I am slowly transcribing my interviews.  I don't quite get why I don't get the smooth language and syntax as the ones in the library.  The archivist insists that they don't edit them.

This bar mitzvah happened, probably in 1942.  I got a little confused with the dates as Rabbi Levine took over for Rabbi Koch around that same time.

I told this story to the some professional congregational leadership and they went white.  Probably thinking about how much money they had to spend with professional torah maintainer rabbis to clean up a mess like this.  

I'm 'INT:' or the interviewer.

INT: When you were studying for your bar mitzvah, who did you study with Rosenberg or Koch?

JG:  I studied with Goldfarb.

INT:  Oh, he was a teacher also?

JG: Yeah.  He taught me the Torah.  My portion and he also showed me, when you open the Torah, you use the scepter, because we just don’t touch the Torah.  It’s sacred.  We point with the scepter.  He did that, I don’t think I used the scepter.  He did and I read where he was going with it, as memory serves me.  And then, the final week or two, the short period of time before my bar mitzvah, Rabbi Levine came in to go over it with me.  He unrolled the Torah and he says ok, it’s amazing to me how they can even find the place, let alone know where it is.  So he rolls it back and forth and spots where my bar mitzvah starts and says, now this is where you start.  I said, yeah, and takes his pencil and makes a big mark there.

INT:  On the Torah?

JG: On the Torah!  Whooooa!  But I can say nothing.