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.

Secularizing Jewish Holidays

Watch now:

Hershl Hartman, native Yiddish speaker and educational director at the Sholem Community in California, describes his understanding of the High Holidays from a secular/cultural perspective both in the past and the present.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Hershl Hartman.

This excerpt is in English.

Hershl Hartman was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1929.

This interview is part of the Yiddish in the Academy: scholars, language instructors, and students series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

Drafting a Communist

10 min 49 sec

The Language of Fighters

1 min 15 sec

Sholem Asch's Yiddish Dialect

1 min 51 sec

"My Mother Was a Bolshevik": Politics in My Yiddish-Speaking Home

1 min 16 sec

Lessons From Working with Holocaust Survivors

2 min 28 sec

Hitler-Stalin Pact and Changing Perceptions of Russia

4 min 59 sec

Teaching Yiddish Appreciation Through Music

1 min 3 sec

"Off-Broadway," A Phrase Courtesy of the Yiddish Theater

2 min 43 sec

Shtot Oder Shtok?: Dialects & Interpreting for Hasidim on Phone Help Lines

1 min 54 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

Themes: