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.

Menachem Mendel Lefin, a Yiddishist Maskil in Ukraine

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Ken Frieden, B.G. Rudolph Professor of Judaic Studies at Syracuse University, speaks about his current interest in Menachem Mendel Lefin, a man who felt no contradiction between his Haskalah ideas and his use of Yiddish, and was responsible for variety of original works as well as translations from Hebrew and German into Yiddish.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Ken Frieden.

This excerpt is in English.

Ken Frieden was born in New Rochelle, New York in 1955.

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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

"Assimilated Enough to Not Be Threatened" by Fiddler on the Roof

52 sec

Were Jewish Roots "Camouflaged" in My Father's Name?

1 min 3 sec

Coming to Yiddish Through Its Opposite: Germany

5 min 7 sec

"Trying to Eat a Steak With a Butterknife": A Criticism of Analyzing Yiddish Literature with Theory

1 min 1 sec

"The only person who will listen to me in Yiddish is my dog"

1 min 3 sec

"Maybe the best place in the world" for a Yiddish Program: Melbourne, Australia

1 min 34 sec

My Neighbor was the Grandson of the Great Yiddish Actor Jacob Adler

1 min 58 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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