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.

Gaining Strength Through the Letters: Personal Impact of Yiddish

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Joan Rudd, sculptor and Yiddish activist, recalls a powerful memory of hearing her religious school music teacher, musicologist A.W. Binder, sing the Yiddish song, "Oyfn Pripetshik," and how its call to derive strength from the letters of the Hebrew alphabet has stuck with her ever since.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Joan Rudd.

This excerpt is in English and Yiddish.

Joan Rudd was born in New York, New York in 1948.