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.

"A Thin Thread": Song-Teaching Project in Former Soviet Union

Watch now:

Adrienne Cooper, Yiddish diva and mentor, remembers her time teaching devoted Russian Jewish students in St. Petersburg, who both needed and wanted to learn more about their Jewish histories. For these students, she says, relearning and "weaving" that back together the remnants of that history as though they were a "fine thread" was the real journey.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Adrienne Cooper.

This excerpt is in English.

Adrienne Cooper was born in Oakland, California in 1946. Adrienne died in 2011.