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 Language is Not Important, It’s the Knowledge: How I Ended Up In A Jewish School in the Soviet Union

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Iosif Lakhman - native Yiddish speaker who grew up in the Soviet Union - explains why his father sent him to his shtetl's Yiddish school as opposed to the more popular Ukrainian school.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Iosif Lakhman.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

Iosif Lakhman was born in Ukraine in 1921. Iosif died in 2017.

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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

1936: Reciting a Poem for Itzik Feffer, Soviet Yiddish Poet, When He Visited Our Ukrainian Shtetl

3 min 57 sec

1937: They Gave a Directive to Round up Six Enemies of the Soviet State From Our Shtetl

3 min 4 sec

"I Didn't Have Anyone to Speak with.. So I Read and Read": Reading, Translating, Exchanging Letters to Keep Yiddish Fluency

2 min 40 sec

August 12,1952: We Had No Idea About the Murder of Peretz Markish and the Soviet Yiddish Poets

2 min 45 sec

Learning English in Community College Upon Arrival from the Soviet Union

1 min 45 sec

The Soviet Yiddish School Held a Passover Dinner with Treyf Food

1 min 32 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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