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.

Ron Finegold's Oral History

Ron Finegold, audio recording engineer and curator of notable recordings at Montreal's Jewish Public Library, was interviewed by Christa Whitney on December 13, 2011 at the Montreal Jewish Public Library in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Ron begins the interview discussing his family background. His father's family came to Montreal through the Jewish Colonization Program in South America. Ron's mother was born in 1896 in Płoskirów, now known as Khmelnytskyi n modern-day Ukraine. Ron shares the stories his mother recounted to him about the Petliura pogroms (hundreds of pogroms that occurred while Symon Petliura was Head of State of the Ukraine from 1919-1920). Ron's mother left Płoskirów in September of 1921 for Canada and arrived in Quebec City, Quebec on Labour Day, the first Monday in September 1921. Ron describes Yiddish as the family's primary language until they switched to English when his siblings began school. Yiddish and Russian then became his parents' secret languages. It wasn't until many years later that Ron was able to take a Yiddish course at the Jewish Public Library through McGill University. Ron then goes on to discuss the Jewish community in Montreal, and tells about kashrut certification (certification for food that is in keeping with Jewish dietary laws) and kosher butchers that his mother and the community patronized. Ron recounts one particular instance where his mother instinctively knew something was wrong with their regular butcher, so she switched to a newly opened shop. Shortly afterward, the original shop lost its certification for selling non-kosher products, and the new shop remains in business until today. After college, Ron worked for the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society, and found that the job allowed him to network within the Jewish community. He elaborates on the many relationships within Freemasonry, which he found to be rewarding both as a fraternity and as a charitable organization. Ron then goes on to discuss his connection to the Jewish Public Library (JPL). He recounts the way the JPL has changed throughout the years. Early on, their collection was primarily in English and Yiddish. It expanded after World War II to include materials in Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, and French, among others. Ron recalls that his first important project at the library was with Will Ostringer, who had been recording audio for the library's live events with his own equipment: a set of microphones and a portable Wollensak reel-to-reel recorder. Ron describes buying his own audio equipment and doing his own recordings of material of Jewish interest. There were some extremely popular recordings in the collection with which Ron was involved, such as recordings of Charles Bronfman, Abraham Joshua Herschel, Saul Bellow, Irving Leighton, Bernard Malamud, and others. Ron sees contemporary Yiddish as Singer saw it, as "...always dying, and always there." He goes on to observe the tremendous number of source and borrowed words that work in Hebrew and English, but laments that Yiddish will not be the lingua franca anymore. Ron concludes that the gradual decline of the use of the language is unfortunate, "but it is the nature of the thing." Ron adds that contemporary Yiddish education and communication will always be a niche market. Ron ends the interview with advice for the future, saying that despite the attempts to de-Judaize Judaism, to refashion Yiddishkeit (Jewishness), the various manifestations of Orthodoxy are the only trajectories that have a lasting effect on the survival of Judaism. Ron relates the story of Richard Marceau, a Member of Parliament with the Bloc Québécois from 1997-2006, who converted to Reform Judaism. After being excluded from counting towards a Chabad minyan in Quebec City (the traditional quorum of ten Jewish men required for prayer), he decided that he needed to convert to Orthodox Judaism. These sorts of stories make Ron proud and happy.

This interview was conducted in English.

Ron Finegold was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1938.