T his is one of an occasional series intended to paint a cumulative portrait of our Jewish community.
Individuals for this column are selected at random from the Milwaukee Jewish Federation community database. The Chronicle does not have access to donor information, or contact members of the community with regard to their giving habits.
Today we focus on Doris Chortek.
For 80-year old Doris Chortek, theater opened the community to her.
Because of her strong roots in theater, Chortek has spent most of her life doing volunteer work that helped “people find their way, become successful and reach their full potential,” she said during an interview in her River Hills home.
A Milwaukee native, Chortek first discovered theater at Shorewood High School, where she immediately took to the technical aspects, such as lighting and working backstage.
During and after her college years at Northwestern and Marquette Universities, Chortek worked in the theater — in production at Northwestern, as director of costumes and lighting at Shorewood High School and Opportunity School, and as assistant to the art director and production manager for ABC-TV Chicago.
Chortek laughed as she recalled a comment her father made to her upon her accepting the job at ABC-TV in 1949. “Television is a fad,” he said, “and I’d better stick to teaching,” she remembered.
Later, Chortek became a co-founder of Fred Miller Theatre, which is now known as the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre. As part of the project, Chortek co-founded the School of Professional Arts, where she taught acting, oral interpretation, speech, history, persuasion and more.
In 1958 the Miller Theatre was turned over to community management. That, she said, marked “the end of my major interest in theater.”
Besides, as a newlywed, she “wanted to be home at night to make dinner for my husband,” she said, grinning.
Teaching by giving
For Chortek, her work teaching is a short step from the volunteerism that has defined her years since. “The whole point [of my volunteer work] is to help them so they can help themselves. A lot of that comes from being a teacher.”
She has chosen a life of volunteering because “that’s what my parents taught me…. You grow up knowing that’s the way to be.”
“I think she’s probably the brightest woman in the Jewish community of Milwaukee,” said longtime friend Lois Shumow, who described Chortek as “very dedicated” and “very talented.”
“She’s probably one of the few women who could’ve been president of a company somewhere, and instead she chose a volunteer route,” she continued, “When I need some advice I always call on her.”
Chortek, who has been involved with organizations including Greater Milwaukee Foundation, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, Inc., Jewish Family Services, Milwaukee Center for Independence, and Community Care Organization, said she “tends to choose the [organizations] that will help the most people.”
One of her more memorable endeavors was her involvement with Women in Community Service Job Corps as project director and Wisconsin coordinator between 1965 and 1969.
According to Chortek, when the government created Job Corps in 1964, a program intended to create more jobs for the unemployed, “they forgot to do it for women.” she said.
As a volunteer for the Women in Community Service Job Corps, Chortek worked with about 125 other volunteers to recruit and screen women, and assist them in cleaning themselves up before sending them off to Job Corps centers to be trained for future employment.
Chortek remembers encountering girls as young as juniors in high school who couldn’t read or were dyslexic, and girls with illnesses that no one had taken the time to remedy. She even recalls going to court over paternity issues with some of the younger mothers.
The volunteers were a diverse group, Chortek said. But this didn’t prevent them from “merging into a tight team.” In fact, Chortek still keeps in touch with many of them today.
Out of this project emerged the Children’s Performing Arts group in the late 1960s. As president of Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun Temple Sisterhood, Chortek felt it would be valuable to expose the young congregants to the inner city children who “weren’t white and just like them.”
On Saturdays, therefore, the group would bus the inner-city kids into the temple and run programs to build self-esteem through music, dance, makeup and drama.
And that intersection between doing good works and being a Jew is central to Chortek’s values. “The philosophy of Judaism and being a Jew is very important to me. It pretty much stands behind what I do,” she said.
“What’s right in Judaism is right in a lot of places,” she added, noting honesty, fairness and goodwill. “Some things are right and some things are wrong and you have to speak up about it…. You can usually find a Jewish basis for those kinds of decisions.”
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