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.

She Thought She was Speaking English: Hearing and Speaking Yiddish as a Child

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Bernice Mayer, native Yiddish speaker who grew up in the Bronx and worked with Meir Kahane in the Jewish Defense League, describes her mother speaking Yiddish to her as a child, and hiding under the table to listen to her mother, grandmother, and aunts speak in Yiddish.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Bernice Mayer.

This excerpt is in English.

Bernice Mayer was born in Bronx, New York in 1931.

Other video highlights from this oral history

My Mother's Seven-Year Journey to the United States

4 min 53 sec

Memories of Jenny Goldstein and the Yiddish Theater

1 min 25 sec

Shlogn Kapores: A Young Child's First Encounter with the Erev Yom Kippur Ritual

1 min 27 sec

Involvement in Betar and Work with Meir Kahane

3 min 21 sec

"I Wouldn't Dare Say to Her Don't Speak to Me [in Yiddish]": My Mother, WEVD Yiddish Radio, and the Pressure to Assimilate

1 min 11 sec

Role of Ritual and Superstition in Cultural Transmission

2 min 29 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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