A Virtual Alumni Panel About Life in the Home
On Wednesday, July 2, the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE) is hosting an alumni panel consisting of Sam Brody and Bettye Sawl Eisner, both former residents of the Jewish Orphans' Home of New Orleans, in dialogue with Marlene Trestman, writer of Most Fortunate Unfortunates: The Jewish Orphans' Home of New Orleans.
Join this event to learn about what life in the Home was like for Brody and Eisner and to engage in a conversation about how childhood experiences affect adjustment into adulthood.
The Alumni Panel will take place virtually on Wednesday, July 2 at 6 p.m. over Zoom. Registration is live now.
The Two Panelists
Brody lived in the Home beginning at age 7 and, afterward, despite academic struggles that led those around him to assume he would not attend college, he graduated from the University of Chattanooga. Having studied Chemistry, Brody served in the U.S. Air Force as a radar technician during the Korean War and then worked as a chemist at a variety of companies until he retired in 1992. He has been married to his wife, Eleanor, since 1954. They live in Boston, Massachusetts.
Eisner also started at the Home at age 7 alongside her three older siblings. Their widowed mother enrolled them there until 1946 when the Home closed and then rejoined her children in New Orleans. For two years, Eisner studied early childhood education at Tulane University. She pursued interior design while also raising two children with husband Willard Eisner. They live in Fresno, California.
Marlene Trestman, Author
An orphan herself, Trestman is a New Orleans native and lived at the Jewish Children's Regional Service, the organization that followed the Jewish Orphans' Home. She attended Goucher College and George Washington University Law School to become an attorney.
Her book Most Fortunate Unfortunates: The Jewish Orphans' Home of New Orleans delves into the history, both the triumphs and failures, of the Jewish Orphans' Home as a pillar of the New Orleanian Jewish community. Alongside Most Fortunate Unfortunates, Trestman is the author of Fair Labor Lawyer: The Remarkable Life of New Deal Attorney and Supreme Court Advocate Bessie Margolin.
More on the MSJE
Sponsored by the New Orleans Recreation Culture Fund and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, this event aims at deepening the MSJE's current exhibition on The Jewish Orphans' Home of New Orleans with stories and testimonies from attendees in tandem with Trestman's exploration of the Home in her book.
The MSJE's overall aim is to provide insight into what it means to be Jewish in the South and the attached history. The museum is home to artifacts and exhibitions that weave together this cultural heritage.
