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.

Happy and Hopeful for the Future of Yiddish

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Rosalyn (Reyzele) Kirkel - storyteller and leader of a Yiddish shmooze-group in Denver, Colorado - explains why she is happy about the state of Yiddish today and the interest in Yiddish evident at such institutions as the Yiddish Book Center.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Rosalyn (Reyzele) Kirkel.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

Rosalyn (Reyzele) Kirkel was born in Siauliai, Lithuania in 1941.

Other video highlights from this oral history

"My Mother Hid Us in the Attic": Surviving the "Kinder-Aktsie" (Children's "Action") in the Shavl Ghetto

7 min 53 sec

My Mother Smuggled Me Out of the Shavl (Šiauliai) Ghetto: A Hidden Jewish Child during the Holocaust

6 min 43 sec

Becoming a Storyteller

2 min 13 sec

Perceptions of Yiddish and the Holocaust in Israel

4 min 10 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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