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.

"So Much Acceptance": Jewish Diversity at KlezKanada

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Joanne Borts—Broadway singer and Yiddish activist—discusses how she "fell in love" with KlezKanada. She reflects on the mutual acceptance among Jews from a the range of religious observance at KlezKanada, and how experiencing this opened her up to dating the religious man who became her husband.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Joanne Borts.

This excerpt is in English.

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This interview is part of the Yiddish and the Arts: musicians, actors, and artists series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

"For Me, Yiddish Was Always the Language of Cool": Fond Memories of Camp Hemshekh

3 min 32 sec

"You're Absorbing a Piece of the World That May Not Be in Everyone Else's Line of Sight": A Typical Day at Camp Hemshekh, A Socialist, Yiddishist Summer Camp

4 min 16 sec

Zalman Mlotek, The "Cool" 'Shule' Music Teacher who Inspired a Broadway Singer

3 min 34 sec

The Three Yiddish Divas: A Globe Trotting Yiddish Music Group

2 min 35 sec

"I'm Taking Back Yiddish": Removing the Guilt and Resentment that Became Associated with Yiddish Through Assimilation, the Holocaust, and Israel

5 min 32 sec

"If We're Not All Somehow Children of the Survivors, We Might Forget": New Ideas about Remembering the Holocaust

2 min 18 sec

"Kop, Akslen, Kni, un Fis": Yiddish "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes"

1 min 10 sec

The Yiddish Alef-Beys (Alphabet) to the tune of The Sound of Music's "Do-Re-Mi"

1 min 1 sec

Camp Hemshekh's Yiddish Anthem

1 min 16 sec

"Why Shouldn't We Also Bring the Language With Us?" Joanne Borts on Her Kids & Yiddish Program

1 min 34 sec

"To Me, Yiddish Was the Language of Secular Jews and Hebrew Was the Language Of Religious Jews": Associations with Yiddish and How They Changed Over Time

2 min 39 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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