Ilene Gelbaum is a retired midwife who now lives in California. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, then went to Mt. Sinai’s nursing school. Ilene grew up going to Folkshule (Yiddish elementary school) and her grandparents spoke Yiddish and Russian. Ilene and her husband met when she was 14 and he was 16 because they went to the same high school. They married when she was 18 – they eloped in Jersey City! They never told their parents that they eloped, even after their full Jewish wedding a year later.

Ilene and her husband Mark joined the PeaceCorps shortly after they were married, and lived and worked in Sri Lanka for three years. They set up a malaria clinic (she was the nurse, he did some lab work) and she also delivered a baby there for the first time. She told the story of the first baby she delivered, her neighbor’s son, who wrote a letter to her when she was back in California. The letter said that he was starting nursing school because of Ilene’s influence on his life.

Ilene and Mark came back to the US (to New York) when Ilene was pregnant with her oldest child, a daughter. She worked as a nurse while she was pregnant, then enrolled in midwifery school. She interviewed for one midwife job in New Jersey, but had 25 interviews in California and so the family settled in Torrance, CA, where they still live. Ilene worked at the same job for 40 years and recently retired after delivering over 5000 babies! She talked about her experience at an international midwifery conference in Oslo, Norway that brought together midwives from all over the world.

Ilene talked about being a grandmother and how that was so important to her – as a child she had seen the bobes (grandmothers) sitting outside in Brooklyn, and so she took on that responsibility with her own grandkids. She said she wants to make sure her grandchildren know about their past. Ilene recently found her husband’s cousin in Buenos Aires, Argentina, through a Facebook search. She and her husband visited the cousin, Julia Rosita Gelbaum, and in the interview she tells the whole story of their meeting and the striking similarities between her husband’s story and the cousin’s family’s story.

Ilene talked about her trip to Iceland, and how this connects to her life philosophy of just going out and doing things. One of her patients, from Iceland, invited Ilene and her husband to stay with her family if they ever made the trip. Ilene was lucky enough to have a layover there so she was able to spend three days with the former patient. She also talked about the importance of finding a mate and having a family – that is the advice she gives to future generations.

At the end of the interview Ilene talked about how she became a mohel (the person who performs ritual circumcision), and the ways in which this has affected her relationship to Judaism. She said that learning as an adult has been a totally different and eye-opening experience for her. She also talked about her belief in G-d and how that relates to delivering babies.

To cite this interview: Ilene Gelbaum Oral History Interview, interviewed by Emma Morgenstern, Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project, Karmazin Recording Studio, Yiddish Book Center, October 8, 2010. Video recording, http://archive.org/details/IleneGelbaum8oct2010YiddishBookCenter ( [date accessed] )

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