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.

What's a Mentsch?: Transmitting Jewish Values through A Yiddish Word

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Rena Trefman Cobrinik, writer and educator, tells an anecdote about teaching children the word "mentsch". Her story reveals how morals, and the ability for people of all ages and kinds to be genuine and good, can be transmitted through language.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Rena Trefman Cobrinik.

This excerpt is in English.

Rena Trefman Cobrinik was born in Bronx, New York in 1933.

Other video highlights from this oral history

"Right-On-The-Nose Kind of Language": Yiddish Being Used in Major English Newspapers

1 min 19 sec

Dancing in the Streets: Celebrating the Founding of the State of Israel

1 min 16 sec

"Emotionally, It Has Never Left Me": Impact of the Holocaust

3 min 24 sec

Kvelling Over the Kinder's Yiddish

2 min 36 sec

Language-Learning Through Song

2 min 16 sec

Living in a Not-Very-Jewish Neighborhood

1 min 41 sec

Yiddishe Shule, Not Hebrew School

1 min 46 sec

Memories of Yiddish LIterature and Song at Shule

1 min 31 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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