Minyan

Minyan is an oral history project by poet Philip Terman and journalist Larry Berg. They interviewed 11 members of Congregation B’nai Abraham in Butler, Pa. and adapted selections from the interview transcripts into biographies told through poetic verse.

Terman conceived of the project after interviewing his sister-in-law about her mother, a Holocaust survivor, and later adapting the transcript into poetry for the book I am a Jew: A Holocaust Memoir. Inspired by the hybrid documentary-poetry format, he decided to capture stories from his fellow congregants at Congregation B’nai Abraham. Together they interviewed Larry Berg, Roberta Gallagher, Ellen Garbuny, Cantor Michal Gray-Schaffer, Herb Grossman, Sara Grossman, Eric Levin, Vivian Prunier, Phil Terman, and Ben Vincent. A ninth interview with Hunter Bell was not recorded but was incorporated into the book.

Terman approached fellow congregant and longtime Butler radio personality Larry Berg to assist with the interviews. They conducted nine interviews with 11 subjects in 2022. Terman adapted these into a book-length collection of poetry titled, Minyan.

Terman is the author of eight books of poetry: The House of Sages (1998), Book of the Unbroken Days (2005), Rabbis of the Air (2007), The Torah Garden (2011), Our Portion (2015), This Crazy Devotion (2020), The Whole Mishpocha (2024), and My Blossoming Everything (2024), as well as numerous chapbooks, translations, and collaborations. He is a retired professor of creative writing and literature at Clarion University (now PennWest Clarion), where he directed the Spoken Arts Reading Series and advised the literary journal Tobeco. He is a founder of the Bridge Literary Arts Center.

Berg came to Butler in the early 1960s from Baltimore. Initially a disc jockey and advertising salesman, he purchased the Butler radio station WBUT in 1964. He sold the station in 1978 and moved to sister station WISR, where he sold advertising and hosted an afternoon talk program called The Larry Berg Show. He was an on-air personality with KDKA radio from 1972 to 1983 and was a regular Saturday afternoon music program and vacation replacement for Jack Bogut, Roy Fox, and John Cigna. By the time he retired in 2001, he had interviewed more than 40,000 people including Elvis Presley and Paul McCartney. Berg was a past-president of the Butler County Chamber of Commerce, the Butler Rotary Club, and Congregation B’nai Abraham of Butler.

Bibliography

• Minyan Project Records [MSS 1362]

Exhibit history

• Author: Eric Lidji
• Original: September 17, 2025
• Current: September 17, 2025

Acknowledgements

• This entry was created through a Jewish Community Priorities grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.