GONZÁLEZ: Hey everybody, I’m Ana. 

NUNES: I’m Alex, and you’re listening to Mosaic.

GONZÁLEZ: Alex, do you ever go into the grocery store and get rolls from the bakery section?

NUNES: Yeah, like dinner rolls from that plastic container where you use the tongs to get them out? 

GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, well, Murray Kaplan hates those rolls. 

MURRAY KAPLAN: The supermarkets have delis, they have bakeries. Good, bad or indifferent. It's there. It's convenient. Is it good? I don't know. It depends on what you consider good.

GONZÁLEZ: Murray owns Rainbow Bakery in Cranston. He’s up every day at 3am, making kaiser rolls and knotted rolls, rye loaves, challah, and bagels to carry on the tradition of Jewish baking in Rhode Island. 

NUNES: But as Murray gets closer to retirement, he’s faced with a choice: continue the tradition his grandfather brought with him from Russia or hang up his apron strings for good. 

GONZÁLEZ: In this episode of Mosaic, we get a peek into the history of Jewish Rhode Island in the 20th century through Murray Kaplan, who runs the only remaining Jewish bakery in the ocean state.

GONZÁLEZ: What are you about to get out of the oven? 

KAPLAN: Well, this is a steam box. And these are the kaiser rolls that are proofing. Rising. I have some rye bread going in the oven. We’re normally closed on Mondays. So I'm being very conservative with what I bake. 

GONZÁLEZ: It’s 5:30 am, and I’m standing with Murray in the back of Rainbow Bakery. He’s already been baking for two and a half hours. It’s the second night of Hanukkah, and two days before Christmas.

GONZÁLEZ: Who's coming in to buy stuff this week?

KAPLAN: Everybody. We rely a lot on our Jewish trade, right, but also we’re in a very much mixed area, so we have a lot of non-Jews that come in. We carry cookies for Christmas, cupcakes for Hanukkah and Christmas. So it's a very mixed crowd of people. In fact, I have Italian bread and pizza in that other oven other there, so [laughs]. 

GONZÁLEZ: As you can hear, the whole place is ringing with different steamers and ovens. And Murray has no timers going, just a wristwatch he keeps checking to see when he should take the loaves of rye bread out of the oven. He’s finishing up baking for his local shipments and his daily customers, who come in for pastries, bread, and --

KAPLAN: I just finished boiling bagels. So I have a full rack of bagels. I don't know if you like bagels but…

GONZÁLEZ: I love bagels. 

KAPLAN: Ok, what kind do you like?

GONZÁLEZ: What do you think is the best? 

MURRAY: I like onion.

GONZÁLEZ: You like onion? I like onion! 

GONZÁLEZ: Murray walks over to a rolling cart, stacked with pans and pans of fresh, hot bagels. He hands me an onion one.

KAPLAN: I would get you butter or cream cheese, but..

GONZÁLEZ: [mouth full] That’s ok, you’re baking.

GONZÁLEZ: He plods back to the ovens, checking on the rye loaves. He takes a couple more dough rounds from a rack, places them on table, sprinkles them with corn meal and cuts six, even slices into the tops of the dough. 

KAPLAN: I was brought up in it. Some people ask me why do I do things? I don't know. It's because it's the way I've always just done them [laughs]

GONZÁLEZ: See, before Murray ran Rainbow Bakery, his father, Barney, ran it. And before him, his father, Abraham, ran it. But back then, it was Kaplan’s. And it was right across the street from the first synagogue in Providence.

NUNES: When Murray’s grandparents bring their young family to Providence from Russia in 1907, there’s already a growing Jewish community in Smith Hill.

GONZÁLEZ: Back in episode 15, we talked about the original community of sephardic Jews who arrived in colonial Rhode Island from the Iberian peninsula. But over the 19th century, two more waves of Jewish immigrants come to the United States from eastern Europe. 

NUNES: The first wave comes from Germany around 1840. They’re middle- and upper- class folks who are hoping to escape the restricted job opportunities for Jews in Germany. There are merchants and textile workers, but also doctors and accountants. 

GONZÁLEZ: The second major wave of Jewish immigrants start arriving in Rhode Island from Russia in the 1880s. They are fleeing an increasingly nationalistic Russia, where economic restrictions and pogroms threatened their livelihoods and lives. Providence offers them a chance to start new, even if that means changing their professions to adapt to this new land. Abraham and Rose Kaplan and their young son Barney are part of this wave.

KAPLAN: They came here from Russia 1907 I believe. And they started a bakery. In Russia, they were millers.

NUNES: So, Abraham Kaplan decides to ditch the mills and go into baking. This is a pretty smart business move for two reasons. First, non-Jewish business owners are not exactly keen on hiring Jewish immigrants. And secondly, Jewish communities depend on other Jewish people for their food. 

GONZÁLEZ: Right, Judaism has strict dietary laws, or kosher foods, that govern the way food can be prepared and consumed. The religion also requires certain foods, like challah and matzo, for religious ceremonies. So, Jewish immigrants need to create their own markets, delis, and bakeries to feed themselves in keeping with their religious traditions in this new land. 

NUNES: In 1917, ten years after immigrating from Russia, Abraham Kaplan opens Kaplan’s bakery on Black Street in Providence. The street no longer exists, but the synagogue, Sons of Jacob, still stands across the street in what was once a deeply Jewish immigrant neighborhood.

GONZÁLEZ: Kaplan’s does well enough for Abraham’s son, Barney, to take it over. And he moves the bakery to the newer, bigger Jewish community forming in South Providence. 

KAPLAN: They moved to Prairie Avenue, which was a Jewish Mecca. In South Providence. And in those days, there were a lot of Jewish bakeries in that area. You had Korb's, Perler's, Kessler's, Kaplan's, which is my father.

NUNES: And that’s just in South Providence. By the 1930s and 40s, there are dozens of Jewish bakeries throughout Rhode Island.

GONZÁLEZ: Murray is born in 1948, a few years after the end of World War II and at the peak of his father’s success in the bakery business. Barney Kaplan decides to move his growing family, like so many others, out of the cramped city and into the suburbs. 

KAPLAN: My father decided to come to Cranston. Cranston was a growing community at the time. He told me, when he was a young man, very young, that he had the opportunity to buy all of the land from the corner of Park and Reservoir all the way to Garden City for $10,000. And his father wouldn't let them do it because Reservoir Avenue was a stagecoach path. Garden Hills and Dean Estates were coal mines. 

NUNES: So, Barney doesn’t make the investment. He stays in Cranston to raise his family and goes into partnership with a friend in the baking business.

KAPLAN: That's how Rainbow Bakery came to be, because it was in 1954. They couldn't decide whose name should come first on the sign. So the movie The Wizard of Oz, was very big then. So, “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”. Hence the name.

NUNES: Barney and his partner open Rainbow Bakery at 728 Reservoir Avenue on April 15, 1958. And Murray and his brother are right there beside their father. 

KAPLAN: When I started with my father in Cranston, I was probably I think I was like 10 years old. And it was my brother and I, and we used to do things like cleaning pans, sweeping the floor. You know, all of the things that you need to know. 

GONZÁLEZ: While Murray is learning about baking from the bottom up, Rainbow Bakery is taking off. I-95 doesn’t exist yet, so Reservoir Avenue is the main road beachgoers from Providence and Pawtucket drive to get to the beaches in Narragansett. Plus, new houses are popping up right and left. 

NUNES: Murray remembers five men who would sit on barstools around the counter. Their sole job is to make to Kaiser rolls all day long. Murray would take their dough and put into proofing boxes. There are lines out the door most weekends.

KAPLAN: And we used to have, my father would hire Cranston police on Saturday and Sunday because we had a crosswalk and people would go to the market. And the only bakery item that a market in those days carried was hamburgers, hot dog rolls and white bread. So they would go to the market, buy their canned goods, chicken, or whatever. And then they come across the street to the bakery.

GONZÁLEZ: Soon, the Kaplans have outgrown their space and decide to move Rainbow Bakery to a new, state-of-the-art baking facility down the street. Murray’s dad purchases a lot at 800 Reservoir Avenue and starts construction. He makes sure there are new mixers and larger ovens and big space for customers to wait and eat their food. It’s going to be a beautiful bakery.

KAPLAN: He passed away six weeks before we opened here. He died December 30, 1964. We opened mid February of '65.

NUNES: Murray’s mother steps up and runs the bakery. But it’s the 1960's. Women business owners are an anomaly. And Murray’s mom has to change how she operates in order to keep the business running. 

KAPLAN: She had to toughen up. And it was hard to see. 

GONZÁLEZ: Local repairmen ignore her requests for work. Companies try to sell her on bad deals. But she doesn’t give in, and she keeps Rainbow Bakery afloat while Murray finishes high school and enlists in the Navy.

KAPLAN: I enlisted in the Navy because I didn't want to get drafted. Because drafting in 1967 was a ticket to Vietnam. I didn't want to come home in a box.

NUNES: It’s 1967, and Murray enters the Navy, completes basic training, and heads to Officer Candidate School in Newport. Then, in a fortuitous twist of events, the Petty Officer that runs the bakeshop gets injured. Murray’s instructor knows he can bake, so he asks Murray if he’d be willing to take over the position. He spends the rest of his Navy career baking. 

KAPLAN: I got into the art end of cake decorating. You know figure piping and things that we did before we had computers, it was all hand drawn. And I had to do the CB emblem --- 

GONZÁLEZ: CB stands for Construction Battalion. They’re a branch of the Navy. 

KAPLAN: -- on this cake that was probably the size or two with these tables put together. So when they saw this, they said, “Oh, we have to put this on the Chief Warrant Officer’s desk.” I said, “You’re kidding me. Really?”They said, “Oh yeah, wait ‘til he sees this.”

GONZÁLEZ: So, Murray is becoming a phenomenal baker in the Navy. He’s also looking towards the future. He gets married to his wife Deborah in 1968. And when he gets out of the Navy in 1971, he’s fully prepared to take the reigns at Rainbow Bakery. 

NUNES: Business is booming. And not just with Jewish customers.

KAPLAN: As a young man, when I was probably in my 20s and 30s, on holidays like Easter, Christmas, people would come in, dressed to the nines. At the end of each mass, my store would fill up with customers. We had, in fact, I had a ticket machine. You had to take a ticket. And even on Thanksgiving, we had one guy that dropped a ticket, and there was a fight over it. 

GONZÁLEZ: In 1976, Murray volunteers to make a cake for the state of Rhode Island’s Bicentennial celebration. And he constructs an exact, to-scale replica of the State House out of cake. 

KAPLAN: So what I did was I took sheets of cardboard and I made negative molds, and I pressed sugar, moisten sugar, into the molds, and I let them dry. And I removed the cardboard. And then we had to etch in the windows and, you know, all of the columns and everything. It took a tremendous amount of time.

NUNES: Months of design work. Murray spends the whole week before the celebration baking and assembling the cake. And this thing is gargantuan: it takes up a whole 4x8ft sheet of plywood. When they finally get it to the State House, the Rhode Island Honor Guard needs to help them bring it up the stairs. 

KAPLAN: And nobody brought knives. So the Honor Guard ended up cutting the cake with their swords. 

GONZÁLEZ: At the end of the day, the cake feeds hundreds of Rhode Islanders, and Murray receives a replica of the Independent Man from the top of the State House. He’s the talk of the town. But, times are changing.

NUNES: Murray’s mom dies in 1979. She’s only 58. Murray and his wife are now the sole owners of Rainbow Bakery. 

KAPLAN: I want to go back maybe to the maybe mid- to late- 1980's. A lot of the older Jewish people, a lot of them passed away. A lot of them spent their winters in Florida. Their children didn't observe as much. And there was just a sharp decline.

NUNES: Fewer customers come into Rainbow every day. Murray can still rely on his wholesale business to shops and restaurants, but he notices that more and more bakeries in Rhode Island are shutting their doors for good. 

GONZÁLEZ: On top of the Jewish population relying less on Jewish bakeries, grocery stores are opening up their own bakery sections. Shoppers don’t need to make a stop at the butcher, the deli, and the bakery anymore; they can just fill up their carts with meats, veggies, and machine-made bagels in one supermarket. 

NUNES: Murray starts losing the help he needs, too. During the 70s and 80s, he employs dozens of people to help him meet the demand. But as the decades pass, Murray has to do more of the work himself. 

GONZÁLEZ: Which he does, without complaint, day after day. Up at 2:30, baking by 3, filling orders and balancing the books until late in the afternoon.

KAPLAN: Years ago, we had a lot more help. That was skilled. And my wife used to come in and do all the bookkeeping for me. Which she got to a point where she said, “You know what? You keep working. I’m out.” And she was smarter. 

NUNES: One day, after years of this daily grind, Murray realizes that Rainbow Bakery is the last Jewish bakery left in Rhode Island. 

KAPLAN: The old traditions are rapidly vanishing. It’s not just Jewish bakeries, but all kinds of retail bakeries like myself are vanishing. And I would think that probably within the next five to 10 years, you'll see places like Panera Bread, Starbucks, all of the bakery cafes, okay? 

GONZÁLEZ: And even though it’s sad, Murray can’t be the one to keep these Jewish baking traditions alive. He’s tired, and he has other things he wants to do, like spend time with his wife.

KAPLAN: She's been after me, she said, “You waited much too long to do this.” I'll be 72 in a few months. I mean, none of us know how long we've got. But I mean, let's face it, you know? We've been married almost 52 years. Okay. I got a great wife, man. She's just...she's amazing. Okay. And I just I love her to death. And yes, I did wait too long because we should have been doing things before you know is traveling. Just enjoying one another, going out and doing things that we don't ordinarily do. And I regret that. But there's nothing I can do about it. It's too late. I can't go back. All I can do is look forward. 

NUNES: Rainbow Bakery is currently up for sale. Murray says the best case scenario is that someone buys the building with the equipment and keeps it running as a bakery. But, most likely, he’ll just sell everything off to pay for his retirement. 

KAPLAN: You know, I do, I really love what I do. And when I see the result of what I did with the end of the day, I feel good, I've accomplished something. And that, to me is very important. I've done it for so long. And it's just it's a part of me. It really is and it's, it's going to be very hard to give up. But I can get I can get by without listening to my alarm go off at 2:30 in the morning.

GONZÁLEZ: So, if you have a chance, and you’re in the neighborhood, go say “Hi” to Murray, and ask for an onion bagel while they’re still hot out of the oven. 

NUNES: Mosaic is a production of The Public’s Radio, edited by Sally Eisele with production help from James Baumgartner and Aaron Selbig. Our original music is by Bryn Bliska. Torey Malatia is the general manager of The Public’s Radio. I’m Alex Nunes.

GONZÁLEZ: And I’m Ana Gonzalez. Thanks for listening to Mosaic! If you've enjoyed the stories you've heard over the last few months, we'd like to ask you for a small favor: Share this podcast with someone you know. You can tweet about it, post it to Facebook, or email your family with a link. We'd like for as many people as possible to hear about Mosaic, and we know that when you share it with friends, that can make a big difference. You can share it from your podcast app, or find all the links at thepublicsradio.org/mosaic. Thanks!