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.

Middle Class Mischief

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Joel Halpern, professor emeritus of Anthropology at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, talks about breaking into Sinclair Lewis' house as a kid, but not getting in trouble because of his middle-class privilege.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Joel Halpern.

This excerpt is in English.

Joel Halpern was born in Bronx, New York in 1929.

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Other video highlights from this oral history

"Why Don't You Go Back to Hester Street?"

1 min 33 sec

Antisemitism in Archeology

2 min 20 sec

Car factory work was segregated by ethnicity

3 min 11 sec

Celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah in the 1930s

1 min 17 sec

Fiddler on the Roof: Manufacturing Memory

6 min 9 sec

Sheltering a Jewish Family in Serbia

4 min 3 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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