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

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Ken Frieden, B.G. Rudolph Professor of Judaic Studies at Syracuse University, speaks about the promise made in his ketubah (marriage contract) to speak "both loshn-koydesh [Hebrew] and mameloshn [Yiddish]", and the role that Yiddish has come to play in his household.

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

This excerpt is in English and Yiddish.

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

Menachem Mendel Lefin, a Yiddishist Maskil in Ukraine

2 min 15 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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