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.

“Finding Space for Another Language in Polish Monoculture”: Using Yiddish in How I Present My Music

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Raphael Roginski, a musician and activist, talks about his decision to title all of his albums in Yiddish as a means of subverting the cultural homogeneity of contemporary Poland.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Raphael Roginski.

This excerpt is in English.

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This interview is part of the Yiddish and the Arts: musicians, actors, and artists series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

Raphael Roginski on Countering the “Fetishization” of Jewish Culture and Music in Poland

5 min 44 sec

Raphael Roginski: Improv in Sejny, Poland

2 min 55 sec

Raphael Roginski: Improv #2 in Sejny, Poland

4 min

Gambling in Yiddish: Growing up in Frankfurt in the 1970s and 80s

4 min 46 sec

“An Amazing Place”: Red Lights, Trauma, and Yiddish in 1970s and 80s Frankfurt

7 min 46 sec

“A Symbol of What Was Jewish Culture for Me”: My Uncle, an Auschwitz Survivor, was Funny

2 min 18 sec

Everything Had “A Flavor of War”: My Later Childhood in Post-WWII Poland

6 min 13 sec

"You Can't Understand the Music Without Yiddish"

2 min 4 sec

“Who Am I, A Ghost?”: Making Sense of Multicultural Polish Past

3 min 25 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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