Joseph Sigmund Weitz was born in the Bronx in 1923 to Arnold Weitz and Bertha Bayer, a Jewish-Austrian emigre couple who ran a successful dairy business on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. Four years later they were blessed with a second child, a daughter Sarah (“Sherry”).
Theirs was a childhood steeped in culture, both parents artistically and musically talented. As was typical of Jewish families, outings to museums and concerts were a steady part of their children’s education. The Weitz’s made their home just off the Grand Concourse, the broad and beautiful 5.2 mile long thoroughfare through the Bronx. Reminiscent of Paris’ famed Champs Elysées, the Concourse was designed by Alsatian immigrant Louis Aloys Risse (1850-1925). In her fascinating 2011 book of the same name, historian Constance Rosenblum has called it the “Boulevard of Dreams”, and it indeed proved to be a transformative pathway for countless upwardly mobile immigrant families. Summers were spent first in Upper New York State and then at a summer cottage Arnold purchased in Long Beach, Long Island. Aside from providing an attractive retreat from the hustle and bustle of New York city life, these summer forays were likely intended to shield the children from the dual, ever present specters of tuberculosis and polio, both of which remained frighteningly prevalent in 1930s New York.