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.

Michael Katz's Oral History

Michael Katz, Yiddish cultural activist and grandson of Yiddish journalist Moishe Katz, was interviewed by Emma Morgenstern on July 24, 2011 at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts.

This interview was conducted in English.

Michael Katz was born in Bronx, New York in 1955.

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Video highlights from this oral history

I'd Probably End Up Going to Prison

2 min

A Small Yiddish World

2 min 14 sec

"Dad, They Understand Yiddish!"

1 min 49 sec

I Was at the "I Have a Dream Speech"

2 min 44 sec

Divisions Within the Jewish Left

3 min 8 sec

"The Greatest Fiddler of Them All": Meeting Itzhak Perlman

1 min 37 sec

The Legacy and Future of Kinderland

2 min 42 sec

"They Got Us in Germany, They're Not Gonna Get Us Here": An Antisemitic Incident at Camp Kinderland in the Post-WWII Period

3 min 34 sec

"Can I be a Jew Without Being Progressive?"

2 min 28 sec

Four Generations of Yiddish Activism

2 min 23 sec

"If You're Not Gonna Go to Shul, Go to School."

1 min 1 sec

What a Mensh!

2 min 2 sec

"A Besere Velt" (A Better World) Through Music and Culture

3 min 10 sec

More information about this oral history

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