What a Time It Was (to Be Jewish at Middlebury)
At her 70th Reunion in June, Diana Shulman ’56—who, at 92, is still working as a musical entertainer and comedienne under the stage name D’yan Forest—sat down with Jewish leaders at Middlebury for a humorous but thought-provoking interview about what it felt like to be one of few Jewish students at the College in the early 1950s.
Shulman, who confesses she came to Middlebury primarily for the skiing, was surprised to find her Jewishness a social liability on campus. Though unable to find dates and rejected from sororities, she stuck it out as a drama major, crediting Middlebury for opportunities that led her to later live in Paris and launch a decades-long career on stage.
“Chaplain Scott helped us the whole way. He was the nicest guy in the whole world. And he helped us get together, get the room for us. But we didn’t talk about it. I never talked about it to the other students. Now I do, even at the dining room table last night [at Reunion]. But, ehh, being Jewish, it wasn’t so good in those days.”
Among a wide range of topics in the interview, Shulman talks about joining the College church choir as a way to stay occupied during then-daily services; her mother told her to just skip the Christian words, leading her to sing such lyrics as “We Wish You a Merry Hm-hmm.”
“It’s the spirituality I got at Middlebury, and I think it’s because I was in the country … and when I was unhappy or some things weren’t going well, I’d walk out, you know, along here, and I’m sure everybody who’s a student in Middlebury sometimes just walks in the countryside here and prays a little or something. It’s funny. … Middlebury probably brought in the spirituality.”
She recalls how, when classmate Eddie Maline ’57 suggested they start a Hillel chapter, she responded, “What the Hillel is that?” And when asked why, as a nonagenarian, she continues to work, she responds with a joke from her standup routine: “I’m still paying back my student loans.”
