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.

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

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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, remembers her teachers telling the Italian and Jewish students to make their parents speak to them in English, and describes her mother's reaction when she suggested listening to something other than WEVD.

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.

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Other video highlights from this oral history

Involvement in Betar and Work with Meir Kahane

3 min 21 sec

Role of Ritual and Superstition in Cultural Transmission

2 min 29 sec

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

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

1 min 30 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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