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.

How My Neighbors “Adopted Me As Grandma”

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Rebecca Levine, Yiddish teacher and Yiddishist, talks about the non-Jewish family across the street, whose children have adopted her as their grandma, and to whom she taught Chanukkah songs.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Rebecca Levine.

This excerpt is in English.

Rebecca Levine was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1932.

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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

My Parents’ Corner Store Had the Only Public Telephone in the Community

2 min 12 sec

A Gute Nakht

1 min 15 sec

You Can’t Handle the Truth!: Remembering Yiddish Shule

1 min 39 sec

Murdered, Right There In The Town

1 min 29 sec

Bobe Listened Continuously: WEVD

1 min 26 sec

“I Wouldn’t Say A Hotbed of Radicalism, but…”: Brooklyn College in the 1950s

1 min 22 sec

Racism and Antisemitism in Virginia

4 min 18 sec

“I Don’t Think Any of Them Will Be A Yiddishist, but Who Knows?”: Yiddish Across Generations

3 min 31 sec

“My Crown, My Treasure!”: An Itchie Goldberg Story

2 min 17 sec

Passing on a “Tam” for Yiddish

2 min 7 sec

Dictionary Yiddish and Chocolate: The Possible Future of Yiddish

1 min 58 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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