Launched in 2005, WellesleyWeston Magazine is a quarterly publication tailored to Wellesley and Weston residents and edited to enrich the experience of living in two of Massachusetts' most desirable communities.
Issue link: https://wellesleywestonmagazine.epubxp.com/i/256387
One hopeful sign, Goldman said, is that the dogma of Mao and Marx matters less in China today than the 2,500-year-old teachings of Confucius. "The emphasis in the post-Mao period on education, education, education, comes from Confucianism," she said, as does the importance the Chinese place on hard work and taking care of family. "I think that one of the reasons that the Chinese are doing so well in the post-Mao era is because of the reemergence of Confucian values." When she was just a little girl, she'd ask her parents what should I be? They told her focus, whatever you do, just take it seriously So China, China, Literary dissent in the PRC Mao wasn't fond of democracy Yes China, China Raised in a Jewish family in New Haven, Goldman as a girl became interested in China from reading about Confucius. Although the Depression forced her father to abandon graduate studies, he assembled a wide-ranging library that included books on early Chinese philoso- phers. Goldman, who with her husband was among the founders of Wellesley's Temple Beth Elohim, said that Chinese people have told her that they believe there is a connection between Confucianism and Judaism because of the emphasis on education. While the young Goldman had been an armchair explorer into foreign lands, her children grew up immersed in China and the Soviet Union. Their parents talked about their work at the dinner table and in the summers took the family abroad on their research trips. The second oldest, Dr. Avra Goldman, recalled that when she was a young teen in the late 1960s her parents took her and her siblings in a rental car on the thousand-plus miles from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) to Odessa. Avra, a family physician in Cambridge, said her mom packed plenty of peanut butter and jelly. The car attracted a lot of attention because her parents had put a Eugene McCarthy for President bumper sticker on it. As adults with their own families, Avra and her younger brother, Seth, accompanied their parents to China in 2003. Their mother introduced them to many of her friends, including a woman, Zhang Hanzhi, who had been Mao's English tutor and Nixon's inter- preter on his China visit. Seth said for his kids the trip was a revelation. Seeing her pro- 62 W e l l e s l e y W e s t o n M a g a z i n e | s p r i n g 2 0 1 4 an interview with merle goldman 056-065_WWMa14_face2face_v3_WWM_interview 2/1/14 3:45 PM Page 62