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.
I'd Probably End Up Going to Prison
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Michael Katz, activist and grandson of Yiddish journalist Moishe Katz, describes his bar mitzvah speech, in which he explained his fears about the Vietnam War.
This is an excerpt from an oral history with Michael Katz.
This excerpt is in English.
Michael Katz was born in Bronx, New York in 1955.
This interview is part of the Beyond the Books: Yiddish writers and their descendants series.
Other video highlights from this oral history
I'd Probably End Up Going to Prison
2 minutes
"A Besere Velt" (A Better World) Through Music and Culture
3 minutes 10 seconds
A Small Yiddish World
2 minutes 14 seconds
"Dad, They Understand Yiddish!"
1 minute 49 seconds
I Was at the "I Have a Dream Speech"
2 minutes 44 seconds
Divisions Within the Jewish Left
3 minutes 8 seconds
"The Greatest Fiddler of Them All": Meeting Itzhak Perlman
1 minute 37 seconds
The Legacy and Future of Kinderland
2 minutes 42 seconds
"They Got Us in Germany, They're Not Gonna Get Us Here": An Anti-Semitic Incident at Camp Kinderland in the Post-WWII Period
3 minutes 34 seconds
"Can I be a Jew Without Being Progressive?"
2 minutes 28 seconds
Four Generations of Yiddish Activism
2 minutes 23 seconds
"If You're Not Gonna Go to Shul, Go to School."
1 minute 1 second
What a Mensh!
2 minutes 2 secondsMore information about this oral history excerpt
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About the Wexler Oral History Project
Since 2010, the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project has recorded more than 500 in-depth video interviews that provide a deeper understanding of the Jewish experience and the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture.
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