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.

The Roughness of Yiddish

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Christian Dawid - Berlin-based, world-renowned klezmer clarinet player - explains that he likes Yiddish for its "roughness" and the ways in which it can be both beautiful and obscene.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Christian Dawid.

This excerpt is in English.

Christian Dawid was born in Bremen, Germany in 1968.

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This interview is part of the Yiddish and the Arts: musicians, actors, and artists series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

Klezmer Music is Both Close and Far

1 min 47 sec

Yiddishland

2 min 20 sec

Being a Non-Jew in the Klezmer World

2 min 33 sec

"I'm the only one without a grandmother on stage"

1 min 10 sec

Musical Stories

1 min 52 sec

"Can you teach me how to sound more Jewish?"

1 min 48 sec

"Tradition is what we create right now"

2 min 32 sec

Everything Matters

1 min 15 sec

The Klezmer Revival

1 min 33 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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