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.

Billy, Our African-American Housekeeper Knew Yiddish

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Annette Epstein Jolles—Washington, DC native and social worker—remembers her non-Yiddish childhood Housekeeper, "Billy," and the other outside workers in Jewish businesses in her community who learned pieces of Yiddish language and culture.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Annette Epstein Jolles.

This excerpt is in English.

Annette Epstein Jolles was born in Washington, D.C..

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Other video highlights from this oral history

The Forward and the Bintel Brief: Memories of Yiddish newspapers from My Childhood

2 min 19 sec

Crisco and Jewish Women: An American Company's Recipes for Traditional Yiddish Dishes

2 min 24 sec

"You Sort of Felt You Were on Sufferance Being Jewish": Growing up in Segregated Washington, DC

1 min 35 sec

The Jewish-American Response to WWII and the Efforts to Support the Establishment of the State of Israel

1 min 52 sec

"The Shakers and Movers Were Mostly Jewish": American Politics and Growing Jewish Communities

2 min 28 sec

"I Think Jewish Women Are the Gutsiest Women in the World": Stories of Strong Jewish Women

3 min 31 sec

"I Realized When I Looked at it Then a Few Years These People Would All be Gone Forever": The Importance of Capturing Culture through Yiddish Film

1 min 31 sec

"To See the People that Came, and How Sometimes it Really Changed Them": Inspiring Acceptance and Understanding at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC

1 min 46 sec

"It's Kind of the Glue": Yiddish for Jewish Identity and Community

1 min 37 sec

"For Every Person That Helps It to Grow, it Balances Out That Horrendous Loss": The Role of Yiddish

2 min 8 sec

The Bankes: The Folkloric Yiddish Medicinal Practice of Hot Glass-Style Acupuncture

1 min 25 sec

There was an Undercurrent of Antisemitism in the City: Washington DC in the First Half of the 20th Century

2 min 6 sec

"He Would Go to the Cowboy Movies Instead of to Shul": 'An Orthodox Jewish Grandfather and American Cowboy Films

1 min 45 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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