This is the tenth in a series of articles intended to paint a cumulative portrait of our Jewish community through interviews with randomly selected individuals. Today, we focus on Gitel Forman.
“I’ve always been a pretty happy person,” Gitel Forman said during an interview in her Brown Deer condo, and no one could be around her for ten minutes without believing it. Indeed, one might deduce her basically sunny personality just from looking at her car, which sports a license plate reading “GITEL 1.”
Those who have known her a long time say the same. Rabbi Bernard Reichman of Congregation Anshai Lebowitz, who has known Forman virtually since he arrived in the city in 1965, called her “a very good-natured person” and “beloved by everybody” at his synagogue. Moreover, Forman said that during the about ten years she worked for an insurance firm, she was named “Miss Congeniality” twice.
But beyond that, what most frequently is mentioned by people who know her is her service to others and to the community, especially to Anshai Lebowitz, where she has been active for more than 30 years. In fact, according to Forman’s daughter-in-law, Tina Forman, “I don’t know what [the congregation] would do without her.”
She has worked there as secretary, been a member and officer in the sisterhood, including eight years as its “financial secretary,” and every Sabbath serves in the synagogue’s kitchen. And beyond that, according to her co-worker in the kitchen Fannie Engle, “If anything special comes up, she’s always the first to volunteer to help out.” In 1998, the synagogue gave her its “Woman of Valor” Award.
Forman also volunteers at the Hadassah Resale Shop, likes to have people over to her place for dinner and, generally, as Tina Forman said, “Helps everyone.” In fact, if she has a weakness, according to Tina, it is “that she never puts herself first, ever.”
That isn’t quite how Gitel sees herself. Not only does she have her indulgences — she belongs to clubs for cards and Mah Jongg — but she appears to enjoy her volunteering because “you meet a lot of lovely people” and “there’s a very friendly atmosphere at our temple.”
Forman was born in Port Washington, the youngest of three and the only daughter of Russian immigrants Abraham and Ida Horowitz. She lived there until she was seven. Characteristically, her two vivid memories of those years are her friendship with a nun in a nearby Catholic church, and the time she and other children ran after a truck that was leaking a shipment of peas.
But there was no Jewish community there, and as her brothers approached bar mitzvah age, her parents decided to move to Milwaukee. Gitel attended public schools, but also the Workman’s Circle School and the Folk Shule, where among other things she studied Yiddish and Hebrew.
After high school, she held a variety of odd jobs, including work in a war production plant, until a friend of both her brothers, Sol Forman, returned from World War II army service in the Pacific. He was four years older than she and apparently hadn’t noticed her much before, though she was a friend of his sister.
They were paired to go to a party and began seeing each other thereafter. “He was very good looking [and] very nice to be with.” They married in 1946; their two sons, car dealership manager Robert (Tina’s husband and father of granddaughter Shaana, 16) and painting contractor Larry, live in the Milwaukee area.
The marriage also led the couple to Anshai Lebowitz. Her husband’s father heard about “the wonderful new rabbi” at that synagogue shortly after Reichman joined. He met Reichman, was impressed, and urged Sol and Gitel to meet him. They all ended up joining.
As her children got older, Gitel decided to return to work, first for the synagogue, later for an insurance company. Her husband “got a truck and went into the tobacco and sundries business,” and stayed in it until one day in (she believes it was) the 1980s, he was robbed at gun-point and decided to retire.
They are both retired now, but still are active, especially at the synagogue. Among other things, they went on the synagogue’s trip to Israel in 1991, where it was Gitel’s idea to have the group visit the home for orphaned Jewish girls in Jerusalem that relatives of her good friend, the late Rebbetzin Shoshana Reichman, were running.
“I’ve had a very full life,” Gitel said. “I always felt I was doing something.”
Individuals for this column are selected at random from the Milwaukee Jewish Federation community data base. The Chronicle does not have access to donor information, nor contact members of the community with regard to their giving habits.
Loading ...
