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.
Jim Hoberman's Oral History
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Jim Hoberman, Village Voice film critic and author of seminal book Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between the Two World Wars, was interviewed by Emma Morgenstern on June 26, 2011 at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts.
This interview was conducted in English.
Jim Hoberman was born in 1949 in New York, New York.
This interview is part of the Yiddish and the Arts: musicians, actors, and artists series.
Video highlights from this oral history
Writing for the Village Voice
1 minute 15 seconds
A Yiddish Phrase from Childhood: "Shmey Drey"
1 minute 17 seconds
Yiddish Talkie at College
1 minute 24 seconds
Skipping Christmas for KlezKamp
1 minute 41 seconds
Exhibit on Yosel Cutler
1 minute 44 seconds
Taking Grandma to the Lower East Side
1 minute 8 seconds
"History Is What There Is"
1 minute 35 seconds
Hebrew School and Sholem Aleichem School
1 minute 52 seconds
Empty School on Jewish Holidays, Except for Me and an Italian Girl
2 minutes 47 seconds
Yiddish is like a Phantom Limb
2 minutes 5 secondsMore information about this oral history
Themes in this oral history:
- Jim Hoberman, YIVO, Columbia University, Village Voice, New York City, Ukraine, Slovakia, Germany, Harper College, SUNY Binghamton, Jeffrey Shandler, Forverts, Forward,
- Advice
- Favorite Yiddish word
- Yiddish words
- Family history
- stories about ancestors
- Childhood
- Jewish Identity
- Yiddish language
- Yiddish learning
- Immigration
- Migration
- Visual Arts
- Theater
- Film
- Press
- Radio
- Literature
- Career and Professional Life
- Scholarship
- Academia
- Family traditions
- Jewish holidays
- Israel
- United States
- Politics and political movements
- Roots
- heritage
- Jewish community
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About the Wexler Oral History Project
Since 2010, the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project has recorded more than 500 in-depth video interviews that provide a deeper understanding of the Jewish experience and the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture.
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