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.
Philadelphia's Yiddish Radio
Watch now:
Allen Katz, former student at the Yiddish Folkshul of the Wynnefield neighborhood of West Philadelphia, describes the programs that he listened to with his Bubbe on Philadelphia's only Yiddish station.
This is an excerpt from an oral history with Allen Katz.
This excerpt is in English.
Allen Katz was born in 1935 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Other video highlights from this oral history

Philadelphia's Yiddish Radio
2 minutes 13 seconds
Being Taught by Holocaust Survivors
3 minutes 3 seconds
Wynnefield and West Philadelphia
3 minutes 57 seconds
April 1948: Yiddish Was Still the Language of the Jewish People
2 minutes 34 seconds
The Future of Jewish Food: My Take
2 minutes 34 seconds
Overbrook High School
2 minutes 57 seconds
A Partisaner Lid (Partisan Hymn)
2 minutes 20 seconds
"If Judaism Dies, the World May Not Be Far Behind"
1 minute 12 seconds
The Wynnefield Yiddish Folkshul
2 minutes 5 seconds
A Sense of Collective Jewish Insecurity
1 minute 18 secondsMore information about this oral history excerpt
Themes in this oral history excerpt:
- Allen Katz
- Philadelphia
- Pennsylvania
- soap operas
- radio broadcast
- Yiddish Folk Shule
- Wynnefield
- Childhood
- Radio
- Press
- World War Two
- America
- United States
- Urban
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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