The Yiddish Book Center's

Wexler Oral History Project

A growing collection of in-depth interviews with people of all ages and backgrounds, whose stories about the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture offer a rich and complex chronicle of Jewish identity.

How my Father Lost his Faith

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Eugene Orenstein recounts his father's childhood first in a kheder and then studying at a Yeshiva. He explains how reading one book led his father to lose his religious faith at a young age.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Eugene Orenstein.

This excerpt is in English.

Eugene Orenstein was born in Bronx, New York in 1945.