Bernstein Family, Part 1

The Bernstein Family - Part 1 

Mitchell S. Bernstein (1895-1967) and Clara (Goldfeather) Bernstein (1902-1964) 


Clara and Mitchell Bernstein


Mitchell Sidney Bernstein was born in New York City and moved with his family to Montreal, Quebec when he was ten years old. His career started in New York in 1914 with a film exchange for Warner Brothers, before he moved on to Metro Pictures. He arrived in Saint John in 1916 and was working with the booking and staging of vaudeville shows at the Queen Square Theatre and films for Warner Brothers. In 1917, he was working with Famous Players theatres out of New York City traveling from theatre to theatre with the first talking moving pictures (talkies).



Mitchell Bernstein and Joshua Lieberman


Mitchell Bernstein partnered with Joshua Lieberman to form B & L Theatres in 1928. In the early days, they travelled by car to small towns in the Maritimes, rented the local hall, and hired a pianist to play for the silent movies. One of them collected the 10-cent admission fee and the other operated the film. They eventually owned, operated and provided the films for 20 theatres in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Maine. 





Cast - Community Frolics, 1943


Mitchell was a born “showman” who learned all the latest dance steps on his trips to New York in the 1920s and shared them with his friends in Saint John. The Y.M.H.A. shows he produced in the community featured a large cast of Jewish community members performing a variety of song, dance and comedy numbers. He was never seen without a cigar – even while floating on the river in Pamdenec near his summer cottage. 



In the 1950s and 1960s, Bernstein and Lieberman and their sons became land developers. Their projects included Mitchell Apartments, LaTour Terrace at 61 Union Street which had four floors of offices with a bowling alley and coffee shop on the ground floor and the first homes on the grounds of the former Saint John airport in Millidgeville. 

The Saint John Jewish community benefited from Mitchell Bernstein's involvement: as president of the Young Men's Hebrew Association, a Board Member of the Congregation Shaarei Zedek, as President of the Congregation from 1941 to 1943, as an active member and honourary vice-president of the Zionist Organization of Canada and as a charter member of the B'nai B'rith chapter organized in Saint John in 1954. On May 22, 1954, the local Jewish community recognized his contributions with the first of a series of annual Negev Testimonial Dinners at the Admiral Beatty Hotel. As the primary goal of these annual dinners was to raise funds for Israel, "The Mitchell Sydney Bernstein Grove" with two thousand trees was dedicated in his honour. 

His wife, Clara Goldfeather was born in Camden, New Jersey in 1902 and moved to Saint John with her family where she spent the remainder of her life. Clara married Mitchell Bernstein several years after meeting him at a Y.M.H.A. dance. Mitchell was so smitten with the 17-year-old sweetheart that he took “room and board” in her parents’ home so he could visit with her when he was in Saint John. Mitchell waited for Clara to come of age, and they married in June 1922. 

Clara enjoyed her life as a wife, mother and homemaker. She was an active member of the Women’s Hospital Aid, representing the Jewish community of Saint John, and played a volunteer role in the Saint John Music Festival for many years. Within the Jewish community, she was a member of the Daughters of Israel, Hadassah-WIZO and the Sisterhood of the Synagogue. She was only 62 in when she died in 1964. 

Mitchell and Clara Bernstein had two children: Erminie (Mrs. Edgar) Cohen (1926-2019) and Mortimer (1927-2013). 


References: 

  • Louis I. Michelson Archives and Research and Exhibition Files, Saint John Jewish Historical Museum 
  • Marcia Koven, Weaving the Past Into the Present (Saint John: 1989 and 2008) 
  • The Evening Times Globe / The Telegraph Journal (Saint John newspapers)


See also: Goldfeather Family and Lieberman Family


To comment on this story please send an email to sjjhm@nbnet.nb.ca 



This project is made possible with funding from the Archaeology and Heritage Branch, Province of New Brunswick through their Exhibit Renewal Digital Component program and the unwavering support of the Jewish families who made Saint John their home.

 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Home

Image
The Freedman Family Saint John Jewish Family Tree - Introduction The Saint John Jewish community was made up of between 200 and 300 families who came to the city from England and Eastern Europe between 1858 and the late 1940s. Some families arrived together and those who arrived alone encouraged other family members to follow – spouses, children, siblings and parents. Marriage within the community further consolidated family connections. Attempts to trace one family inevitably lead to links to other families in the community and new ways of connecting the community together as a whole. If one had a large enough space, it is quite possible that nearly every Jewish resident of Saint John and their descendants could be linked through a family tree. Exploring those connections and delving into family stories is the focus of this project. Information for the family stories will be gathered from documents (family trees, synagogue and organization records, newspaper clippings, etc.), oral int
Read more

Bernstein Family, Part 2

Image
  The Bernstein Family -  Part 2   Erminie Bernstein Cohen (1926-2019) and Mortimer Bernstein (1927-2013)   Mortimer and Erminie Bernstein, 1930s Erminie and Mortimer Bernstein were the children of Mitchell S. and Clara (Goldfeather) Bernstein. Erminie Bernstein Cohen w as a graduate of Saint John High School and Mount Allison University. In 1948 she married her childhood sweetheart Edgar R. Cohen and had three children. She joined her husband in business when her children were older, as a buyer for their women’s retail fashion shop, Hoffman’s. She was an ardent volunteer from an early age and worked tirelessly as an advocate for social justice and to improve social and economic well-being of New Brunswick ’s most vulnerable citizens. In 1978, she was appointed to the first New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women and as a result founded the non-profit organization, Saint John Women for Action, which worked with others to create a shelter for abused women and their
Read more