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 Thought She Was Magic: Stories of My Vegetarian, Witchy, Thrifty Bubbe

Watch now:

Paul Azaroff, Hebrew and Judaic Studies teacher and native of New York City, excitedly shares magically detailed stories of his unique Bubbe: a chicken-flicker, a button saleswoman, a trash-picker, a vegetarian, and a window to another world.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Paul Azaroff.

This excerpt is in English.

Paul Azaroff was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1934.

Other video highlights from this oral history

Lessons from Translating The Shopkeepers of Vilna: Distant, Vibrant Customs in Colloquial Yiddish

Accidental Artifacts: The Essence Yiddish Theater and Yiddish Film

It Was All One Piece: On Finding Zionism, and Experiencing Judaism in Israel

A Jewish Neighborhood, A Jewish Home: Stories of Growing Up, and Eating in New York City

Mesmerized by The Young Guard: Radical Youth for a New Generation of the Jewish People

Making Love in Yiddish: On Americanized Jews and Living Yiddish

Finding the Mishpokhe in London, France, and Israel

Traveling with Yiddish: A Language Shaped by Different Countries and Climates

Keeping Yiddish, Learning Hebrew: Stories of Language in a Kibbutz and a Jewish Multilingual Past and Present

$75 from Marseille to Haifa:Fighting Sholem Asch on the Way to Israel

More information about this oral history excerpt

Themes: