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.

Accidental Artifacts: The Essence Yiddish Theater and Yiddish Film

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Paul Azaroff, Hebrew and Judaic Studies teacher and native of New York City, gets to the heart of his love of Yiddish theater and film. He describes his first show in the Yiddish theater as a parade of brilliant colors and artistry, and his love of Yiddish film and its accidental documentation of a distant 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

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

2 min 51 sec

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

3 min 5 sec

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

3 min 57 sec

Making Love in Yiddish: On Americanized Jews and Living Yiddish

2 min 17 sec

Finding the Mishpokhe in London, France, and Israel

4 min 59 sec

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

4 min 8 sec

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

2 min 14 sec

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

1 min 35 sec

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

4 min 4 sec

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

5 min 20 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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