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.

Linguistic Diversity in Palestine of the Forties

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Israel Bartal - Professor of Jewish History at Hebrew University - remembers the mixture of languages in Tel Aviv in the 1940s. Languages bore specific connotations and coexisted in a hierarchy, which was largely influenced by the Eastern European background of their speakers.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Israel Bartal.

This excerpt is in English.

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This interview is part of the Yiddish in the Academy: scholars, language instructors, and students series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

An Unexpected Journey: How My Israeli Hebraist Education Lead Me To a Love for Yiddish Literature And Eastern European Jewish History

5 min 37 sec

Yiddish in Israel: Epitome of Diaspora Culture

2 min 33 sec

The Tel Aviv I Grew Up In...

3 min 52 sec

Attitude towards Yiddish in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus

3 min 59 sec

A Conflict Over Yiddish While on Vacation in Tzfat

3 min 19 sec

Popularity of Yiddish in Israel Today

2 min 57 sec

Future of Yiddish

3 min 23 sec

Auntie Fryda

2 min 48 sec

He Spoke My Parents' Dialect

1 min 40 sec

"It Is Incredible How Much We Still Have To Do": Advice for Young Yiddishists

2 min 51 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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