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.

"To Tell About Life and How it Was": Writing the Jewish Immigrant Experience in The Olive Tree

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Arlene Cohen Stein, Writer, native of Utica, New York and retired music teacher, discusses her reasons for writing about her parents, and the Jewish immigrant experience in the United States.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Arlene Cohen Stein.

This excerpt is in English.

Arlene Cohen Stein was born in Utica, New York in 1935.

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Other video highlights from this oral history

"Anything She Made was Good': My Mother's Cooking from Scratch

3 min 27 sec

Singing in the Synagogue Choir

2 min 32 sec

My Father's Store in Utica

3 min 24 sec

Childhood Neighborhood, Interactions with Neighbors

1 min 39 sec

Keeping Kosher as an Exercise in Strength

2 min 9 sec

Shluging Kapores: A Ritual To Pass Down the Generations

2 min 31 sec

Grandmother's Struggle with English

1 min 10 sec

We Were Poor, But I Was the Best Dressed

2 min 9 sec

My Family's Use of Yiddish

1 min 45 sec

"It Was Such a Big Event!": Election Day with my Family

2 min 9 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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