Member Profile
Roz Robinson
October 9, 1949-December 17, 2005
After a ten year battle with cancer, Roz has passed away. 2005 was a tough year for her, but she never complained, and never missed a service until the High Holy days last October at which time her body just gave out. She was our rabbinic leader for the last seven years and was held in the highest esteem. She had a tremendous gift for teaching; the multicolored thread that weaved the tapestry of her life. Whether it was her special education students, her congregants, her family or her friends, teaching made up the essence of who she was and hundreds of people were profoundly touched by her in her short 56 years.
She has received every award TBS has to offer and we've even created some new ones to give her to express our gratitude and admiration for her amazing talents and dedication: The Hirsh Woman of the Year, The President's Award, Distinguished Service Award. Her first Certificate of Appreciation says it all:
Our religion teaches us that we should do good deeds in quiet and unassuming ways. So you have come to Temple Beth Solomon without expectation for any personal glory. Your intense love and concern you have shown to TBS is the same intense love you show to your own family. In the short time you have been on the Temple Board, you have contributed quietly yet efficiently, unassumingly yet proficiently, modestly yet successfully. In addition you have created a Religious School program that is unique and unmatched in the Jewish community showing that your commitment to our temple children is the same as to your own.
It is extremely difficult to condense one's life into a few pages, but we asked Roz to do just that several years ago, after she became ill. So instead of an obituary, you will get a short autobiography of the life of the woman we grew to cherish and respect. We present to you, Rosalyn "Rivka" Robinson:
Roz Robinson, z.l.
I was born October 9, 1949, in Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. Most of my family lived in New Jersey at that time. It was shortly after the war and jobs and housing were both difficult to find. A job for my dad took us to Richmond, Virginia for a while and then on to Syracuse, New York where I did most of my growing up.
I was the first born of two daughters, and I can remember praying to G-d to please send me a sister. This wish was granted just before my 5th birthday. I was overjoyed that my sister arrived, but I didn't know that I would have to go to school now while the baby stayed home with mom.
Each morning at school when they served milk for nutrition, I promptly got a stomach ache, vomited up the milk, and got sent home. After this had gone on a while, the principal called my mom and told her to keep me home if I were ill. Mom told the principal about the new baby. The next day when I got sick, I was sent to the principal's office, instead of home. The principal told me I was not sick; to stop throwing up; go back to class; and, behave myself. I did. That was the end of that!
Somewhere around this same time frame, my dad took me to Temple. He told me they had a class for kids on Sunday mornings and asked if I wanted to stay. I decided to try it. That was the beginning of my Hebrew/Jewish education. During my elementary school years, I also recall taking a class in Yiddish at the Jewish Community Center. I lived and went to public school in a predominantly Jewish area, and the Jewish Community Center offered many classes and programs as well as teen dances and a lounge where we could hang out while I was growing up.
I was always a good student in school and so when it was decided to offer French in Junior High School, instead of waiting until High School, I was asked to participate in the program. That's when my hearing loss first showed up. The French class was given in a lab where everyone wore headphones. A voice on tape spoke sentences in French and we were supposed to repeat what we heard. Meanwhile, the teacher would flip a switch and tune in to listen to the students one at a time. The teacher always seemed to be angry with me or picking on me but I didn't find out why until later. He thought I was making fun of the language with my pronunciation, but actually, I was just repeating what I heard.
About the same time, another incident happened that called attention to my hearing. My dad had a very characteristic whistle that he used when he wanted my sister or me to come in from outside. One evening, I was sitting out front, talking with a friend, when my dad came out and asked why I didn't come when he whistled. I told him that I honestly hadn't heard him.
So, I was taken for a hearing test. First, the sound test in the sound-proof booth. Then, the doctor talked to me while moving index cards in front of his mouth off and on. When he was done, he said that I had a bilateral, sensory-neural hearing loss primarily in the high frequencies and that I had been using lip-reading skills to compensate. The doctor had no idea what caused the loss, or whether it would get worse over time. He didn't think I would ever become deaf. His recommendation was that I study lip-reading.
Wanting the best for me, my parents took me to the Upstate Medical Center and arranged once-a-week lip-reading training for me. The teacher was a young man whose name I don't remember. He told me some of the pitfalls of lip reading: M, P, and B look exactly the same on the lips, so context is important in figuring out what is said. F and V are hard to distinguish. The same is true for many words that sound very different, but look the same on the lips. Each time I went, the man would read me stories without using his voice and then ask me questions about what he'd read. Eventually, he told me that he'd done all he could for me and that was the end of my lip-reading training.
I went on about my life, sitting up front in classes to lip-read better, and was basically okay except for French. Every time I had to stand in front of the class and do a presentation (they wouldn't excuse me from these despite a doctor's note regarding my hearing loss), the teacher would scream at me the words I mispronounced and tell me to repeat and I would repeat what I heard, making her more and more upset with me. This went on through three years of high school French.
New York State had Regents exams and if you wanted to go to college you had to pass the Regents exams which were state-wide tests, not something made up by a teacher or a school. Passing score on Regents exams is 65. During the French Regents exam, the teacher walked up and down the aisles making it impossible for me to lip-read her as she read the first 35 points of the exam, which were oral questions. I sat and played "multiple guess" with my answer sheet when I had no idea what the teacher said. The other 65 points of the exam were written. I just barely passed with a 68.
At the same time, I had been studying Hebrew, going to Temple, and participating in various religious functions throughout my life. I decided to try taking the Hebrew Regents. The problem there was that I grew up learning the Ashkenazic form of Hebrew and the year of my Regents was the year the test changed to the Sephardic form of Hebrew, which is the one spoken in Israel. I did about the same on the Hebrew exam as on the French.
I went on to college at SUNY Stony Brook on Long Island. The language department there was very nice to me even though they insisted I take a foreign language for college credit. I took a French literature course where I could read the books in English, along with the French, and I took the two required semesters pass/fail. That was the end of my foreign language experience. Finally!
Originally, I enrolled in Stony Brook hoping to major in chemistry or some other science. Unfortunately for me, exams at SB were graded on a bell curve. Freshman Chemistry put me in competition with all the premed students, and I often found myself on the down-turn end of the curve. Looking back, I can also see that I often missed items on tests because I missed the material completely. If the professor was writing on the board with his back to the class and I didn't hear him talking, I assumed (incorrectly) that he wasn't. I didn't have any support services. I had no idea I even needed them. So, I struggled my way through Stony Brook changing majors to psychology halfway through and then adding a major in education when the school first added education to its possible majors.
After I graduated, I had a five-year preliminary teaching credential. I applied for some jobs around Stony Brook but nothing came through.
When I originally went to SB, I had a Regents scholarship to cover my tuition. My sophomore year, my dad was transferred to Pittsburgh from his job. Since my parents were no longer residents of NY State, I lost my scholarship. The financial aide office gave me a job in the mailroom at school in exchange for my room in the dorm.
Since my parents were no longer in Syracuse where I grew up; Pittsburgh meant nothing to me; and I didn't find a job near SB, I decided to come to California. My father's sister lived out in Los Angeles. It seemed like everyone was always taking about California and coming out here during vacations, so I decided to try my luck out here, too.
My aunt mailed me a clipping from the newspaper about Vista del Mar Child-Care Service. She said the place was close to where she lived and maybe I could get a job there. I wrote to Vista and they told me to call when I arrived in California.
I arrived July 7, 1971. Vista was having some staff problems as the workers were trying to unionize. Three weeks after I arrived I had a job. The position has been called "child-care worker", "housemother", "youth counselor", etc. I spent the first three weeks there working with the girls, but I was hired to work with the boys. During my first three weeks with the girls, the stereos were constantly blasting and I couldn't hear the phone. The director asked me about it and I said that I knew I had a hearing loss in the high frequencies and that the girls were so noisy I couldn't hear on the phone in the cottage where the girls lived. The director told me she made me an appointment with a hearing specialist during my off time and gave me his name, address and the time of my appointment. When I went, he did the usual tests. I don't recall his name, but his office was in Beverly Hills. He was surprised that I had never been to a school for hearing impaired and he wanted me to see his audiologist about hearing aides, so I set up another appointment to see her. During my appointment with her, she tested various amplifications of sound together with background noise. Her opinion was that hearing aids would not help me at that time because the hearing I had in the lower tones became too loud in order to give me any hearing in the higher tones. When the director called me in again I thought I was going to lose my job, but instead she just told me that the doctor had been very impressed with me and wasn't sending me a bill, so she thought I should send him a thank you note. (of course, I did!) Continued...