzpah]
or bravado, I wasn’t afraid of going to
Ottawa when called upon for special consultations,
or going into international experiences.
It seemed that the agency welcomed that, you
had to be visible, and I had to be visible
during the war orphans crisis. I had to represent
and model the leadership of how people would
be received, placed, protected, given an opportunity
to rebuild their lives. You couldn’t be
a pussyfoot. There were many strong problems.
Now my other experiences, luckily, stood in
good stead. I already explained to you, for
example, how with bravado I went to Québec
to save Jewish cadavers for Jewish burial.
Internally in the community, there were a
lot of religious taboos about the agency’s
secular operations because Montréal was basically
a kind of off-shoot of Vilna, Poland, first
generation religious Jews. Here the Reform
congregation is at the bottom of the totem
pole, it’s the Orthodox observers. A situation
arose for many years, it’s still going on,
babies released for adoptions were usually
placed in non-Jewish homes because the empathy
identification didn’t result as we had discovered
in Jewish foster mothers wanting to keep the
baby, they were raising the baby, until it
was released in two months, three months,
six months, they wanted ownership, and it
was difficult to separate. Whereas a Jewish
baby in a non-Jewish home, obviously it could
be taken out when we had the adoptive home.
Well, this got to the attention of the Canadian
Jewish Congress, the rabbis were very angry
at the agency, and I was called before the
Din Torah, the Jewish court, accused of being
a leader of an organization that was threatening
Jewish babies and perhaps allowing a reoccurrence
of what happened in Germany. I was asked to
give an account, how could I be a Jewish communal
leader and social worker if I permitted that?
The excuse that Jewish families were not forthcoming
was not enough. I accepted the reality and
reminded them, however, in Jewish history,
that placing Jewish babies in non-Jewish homes
did not necessarily mean assimilation or loss,
in fact the greatest leader in Jewish history,
the greatest prophet we have ever known, was
placed and raised in an Egyptian family, and
turned out to be Moses the lawgiver. So they
said well, that’s okay, but you remember
his mother used to come and breast feed him,
I said that’s true, Jewish social workers
supervise these foster homes. That, I would
say, was not necessarily a great victory,
but it was a standoff. And this represented
also my role and the nature of the community.
When I came here, I recognized as a cosmopolitan,
that the local mores and attitudes, ingrown
feelings, traditional lifestyles, values,
meant that I would have to understand and
relate to them. Gradually polishing them,
modernizing them, but because I understood
whatever the reasons the nature and the source
of those concerns, I was able to respond to
them without further alienation. And so I
was released to go on to other things, I felt
fee, I had a contribution to make here and
there, and then I found teaching was the thing
I loved to do, because now I can return what
I had learned.
I guess that’s another reason people go
into social work, the life of the mind doesn’t
die, you’ve got to use your mind, so one
thing led to another, and I decided to come
out of the closet. Around 1963, I realized
that I had reached the watershed in my life,
I had been here from ’47, 16 years, and
my children were older, and I said to my wife,
what do you think we should do, we thought
we’d leave. Well, there were very few opportunities,
or I was over-qualified. Social workers, according
to my wife, are white collar Okies, migrant
workers, and I didn’t want to be a migrant.
Montréal was lovely, in 1963, the drums of
the new drummer were not being heard yet.
Duolessis was there, LeSage was to come, Levesque
was to come, the whole resurgence of active
radical national socialism was way off, it
didn’t seem to exist. We decided this was
a nice place to really settle down. The children
were happy here, they were bilingual, we had
a position although we’re not a native.
We had established a role in our synagogue,
our temple, our friends, our colleagues, it
was a good lifestyle. You know relatives said
where did you get lost, because Americans
looked to Canada, you know, as just the tundra
and the Royal Mounted Police. Well, at that
time, we said, look, maybe there’s another
career, maybe there’s another kind of lifestyle,
maybe you should do more writing and teaching.
And so I said yes, at the right time, and
so we decided the right time would be when
my first grandson was born. And Philip was
born in 1970, and I retired in 1970 after
almost twenty-four years.
I retired in 1970, things had changed, I was
now commissioner of Social Aid Appeal Board,
working in the Canonical law of little jurisprudence
of studying new kinds of juridical rules and
regulations, about the rights of clients to
ask and appeal decisions of bureaucrats and
social workers. That was the revolution I
had always worked for, the right of the client
to speak out, it was in the war, by that time
we saw and I’d seen coming in 1963, what
eventually became the nationalization of the
social service and the health agencies. I
did not want to go public…
Hill: You didn’t want…?
Weiss: I didn’t want the agency to become
a public establishment. This is where and
(inaudible) the history of the agency I saw,
it had done everything the public institutions
said they would do. We met needs, from conception
to the resurrection. Unmarried mothers to
burial services. We already were running as
a house of the people, all social services,
all kinds of needs, group work, education,
and what not, all were being provided, and
I said to the board, my experience in the
States was if you took money, you had to pay
the piper, and you’d lose autonomy and your
social cultural entity. Ten, twelve years
later, this is the situation now in Québec.
As a social service centre, the Jewish Family
Services may be divested of all its functions,
or relegated to second class position, or
made part of one social services centres are
now being groomed to take over the casework
services, and if it hadn’t been for my successor
who understood some of the – he’s now
in Texas, we continued the Baron de Hirsch
Institute, we made a deal with the federation,
it became a (Marino?) agency, a private institution,
quietly standing by. We did not liquidate
all the agency. Some of our friends outside,
and the rest of the country, and others in
the community wanted to know, we maintained
the Baron de Hirsch Institute and now as the
government is cutting off, and divesting its
social service centre, of some of its functions,
traditionally done by the Institute, the Institute
is coming back, and justifying what I myself
have said. You know, sometimes, you get to
be a prophet in your own country, and sometimes,
you don’t. I’m sorry to say that it’s
happening, and it’s happening not because
of budget controls. It’s happening because
of Dr. Camille Laurin’s attitude, it’s
everything in French is good, anything else
is second class or has to adjust to it. And
I think that situation is going to go on whether
Bourassa comes or not, but that political
situation, was not foreseen in 1963, or 1970.
Hill: When you came to Canada, and shortly
thereafter, you’ve mentioned to me a couple
of times, what you observed as the I guess
the three solitudes, French Catholic, English
Protestant, and the Jewish community.
Weiss: I would think four, because the Catholic
was split, too, English Catholic, French Catholic.
That’s true, we had four solitudes.
Hill: Over the years, and thinking of what
you’ve just told me about the involvement
of the state, what happened to the four solitudes
and how were you involved and what happened?
Weiss: Well, professionally, I was merely
involved through the Council on Social Agencies,
at least with the English Jewish, not too
much French, and the English Catholics, so
we had three solitudes working together on
committees, on join common grounds. And we
negotiated with the government for grants
and so on. And then we got to know each other
and began to think of some of the reform activities
we had to get involved in social change. And
that was precipitated by the fact that you
go to self-help groups the greater Montréal
committee for underprivileged or poverty committees,
do you remember these self-help groups?
Hill: Yes.
Weiss: Well, there’s a lot of that action
following Sol Alinsky’s visit. Sol is another
kind of Jewish secular priest prophet, whose
impact was tremendous, and with whom we spoke
common languages. I had some of that kind
of attitude, and my youth, my ability to breach
the language walls somehow in Québec, my
easy access in Ottawa, they figured they’d
follow along with my energy, with some envy
because the attitudes had always been that
Jews seem to know what to do, and they’ve
been doing it so well. Well, obviously, if
you were living in Diaspora for two thousand
years, and saving the poor, and the wanderer,
and the transient, and the pogrom victims,
you develop know-how, even if it’s not professional
know-how, it’s in the blood.
Occasionally, some of my colleagues would
say, “oh gee, I wish we were like, had your
means,” and I said, “very easy, convert.
You have the means you have the history,”
because on the other hand they ask me, why
don’t you become a Catholic? You speak with
a voice of fire, you know (inaudible), I said
fine, I said what do you want me to do? Become
a Catholic? I said, look you had one of us
as a Catholic. Things haven’t changed yet,
any time, nineteen hundred odd years, when
they do, we’ll neither be Catholic, Protestant,
or Jew, we’ll be people.
Well, that’s my rabbi’s favourite saying,
be a better off Catholic, Protestant, and
a a better off Jew.
Okay, I don’t know if that explains it in
a linear, logical way, cause oral history
never gives you the chance to get the proper
sequences, but I lived in a multidimensional
world I discovered. Most of us, well even
in New York, and different agencies highly
specialized and complex, it was very difficult
to be multidimensional, you had to do your
own thing. Here, you could work in a variety
of fields, each of which reinforced or flew
out of each other, or grew out of each other.
Hill: Why was that possible here and not in
New York, for example?
Weiss: A, because it was a smaller community,
and more intensive, and because we had the
solitudes, a lot of this was going in here.
Everybody was involved in a variety of things
that came and trying to get that, then you
moved into it, so that it opened up. Somehow
we were bridge-builders, prospectors, explorers,
discoverers. I have it somewhere in a poem
about Montréal, you know, how we came to
belong, walking the streets, looking at the
sights, and now you suddenly become part of
this feeling and I think I got my kicks out
of it, too.
Hill: Yeah. Okay, you retired from the Baron
de Hirsch in 1970. You had been teaching at
McGill for some years before that, hadn’t
you?
Weiss: I had been teaching part time as a
lecturer primarily in the field of social
administration. When I retired, I had a few
things in mind, teaching, not part time, full
time, private practice, development of my
gerontology interests, I had been teaching
that at Concordia University, then known as
Sir George Williams, and I thought I would
just free myself. Luckily, my children grown,
my wife was modest in her demands and expectations,
and as if all things happened at one time.
McGill was in a budgetary bind, it didn’t
work out. I went to Dawson College as one
of the things I was interested in new community
college development here, you know part of
the universality and education, and I was
offered a variety of jobs, and Sister McDonald
said, how would you like to develop a program,
community recreation? Fine, that’s group
work, I said sure, what will we do, she said,
well, here’s the cahier, do whatever you
can.
That’s fine, I’m able to take nothing
and make something out of it, because that’s
what the existentialist believes in. We come
from nothing Ex nihilo Creatio, from nothing
creation. I don’t know if I’ve pronounced
it in Latin. Ex nihilo Creatio, Creatio ex
nihilo, from nothing to something, from something
to nothing, so I just fell into this part
time and created a department that’s going
gung ho, great. We developed a form of para-professional
group work, centre worker and camp work, and
geriatric clinic or hospital worker, a person
to go out and do his or her thing, whether
it’s teaching arts and crafts, music, or
reading citizenship reactions and the social
change agency, well that’s all part of my
background. I was able luckily to get the
right colleagues and the students went from
two to a hundred odd a year, and clamouring
to get in. That was great, and I did that
within five years. By 1975, we had been certified
as “it”, and American teachers and experts
were writing to us and coming here
Weiss: and interested in our graduates, went
on to get their Master’s and their PhD’s,
at Springfield College. So what we were doing
was not just limited, we were able ot get
the right people.
That was very gratifying, but I didn’t do
that only, I was also on the Social Aid Appeal
Board part time and then I got into a commercial
enterprise in pre-retirement counselling where
I was the senior consultant, counsellor, and
wrote pamphlets, and booklets on preparation
for retirement. One of the results of which,
I now teach social gerontology at a community
college, adult education; I write a weekly
column in the local newspaper, on retirement.
So you see, one thing led to another, utilizing
all these things. So I found that I was doing
much better, financially, when I left the
Institute, when I was working there after
twenty four years.
Well, that made me realize now that the world
of concrete materialism what had happened
to me. Well this is where I am. It’s a question
that makes me wonder, looking backwards, what
was it that made me satisfied with lower middle
class professional status, financially speaking,
that’s what Montréal meant. Its pension
funds, the public funds were late in coming.
In the United Sates, you had the Social Security
Act in 1937, we only got it in 1966, 1967,
etc. (Mr. Weiss later corrects to 1957.) Well,
we have medicare and universal hospitalization,
which is very good. So I asked myself, how
was it possible now to understand, I started
with very little, an East Side immigrant first
generation child in a large family and to
have enough to eat, to pay the rent, and clothe
yourself, and have holidays, was the great
achievement of the middle class. My children
don’t think so, my grandchildren don’t
think so, some of my colleagues don’t think
so, but there are some things I can change,
and some that I can’t, and I remember when
of my great tycoons said, “David, with your
brains and your mouthpiece, you could be a
great asset in the business,” and I said,
“well, why didn’t we sign a contract?”
He said, “you’re too much of an idealist.”
So the assets that I had that he recognized
were not attributes to make money, because
I somehow gave it away for nothing anyway,
and he couldn’t quite trust me, so that’s
the personality deficiency, a blind spot.
If I would do it over again, I might do it
again, but with a little more adroitness,
a little less exuberance, a little more selfishly,
but I’m afraid it would be the same results.
Hill: Would your motto be the same? What I
got I have…
Weiss: “What I got I had, what I had I gave”?
Yes, that would be pretty much the same. But
I would make investments, I would not think
that my life here would be transitory, I would
have borrowed money and bought property, some
of my colleagues did. I would have, knowing
my knowledge about programs and so on, did
the mornal thing with friends and relatives
which I didn’t do.
Hill: What…?
Weiss: Well, steered people to things, advise
them of program developments, whether it would
be business connections. Let’s face it,
everybody in community service who is a volunteer
is there for self-development, self-fulfillment,
and senf-aggrandizement, and as long as you
realize these three parts are indivisible.
We don’t understand the volunteer.
Hill: Is that different for us as professional
social workers?
Weiss: I think we tend to sit on our self-aggrandizement,
our self-development. We want to achieve,
we want to practice, we want to be recognized
by our peers, as knowing, as doing, but not
in the material sense. If we’re good fundraisers,
in federation work, in fundraising then we’re
able to tolerate it. But I never went into
fundraising. Yes, I could raise money, I’d
go to the Québec government and get fifty
thousand dollars for group foster homes, nobody
else thought it possible, you see, by simply
saying to the minister…
That’s how we got our group foster home,
incidentally. The Minister of Welfare, a man
named LaFrance, a great guy, very religious,
couldn’t say no to seeing me and the head
of the agency, big businessman, and we sat
there for two hours in his office and he was
being told by the deputy, something new, and
nothing was happening, and on the way out
I said, “Mr. Minister, may I say a few words,”
he said, “sure what is it.” I said, “Mr.
Minister, there’s a destiny that makes us
brothers, no man goes his way alone, all that
we send into the lives of others, comes back
into our own.” He looked around, he said,
“stop, hold it,” rang the secretary, said,
“say it to her.” He said, “bring it
back to me,” he said to us, “sit down.”
He said, “I’ll give you twenty five thousand
dollars, for this fiscal year, and twenty
five thousand dollars next month, at the beginning
of the new fiscal year,” I got my fifty
thousand dollars by that quotation (laughter).
Now, that kind of money raising, that kind
of almost show biz technique, I could do if
it was for you, but somehow I didn’t feel
it appropriate for myself. That came out of
my childhood.
Don’t grab, there’s eight people, nine
people, be modest, don’t expect, you know,
it’s risky so for them, and maybe that’s
how I sublimated my repressed, I won’t use
the phrase the Freudian phrase, wish, by trans-sublimating
on the other.
Hill: Okay. One of the questions that I neglected
to ask you earlier, Mr. Weiss, was about your
involvement with the professional association,
the Canadian Association of Social Workers.
Weiss: Right, very early on I was very interested,
I remember Joy Mained. I started to write
for the Journal, book reviews. I think there’s
some articles there. Then when the Corporation
of Québec Social Workers started, you know,
there was this parturition there for a time,
I became very active in the local corporation,
I was on the executive. I edited “Intervention”
for several years, before it went all French.
I’ve been on committees with the, as I say,
the Canadian Association, until 1970. After
that, I was no longer directly in a professional
role, but I maintained my membership, and
then the corporation had come into the situation
very strongly, as if to say you can’t be
a member of both. I carried on here, what
I did in the United States, I was on the executive
committee, the conference on Jewish Communal
Service for many years, sat on the executive,
I was on the board of editors, so I’ve been
involved a great deal in that. In fact, even
to this day, I have book reviews published
there, I have articles published there, I’m
very active in the “Intervention” of the
provincial association, but in the Canadian
Association I think when Anthony Grey was
the director and the editor, he was the last
of those with whom I had very much to do.
[pause]
Hill: You were saying, Mr. Weiss, that the
last you had to do with CASW was when Tony
Grey was executive director?
Weiss: Right, I think that coincides with
the time that I was still with the Baron or
shortly after. I think I was active with the
various Canadian conferences, and sessions,
gave papers. I was involved in lecturing,
St. John’s, Newfoundland School of Social
Work, I went out to Calgary, on two occasions,
to give some seminars. I’ve been fortunate,
I’ve had friends and colleagues throughout
the country. So that I didn’t feel neglected
or unknown or unwanted, and that’s very
important, to have a sense of belonging, and
of concern. So I felt that my obligation and
joy to be part and parcel of this, and I still
have some of those ties, and I find that my
roots with the American leaders are still
strong. That some of my colleagues and former
students are directors in agencies throughout
the United States, and we’re in constant
communication, either by letter writing, or
by audio tapes, we are terribly involved,
and that’s good.
Hill: Indeed. I’d like to ask you a couple
of retrospective questions now, more abstract
perhaps than we’ve been so far, one of which
would be that, as you look back on your career,
thirty-seven years in Canada and some years
in the United States before that, accomplishments,
things of which you’re particularly pleased
or proud that you have done.
Weiss: Well, the earliest accomplishment was
when I won my first declamation contest in
the Y as a child. Second was learning to go
before an audience in Little Theatre groups
to learn to overcome my shyness. The leadership
experience that expressed itself in high school,
I became president of the General Organization
of three thousand students, otherwise leadership
was being felt, and when I met and married
my wife, my children were born, those are
peak experiences. Social work, and they’re
related by the way to social work, all these
things show themselves to the kinds of things
I grew with.
Hill: How so, take on as an example.
Weiss: Well, when I got married, I understood
marriage counselling much better than when
I was unmarried. When I had children, I understood
the parent-child problems at different ages,
and stages, which paralleled my life. If you
look at any expert, they generally parallel
their own lifestyle changes and so on with
what they are doing, whether you’re an artist,
or a therapist, or a social worker. Okay,
the big achievement in the United States was
when as a field work student, I was tapped
on the shoulder and said, “would you work
full time before you graduated?” That was
the actual act that made me realize that maybe
I had something, I didn’t know what it was,
but I could picture the Big Time. Then going
to Rochester, and taking on some of the social
problems, instead of, you know, talking, and
I Acted out on a group therapy basis, the
trial by youth. I consider that the best thing
I did there. It certainly settled a lot of
feeling [tone] and curfews for the youth were
taken away, kids were trusted more, they could
trust their elders, we acted on, as Marino
says, we got rid of a lot of anger.
In Montréal many things. I would say the
most important thing in social work that I’ve
done, I made social work credible, and more
acceptable, and professional. I know this
because I have various awards, in recognition.
I think also I modeled certain kinds of social
work, which I call engagement. I was engaged,
again my existential philosophy. If you want
to be realistic and you want to be part of
what you’re doing, you cannot be over and
above it, you have to be in and of it. You
can be in and out of the situation, slightly
above, but you can’t be above it without
being separate. That’s a very hard practical
thing, but I tried to exemplify that, without
knowing that I was doing it. So the accomplishments
here was to revivify, redefine, reorganize
the Baron de Hirsch Institute-Jewish Child
Welfare Bureau, to bring it to I think it’s
paradigmatic excellence by 1970, when it went
public. It had everything that the public
agency was supposed to, it became a model,
cause it had already been doing it. When I
went into full time teaching, I was able to
create, out of nothing, out of no previous
experience, a whole department of recreation
leadership, and leisure counselling. Well
that came out of my own experience, I thought
that was an accomplishment.
Publishing my poetry was an accomplishment,
that flew out of, our grew out of my social
work belief that I have to be true to myself.
I didn’t have to be a closet poet, or writer,
and so I became active in the literary field
again. And finally I was able by the help
of God and a good wife and family and friends
to live to the day that we could say, I have
a prayer, “Blessed art thou oh Lord our
God, King of the Universe, who has brought
us forth to live and see this day of our lives.”
We call it Lazmanhazeh (sp?). I can appreciate
that somehow social work achieved the most
important thing for me, and I in it, to give
me a lifestyle and understanding, I’m looking
for the wisdom still, of what it is to be
a human being in the twentieth centur, besieged
and beleaguered by some of the greatest dilemmas
man has ever experienced, self destruction
on a global scale. A planet that’s almost
over taxed. It is the best of worlds, it is
the worst of worlds, it’s the season of
good things, the season of bad things. The
Tale of Two Cities is really the tale of two
worlds. Social work lives with these, the
visions, these separate solitudes, and what’s
social work, reaching out, touching, caring,
reading, isn’t it, isn’t that the definition
of what love is?
Social work is practical love, applied love,
and Hugh MacLennan has written a gorgeous
novel about Québec and Canada, called “Two
Solitudes,” and he has as the opening theme,
this poem by Maria Rilke which says, “love
is two solitudes, meeting, reaching, or greeting,
touching and caring.” Well isn’t that
a definition of the functions and processes
of social work? Social workers are poets,
great lovers, as such we’re big risk takers,
and we can be overwhelmed by what we do and
are. But having an existential attitude, which
understands the two part, the duality of life,
we learn to cope with these two things that
are indivisible, not separate, indivisibly,
our dual society, well that’s what social
work achieved, for me, and has achieved here.
So we learn to live with our Jewishness, with
our Canadianism, with the Québécois demands,
and we’re coping. I don’t think I would
leave Québec because we have Mr. Levesque,
in spite of Mr. Levesque if I disagree with
him, I’ll stay.
Now that is in spite of the enemy or the demons,
I will not run, I’m not calling him a demon,
but I mean this is what the Sartre calls it,
or Buber, the unspeakable thing needs a singular
response, the individual. I think this is
when you help people who are hurt, in pain,
whether it’s cancer, or bereavement, or
new society, a refugee status, alienated,
it’s to knows that that person has a singular
answer, and a singular response to be found
and made, that makes his situation or her
situation bearable, copeable, even if not
truly understood. That’s what I think social
work did, and what I hope to contribute, or
have contributed to social work.
Hill: I feel sure that your contribution has
really been immeasurable.
Weiss: Well I think that was a good peroration
for the interview.
Hill: Is there anything you’d like to add?
Weiss: Oh, yes, yes, I could add a great deal,
I could tell you how when I first came here,
people would say, I remember now, you don’t
talk to Weiss unless you’re prepared for
psychoanalytical interview or treatment. And
I would say, “well, how do you come to say
this?” It would come back, someone came
to say that they had this interest or need,
and I’d say, fine, tell me about it. I didn’t
say, sure damn it, don’t you know, I wanted
to understand, well, try to understand in
those days, it was considered by the locals,
he’s putting you in the chair. Now one of
the greatest professional leaders, in the
Jewish Communal Service, well I could tell
you, the executive vice president of the Council
of Jewish Federation’s Welfare Funds, Mr.
Carmie (sp?) Schwartz who was the outstanding
Jewish leader in North America. He was an
ex-Montréaler. He was doing his field work
next door to me, was the man who said to me,
David, why do you psychoanalyze people, he
himself was afraid that he would reveal himself,
that’s what they feared, revealing. I believe
that revealing is healing. Not revealed help
is a physical material transaction, but if
I help you materially, or by advice or whatever
it helps you because you have been revealed
to yourself, that part that was obscured,
now that was called analytical, frightening.
I then understood that I was the cosmopolitan
and therefore I developed some of the St.
Catherine Street attitudes, you know, saying,
sure you know, telling the joke, or making
it seem casual because that was the game that
was being played. Never reveal your feelings,
it was dangerous. But you know, true help
means you’re vulnerable, and if you really
want to help, you have to understand you made
yourself and the other vulnerable, so I stopped
psychoanalyzing.
Hill: Okay, okay, on that note, we can close
then, and I’d like to thank you very much
for your time 
this afternoon.
Weiss: You’re quite welcome.
