DAN KRAUSS ORAL HISTORY

CAROLE RENARD: This is Carole Renard, and today is May 15th, 2018.  I am here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts with Dan Krauss, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project.  Dan, do I have your permission to record this interview?

DAN KRAUSS: Yes.

CR:  Great.  Thank you.  So, I'd like to start by talking a little bit about your family background.  I know that your family is originally from Lithuania and Russia, and that you have stories about their journey to the United States, but I wanted to ask you first if you could tell me a little bit about what you know about their life in the Old Country, as far back as you can.

DK:  All right.  Well, what I can remember is my grandmother describing the pogroms that took place -- actually, in Galicia, which was then -- it was 1:00unclear to me whether it -- depending on the year, it was part of Russia, Poland, or Ukraine, so I'm not sure what it was when she was describing it.  But there were pogroms going on, so I remember her describing them.  And I remember as a child wondering why they didn't fight back.  That entered my mind.  And she answered, "Fight back with what?"  You know, there was -- they had nothing to fight back with.  So, I took that in, I guess.  And then, the story that stayed with me, though, was how they actually got here -- which took a bit of ingenuity and courage on their part.  My grandfather was one of those young Jewish men kidnapped into whatever army -- Russia, Polish -- during World 2:00War I, while my grandmother was there dealing with the pogroms and the -- and her first child, who was my uncle.  So, she wound up walking with my uncle, who was maybe, I don't know, four years old, something like that -- literally, walking from Toporov -- that was the village in Galicia -- to Vienna -- over the mountains, the whole bit.  And somehow -- this part of the story remains vague -- somehow my grandfather, while he was in the army, waited for the soldiers on his side to get out of the trench and charge the other army.  And he waited that extra minute and got out of the trench and ran back the other way.  (laughs) Which undoubtedly accounts for my opposition to the Vietnam War in the 3:00'60s.  So, what he did was, running back the other way, he found his way to some hospital of some sort, and they put him in a room, and they put a thermometer in his mouth, and they left him alone.  So, he rubbed the thermometer up and they came back; they thought he had a fever.  And every time they did this, it seemed that he always had a fever, but they couldn't determine what was wrong with him.  So, they let him -- kept him there.  And then, finally, his (laughs) -- somebody came along -- I don't know, a doctor, a prince, an officer -- and took a liking to my grandfather and told him, You can just go home.  And somehow, there were no cell phones, but he managed to hook up with my grandmother in Vienna.  Now, when they got there -- you know, everybody had documents, papers, in those days -- so they decided to come to the United States.  My grandmother had no problem getting a visa, but when they 4:00looked at my grandfather's papers, they saw he had some mysterious illness and wouldn't give him a visa.  (laughs) So, my grandmother noticed that thousands of people were going through every day at that point -- this was 1920.  Thousands of people were going through.  And they didn't write your first name on the visa.  They just wrote your last name; you were supposed to fill in the rest.  So, she waited a couple of days and went back, got another visa -- seemingly for herself, only they put my grandfather's name and documentation in that visa.  And that's how they came here.  And I think -- I'm not sure of the month, but this would have been -- it would have turned 1921, and by April, that's when my mother was born -- here, in Brooklyn.

CR:  And do you know what they did back in Russia, in Galicia, before they left?

DK:  I have no idea.  I don't even know what my -- I assume my grandfather worked in some sort of sweatshop when they were here in New York.  Whether it -- because by the time I got old enough to be aware of these things, they always seemed to be home.  They always lived in the same building, which is why I had such great lunches in elementary school.  (laughs)

CR:  Right.  Yeah.  And I do have questions about that further on, 'cause I remember you mentioning that.  But you don't know exactly what they did once they arrived here?  For work or --

DK:  I don't.  I remember one story about my grandmother convincing my grandfather to shave his beard and all that so they would fit in a little better and have less difficulty.  Because in the Old Country, they had been Orthodox.  Now, they kept a kosher house; they still were, in those ways, 6:00Orthodox.  And my grandfather prayed three times a day, every day.  But by the time -- even when I was in elementary school, he was always home already, so I don't know what -- apart from working in a sweatshop when they got here, I don't know what he did before or after.

CR:  Okay.  Yeah.  So, you were hearing these stories throughout your childhood?  Or did you hear them from them later on?

DK:  I heard some in my childhood.  I remember sitting in the park -- between the buildings that we lived in there were playgrounds, and I remember we'd sit on the bench with my grandfather in the playground.  I wasn't an athlete as a child either, so I would sit on the bench and listen to him talk.  And that's where I heard some of this stuff about World War I and the trenches and all of that.  So, I -- but then later -- the story I picked up about how they got 7:00here, that came a bit later, when either my grandfather died or later than that, when my grandmother died.  My grandfather lived with Parkinson's disease for about forty years.  He had it for a very long time.  By the time it was getting really bad, I was in high school and college, so after school, I would often go up to their apartment and help them -- help my grandmother with my grandfather.  I mean, I remember I was sitting in my room doing my homework and my grandmother called and told me my grandfather fell, she needed my help, so I ran across to the other side of the building, upstairs, and helped pick him up and get him in bed or in a chair.  But I used to take him also outside for a walk and everything.  He had to be -- have somebody with him, he was trembling so badly and all that.  But I did that in high school quite a bit.

CR:  Wow.

DK:  But (chokes up) my grandfather was an extremely -- probably the kindest adult I knew as a child.  For example, when I was in college already, he was still alive.  My parents, my grandmother, and other members of the family were going to somebody's wedding or bar mitzvah or something and they were gonna be out really late, so they asked me if I would go stay with my grandfather -- and me and my girlfriend at the time -- go and stay with my grandfather till they got back -- you know, like, one, two in the morning.  So, I said sure.  So, when we got upstairs and he came and he opened the door, the first thing he said -- and now this was -- by that point he had to be around eighty years old, completely trembling with Parkinson's, and the first thing he says: "What can I get you?  What could I do for you?  What do you want to watch on TV?"  I 9:00said, "No, no.  Grandpa, you have this the other way around.  (laughs) It's, What are we gonna do for you?  What do you want?  What do you need?  Sit down," you know, "and we'll find something."  But that's the kind of person he was, you know?

CR:  Yeah.  Sounds very caring.

DK:  Yeah.  And I remember at that point I was in college and I was in SDS, and my grandmother used to refer to me as a "heyse [fervent] communist."  (laughs) But she always said it with a smile, so I think there was some affection in there.  Because in terms of -- that became for me my way of fighting back.  And it was mixed.  It wasn't just because I came from a working-class background and I saw that both my parents were miserable in their jobs.  My father worked in a clothing factory and my mother was a bookkeeper and a secretary on a cemetery -- a Jewish cemetery in Queens, where I worked summers in high school on the grounds doing physical labor.  So, you know, I 10:00saw a lot.  And so, it was my way of fighting back that way, but it was also my way of fighting back in terms of family -- for my own sense of self-worth and dignity.  Because I don't come from a typical, nice, middle-class Jewish background.  My grandparents -- I remember them the best, because they were, to me, the best.  My parents were another story.  My mother was downright abusive, physically and verbally.  So, my way of fighting back became to become politically active, starting in high school, when I saw the civil rights movement on TV on the news every night.  It occurred to me that this idea of 11:00liberty and justice for all wasn't true, you know?  So, I stopped -- we had assemblies in high school; you had to stand for the pledge of allegiance; I stopped standing.  And I expected trouble.  And somehow, nobody ever bothered me about it.  (laughs) The only time I got in trouble was I organized -- started to organize around something fairly shallow.  There was a dress code -- it was a public high school.  In those days, there was a dress code.  So, I started organizing against that.  And then, for that, people bothered me.  I was sent home to change my clothes.  And I said, "You're gonna make me miss an hour or more of my education just to change my clothes?"  And the dean said, "Get out of here!"  (laughs)

CR:  It's funny what people's priorities are.

DK:  Exactly.  In this culture, that is what their priorities are.  Appearance is everything, you know?

CR:  Um-hm.  So, I do want to talk a lot more about your political activism, 12:00but just going back to your earlier childhood, can you describe the neighborhood that you grew up in?  I know that you were born in Brooklyn.

DK:  Yes.  Well, we grew up in the East New York section of Brooklyn, which even back then -- I didn't grow up -- I was born in Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, 1949.  And since I've been back here in the last few years, I met a couple of other people who were born in that hospital also -- (laughs) strangely enough -- it's funny.  One a year before me, one fifteen years after me.  That hospital no longer exists; I mean, it's called something else now.  But East New York, even back then, was a run-down neighborhood.  It was the most eastern part of Brooklyn before you got to Queens.  And I remember my parents complaining that there was never enough heat in the winter -- all the standard stuff, you know?  And even if they complained to the landlord, still not enough heat in the 13:00winter.  So, they decided to move.  Now in my -- looking back, I wish they had moved to another neighborhood in Brooklyn.  There were better neighborhoods.  But they decided to move to Queens, which to me was a huge mistake.  'Cause in those days, Queens was a cultural wasteland.  It was still -- it was like the suburbs of the city.  It's changed now, thankfully.  Because of all the immigrant groups who have come in there, it's a much more interesting and vibrant place.  Better restaurants, all kinds of stuff goin' on.  So, in that sense it's better.  But back then, it was a cultural wasteland.  So, they bought a co-op in this seven-building complex.

CR:  How old were you when you moved?  To --

DK:  About four or five years old.  So, all my schooling before college took place in Queens.  All of the kids -- well, it was a very boring, monotonous place.  In fact, when I was about twelve, I started sneaking into Manhattan.  14:00And I had to take the bus to the subway and into Manhattan.  And I would hang out in Greenwich Village.  (laughs) One always finds one's own, you know?  So, I would hang out in the Village.  Washington Square Park was filled with folk singers, chess players -- still chess players, but -- filled with folk singers, all kinds of people hanging out, singing, talking politics, all that stuff.  It was great.  There were cafés at night -- you know, all of that.  That I waited till I was in high school to go -- slip into.  So, I started out there in the Village.  And then, I always -- my grandfather was a big walker, so I like to walk a lot -- still, to this day, I walk many miles around here, too.  So, I would walk from the Village uptown along Fifth Avenue, 'cause in those days, there were all these great bookstores and beautiful buildings and the 15:00museums.  And that's where I would go hang out, 'cause, you know, one always seeks out a world one hopes to fit into more than the world one fits into.  So, I would hang out in all those places -- you know, the bookstores and the museums and all of that.  And I attribute that -- I mean, there's something about being in that world, even if I wasn't part of it, but it was an education.  It was culture.  It was a way of broadening my life, to understand that there was a world out there that would be better for me -- less nasty, less mean-spirited.

CR:  Yeah.  And so, the building that you were living in in Queens, was that the building that your grandparents were living in when they lived in this building?

DK:  Yes.  They moved in not long after us.  I guess my parents must have arranged for them to buy an apartment.  And when I say buy an apartment, it's 16:00not like today.  The apartment cost maybe twelve hundred dollars.  (laughs)

CR:  Yeah, very different.  (laughs)

DK:  It's, you know, one -- what, point-zero-one percent of a -- so -- like, twelve hundred dollars.  So, they bought an apartment on the other side of the building.  And by this time, I think I was already in elementary school or just before elementary school, and once I was in elementary school, the school cafeteria stank.  And not just the quality of the food but the smell of the food -- literally, it was nauseating.  Whatever it was -- it was, like, franks and beans every day -- it was just something awful.  But my -- what was holiday food for a lot of Jewish kids was daily lunch for me: latkes, chopped eggs and onion sandwiches, kugel, soup and chicken, all of that -- those were my daily 17:00lunches.  And it was great, you know?  So, I would get upstairs -- and the school was only three blocks away, and they used to let you out for lunch in those days, so it was easy.  So, I'd walk home, go up to my grandparents' apartment.  My grandfather would be praying the -- whatever -- the afternoon prayer (UNCLEAR).  Then he would sit down with me and we would have one of these great lunches.  And my grandmother would ask questions -- school, this -- the usual stuff.  But it was always -- there was a kindness about it, you know?  What comes with food is nurturance and warmth and love, because she didn't have to do this.  I could have eaten in school and my mother could have made sandwiches for me to take to school, like other kids had.  But this was great, you know?  And my grandparents would speak Yiddish to each other back 18:00and forth.  They would speak to me in English -- in their, you know, broken English -- but we understood each other completely.  So --

CR:  Did you speak Yiddish at all?

DK:  I didn't.  Because when they spoke it, it was usually so I -- the standard story -- so I wouldn't understand rather than so that I would.  But there were some comments I remember.  For instance, when my grandmother felt someone was trying to trick her or cheat her in something, there was a Yiddish phrase, which I've learned subsequently is fairly common -- the English translation is, "Don't piss down my back and try to tell me it's raining."  So, later on, who knew how prophetic that phrase was?  To me, that became the perfect description of trickle-down economics, you know?  And I tell people that now when that subject comes up, 'cause it describes it perfectly.

CR:  Do you know it in Yiddish?

DK:  I don't.  No.  (laughs)

CR:  Neither do I.  So (laughs) --

DK:  (laughs) It's lucky I could say "heyse communist."

CR:  Right.  (laughs)

DK:  But there was that other expression -- that my grandmother would refer to certain people who annoyed her -- she would refer to them as -- what I heard was "trumpenik," between her accent and what I could hear at the time.  It turned out -- 'cause I had called here after the -- or during the election -- or before the election -- was it, a year or so ago?  It seems like an eternity.  I called here remembering that phrase and I asked if they knew the translation.  And somebody -- whoever I spoke to -- said, "Well, let me speak to someone and we'll get back to you."  And she did and she says, "It's not actually 'trumpenik,' it's 'trombenik' -- t-r-u-b."  And I said, "Well, what does that mean?"  And she said, "It means 'a parasitical person.'"  And I said, "It 20:00still works."  You know, it's still perfect.  (laughs) So, my grandmother was prophetic in many ways, in all of that.  So --

CR:  Did you grow up with any other languages in the home?

DK:  No.  It was Yiddish and English.

CR:  Did your parents speak Yiddish as well?

DK:  My mother spoke to my grandparents in Yiddish -- and not that well, but yeah, she could converse with them, basically.

CR:  And was there anyone else in your childhood home, other than your parents and your grandparents?

DK:  I have an older sister.  She's four years older.  And she -- what could I say?  Didn't fight back.  She fit into the family program.  Unfortunately.  And in a way, she was -- well, she was protecting herself, because if you cave in, no one's gonna hit on you.  If you are fighting back, 21:00they're gonna hit on you, literally and figuratively.  So --

CR:  Right.  So, you talked a little a bit about your grandfather praying three times a day and the food that you grew up with.  Would you say that you grew up in a Jewish home?

DK:  Yeah.  (laughs) It was kind of an Americanized Jewish home.  My parents kept kosher in the house -- in the apartment.  We ate out, though.  Then it was okay to eat treyf [not kosher].  But that's how I learned that every good Jewish boy loves his treyf, you know?  So, to this day (laughs) I don't keep a kosher home, but I love my treyf.  But I'm basically vegetarian, so -- but I do love shrimp and scallops and all that stuff.  So, what I -- yeah.  But this is -- this became the funny part -- because what happened was that it branched out from just being able to eat out -- 'cause, you know, everybody loves Chinese 22:00food and Italian food and all that.  So from -- if we went on some kind of drive somewhere, that's when we can get these big hero sandwiches, which -- New York heroes are different than here.  It was real -- a real baguette, you know?  The real deal back then.  There were still bakeries that made them.  There still are one or two in New York that you can find.  But on that baguette, you could have ham (laughs) and Swiss and mustard -- and all that stuff that you couldn't eat in the house.  In fact, I think that was my favorite sandwich back then.

CR:  (laughs) Ham and cheese (UNCLEAR).

DK:  Well, it was a funny thing, because I remember hearing a story about -- you know who Isaac Deutscher was?  He was a historian and a socialist.  He wrote a really great biography of Leon Trotsky in three volumes: "The Prophet 23:00Armed," "The Prophet Unarmed," and "The Prophet in Exile."  And he also wrote a book on the Chinese revolution -- the first Chinese revolution, around 1905 or so, 1911, somewhere in there.  And he was a great writer, great historian.  And there's a story about him eating a ham sandwich on his rabbi's grave.  (laughs) So, talk about rebellious socialists -- I mean, you know.  But anyway, so -- and then we were allowed in the apartment -- if we brought -- took in Chinese food or Italian food, we could eat it on paper plates and plastic utensils.

CR:  Um-hm.  Just as long as it wasn't with the dishes and --

DK:  Right.

CR:  Yeah.  (UNCLEAR)

DK:  So, it was a kind of weird -- you know, kosher house.  (laughs)

CR:  And did you guys do anything for Shabbos or celebrate holidays?  Do you 24:00have any memories of that?

DK:  Yeah.  (laughs) I do.  When my grandparents were doing it, it was great, 'cause I remember my grandmother making hundreds of blintzes for everybody -- when we would show up, my uncles and aunts and their kids, so it was a really big table in a relatively small apartment.  But hundreds of blintzes.  And I loved blintzes.  Or depending on the holiday -- if it was latkes, hundreds of latkes.  Loved potato latkes.  Kugels, all that stuff.  Soup and chicken -- all of it.  So, depending on the holiday, yeah, there was all that food.  Same food, but it was always good.  You know, I couldn't get enough of it.  And yeah, so all those people around the table.  But this is the thing about my family -- later on, when I started going out and I had a girlfriend or I was 25:00living with somebody -- I was a child of the '60s -- you know, we had premarital sex and all that stuff, and we were living with each other before marriage -- I always sought to be adopted by that person's family.  Because often -- more often than not, those people used to talk.  So, I would go to a wedding or something and I would always wind up talking to other people's families that were there, because they talked.  My family didn't talk.  Unusual for Jewish people, I suppose, but (laughs) -- but once again, finding out there was a bigger world out there with other people that you could talk to -- that was liberation for me.  So yeah, but -- you know, there were -- when there were more people around at those holidays, there was a little more talking.  But oftentimes, people were yelling at each other.  Not over politics -- not over things like that -- over petty-ante -- you know, You had four blintzes, I had 26:00five.  Crazy nonsense like that.  Or, Why do you disrespect me?  Why don't you like me?  Who said anything about that?  It was just stuff where people were acting out on their psychological issues rather than anything else.  And -- except -- yeah, Passover, there was a seder; you'd get through the Haggadah and then the meal and all that stuff.  That part -- that took place.  That part was traditional.  (laughs) But the other stuff -- everything was kind of made a misery.  And it reminded me of this story -- Terry Gross -- (UNCLEAR), right?  On NPR, "Fresh Air."  She was interviewing -- I'm forgetting now which children's author -- a very famous one who grew up on the Lower East Side.  Maybe Maurice Sendak?  I'm not sure who it was.  He grew up on the Lower East Side, and in the building they lived in, it was his family, and next door there 27:00was a very large Italian family.  But they all dressed alike: you know, the men had beards, everybody dressed in black, all that stuff.  (laughs) But the difference is, when he went -- if he got to have a meal with the Italian family, everybody was laughing and talking and carrying on, you know?  And there was opera in the background.  These were working-class -- you know, poor people, but still, there was all that going on.  So, he always thought -- when he was a child, he didn't know -- he that thought the Italians were the happy Jews.  (laughs)

CR:  That's very cute.  (laughs) Yeah.

DK:  And that -- when I heard that story on NPR, that really rung true for me, you know?

CR:  Sure.  Yeah.  So, I'd like to talk about your education.  I know that you attended public schools in New York through grad school, is that right?

DK:  Yeah, yeah.

CR:  So, I want to get to grad school and your MFA experience and stuff, but first I wanted to know what your experience was like attending public school in New York City before college.

DK:  Actually, it was -- surprisingly, because we're going back -- starting in the '50s, and even in New York City, there was a good deal of anti-Semitism in my elementary school.  I remember being called a Christ-killer by other kids.  Now, the teachers didn't go that far -- and actually, maybe my protests started before high school, 'cause I remember we were told we had to sing Christmas carols in class.  And I don't remember if -- what grade, but it was the early grades -- second, third, somewhere in there.  And I had to be at least eight 29:00years old or older, because I was already in Hebrew school.  And that was every day after public school, Monday through Thursday.  Friday you were expected to turn up at Shabbat services.  So, I remember thinking I didn't want to sing Christmas carols.  And they said, You have to.  And I said, "Well, I'm not going to."  So, I remember going up the hill -- because the Hebrew school was up the hill -- after school.  I had to go home, have a snack, change my books, go up the hill to Hebrew school -- and saying to the rabbi, "They're making us sing Christmas carols in school.  I want a note" -- I was a precocious youth (laughs) -- "I want a note saying I shouldn't have to do that."  And the rabbi did in fact write me a letter to take back to school.  And I showed it to my teacher and she said, "Oh, you didn't have to bring a note.  We didn't mean that you had to sing Christmas carols."  Oh, okay.  All right.  So, from that point on, I didn't have to do that.  I wasn't the only Jewish kid in this 30:00class, but I was the only one who was a problem that way.  I remember being in the -- I told you about the playground behind the building?  So, I remember being there with a few friends, and there were other kids -- Italian and Irish kids -- who came from other parts of the area, other neighborhoods.  They would come around occasionally, and I remember them coming up to us, me and two of my friends, and saying, Are you Jewish?  Are you Jewish?  And my other two friends said no; I said yes.  Even though they were Jewish.  (laughs) And they didn't -- nothing came of that, but it was the kind of -- it was just amazing to me, you know?

CR:  That your friends had denied being Jewish?

DK:  Right.  Even at that point.  But anyway, back to school.  And then, 31:00there were other incidents.  What was it -- that the teachers -- there were no Jewish teachers in my elementary school, even, you know, back then in the '50s.  That all started to come about, I think, by the time I was in junior high school.  And in fact, the schools were open on the High Holy Days in New York when I was in elementary school, because there weren't enough of us who were absent to make them close them down.  But by the time I got a little older, all public schools were closed on the High Holy Days in New York City, because not only were there enough Jewish kids, but there were enough Jewish teachers that -- what were they gonna do, you know?  They had to close them down.  But there were bits of anti-Semitism in elementary school and in junior high school -- being called names.  I remember being chased -- after-school 32:00hours, being chased around, being called a kike or a Jew bastard and all of that, and having to run fast up the street.  Queens was that kind of place.  Which is sort of ironic, 'cause when the Catholics were moving in before us, the Protestants, who were there before them, started moving out.  (laughs) You know?  It's bizarre.  But that's how it happened.  By high school, I think my high school was mostly Jewish.  It was Jamaica High School.  There were plenty of Jewish teachers, plenty of Jewish kids -- a lot of other kids, too, but we seemed to have a huge presence.  The City College of New York, which was in Harlem, in Manhattan -- also a huge presence.  And we had -- SDS was a very large group at the time, as were the other leftist groups.

CR:  Just going back a little bit, could you tell me about your Hebrew school experiences?

DK:  Yeah, that (laughs) -- the part -- it's interesting, 'cause then we learned language -- Hebrew -- and history -- I know all the stories, all of that.  My mind focused on the stories.  So, while we were reading from these textbooks, I was -- sat, I guess, toward the back, but what I saw in my mind were all the characters in the stories actually saying and doing the things in the stories.  So, like, everything that was around me disappeared.  So, I know -- when it got to later -- there was about ten years in my adult life when I tried to have an imaginary friend (laughs) -- and think you could be a socialist and a Jew and all that stuff -- I knew all these stories.  I could have debates 34:00with people, interpretations, and analyze and do all that stuff -- which we did, 'cause I used to attend the National Havurah Summer Institute.  I attended it for about ten summers.  I even took my son for eight of those ten summers, when he was little.  They had a great kids' program and all that.  But yeah, in the classes, in the courses, I could participate fully in all of the discussions, 'cause I knew all these stories, all these characters, what was important -- what became important to me about them, that was their personal transformation -- every single one of them -- what they had to go through to become who they became.  You know, whether it was Jacob wrestling with God and being scarred by the experience -- all that stuff.  Moses going from being a prince to a liberator -- you know, all of it.  So, but I started learning that, all of that, in Hebrew school as a kid, but I couldn't focus on the Hebrew.  (laughs) 35:00That was my deficit.  That was in part a self-esteem issue, because when you're told every day that you're stupid and useless, you have a hard time learning things that are foreign to you.  So, that came about later.  So, that -- but it did come in handy in that way, you know?  A huge part of my education.  In fact, even today, I have to tell people why my name is Dan and not Daniel.  You know, everybody wants to change it to Daniel when they're writing it down or typing it.  I have to explain what the difference is.

CR:  Do you want to share here?  Or you don't have to.  (laughs)

DK:  No, sure, I do it all the time.  (laughs) Especially around here.  They are two very different names, okay?  "Dan" or (Hebrew pronunciation) "Dan" means "judgment," so when people accuse me of being judgmental, I tell them it's my birthright.  And it comes from "Dan" or (Hebrew pronunciation) "Dan," who 36:00was one of Jacob's twelve sons.  There's a city in Israel now named Dan.  And Dan was one of the twelve tribes -- after Jacob's son, right?  Now, "Daniel" or (Hebrew pronunciation) "Daniel" means "God's judge or prophet," like Daniel in the lion's den -- a whole different story.  (laughs) So, yeah, it's a very different deal.

CR:  Yeah.  Interesting.  So, just to finish up talking about your education before we get into the political activism aspect of your life, could you tell me about the MFA in poetry at Brooklyn College that you pursued and who your mentors were and --

DK:  Yeah, that was great, actually.  I was very lucky.  I started writing poetry when I was sixteen, in high school -- really terrible stuff.  (laughs) But fortunately, my English teacher, who was very good to me -- he's still 37:00alive, actually -- in his eighties now -- he didn't tell me it was terrible.  Of course, I used to show it to him, and, you know.  But he was kind enough not to tell me how bad it was, but to be encouraging -- you know, "You should keep working, keep working at it."  And I did.  So that after college -- during college, I was driving a cab in New York City, I was organizing in the union, I was doing all that, I was doing theater.  I was doing a lot of stuff as an undergraduate, but I was writing poetry all at the same time.  And I was one Sunday sitting in Central Park --- in Central Park -- in Prospect Park in Brooklyn on the meadow reading the Sunday "Times," and in the magazine section, 38:00I think it was, there was an article about John Ashbery -- who just died a few months ago.  And it described his poetry, it described him and all that.  And it also mentioned that he was heading up the poetry program -- the MFA program in Brooklyn College, just down the road a piece.  So, I became interested and excited to know that.  And I walked around for a few days trying to get over my fear of rejection and humiliation, and I decided to submit a manuscript.  And I did.  And I got a letter back saying, You have been accepted to (UNCLEAR) John Ashbery.  And I was, like, jumping around for days, you know?  It was great.  So, I scraped together -- by then, graduate school at CUNY Brooklyn College had tuition.  I went for free as an undergraduate.  In fact, the dean had to 39:00invent a degree for me as -- to get me out of there.  His words were, "You are infringing upon the financial resources of this institution."  (laughs) Anyway, we can go back to that in a minute, but the -- so, Ashbery was there; I got to work with him in the workshop.  I got to work with him as my mentor, 'cause we had tutorials.  So, sometimes it took place at Brooklyn College, sometimes at his apartment in Chelsea, in Manhattan, which was great because Ashbery started out as a painter and he was friends with all the abstract expressionists.  And they all hung out together, originally in Paris before they came back to New York.  So, he had, on his walls, an original de Kooning, an original Larry Rivers.  He had all that stuff on his walls, you know?  This, to me, was -- (laughs) and he was always -- go for tutorial, "Would you like some tea?"  And 40:00he helped tune my ear up.  He was a really good teacher.  Incredibly well-educated, incredibly intelligent.  Well-read, of course, but a good teacher.  There was no condescension, no snobbery there.  He would hear what you were writing and help you tune your ear up, which is as it should be.

CR:  Right. 

DK:  Yeah.

CR:  And then, did you also work with Allen Ginsberg?

DK:  I did, because Ashbery received a MacArthur genius award.  I know you're familiar with that here.  (laughs) He received the MacArthur genius award after my first year, I think it was.  So, he left.  Bought a house up in Hudson, New York.  But he was commuting back and forth but he wasn't gonna be at Brooklyn College anymore.  He wound up teaching at Bard, up near Hudson.  And Allen Ginsberg came and took his place, which is also great.  Really exciting.  I 41:00mean, I'd seen Ginsberg prior to that time but -- when I'd heard him read somewhere or -- I had a friend who worked as a head usher at the 92nd Street Y and she said, "We need some ushers."  This is a New Year's Eve thing and Allen Ginsberg was coming and he was gonna do some kind of thing for New Year's Eve.  "So, we need some ushers.  You want to do it?"  I said, "Yeah, great."  So, I went.  I don't know how we had to dress.  Who remembers that part?  But I remember being in there and the people who showed up: Leonard Bernstein, the Kennedys.  All these people were there and there I am, standing in the same room and listening to them.  And so, we go in and Ginsberg, he sits in a lotus position on the stage (laughs) with his harmonium.  And his whole thing he did for the whole time was William Blake's "Merrily, merrily we welcome in the 42:00year."  He sang it to his harmonium for an hour.  (laughs) That same line, over and over again.  I guess he was getting into his Buddhism.  (laughter) So, that's when I think I initially saw him for the first time in person.  I'd seen him other times, at a reading in the East Village and other places.  But then, he shows up at Brooklyn College and the first time he came, he came up to get the tour and the whole bit and I happened to pop into the office and he was there with Peter Orlovsky, his long-time lover.  They had been together for decades and all that.  So, they were there and they introduced me and all that stuff.  And then, I was working with him for another year.  And that was also great, 'cause he didn't like my work as much as Ashbery did, but he was also helpful in tuning up my ear, which is what a teacher should do.  And sometimes, again, the tutorials were at school or sometimes they were at his apartment.  I 43:00think it was East Thirteenth Street or East Eleventh Street, somewhere over there.  And all kinds of people were coming in and out of there all day.  Orlovsky was there, of course, and there were all these other people coming in and out.  And I remember times, though, he'd say, "Dan, you mind if we go for a walk?  I need to do some errands and we'll talk as I'm doing this stuff."  I said, "Sure, great."  So, we're walking around the neighborhood and this is where he reminded me of a cross between a letch and a Jewish grandmother, (laughs) because we were in whatever passed for a supermarket on the Lower East Side and he's picking up a chicken and he's looking to see if it's okay.  And this is Allen Ginsberg, but he's picking up to see if it's okay to buy it and all this stuff.  And then, people, somebody went, "Hey, Allen!"  And he waves and then he looks at me and says, "I have absolutely no idea who that is."  And 44:00he said, "When I was younger, I always wanted to be famous.  But now that I am, I don't like it at all because people are always wanting things from you.  They're always wanting your time and all that stuff."

CR:  Yeah.

DK:  But yeah, graduate school for me was a blast.  I mean, I got a degree for my own work.  What could be better?  (laughs)

CR:  Great, yeah.  Do you still write poetry?

DK:  I stopped almost nineteen years or so ago now.  Whatever dried up, dried up.  I think what I was writing about, as long as it was elusive, I could search for it in the poems I was writing.  But once it became clear, I didn't have to write about it anymore.  (laughs) That's the only logical explanation I can think of.  I could still see images and metaphors and all that, but there's 45:00nothing behind them anymore, nothing to pick them apart for anymore.

CR:  Interesting.  Well, we're gonna move on from the education part of this, but did you have anything else that you wanted to say about your undergrad degree or anything?

DK:  Well, the City College bit was -- at a certain point, I dropped out to organize the proletariat for the impending revolution.  This was at the end of the '60s; SDS had imploded.  I joined a group called the International Socialists, which was a Trotskyist group, and I decided to drop out of school and organize.  So, I worked in a steel mill; I drove a cab, as I said before.  I was doing all this stuff.  And at a certain point, though, I realized I was a lot happier walking around the city with Walt Whitman under my arm, talking to 46:00people, getting an education, so I tried to go back to City College.  And City College was a big school for -- it's like the flagship CUNY school.  But the dean saw my application.  He came out of his office and he said, "I don't want to let you back in here."  I said, "Why not?"  He said, "Well, how do I know you're not gonna cause trouble here again?"  (laughs) I said, "I've changed, I'm different!"  He said, "Well, you write me a letter and tell me how you're different and I'll decide."  I said, "Okay.  When do you want the letter?"  He said, "Whenever you write it."  So, he goes back into his office.  I walk over to his secretary, I said, "Could I borrow a legal pad?"  And she said, "Well, what do you mean?"  Said, "He wants me to write him a letter, I want to write the letter, so could I borrow a legal pad?"  So, she says, "Okay, 47:00here."  She gives me the pad, I go sit down on some chair or a couch or something in the outer office.  And I sit there and I write this seven-page letter about how I was acting out, I was transferring my parents' abuse and authoritarianism onto the college and the administration and rules and I go on for seven pages of this stuff.  And I go back to the secretary and I said, "Here's the letter.  He said he'd read it when I was done."  (laughs) So, she looks at me like this.  I said, "Well?"  So, she knocks on his door, he comes into the doorway.  He's standing in the doorframe.  She hands him the letter.  I'm facing him like this, in the doorframe, and he's reading it, page after page.  Skimming it, I guess.  And he looks at me and he says, "Is this true?"  I said, "Of course!"  You know, in part it's true, but I still believe 48:00what I believe.  Besides which, who's there to cause trouble with anymore?  It's 1973.  Everyone's gone.  (laughs) So, he decides to let me back in.  So, once I'm back, though, I realize I've done my core requirements; I did that the first half.  And now, I'm writing poetry, I'm interested in theater, I'm interested in art and drawing and sculpting, and I can take all these classes for free!  So, that's what I start doing.  And if I don't like something, I drop it, I add something.  I'm going on like that.  So, after a couple of years, I get called to his office again.  (laughs) And he said to me, "You are infringing upon the financial resources of this institution."  He said, "Look, 49:00we're gonna go down to the registrar.  I'm gonna look at your transcript.  I'm gonna see what you have.  You have to graduate this semester.  No more adding, no more dropping, no nothing.  This is it."  So, we go down there, he's looking at my transcript.  He looks at me, he says, "What do you think you are, a renaissance man?"  I said, "What's wrong with that?"  And he said, "Well, all right, let's see?  What do you have?  At the end of this term -- no more adding, no more dropping.  You finish everything, you will have 128 credits."  That was the graduation requirement.  I said, "Okay."  He said, "All right.  Now, what kind of degree can I give you?"  (laughs) And he's looking over everything, says, "Okay, you're getting a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary social science."  I said, "Sounds good to me."  (laughs) So, that's what 50:00happened, and I graduated, (whistles) out.  And again, I was sitting in Prospect Park and that's how I got my first teaching job.

CR:  Okay.

DK:  I should probably go back there and sit and maybe I'll get the winning lottery numbers.

CR:  Right, it seems to be a lucky place for you.  (laughter) Yeah, wow, that's so interesting.  So, going back to your childhood a little bit, were you exposed to political activism in the home at all?  Was there any political atmosphere with your parents or grandparents?

DK:  I think my grandparents' stories of what they went through and all that made, somehow -- it's not that unusual, I don't think -- made me able to empathize with people going -- between that and my own situation, psychologically and physically, made me able to empathize with people going 51:00through those things.  So, as I said, once in high school, I learned about the civil rights movement, which was taking place in real time -- that could make things kick in.  Or like in elementary school, not being forced to sing Christmas carols.  Having that innate understanding somehow.  But in the home, no, my parents, they were upset.  When I was eighteen, I heard about -- there was gonna be one of those Israel birthday marches in Manhattan, so I wanted to go.  I did go.  But they were upset about that.  "Don't say anything, don't do anything," that kind of mentality, which I've always hated.  Makes me explode even more.  So, no, if anything, their mentality had the reverse 52:00effect.  That's what made me politically active.  That and their behavior towards me.  Now, there was a guy who lived on our floor who was different than all the other neighbors.  He worked for one of the networks, I think ABC or something like that.  And again, this was sort of in high school, so in the '60s.  And his wife, though, used to talk to my mother and the other neighbors and he would come in occasionally to say, Hey, we got to go.  We got to do this or that.  His name was Nat Sherman.  I remember that.  I remember that because he wore turtlenecks; he had black-frame glasses long before all these hipsters today do.  (laughs) He smoked a pipe and he had the funniest sarcastic 53:00sense of humor I had come across up until then.  And he would always make a few cracks while he was getting his wife.  And I remember being the only one sitting there laughing.  And his wife would smile, but I was laughing.  And this was a connection for me that I couldn't make, but I could make it in my head because it was very sharp, very smart.  And was always something more worldly going on in his comments.  There was an incident when I was in high school around 1964, the beginning of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the predecessor of SDS.  Mario Savio and a couple other guys.  Mario Savio is from Queens, by the way.  He went to Martin Van Buren High School.  He's also the founder of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.  So, he was out there in Berkeley and he came on -- I forget which show, on TV.  Was him and two other guys on 54:00the Left debating three guys on the Right.  Now, he and the two other guys have long hair, facial hair.  The other three guys -- very clean-cut, all that stuff.  Shirt and tie and the whole bit.  So, I'm listening to this debate and my mother comes in the room.  She says, "See how nice those nice clean-cut boys are?"  And I said, "Yeah, but it's a funny thing: I agree with the other three guys."  (laughs) So, that connection is still there, especially now.  It's come back out.  So, I'm particularly happy when I see those kids in Florida, in Parkland.  I was amazed.  Utterly amazed.  It's like what we were doing has skipped a couple of generations and maybe we're back.  So, whenever there's a demonstration or something, I can go to a meeting to help organize, I go.  Here 55:00and now.

CR:  Yeah.  So, it sounds like the civil rights movement had a pretty big influence on you.  Were you involved in it at all during high school?  Or was it more of a sort of a motivator going forward in your political activism.

DK:  Well, I was involved verbally.  I mean, there weren't that many demonstrations in New York around that at the time.  The demonstrations that started in New York were more anti-war, and sometimes there were labor strikes and things like that.  So, those things I would get involved in.  The civil rights movement, to me, was both separate and part of all of that because even with -- you could have justice, economic justice someday, and fight for that.  But you're still gonna have to confront racism.  And in fact, I think Jewish people, in a very strange way, owe black people in this country a huge debt of 56:00gratitude because we have been able to kind of assimilate more readily, more easily.  I mean, people around here, they don't know I'm Jewish, I'm not Jewish.  They have no idea what I am.  That's never been true for black people.  And black people have always borne the brunt of racial animus in this country.  Always, to this day.  So, in that sense, yeah, we've gotta continue that one.  And I remember being, even as a teacher -- and I've taught in schools in the city where I was often one of a few white people.  Often there were no white kids.  (laughs)

CR:  Yeah.

DK:  But not an issue for me in that way.  It's an issue, but not an issue for 57:00doing stuff.  So, yeah, and in fact, I was supposed to help organize something with the local NAACP in June, but I'm going -- something else came up that I can't avoid.  But if they have another date, I will chime in on that.  So, it was a motivator but it was also a -- and something I could participate in when and where it was happening.

CR:  Yeah, sure.  So, let's see if I have anything before your activism in your adulthood.  Well, before we start talking about your activism in adulthood, are there any values or practices that you feel your parents or grandparents were trying to pass on to you, political or not?  You've talked a little bit about the sort of apolitical aspect of your childhood home.  (laughter)

DK:  Well, yeah, my parents, I think -- they all would have liked for me to do the ritual stuff, the formal stuff, and to continue that.  And there was a ten-year period where I did, not to the extent -- I belonged to a synagogue on the Upper West Side.  Pretty well-known one, actually: B'nai Jeshurun.  And that's where Bikur Cholim came in.  It's a great synagogue as synagogues go.  It's progressive, supposedly.  But at the end, I found I was running into all the same stuff I was running away from to begin with: the same attitudes about relationships, about professionalism and money, the social pecking order, all 59:00that stuff.  And what I was really looking for, I think, was community and emotional gratification and ultimately didn't find either, in spite -- ten years of plugging away at it.  So, it's a good effort.  (laughs) So, I went back to my secular socialist ways.  So, the ritual stuff, it stays with me.  There are cultural things that -- I'm inculturated.  There are things I like to do, that I like to have in my life that I have a good deal of feeling for.  That has stayed with me.  But the other stuff, I remembered going -- taking a girlfriend once to services.  And the thing I like about B'nai Jeshurun: it's very musical.  So, I'm singing away with all this emotion.  And on key, by the 60:00way.  (laughs) And afterwards, we were talking and she said, "See?  You feel for this and I'm wondering why they're doing it."  And that's what finally I walked away with, (laughs) apart from the singing, which feels good all the time, 'cause you're using your body and your mind, all of it, and your lung capacity and all that.  Of course, the endorphins kick in, so it feels good.  But apart from that -- and the emotions kick in, so feels good.  So, apart from that, why are we doing it?  So, culturally, yes, there are still certain things that I look back on, like my grandparents, have a good deal of feeling for.  And they were very kind and generous with me.  And when I want to feel that, that's where I look back.  I have to skip over my parents and go back there.

CR:  Right.

DK:  But that's where all the Yiddishkayt is, really.

CR:  Yeah, sure.  So, why don't we talk about your activism in your adulthood, starting maybe in college or when you feel like you started becoming politically active, which obviously you started in childhood in different kinds of ways.  (laughter)

DK:  Yeah, well, it was actually interesting to me to find -- and it does come out of Jewish roots in a way, because being -- and I wish more people in Israel at the moment would remember this lesson -- but being part of an oppressed people for so many centuries in so many places, I think, in part -- and then being oppressed in my own home for so many years, the activism grows out of that.  And so, my first year of college, I went out of town: in all places, 62:00Kansas.  Emporia, Kansas, which nobody has ever heard of.  It's only known for two things.  It's the first Carnegie library built west of the Mississippi, on that campus.  The college doesn't exist anymore, by the way.  And then, it was the home of William Allen White, who was the publisher and editor of the "Emporia Gazette" and he was a friend of Teddy Roosevelt and all that.  It's the Progressive Era and all that.  And that's it.  (laughs) But when I was there, I managed to meet a group of people, like ten other people, who hung out at a coffee house in town that was run by a couple of Methodist ministers.  But it was, again, folk singing on Friday nights and talking politics and all that 63:00stuff.  And we would go out and do things and we would get -- and this is a funny story -- we would get looks and we would get yelled at on campus and all this stuff.  And I remember -- did you ever hear of this guy, General Hershey?  He was head of the Selective Service System, the draft, back then when there was a draft.  And he was coming -- I think it was to Topeka or Wichita, somewhere, to speak.  And a few of us got into a car and we drove down there and people were actually driving there from other places.  So, there were quite a few of us there by the time we got there.  And we had a big, for there, a big demonstration.  The whole works: jumped on his car and all of it.  Chanting, signs, everything.  And when I got back to Emporia that night, some other students said, We saw you on the news, in this scandalous tone.  I said, 64:00"Oh, really?"  But there's no way to save the clip.  (laughs) And all of that stuff going on.  Well, my two roommates there were these two conservative kids from New Jersey.  So, one semester with them and I thought, Oh, yeah, I can't deal with this.  It bothered them that on Friday after classes, before going to dinner and then going out on Friday night, I would stay in my room, in the room reading, catching up on the news and all that stuff.  It bothered them that I did that.  (laughs) Said, screw this.  I went and I got my room changed.  And this was the funny part: knowing the college owned a building in town, off-campus, that had been originally a hotel -- it was the tallest building 65:00around.  It was seven stories high.  And I got a job -- that had one of those old elevators with the gate thingy on it and all that.  So, to make a little extra money, I would run the elevator during certain hours and all.  But they gave me a room on one wing of the seventh floor, which is where all the black students, the black male students were housed.  And I had to laugh.  I said, Well, okay, great.  That works for me, because -- I mean, we would be in each other's rooms talking, laughing, getting high.  You know, being into smoke -- marijuana.  And there were parties on weekends.  But the great -- the funny part was all those -- the football players and these thuggish types who had been threatening me when I was walking on campus and all that 'cause of my activism 66:00or my anti-war politics, soon as they saw that I had these big, black friends, shut their mouths.  They were afraid, (laughs) which also made me laugh.  It's amazing how racism works in all these different ways.  So, yeah, so it goes back there, then at the end of my first year, I get to City College and there's everything going on, 'cause 19-- it's the fall of '68.  So, we had strikes and building seizures.  All that stuff is going on and it was great.  In the spring, that was the spring part.  (laughs) In the fall, it was all the organizing and meetings and all the stuff going on.  But it was thrilling to be in a place where there were thousands of me, running around having all these incredible discussions.  Sometimes, some days you never got to class 'cause the 67:00south campus cafeteria, everybody was in there.  This table was discussing French literature, that table was discussing Marxism.  At every table, there was an interesting discussion going on.  And there was a joint getting passed around (laughs) the whole place.  So, some days, you just never left there.  It was just amazing.

CR:  Yes.

DK:  So, that was really exciting, really wonderful, to get involved, to hit New York, hit the streets of New York again and boom, all this is happening.  But it was also the first time I got clubbed and gassed.  (laughs)

CR:  Wow.

DK:  Even in New York.  Because I remember being at a demonstration in Manhattan and the people, the cops charged into us and started chasing us.  And one cop was chasing me up some street.  People are jumping over things and 68:00running all -- 'cause there are outdoor cafes along Fifty-Ninth Street or the avenues, wherever they were.  People are jumping over chair-- we're running all over, they're chasing us everywhere.  So, some cop is running up the street behind me and he swings his club at me.  But fortunately, he hits me right on this muscle here, so I barely felt anything between the movement -- on the muscle.  So, I turn around and I smile at the guy and he's so shocked like that that in that minute, in that second, I tear off in another direction.  (laughs) And I escaped being hit again and arrested and all that stuff.  That was my first clubbing.  (laughs)

CR:  Wow.  (laughter)

DK:  But there was a big demonstration at Fort Dix in New Jersey where 69:00literally thousands of us were coming by busloads from New York, from all over the place.  And there were meetings before the demonstration and we were taught how to make these gas masks, homemade gas masks with gauze and tape, all kinds of stuff that were supposed to work because it supposedly is the recipe that the Viet Cong used.  (laughs) Well, I was one of the many marshals in that demonstration, so I was up front.  And that gas mask was useless.  It (makes whooshing sound) right into my face, my eyes.  My face felt like it was burning off.  I couldn't see a thing.  I couldn't even open my eyes.  I could barely breathe.  So, I thought to myself, Well, I can't see.  But just about face in the opposite and walk backwards.  Walk back to -- hopefully from whence I 70:00came.  And luckily, I don't know how many yards back I was doing that when somebody who knew me grabbed my arm and said, "Dan, it's me," I forget who, and walked me back all the rest of the way and got some water and all that.  And that was my first gassing.  (laughs) And, you know, major gassing, this serious stuff they were using.

CR:  Yeah.

DK:  But there was something else that happened at City College.  There was a point where -- the spring, and there were building takeovers and all that.  There were two main groups.  There was SDS and then there were -- the City College commune, which was the City College branch of the Yippies who you probably heard of: Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, all those guys.  So, the Yippies 71:00decided to seize certain buildings, right?  And there was also the Young Republicans or whatever neo-fascist group was running around.  And they decided to climb the fence -- I think it was the education building, Klapper Hall -- climb the fence and throw out the Yippies.  So, we were there -- and we, I mean, members of SDS -- and we started pulling the Young Republicans off the fence and (makes whooshing sound) throwing them off.  So, it was really funny: one guy pulled down the guy's pants, from the fence.  And, of course, he's all embarrassed and humiliated, jumps down: "Why did you do that?  Why are you doing that?"  And then, we just shooed them away.  (laughter) So, that kind of stuff was fun and it went on.  And then, we had, during one of the strikes, we 72:00had seized the student center, student union building, which was Finley Center.  Beautiful old building, 'cause the south campus was originally a convent, a nineteenth century convent, and beautiful buildings.  The appointments, the furnishings in there -- not convent furnishings, but it was beautiful couches, rugs, Persian rugs, all that kind of stuff, wall hangings, and it was beautiful.  They've torn all that stuff down since, but anyway.  So, we go in there, we're having a big meeting, and these Young Republicans, they passed around the leaflet and they claimed they had seen during one of the previous nights -- these were their words in the leaflet -- people on the floor fornicating like dogs.  So, one of my friends gets up, 'cause the guy is at the meeting saying -- yeah, making this point.  So, my friend gets up and he says 73:00-- see, we were always smarter than they were.  So, he gets up and he says, "Was it the fornication or the position you were opposed to?"  (laughs) And, of course, the guy gets all embarrassed and that shuts him up.  All that.  So, it was great.  We were fighting against the war, we were fighting, actually, also, to have open admissions at the City University.  We were slightly wrong about that but that was out of naiveté, not out of malice in any way.  And the naiveté was just we assumed since most of us had come through New York City public schools, we assumed everybody who did was as literate as we were.  We didn't know that wasn't the case, but we did find that out, however.  So, had 74:00we known, I think at least some of us would have suggested something in between, something where you could do remediation and you get to the certain level and then you get into the college.  But, alas.

CR:  Yeah.

DK:  But, yeah, there were just numerous, numerous things happening all the time.  It was very active.  There was a point where my roommate and I thought our phone was tapped.  We were living in Brooklyn, commuting up to City College, and we thought -- 'cause we could hear things on the line all the time -- the technology wasn't that good in those days.  (laughs) So, we would hear things on the line all the time and we would make jokes about it.  We would order a sandwich, we would -- all this kind of stuff.  But it became that way because SDS was not -- we didn't have a chapter president or officers and all that.  But we could get stuff from the college.  We had an office on campus, 75:00we could get paper and a mimeograph machine and all the stuff we needed to have a chapter and organize, right?  But every semester, somebody had to sign up as the president and the treas-- all that, so somebody just took a turn doing it.  Didn't mean anything.  Just did it.  So, that particular term, my roommate had signed up as the president.  And that's when we were fairly sure that our phone was being tapped.  We would hear things, as I said.  And then, always the police presence would show up on campus in unusual ways.  Suddenly, the grounds staff would become much larger.  (laughs) Or they had private guards: Pinkertons or whatever they were.  Suddenly, they would become much larger.  All that stuff.  And that year, it was 1969, that's when I got my first 76:00passport, just in case, because it was the year of, I think, the McLellan Commission had started.  They were actually subpoenaing people and I think my roommate was one of those people who got subpoenaed.  So, just in case.  (laughs)

CR:  Yeah.

DK:  All that.  And I also managed to avoid the draft by luck.  I didn't have to -- I prepared to avoid it.  Because I went -- when I knew I was dropping out to go organize, I went to my draft board and I demanded they give me a 1A.  I think that's what it was called, a 1A.  That meant you were draftable.  And this was a strategical move because I knew if I went down there and they just 77:00did it -- because I said, "I'm dropping out of school.  I no longer get a student deferment, boom."  If they just did it, that would exempt me from the draft because legally you had to have a hearing before they could do it.  So, I thought I'd trick them.  But the person, the clerk I was speaking to said, "No, no, you have to see the board first" and all that and I said, "Okay, where are they meeting?"  And she stupidly said, "They're in that room over there."  (laughs) So, I walked right in and I say, "You have to give me a 1A.  I'm not gonna be a student anymore" and I was very -- and they looked at each other, they looked at me and said, Well, leave your name and we'll have a hearing.  And -- okay.  But at least I was establishing the fact that I was unstable.  That's what I was really trying to do, just in case they didn't buy the hearing bit, I would be laying the groundwork for another bit.  So, I went and I got 78:00letters.  My childhood doctor went back to school when I was about fourteen and became a psychiatrist.  So, I looked him up and he was very sympathetic.  His father had been a socialist around World War I or something like that.  So, he was very sympathetic and he said, "Come out to the house, we'll talk."  I did.  We sat and talked for two hours.  And he was very legit.  He was a psychiatrist at a VA hospital, so, had to be cleared and all that.  So, he was very legit and we sat and talked for two hours.  And he wrote me this beautiful, long letter.  I lost it; I actually had a copy of it.  At the end of it, (laughs) it said that during times of stress, Mr. Krauss suffers from 79:00derealization, depersonalization, and loss of ego boundaries.  So, I got the letter, I took it back to school, to City College, and I'm showing my friends and we're all laughing about it.  And one of them says, "Wow, you can do that without drugs?"  (laughs) So, I got that and a couple of other letters corroborating things and I had all those put in my draft file.  And I knew exactly how I was gonna act.  And see, it was helpful that I worked on a cemetery in the summers.  I knew how I was gonna look and how I was gonna act and describe why I liked working on a cemetery and all this stuff.  (laughs) And then, they switched to a lottery system.  So, I go to the -- I didn't have 80:00a terribly high number.  So, there were 365, one for each day of the year.  So, mine was 175 or something like that, in the middle.  And you're only exposed to the lottery for one year.  And that year, for some strange reason, they only went up to 125.  And then, it was like (makes whooshing sound) it's all over.  I'm still gonna do what I'm gonna do but I don't have to worry about being drafted and dealing with all these charades anymore.  Otherwise, you might be talking to me from Canada now.

CR:  Yeah.  (laughter)

DK:  But yeah, it was an amazing time.

CR:  Sounds like it.

DK:  All that was -- civil rights movement, the anti-war movement was part of our lives every day.  It was even on TV every day.

CR:  Yeah.  Yeah, it's pretty incredible.

DK:  Yeah.

CR:  I'm just trying to be mindful of time, so we might jump ahead a little 81:00bit, actually, 'cause I wanted to ask about your experience starting a family and what values you wanted to pass on to your son as he was growing up, Jewish or otherwise, and I assume political, but --

DK:  Well, my son's mother and I separated when he was very little.  He was four.  It's unfortunate that that had to happen but sometimes when you grow up in a family like mine, you wind up picking the wrong person to marry.  And I did that twice, actually, before I finally learned why I was doing that.  So, the second marriage, my son comes along.  So, from the time he was four -- but I always stayed right there.  We had joint custody.  I took him everywhere, we were -- all around the city, to everything.  All kinds of stuff.  Theater.  82:00Not when he was four, of course.  But we took long walks everyplace.  We ate in different places, all these different kinds of foods.  So, when he was, I don't know, maybe six or eight, they had this Spanish restaurant in Greenwich Village called the Seville.  It's an amazing place.  It looks just -- I don't know, I haven't been there in a while, clearly, about nine years.  But it looks just like it did or it looked just like it did back -- it opened around the Spanish Civil War.  Immigrants who fled Spain at that time.  So, it looked the same, the waiters were the same.  It was just -- the food was incredible.  So, I took him there when he was around six or something like that and he had his first paella.  Now, how I found the place -- 'cause one day, I was doing something, I was meeting people in the Village from Brooklyn.  And I got there 83:00early and I was just wandering around and I was picking up the scent of garlic.  And I just followed my nose for -- several blocks away and that's how I found the Seville.  And the food was just amazing.  And everybody, everything there -- so, we're sitting at this table eating, he's eating his first paella, and the look of pleasure and concentration on his face is so -- he's like this -- that all the waiters came over and were watching him.  (laughs) It was amazing.  So, to museums and we would go and I would go to the Met, for instance, and we would look at various paintings.  I'm big on the impressionists and the expressionists and all that nineteenth century stuff.  84:00And I would discuss the stuff with him.  I would ask him questions, always the English teacher, but I would say, You look at this painting now, you see it's the same -- the "Bridge at Giverny."

CR:  Monet?

DK:  Monet.  So, we're looking at these Monets.  You could tell it's the same place.  "Why do the paintings look different?"  And he says, "It's the light.  The light is different."  "That's right."  And I said, "What's Monet trying to tell us about light and perception and shape and how light changes things?"  And these people are looking at us.  (laughs) I loved that stuff.  So, I would take him everywhere, everywhere and, like I said, for eight years to the National Havurah Summer Institute.  I took him on a couple of demonstrations.  One was an Israel birthday demonstration.  So, all the stuff 85:00I was trying to teach him was everything about culture and art, about science, 'cause I'm a big fan of science.  In fact, I'm going to endow the City College, since I have this peculiar relationship with them.  (laughs) Things have changed with my son, unfortunately, but I am going to leave my very small estate to endow a scholarship.  City College has just been granted accreditation to have a medical school.  It's the CUNY medical school, but it's gonna be at City College.  So, it'll be my last atheist generous act against all this creationist nonsense that's going on, all this fundamentalist nonsense going on.  I'm going to endow a scholarship for students studying medicine at the 86:00CUNY School of Medicine at City College.  And my estate will be enough to do that and my name will be on it in perpetuity, 'cause they keep adding -- you start it, they keep adding to it, but your name stays on it.

CR:  Wow.

DK:  So, I am a big fan of science.  Doesn't have all the answers yet but it certainly has a lot more answers.  So, all of that.  So, yeah, so growing up in my family, reason became very important to me.  When I've had a couple of instances in recent years of Jewish friends or places that have stopped talking to me 'cause I've gone back to my secular, socialist Jewish ways -- and there is a history, quite a long history of that.  I've said to them, "That's all right, 87:00you can Spinoza me."  (laughs) 'Cause that's what happened to him, right?  And he wasn't even an atheist.  He just believed in the primacy of reason, so there you go.  So, I've tried to teach my son all that stuff: culture, art, literature.  I was always reading to him, long before he could read, and the works.  Everything.  All the socialism, everything I could put to him.  And not in a didactic way.  It was, Have a discussion, have an experience, go do something, go see something, and then let's talk about it, along with other things.

CR:  Were there any values that you feel were specifically Jewish that you were 88:00trying to pass on?

DK:  I guess during that time, those ten years, I thought there was a connection between Judaism and socialism.  And that's the thing about religion: everybody's got their take, right?  So, yeah, there are things you can extrapolate.  There are things in Torah that say, "Leave the certain part of what you harvest from the field for the poor."  There's all that stuff that you can extrapolate.  But I like to extrapolate further.  So, why do only certain people own what you're leaving behind?  I like to take it to that next step.  (laughs) Therein lies the problem.  So, yeah, I mean, I tried to make that connection.  And as I said, B'nai Jeshurun's very progressive.  But yet, when you got to know people in some kind of -- have dinner with them and relationships with them outside the services -- people did, 'cause there were 89:00Shabbat dinners in people's homes and there were -- 'cause it's a huge congregation, four thousand members, thousands of which were single people at the time.  So, there were all these singles' activities and all that.  But in getting to know people in those ways, I found that they were -- had the same materialistic, bourgeois attitudes that I had been fleeing from early on or arguing with and fleeing from early on.  So, yeah, it goes so far.  What was it that's -- oh, I remember being at a service, sitting behind this guy I knew from one of these singles' things.  And I remember somebody saying something that ticked me off and the guy looks at me and he says, "Well, everything's for sale, everything can be bought and sold" and all that.  I said, "So, why are you here?"  But it's really, Why am I here, you know.  (laughs) That's the 90:00thing.  That's the problem.  So, people, it's standard, and people do one -- in Christianity, they do something on Sunday.  Look at Paul Ryan!  Perfect example.  Religious Catholic but yet, he fired that priest.  (laughs) Because the priest was talking about healthcare for everybody.  Come on.  That's the problem right there.  It's true across the board.

CR:  So, I want to talk a little bit about your relationship now with Yiddishkayt and Yiddish specifically, if you have one.  But how, if at all, do you feel that Yiddish and Yiddishkayt and Eastern European Jewish identity fits into your broader sense of identity?

DK:  I think it starts there, that sense of empathy, coming from a place where 91:00people were forced to leave, were forced to live in poverty and were forced to leave their homes periodically, episodically, continually from one country to another for generations to emigrate all over the place.  And to here.  And now, the same thing is going on and for much the same reasons.  And the reaction to it is the same.  So, when I hear this idiot, Sessions -- this is what I think.  He goes home at night, puts on a Confederate uniform, and mounts a hobby horse and goes in his living room like this.  I mean, I'm sure that's what he does.  To hear somebody like that talking about these refugees at the 92:00borders, taking children away from parents, it's enraging in so many ways.  Because I hear the same experience.  I see hundreds of people on that ship in New York Harbor being turned back to Europe where they're going to be killed.  It's not a different experience.  It's the same thing.  If these people have to go back to Guatemala or Honduras, they're gonna be killed or enslaved by these gangs.  So, the gangs don't have a fancy uniform and a flag, but it's the same thing.  So, it's here we go again, which tells me, well, we come from a very screwed-up species.  And biologically, the human species is very screwed 93:00up.  But, again, the only way to find one's own dignity and one's own -- is to fight that part of the species, because as screwed-up as they might have been as people, we also have an Einstein and a Freud and a Marx and all these brilliant people who have tried to show us what we can be and should be.

CR:  Yeah.

DK:  So, that comes, I think, on some level, out of that Yiddishkayt experience, out of my grandparents telling me those stories, out of sitting in that playground -- and when I was a little kid, I met my first Holocaust survivors, 'cause they had moved into the building, I think, behind ours and they were sitting in the playground.  They actually organized a ping-pong club 94:00for the kids in the neighborhood.  But that's where I heard, indirectly, in my ear, in their accents, a direct description of the concentration camps they were in.  So, all of that.  So, I like to think if I had been back then, I would have been one of those guys like the Vilna book smugglers who picked up a rifle, went into the woods, and did what they did.  I don't know, I like to think -- but that's the kind of person I think I am now.  And we're not picking up rifles.  We're not at that point.  Hopefully, we never will be.  But we're at the point, again, where one finds one's freedom, one's dignity, one's self-respect and self-esteem in fighting back because there's always that 95:00element of the human species that's out to degrade everything it touches.  That's how it rationalizes its own existence.  That's Donald Trump.  Trombenik.

CR:  Yeah.  Are there any things that you want to share about your experience as a teacher, or --

DK:  Well, the wonderful thing about teaching literature and writing is that it involves everything else: stories, novels, short stories, poems were all about the human experience on all these levels, physically, psychologically, all of it.  So, it was great to be able to embody everything that we've just been talking about in the literature, with the literature.  So, I remember teaching 96:00at one point at Manhattan Community College on the other side of Brooklyn, down by -- wow, it's been a while.  Sheepshead Bay, down that end.  The other side of Sheepshead Bay.  And I was teaching a class, it was a freshman comp class, but it was called -- something to do with identity and the self or something like that.  And we read this great stuff, what Freud really said.  It's a layperson's version of various writings.  We read Kate Chopin, "The Awakening."  All this great stuff.  And I remember these kids, it was like they were dying for this stuff.  But in the schools in this country, we don't teach it at all and we don't teach it soon enough, because all these kids, 97:00they're dying for it.  These are all Brooklyn kids.  They're mainly working-class kids, nineteen, twenty years old, eighteen years old.  But they're all dying for it because it helps them piece the world together and piece themselves together in that world.  So, it was just great to be able to embody that.  And when I taught a class up here at Holyoke Community College back in the -- my last year here, '87, '88, before I went back to New York, we were reading Kafka.  And I was teaching them Kafka's idea of alienation, how you are loved only insofar as you are useful, can be exploited.  And so, when Gregor Samsa wakes up as a bug, metaphorically, of course, and he can't go to work anymore, his family's first response is -- well, not their first response, 98:00but eventually they're just trying to kill him because he's useless now.  And there was one woman in the class who insisted she liked being useful.  (laughs) This was important to her.  I mean, she wanted to be used in that way, yeah.  Of course, the other students are all chiming in.  This was a great class, 'cause all older women who were going back to school for the first time and getting their first intellectual experience on that level, so they were all really very active and great and discussing things.  And this same woman, 'cause it somehow came up in the discussion, she asked me if I was Christian and I said no.  So, she said, "What are you?"  I said, "Well, I'm Jewish."  I hadn't gotten back to my secular part, yet, but I was far from religious.  And she said, "Well, then you're going to hell."  And the rest of the class, they 99:00were ready -- and I'm the only Jewish person in the room but the rest of the class is ready to (makes whooshing sound) and it's, What the hell are you talking about?  "Well, if you don't accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, you're going to hell."  There was no -- and I was just laughing.  (laughs) The class was more upset about that than I was, 'cause I found this amazingly humorous.  It could have been a scene in "The Exorcist."  I find that movie to be one of the funniest, irreverent movies I've ever seen.  It was great.  I had my last teaching job before I retired in the city, administrator who had kids I had the following year.  She looked at me and she said, "What did you do to them?  All they want to do is write now."  (laughs) I said, "I 100:00call it teaching."  (laughs)

CR:  Right.

DK:  Because what you can learn in terms of the structure and content, it gives you a handle on the world and a means of expression of your thoughts and feelings.  There's nothing like it unless you're a painter or a composer or something like that.  What else is there but language?

CR:  Right, yeah.  Well, on that note, I'm going to ask you my closing questions and then we can get to the photograph.  Do you have -- these are just questions that we ask most of our narrators at the end of interviews -- but do you have a favorite Yiddish word, phrase, or song that you'd like to share?  (laughter)

DK:  I have an album of songs, actually, which is, I believe -- I still have all these albums in this sideboard and I believe one of them, all these Yiddish 101:00labor songs.  I mean, I don't understand most of them but they're stirring melodies and they're really good.  So, I like all those, or many of them.  And again, remembering my -- a couple of my grandmother's expressions.  Those two in particular stand out now for obvious reasons.  And then, I just remember common, everyday phrases like, "Vi geystu [How are you]?"  And things like that.  It just seemed -- to be asked something when you're a kid is so important.  Someone's interested in you, thinks you're important enough to take an interest.  All that stands out.  And that's part of the tradition and 102:00children are very important, or should be.  (laughs)

CR:  Right.

DK:  So --

CR:  Yeah.  And do you have any advice for future generations that you'd like to --

DK:  Well, right now, I would like to see everybody get out there the way those kids in Parkland, Florida are out there.  Everybody, like we were -- well, we weren't everybody but there were hundreds of thousands of us in the '60s.  That's what made things change.  And frankly, that is the only way things change.  So, they have to get out there, even if -- just register to vote and vote for people who are really going to do something, not just wear a label, or not take us backwards.  But now, it's essential 'cause we're at a real crisis 103:00point.  It's funny to me: Marx, he was amazed by the fact that his wife, Jenny, was actually German nobility, Bavarian princess or something like that.  And Marx was always amazed that she married him, this son of a converted Jew who was poor.  (laughs) But Jenny's response was, "Well, I could have had a very boring life with all of these wealthy aristocrats or I could have had this really exciting bohemian life with this brilliant bohemian intellectual socialist."  And she did.  So, that's a big part of it, is to break with convention, and not 104:00in the shallow sense.  Tattoos and piercings, yeah, I mean, fine.  But in a more meaningful way in terms of culture and art and music and literature and socialism, all that break with convention.  It was thrilling that Bernie was able to galvanize so many people.  I was amazed that it's like, Wow, we're back!  (laughter) And he's from Brooklyn too, you know?  Yeah.

CR:  Yeah.  Well, thank you.

DK:  Right.  I did go back there, by the way.  As soon as I got out of high school, I told you, I spent that year in Kansas.  (makes whooshing sound) Back to Brooklyn for a good twenty years of my adult life.  So, yeah.

CR:  Yeah.  Well, thank you so much on behalf of the Yiddish Book Center and, of course, myself.  Thank you for sharing these stories and your advice and 105:00your wisdom and -- yeah, thank you.  Why don't we look at the photograph and then, yeah, (laughs) that'll be that.

DK:  Okay.

CR:  Yeah, so if you could hold it up a little bit higher, just so that we can see it on the camera?  Yeah, perfect.  So, can you just tell us a little bit about who these people are and --

DK:  All right.  Well, this is Izak and Molly Dodel.  I named my son after Isaac.  My son's spelling is I-s-a-a-c, the usual way, but his spelling was I-z-a-k, which I thought was really kind of unusual, weird.  And then --

CR:  Yeah, if you could just hold it up a little bit.  Yeah, okay.

DK:  And then, in Yad Vashem, when I took my son to Israel, actually, about -- how many years ago is it now, almost ten years ago -- there was someone on the 106:00wall there with the same spelling in a couple of places, actually.  So, it must have been some transliteration from the Yiddish or something like that to English.

CR:  Yeah.

DK:  But these are the people I was talking about.

CR:  Yeah, your maternal grandparents.

DK:  My maternal grandparents who lived on the other side of the building, who I got so much from.

CR:  Yeah.  Beautiful, thank you.

DK:  Yeah.

CR:  Yeah, your grandmother has such a kind smile in that picture.  It's really beautiful.

DK:  Yeah, well, they were always that way with me and I think others.  In fact, I remember my grandfather wrapping packages.  This would have been around this time, in the '50s.  And wrapping packages and then tying them in a certain 107:00way and sending them to Israel, which was a very poor country at that point.  And then, some years later, in the '70s, there was a book of stories about people finding their backgrounds and their traditions and this one guy who was Jewish went to Italy with a friend of his.  Or Ireland.  That friend was trying to trace his background and it made the Jewish guy want to find his, because when he saw this Italian guy or Irish guy's father tying packages, he did it just in the same way the Jewish guy's grandfather or father had tied packages to send.  And when they had a discussion, he found out that -- he didn't know this -- these people didn't think they were Jewish at all.  But 108:00they went back in their history and they started talking about how there was somebody who was a traveling something.  But he knew he had to get back home by a certain time on Friday nights, not knowing why or how, and that they lit candles, they did certain things without any prayer, without any -- but they did certain things, traditional things, which would indicate, (laughs) between the packages and the -- would indicate that somewhere in that family, they were Jewish.

CR:  Right.

DK:  So --

CR:  Interesting.

DK:  -- reading that in literature later on ties everything together, so to speak.

CR:  Yeah, yeah.  Well, thanks again.  Thank you.

DK:  Sure.

CR:  So, we can stop recording now, I think.

DK:  Well, grateful to be able to thank my grandparents in this way, finally.  (laughs)

CR:  Yeah, yeah, and now the stories are recorded and that's wonderful.

[END OF INTERVIEW]