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 Jewish Grandparents' Kiss in the Square of a Spanish Inquisition Burning

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Ilan Stavans, academic and writer, talks about the history of crypto- and Sephardi Jews in Mexico, as well as the Jewish-Mexican experience more broadly, and relates the story of the strange connection between his grandparents' first kiss and the autos-da-fé.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Ilan Stavans.

This excerpt is in English.

Ilan Stavans was born in Mexico City, Mexico in 1961.

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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

Golemito, the Nahuatl Golem

3 min 11 sec

"A Cultural Jew with Very Strong Faith Defined by Ambivalence": Ilan Stavans on His Jewish Identity

3 min 20 sec

"I Think I Am Here in Order to Think": Ilan Stavans on Jewishness, Mexican-ness, and the Future

6 min 28 sec

"I Want to Provoke Thought": Ilan Stavans on Writing

4 min 57 sec

"Daring" to Find Out Who You Are: Ilan Stavans on Writing and Jewish Identity

1 min 57 sec

Ilan Stavans, a Mexican-Born Descendent of Shtetl-Dwellers

3 min 41 sec

Mole Latkes: A Hybrid Eastern European-Mexican Jewish Culture

3 min 31 sec

The Jewish Geography of Mexico City

4 min 21 sec

My Father, "Rebel" Actor of the Mexican Jewish Community

1 min 46 sec

Ilan Stavans Describes his Yiddish Education in Mexico City

5 min 9 sec

Four Languages Coexisting in Jewish Mexican Life

3 min 28 sec

Yiddish to Relate to the Past: Ilan Stavans on Languages as Glasses that Change One's World View

2 min 1 sec

"A State of Fear": Economic Collapse and Anti-Semitism in Mexico in the 1980s

6 min 49 sec

El Iluminado: The Story of Luis de Carabajal

4 min 50 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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