by Joel Rosenberg
Just a few notes about Steven Epstein, a. k. a. Woody / Kommander Kitchen. He lived in the attic at Havurat Shalom in 1969-70 (my first year in the Hav), and befriended Louis Putterman, then a high school dropout living for a time on the second or third floor, who wrote a mythic tale of 113 titled The Story of Uncle House (presented twice at Havurah reunions).
In fall of 1970, Steven and Louis, with their NYC friend Rabbi Neal Kaunfer and others who had formed a gar’in, went off to Israel to found Kibbutz Gezer. I went to a going-away party for them on an ocean liner moored at NY Harbor, an event that flowed with much champagne, courtesy of Steven’s mother, who then owned the Danskin Company.
Kibbutz Gezer, situated near the archaeological remains of the biblical city of Gezer, has had a long, complicated history of foundings and re-foundings, going back as far as 1896, including military defeat by the Arab Legion in 1948, a postwar rebuilding, and a 1964 dissolution. The 1970 gar’in required some four years to rebuild it into a functioning farm, and it was officially re-founded on July 4, 1974.
Steven / Woody eventually headed off to Japan, basing himself in Tokyo, where he has long been involved in various commercial and technological ventures, serving in recent years as the author of various risk-assessment reports of a geological or environmental nature for large organizations, public and private, including work related to the Hokkaido earthquake and to nuclear-plant safety.
As this web link shows, Woody was a poet and free spirit, from ancient times unto our own. May he continue so unto eternity.
In fall of 1970, Steven and Louis, with their NYC friend Rabbi Neal Kaunfer and others who had formed a gar’in, went off to Israel to found Kibbutz Gezer. I went to a going-away party for them on an ocean liner moored at NY Harbor, an event that flowed with much champagne, courtesy of Steven’s mother, who then owned the Danskin Company.
Kibbutz Gezer, situated near the archaeological remains of the biblical city of Gezer, has had a long, complicated history of foundings and re-foundings, going back as far as 1896, including military defeat by the Arab Legion in 1948, a postwar rebuilding, and a 1964 dissolution. The 1970 gar’in required some four years to rebuild it into a functioning farm, and it was officially re-founded on July 4, 1974.
Steven / Woody eventually headed off to Japan, basing himself in Tokyo, where he has long been involved in various commercial and technological ventures, serving in recent years as the author of various risk-assessment reports of a geological or environmental nature for large organizations, public and private, including work related to the Hokkaido earthquake and to nuclear-plant safety.
As this web link shows, Woody was a poet and free spirit, from ancient times unto our own. May he continue so unto eternity.