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.

Done, Yiddish: Leaving Behind a Language

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Paul (Pinny) Switzer, native Yiddish speaker and professor emeritus of statistics at Stanford University, recalls his gradual distancing from the Yiddish language, as he matured in an English-speaking community.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Paul (Pinny) Switzer.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

Paul (Pinny) Switzer was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 1939.

Other video highlights from this oral history

A Sunday Tradition of Prayer and Brandy with My Grandfather

3 min 1 sec

"Yiddish zol lebn mit mir (Yiddish Should Live With Me)”: Returning to Yiddish as an Adult in California

2 min 59 sec

"They Were Our Neighbors": My Father's Memories of the 1919 Pogrom in Sudylkiv

2 min 18 sec

Welcoming Jewish Refugees to Magnus Avenue in Winnipeg After World War II

2 min 37 sec

Always Thought They Would Return: Reckoning With the Holocaust

2 min

Showered in Candy: Paul (Pinny) Switzer Recalls His Bar Mitzvah

3 min 48 sec

A brivele dem zayden (A Letter to Grandpa): A Thin Thread of Post-Childhood Yiddish Connection

2 min 48 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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