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.
American Jews Didn't Quite Seem Jewish: A "European" Jewish Household
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Helena Lipstadt, a poet and garden designer, describes her sense of European Jewish identity, growing up in the United States as the child of survivors.
This is an excerpt from an oral history with Helena Lipstadt.
This excerpt is in English.
Helena Lipstadt was born in Berlin, Germany in 1947.
This interview is part of the Beyond the Books: Yiddish writers and their descendants series.
Other video highlights from this oral history
American Jews Didn't Quite Seem Jewish: A "European" Jewish Household
2 minutes 9 seconds
Working From Place of Minority: Reflections on Queers in the Klezmer Revival
1 minute 57 seconds
The Chicken Farm: An Original Yiddish Song
1 minute 26 seconds
"I Built A House!": Remembering A Feminist Collective
4 minutes 16 seconds
Longing for Gan-Eydn (Paradise): Reflections on Identity, Yiddish, and Poland
3 minutes 8 seconds
"The Henry Kissinger of Panama:" Dr. Herschel Klepfisz
3 minutes 11 seconds
A Very Small Basket: Limited Knowledge of My Jewish Family Background
1 minute 57 seconds
A Better World: A Feeling of Empowerment of a Generation in the 1960s
4 minutes 32 seconds
"Making That Bridge (to Poland) Through Life Rather Than Death": Working on the Gwozdzdiec Synagogue Replica Project
5 minutes 32 seconds
My Mother Had Golden Hands: Jewish-Polish Dishes at Home
1 minute 35 secondsMore information about this oral history excerpt
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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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