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.

Yiddish as an Answer to Questions of Jewish Identity

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Tal Hever-Chybowski, historian and teacher of Yiddish and current director of the Paris Yiddish Center Medem Library, suggests one reason for a contemporary surge of interest in Yiddish is the search for understanding one's Jewish identity and an oft-felt sense of dissatisfaction with inherited models of Jewishness, whether religious or Zionist.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Tal Hever-Chybowski.

This excerpt is in English.

Tal Hever-Chybowski was born in Oakland, California in 1986.

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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

Mocking the "Polish" Grandma: Growing Up with Anti-Diasporic Sentiment

3 min

Becoming "The Jew": Experiencing Philo and Anti-semitism

6 min 9 sec

Paris: My Mecca of Yiddish

3 min 55 sec

Only With Superlatives Can One Describe Niborski

2 min 4 sec

Deconstructing the Notion of a "Dead Language"

2 min 18 sec

Coming Back to the Past to Create the Future

1 min 24 sec

Advice for Serious Students of Yiddish

1 min 12 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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