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.

Speaking Yiddish To Prevent It from Becoming Latin

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Frederick Schwartzman explains that it was important for him to pass on Yiddish because if came from a culture that had been murdered, and that it was important to speak it so it didn't become a purely academic language.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Frederick Schwartzman.

This excerpt is in English.

This interview is part of the Beyond the Books: Yiddish writers and their descendants series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

Founding Pripetshik, a Play Group for Yiddish-Speaking Children on Park Ave.

2 min 57 sec

"Open Mouth and Speak!": Speaking Yiddish by Choice

1 min 18 sec

My Uncle, B. Demblin, Was an Author and Intellectual

2 min 11 sec

A Story of Double Cousins

2 min 3 sec

Brisk (Brest-Litovsk) Was an Important (Jewish) City

3 min 33 sec

"It Was a Real School": The Sholem Aleichem School System

1 min 46 sec

Our Children Spoke Japanese with Their Mother and Yiddish with Their Father

1 min 50 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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