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.

Organizing Jewish Community in the "Wilderness" of Suffolk County

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Rita Licht Rosenthal, a retired social worker, remembers her mother's concerns over Rita's children being brought up in a place with so few Jews, and then relates the story of the founding of the Commack Jewish Center.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Rita Licht Rosenthal.

This excerpt is in English and Yiddish.

Rita Licht Rosenthal was born in Bronx, New York in 1930.

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Other video highlights from this oral history

Same Classes, Different Degree: Sexism at College

1 min 15 sec

A Life in Service

2 min 4 sec

Life in the Bathgate Ave. Bronx Neighborhood During the Depression

2 min 45 sec

Three Weeks of the Same Lesson: Tutoring with the rebetsn (Rabbi's wife)

1 min 24 sec

"Hebreyish, Hebreyish": A Father's Naches (Pride) in His Daughter's Hebrew Skills

2 min 10 sec

Yiddish in Venice and Paris

2 min 9 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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