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.

"It Was Really Like Being in Love": Discovering Yiddish

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Joel Berkowitz, Director of Jewish Studies and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, recounts how he was "bitten by the bug" of Yiddish at a summer program at Oxford, in an experience that describes as a "Jungian connection" akin to being in love.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Joel Berkowitz.

This excerpt is in English.

Joel Berkowitz was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1965.