This article appeared in the Nov. 27, 2013 Jewish Advocate.

Local voices recall where they were when they heard the news about JFK

By Susie Davidson

Special to the Advocate


During the observance of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, The Advocate asked some members of the Jewish community for their recollections, which were generally vivid, detailed, and profound. For all, the impact has never diminished.


"I was eight years old, a third grader, sick, and so, home from school," said Rabbi Howard Jaffe of Temple Isaiah in Lexington. "My mother let me lie down on the couch in the living room, where I could watch our one television to pass the time." Jaffe still recalls the show that was on ("Bachelor Father," starring John Forsythe).  "It had ended its run the previous year, and was now in daytime reruns," he said. And it was interrupted by the shocking news. 

"It may have been the first time I ever experienced a television show being interrupted for a breaking news report, and I certainly was not prepared for the news that President Kennedy had been shot - I cannot imagine that anyone could have been," he said. "Even as an eight-year-old, I felt as if he was someone close to me and important in my life. The announcement of his death was too much for me to comprehend, and was, I think, the first time I was conscious of the death of someone important to me, and in this case, important to every other person I knew, as well," he said.

"I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin," recalled  Sheila Decter, Executive Director of the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action (JALSA).  Decter had been so taken by the words of the President that she had gotten involved in encouraging people to participate in the Peace Corps. "In the organization's early years, they wanted people who knew languages," she sad. "I didn't feel that I myself was a good candidate, because I had always been a poor language learner, but I helped to register people and to tell them about the Peace Corps, and was part of that effort."

Decter was in her apartment getting ready for Shabbat dinner when she heard it over the radio. "I thought I wasn't hearing it right. I thought it was like Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds,' an extreme broadcast that wasn't true," she said. She went downstairs to the street to hear if others had heard it as well. "People were bereft and crying all over the streets of Madison, and then I knew it was true." As a memorial to Kennedy, Decter became involved in encouraging passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which had been approved by the House Judiciary Committee on Oct. 26, 1963 and formally reported to the full House on Nov. 20, only days before the assassination.

"I was crossing the street in Coolidge Corner when the news that JFK was shot reached me," said Larry Ruttman, Brookline resident and author of "American Jews and America’s Game: Voices of a Growing Legacy in Baseball," and "Voices of Brookline." "I was stopped by an excited passerby with the shocking news that JFK had just been shot in Dallas." As is often the case, Ruttman remembers what he was wearing at that moment frozen in time, a Glen plaid gray suit. "Only a few days prior I had returned from my honeymoon with my wife Lois in Jamaica," he said. "I had never been to a place so naturally beautiful, but now Lois and I saw horror and grief unfold before our eyes on that unforgettable weekend." Indeed, Ruttman said, it changed the newlyweds' very outlook on life. "Our hopes begin to dissolve as that charismatic and brilliant man passed from among us," he said.

"I can still vividly remember my shock when, walking across the Princeton quadrangle during my freshman year of college, a classmate shouted out his window that President Kennedy had been shot," said Massachusetts State Treasurer and gubernatorial candidate Steve Grossman. "Our family has been close to the Kennedys for five generations, beginning with the work my grandfather did on John F. 'Honey Fitz' Fitzgerald's campaign for mayor of Boston in 1910," he noted.

"I was 14 and a student at Randolph High School," said Alan Teperow, Executive Director of the Synagogue Council of Massachusetts. "I don't remember the reactions of fellow students other than disbelief."

The painful, heartbreaking and cataclysmic events of Nov. 22, 1963 will resonate forever in those who remember that day. But the legacy of the too-brief life of the beloved President has never diminished.

"His was a life too short to be measured by deeds, but long enough to  have instilled a spirit which had it persisted would have changed our history since then, had he lived," said Ruttman.

"As we observe this 50th anniversary, let us choose to focus on John Kennedy’s life, what he stood for, and how he transformed the lives of so many, both in the United States and throughout the world," said Grossman.

"To this day, I am fascinated by anything related to JFK, the good and the bad, and was very moved by the many commemorations, radio shows and TV programs devoted to remembering Kennedy's life and tragic death," said Teperow. "I thought at the time, and am convinced today, that JFK was maturing in the presidency and was just beginning to achieve greatness when he was shockingly taken from us.  Who knows how that single incident may have changed the course of American and world history forever?" he pondered.

"In less than three years in the White House, John Kennedy inspired a generation of Americans to pursue civic engagement and public service. He employed public policy as a means to empower the most vulnerable citizens in our society, from minorities, to the disabled, to the mentally ill, to the poor. Kennedy was a tireless advocate for helping those citizens who so desperately needed government to deliver for them," said Grossman.

"That spirit of hope has always been a part of my interest in social justice, that notion of making the world better," said Decter.