JOYCE RAPPAPORT ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney and today is October 9th, 2018. We're here in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and I'm here with Joyce Rappaport. Did I say that correctly?

JOYCE RAPPAPORT: Yes, that's right?.

CW: We're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record?

JR: Absolutely, yes.

CW: Great.

JR: Yes.

CW: So, I thought we could start first with the paternal side of your family and talk about those two grandparents.

JR: Yes.

CW: Could you -- and start specifically with Malka Lee. So, could you just say who your paternal grandmother was by name?

JR: My grandmother's name was Malka Lee. That was her pen name. Her real name 1:00was Malka Leopold Rapoport, once she married my grandfather. So, that would be --

CW: And what do you know about that side of the family that she came from?

JR: Okay. I know more about my grandmother than I do about my other grandparents. So, she's a good person to start with. She was born in Monastrishtch, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She was born in 1904 and grew up in this small Galician town where -- and she was the oldest child in a family of -- I don't know how many children all together. Maybe six or seven, all of whom perished in the Holocaust except for one brother. And that 2:00was a major factor in her life. Malka started writing early in her life. She wrote poetry. There was a lot of trauma in her childhood. Deaths of at least one sister. Poverty in the family and then the coming of World War I. And she and her family escaped, lived in Vienna for a while and came back after the war. She was very, very attached to her mother and I am named after her mother, Freyda, Joyce in English. And that was a major bond between Malka and me, to the exclusion of, for example, my sister who was not given the closeness that I was. But that's not relevant to this part of her life. Malka, for some reason, we 3:00don't know why -- relatives in America sent over a ticket for one member of the family to come over. And we've always wondered why they gave it to the daughter. There was a son a year or two younger. There was the father. But Malka was, at age sixteen, sent to America, which was a major turning point in her life. And she arrived in New York City around the year -- I'm guessing about 1920, 'cause she said she was sixteen. She was already a poet and was -- when she came to New York, she switched her language of writing, of poetry from German to Yiddish. She became involved with radical politics, met my grandfather, Aaron, and they 4:00got married when she was quite young. She was about eighteen. And they lived in the Bronx, in the Sholem Aleichem houses, where a number of Yiddish poets and artists lived. It was quite a radical life. But she had left behind her whole family, who -- they seemed to have been doing all right because nobody else came and they all married and settled into life in -- not just Monastrishtch but larger cities, as well. And there was correspondence between Malka and them.

CW: Were there any stories from earlier from her that were passed down to you?

JR: Okay, you know what? Not so much passed but she wrote a memoir and -- not a poetry memoir but a biography, autobiography. I'm not even sure what year it 5:00was. It's in Yiddish and it's the story of her childhood. So, I have that -- I actually don't have it here but I have -- there's a translation in this book, "Found Treasures," and it's called "Through the Eyes of Childhood" by Malka Lee. So, the stories I have in mind about that are in that story. They were not things she told to me, specifically. The story that she's famous for and it's kind of made her a feminist icon is that at some point, her father found her poetry and put it into the oven or into the fireplace. And her mother rescued it and said, "This is your talent." And the rumor is that's why she was sent to America, 'cause she was a brilliant writer. So, she never told me that story. I 6:00did read the rest of the memoir. This is only one chapter and there's some very poignant stories of her brothers and sisters and the poverty of World War I and just picking up the pieces and getting their lives together again. So, she came to America and worked but quickly became involved in radical politics and the Yiddish writer lifestyle.

CW: Could you, for someone -- as if you're speaking to someone who hasn't read any of her stuff --

JR: Yeah.

CW: -- how would you describe the themes that she wrote about?

JR: Okay. Her early themes, I think, are close to what was being written in America. Just kind of imagist, stark, but somewhat romantic poetry that talked 7:00about people and the things she saw around her. A lot about nature. They had a place up in New York State where my grandfather's father owned a farm. So, they spent a lot of time there, as well. She also wrote about my father, whom she absolutely adored. He was born in 1924, so she was about nineteen when he was born. And she wrote about love in those days. Then, the shattering thing in her life was the letters stopped coming from her family. And even before that, they were receiving letters saying, "Get us out of here. Do anything you can." And they really tried. We have correspondence showing that they were writing to consulates abroad but nothing happened. And in the early '40s, she realized that 8:00the whole family had been killed. And it's documented in the yizkor book of the town she was from. So, at that point, her style really changed and she had a lot of guilt, had a lot of sadness, obsession with what happened to her family and how she didn't do anything about it, even though we know now -- what could she have done that she didn't do? So, the '40s were a very, very difficult time for her. At that point, she was also close to communist ideas and she broke with them in 1952 when the Yiddish poets were killed in August '52. And whereas she 9:00still maintained her left wing values, she broke with the Soviet Union. So, I was born in '52. So, the person I met was a very sad and sentimental person. And as I said, I was named for her mother, so she would call me “Mame sheyne [Sweet one, lit. “beautiful mom”]” and give me things and say, "I want you to have this. My mother would have liked it" and things like that. So, I saw her as kind of -- and obviously, she wasn't so old in '52. She would have been forty-eight when I was born but she was very Old World-looking to me. I don't know exactly what that means but --

CW: Can you describe what you remember her looking like?

JR: Very stark, with a bun on her hair. And she would sing all the time. She was 10:00always humming and always writing, too. She had a Yiddish typewriter and she was sitting there, typing away. She was a terrible housekeeper. We used to hate going there (laughs) for meals because bobe [grandmother] cooked and it was inevitably burnt or just -- she wasn't a housewife. And that was fine. But it was exciting going there anyway because there were books to read in English and Yiddish. Lots of newspapers, lots of other writers and artists coming by. It was an exciting thing. As I got older, I recognized it as something unusual. But for me, she was this grandmother with the bun and she wore strong perfume. Apple blossom perfume, it was, and she had a lot of red makeup and a lot of her furniture was bright and red, also. I gue-- so, for me, it was a visit to 11:00another world, in a way. She wasn't like my friends' grandparents. She wasn't like the people I'd meet when I'd go to other people's homes. She wasn't like my other cousins. She was very intellectual and always seeming to be running to give speeches or readings or publishing books. And there would be ovnts [evenings] to celebrate it. She would read but she put on this very dramatic voice -- which I've heard other Yiddish poets from that age, too. So, I couldn't quite relate to it. And yet, it was interesting. And she was -- but again, very haunted and very moody and just sentimental. And, as I said, her poetry changed 12:00-- although she also became very interested in Israel. And that was a dream for her. She did go there at least once, and I remember that. The other thing in their lives was this place in the country, Lee-Ra Colony that she and my grandfather built with sixteen bungalows or cottages in High Falls, New York. And they were rented summer after summer by Yiddish poets and artists. And I spent every summer there till I was about twelve.

CW: Can you describe what you remember it looking like?

JR: Oh, it was -- for me, it seemed huge. I've been back there, it's nothing. But for kids, we had freedom there. There were sixteen cottages, which were very 13:00-- nothing fancy. They were maybe a small room with a little bedroom off it. But all my cousins came up there, as well. And there were, I don't know, there were -- I seem to recall people reading the Yiddish newspapers there all the time. I believe I met Glatstein there -- the poet and artist -- the Likhts were there. And people who -- I don't even remember their names but I was always told: Well, they're famous. But (laughs) I'm not sure. They definitely had stature in that world. I didn't know so much of what was going on. Remember, this was -- when I was born, it was the '50s and I know my parents were very reluctant to talk about left-wing politics because they were kind of paranoid that they'd get in 14:00trouble or my grandparents would get in trouble for being part of an un-American way of life. So, that kind of overshadowed things. Okay?

CW: What language would you use with those grandparents?

JR: Mostly English. But they spoke Yiddish to each other and to my parents. And I went to Yiddish school, so I understood quite well. But I don't remember speaking it very much. I know I had to write letters to my grandparents in Montreal and I would have to write them in Yiddish. So, once in a while, I find something I wrote back then and I say: Wow, I don't think I could come up with that vocabulary right now. But, yes, they spoke just Yiddish although, as I said, they really made an effort to buy books that were intellectual poets. In 15:00my grandparents' collection, I found Walt Whitman, what else, Blake, Yeats. So, things that were -- people were reading in the English world back then. But they made an effort to know other cultures.

CW: So, before we switch to your grandfather, I'm curious: Do you know the story behind the choice of pen name, Malka Lee?

JR: Yes, yes. Her last name was Leopold. So, I don't know when she chose the name but certainly by the time she started writing in the '20s in the United States, 'cause I know I've seen things that she published then and she was definitely Lee at that point. And their bungalow colony, Lee-Ra, was Lee and Rapoport. So, that's the full reason behind it. Leopold was her maiden name.

CW: Okay. Well, we can add more about Malka Lee going forward. But let's switch over to Aaron Rapoport --

JR: Okay.

CW: -- your grandfather. So, what do you know about him?

JR: Not as much. I know from an interview that he did with my mother -- my mother was a graduate student in anthropology at Columbia, which is -- and she met my father there. And she interviewed Aaron at one point. Must have been around 1948 or '49 about his background. But the whole interview was done as if she were a grad student or an anthropologist. It's not like a family member. She doesn't reveal -- it's like you sitting here and asking questions. So, I do know 17:00that he was born in a town called Berezina or something like that in Belarus now, and that he -- I don't know what order he was born in the family. I don't know that much about him, actually. I know his father came over to America and the rest of the family came a few years later. And they settled in -- or his father had come to the Lower East Side and then moved up to Ulster County, New York, because I believe it was Baron de Hirsch land. So, he had wanted to be a farmer. So, the children all came up there. I don't know how much schooling my grandfather had in America. He did speak English quite well and I know he was in the US Army and was torpedoed off the shore of France at some point. We have 18:00certain documents like where he wrote a -- or signed a letter to the US government asking for a Jewish chaplain so that they could -- or for some way to have Jewish holidays on -- with his troop. He was not religious at all but this was important to him. I know he came back and moved into the Bronx. He worked as a sewing machine repairman and that actually was a good job to have during the Depression. But his main activity was also to be a writer. And he wrote poems about workers and then he also wrote the story of Devorah the Prophet, which I understand somebody translated at the Yiddish Book Center. I don't have real 19:00memories of him being as self-promoting as my grandmother. I think he was a very frustrated person. I think he wanted to be a famous writer and she was more famous than he was. The family always said he's really the better writer but I can't vouch for that. He was frustrated. He was an angry person. I would go to my grandparents' house when my parents were not there and they would be fighting all the time, I don't know about what. They stayed married. Obviously, things worked for them, but I think it did have -- their family life did have a negative impact on my father and on my aunt. But I can't tell you that much more 20:00about my grandfather. I remember he died when I was twelve. I remember he was sick, up in the country, the summer he died. And he was really sick and relatives who I didn't even know suddenly started appearing to come to visit him. So, other than that, I should say he also was an inventor. And he drove my father crazy with some paranoia that he had sent some idea to the Russian government during World War II about some kind of anti-tank invention. And after the war, he was terrified that he was going to be arrested. So, I do remember that, just this fear that both -- my whole family lived with in the McCarthy 21:00age. So --

CW: When you think of him, what do you remember him looking like?

JR: Exactly the way he looks in pictures. I have a picture if you want me to lift it up right now.

CW: Sure!

JR: Let's see. It's in his book. He looked exactly like that: tall, good-looking, dressed well. I don't remember too many conversations. He had a driver's license and he would drive me home from Yiddish school once in a while 'cause I didn't live -- he lived right near where my Yiddish school was and I lived in the next neighborhood. And I don't remember talking to him. I don't remember being afraid but he was very quiet and then sometimes he would just -- in front of my grandmother, he would get angry. So -- what about that? I have 22:00one sentimental memory. He must have known he was sick and we were there for dinner. We would often go there for Friday night dinner and for some reason, he took my sister and me and he started talking about his life. And he just looked really sad and then he just got up and he went away. And I don't remember what he said but I think I was eleven or twelve and he died a few months later. So, that's all I remember. I remember going to his funeral. It was the first funeral I had ever been to. And I visited his grave where it says in Yiddish that he's a citizen of the world. So, other than that, I don't have too many memories, partly because I was named for my grandmother's mother and that was the attention I got from that family. Maybe my aunt can fill you in more on my grandfather.

CW: So, I wanted to talk a little bit more about the Sholem Aleichem hayzer [houses] and what you remember from visiting that place, 'cause it has sort of an importance in Yiddish history.

JR: Okay. Yeah.

CW: Can you just explain what you know about the Sholem Aleichem hayzer?

JR: I know it was a cooperative and there were a lot of community events. And there was kind of an auditorium, there were some school classrooms, there were -- I remember there was a courtyard, there'd be signs with announcements of things that were going on or announcements if somebody died, that sort of thing. I know a lot of poets lived there but when I moved -- when I lived in the Bronx, 24:00'cause that's where I grew up, it had changed a lot. It had become kind of a regular apartment building or apartment complex. There must have been five or six buildings, maybe four stories high. My father remembers it as freedom. You'd go from one apartment to the next and just visit friends. And he had a whole khevre [community] there. My aunt doesn't remember it quite in the same way because she was thirteen years younger than my father. So, this is what I mean about I'm giving a watered-down impression. I went to Yiddish school in the Sholem Aleichem houses. And so, I was there three times a week. I didn't always go to see my grandparents. Mostly I didn't. I would just come home. But that was 25:00in that building, too. And there were a few people in the class who did live there or their parents had grown up there like my father had. So, I can't tell you that much, although I did walk around there a few years ago. So, I saw the potential that it had then.

CW: That's great. Well, I wanted to switch over to your Montreal side of the family. But before that, do you remember when Malka Lee passed away?

JR: Yes, it was 1977. That's when it was. Or '76, in March.

CW: Mm hm. Seventy-six, yeah.

JR: Yes, yes.

CW: So, what do you remember about --

JR: A few years before, she had developed dementia. Probably about 1970, she had gotten sick and she started forgetting things. And she was frustrated, very 26:00upset with herself, crying a lot. And her second husband was really nice to her, taking care of her and understanding. But it got worse and worse. I don't remember exactly but she had to go to a nursing home, I think, in the Bronx and then ultimately in Manhattan quite early on. It wasn't like Alzheimer's, now. We think she may have had some strokes. But she just kind of lost it. And I remember going to her room in there and seeing her lying there, acting like a little kid. And on the wall were things from her life, like an award she had gotten from the Pioneer Women in Israel and a picture of her and one of the 27:00prime ministers. And I'm thinking: Who is that compared to what she is now? It was very, very sad. And then, she went to another institution. And the way things were back then, my parents did not want me to see her and I never went to see her again. I don't know, she was pretty much in a vegetative state and maybe it was more the way things were then but they didn't want me to see what she had become. I think it would be different now. And she died in 1976. I was living in Toronto then and I came back and went to the funeral. So, other than that, I had mixed feelings because she was not an easy person and she did a lot of hurtful things to my parents. She was not the kindest to my mother. So, I got a 28:00different impression of her from my home than I did when I saw her. And so, I have to separate Malka the writer, the Malka who was obsessed with me because I was her -- the incarnation of her, the reincarnation of her mother. And yet, there was this other side of her that was frustrated and sad and not always so nice to everybody.

CW: Would you say a bit more about that, about what happened with your mother?

JR: Oh, it has to do as much with my mother (laughs) as with Malka but my mother ended up coming from Montreal, going to grad school in anthropology. And my father was a graduate student in history and they lived -- my mother had this 29:00idea of being a very bohemian person. And they got married and moved to the Bronx, couple blocks from my grandmother. And my grandmother was a very demanding person. And there was tension there, which my mother couldn't -- it was impolite to confront somebody back then but it was definitely there and she'd get mad at my father for not defending her, that kind of thing. So, I don't know, that doesn't really have to do with Yiddish but there was a side of Malka that was difficult, let's just put it like that. But I think she's redeemed herself in her own autobiography by what she went through in her life. It was very difficult.

CW: The other side of your family, your grandparents were in Montreal?

JR: Yes.

CW: So, can you just say their names and a bit about their background?

JR: Okay. So, my grandfather, his name was Wolf Heitman. There's a portrait of him right behind us. And he was a Yiddish teacher. My grandmother's name was Luba Belensman. Or apparently it was Belausov before that. And they were very active members of the Yiddishist community in Montreal and in the Jewish Public Library and the early day school movement here. They lived a much quieter life, less frenetic than my grandparents. They didn't have families that they had left behind, that sort of thing. It was kind of, at least for me, visiting, it was a 31:00very idyllic life and probably contributed to why I'm living in Montreal or saw Montreal as a nice place to live. But you want to know where they're from or --

CW: Sure, yeah.

JR: Okay, I know more about my grandmother and less about my grandfather. But which one would you like to hear about?

CW: Start with your grandmother.

JR: Okay, so my grandmother, I know a lot because I interviewed her. And my mother also interviewed her and we've got recordings and they're fascinating. So, she was born in -- what do you call it? In Ukraine. Kherson, Ukraine. Her parents were originally from SB onim. Her father was a melamed [teacher in a traditional school] who at some point moved to Tbilisi, Georgia and taught 32:00there. We don't know why they went that far. Some of my -- at least one of my grandmother s older sisters was born in Tbilisi. They suddenly had to leave and -- apparently because of some anti-Semitism and they ended up in Kherson, which is in Ukraine. My grandmother was born there and lived there till she was about twelve. And, at that point, they came to Montreal via Halifax.

CW: The whole family?

JR: The whole family. Somebody was -- and some of this, you don't know, it's myth or what. Somebody was involved in a radical organization and they had to leave or that brother had to leave. So, everybody left. I don't know how much is true but they ended up in Montreal, probably about 1907. And Luba had some 33:00education here and lived down in the old Jewish area.

CW: Downtown?

JR: Downtown, yeah, and worked as a seamstress and was very interested in Yiddish culture, as well. She also traveled a lot. She would go and work in New York and she worked in Chicago at some point. And I don't know how she did that but she seemed to have been much closer to the way people live now. And yet, when she got married, she didn't do much afterwards except run this beautiful salon in their home on Mount Royal Avenue in Montreal.

CW: Salon meaning a literary salon?

JR: Yeah, it was just people'd stop by. I mean, she idealized it 'cause by the time I met her, this wasn't going on so much. But she would say, "I'd make a pot of coffee and somebody would see the light was on, they'd stop by no matter what 34:00time of day it was." So, she met my grandfather, who was a lot older, maybe ten or eleven years older. They met at the Jewish Public Library. He was taking out a book on Spinoza. That's all I know. They went out for many years and then they got married. And she always said, "I didn't want to get married but I did." And they had just one daughter, my mother. They lived in an amazing apartment, at least from my point of view when I'd visit, when I was a kid. It was on Mount Royal Avenue. The front of the apartment was owned or occupied by Dr. Solomon Gold, who was a physician. And I mention him because in the recordings you've 35:00inherited from the Jewish Public Library is Dr. Gold speaking about my grandfather. So, anyway, Dr. Gold had his office in the front of my grandparents' apartment and they were in the back. You had to walk through his waiting room to get into my grandparents' apartment. The apartment was on different levels for some reason. So, there was a stage in the kitchen. So, my sister and I would spend time just performing, putting on plays there. So, it was a very freylekh [happy] home with people really, literally stopping by all the time like in a Russian novel. Coffee all the time. Just people -- it was in a vibrant neighborhood. So, I have really good memories of that. It was right near the park and it was very different than where my family lived in New York, 36:00which was not as downtown-y. So, right opposite where my grandparents lived was the Jewish People's School and the Jewish Public Library was nearby, too. So, I have really nice memories of them.

CW: And what about your grandfather's (UNCLEAR)?

JR: Grandfather. I wish I knew more about his training, his background. I know, because we traced down the town -- I always knew he was from a little town near Mazyr, which is in Belarus now. And they referred to the town as [Retshkis?]. And we thought it was somewhere near Minsk. But then, we discovered that there is -- and it was described as being on a little river right near Minsk -- or 37:00right near Mazyr. We now think it was a place called [Rutki?] or something like that, right across the river. I think we've traced it down and it really was a tiny, tiny shtetl [small town in Eastern Europe with a Jewish community]. Don't know anything about it. They say he went to the Mir Yeshiva. And I think I know that's true. And he also fought in the Russo-Japanese War and was in Vladivostok, which -- in my childhood, I thought that was near Japan. And he had, you can see in the picture, he had kind of high cheekbones. And I thought, well, that's 'cause he fought in Japan, which is totally irrational. But that's what I thought. Apparently, he came to Canada because he was a radical. I don't know what he did but I also know a lot of his family members were here, as well. 38:00He was the youngest of a number of children and I didn't know any of the others. His parents never came over. My grandmother's whole family came. So, he got here and was very interested in Yiddish culture and in teaching and was one of the founders of the Jewish People's School, which was, as I understand, it was -- break off from the radikale [communist, lit. “radical”] Yiddish School. And then, he was clearly on the side of teaching Yiddish rather than Hebrew. My mother went to the school and all her friends went, too. And I mean, I grew up feeling like this was idyllic compared to me having to go to Yiddish school across the Bronx, very part-time. It was all integrated for them and very much a 39:00comfortable feeling for people. They grew up loving Jewish culture and the schools were also educationally open to educational trends and high achievement. So, he was very involved with that till the end of his life. And I remember visiting him at the school and I also remember he would mail us, in the time when people mailed letters -- every week, we'd get whatever the school had produced, mimeos, pictures, and little exercises, and we would receive them. So, yeah, he was soft-spoken. I know people here who were his students. And I mentioned his name and they say, Oh, Lerer Heitman [Teacher Heitman], and they start to cry. They really do, 'cause he was a very gentle person. So, that's my 40:00perspective on that. If I were my mother, I would be telling you who went there, who was famous, who was not, all those things. But, again, I feel like I'm giving you a watered-down version of what the next generation inherited.

CW: Well, how often would you come up here and for what occasions?

JR: We came up definitely for every seder and we came for Rosh Hashanah. We did not go to shul but we would get together with family members. And then, as I got older, I would sometimes come up by myself. I would take the bus up from New York. So, I feel like my family has been in both cities for over a hundred years now. And when I drive down the Adirondacks, I'm saying: This has been -- we've been doing this back and forth. And now I have two kids in New York and one in Montreal. So, it's going to continue for a while, so yeah.

CW: Great. So, to switch to your childhood, what was the Yiddish -- we've heard about your grandparents but what was the Yiddish that you were exposed to outside of the family?

CW: Okay, so I can start with when I was born. As I said, my mother was a graduate student in anthropology with Margaret Mead and she worked on "Life is With People." I don't know if you know that book but it is -- they had a government grant in the late '40s to recreate life in the shtetl. And they needed somebody to do Yiddish interviews of survivors just to get a full picture of what life had been like in Eastern Europe. And my mother, who was really fluent in Yiddish, was hired to do interviews. And they thank her in the book 42:00for doing that. So, apparently, when I was born, in the hospital -- this is probably myth, too -- the book was delivered to her, 'cause it was published in '52, I believe. So, that was one aspect of my Yiddish life. My mother also, even though she ultimately had another career, she always was translating. And my father -- they were both graduate students at Columbia. He was studying history and he wrote his dissertation on Yiddish press reactions to World War I. So, both of them were more than fluent in Yiddish but they didn't really speak Yiddish to each other at home. I would hear Yiddish when they'd speak to their 43:00friends 'cause they would often speak Yiddish to them for some reason. And definitely to their parents. So, my Yiddish, when I was in second grade, all of a sudden, I was told I'm going to be going to Yiddish school after school, three afternoons a week. And I felt sort of freakish because everyone else was going to Hebrew school. And I didn't know how to explain why I was doing something different. It was kind of elitist to be sent to Yiddish school and I --

CW: Can you say more about that, why you felt like Yiddish was the elitist choice?

JR: Part of it was my parents were very anti-religion or anti-ritual, even though they knew everything. They didn't grow up in religious homes but they 44:00approached Judaism as a cultural part of their life and as a language and as a historical quality to be preserved. And they looked down at people who went to synagogue and repeated things by rote without really understanding them. They would go to a bar mitzvah and say, The kid doesn't know what he's doing. They're just reciting something they don't understand. And we're going to send you to Yiddish school where you're going to find out what the Jewish people did in the past and what -- I don't know if they had a vision of where it would go. I don't think they thought that far. But they felt like they were giving me a cultural event in my life that I could transmit later on to my own children.

CW: So, what was your experience in school?

JR: It was odd. It was a -- we only had seven or eight people in our class. You would meet Monday, Wednesday, and Friday after school for an hour. The Yiddish was not so hard to learn, 'cause we got a lot of exposure to it and we had songs and poetry and history. But culturally, I felt there was a real divide in the class between children of Holocaust survivors and children of American Yiddishist parents like mine. So, there definitely was a tension that -- I don't know when I started feeling it. I think I felt it when we got a new teacher who had been in the Warsaw Ghetto. And I was terrified of her. I mean, I don't know 46:00if I knew about the Warsaw Ghetto at that point. But I felt like she looked down at me because I was shy. And I felt that -- I grew up feeling like I wouldn't have survived like she did and that she was looking down at me. Now, I don't know why I had that feeling. I certainly came to like her later in life. So, maybe I was imagining it. But I felt like the children of Holocaust survivors had their own environment and that we were not part of it. And it was hard to be their friends. Maybe they felt the same thing from us. Maybe they felt we were privileged. So, there was definitely a tension there. And I continue to feel it, not with those people. I don't really know them anymore. But even now, in 47:00Montreal -- this isn't a Yiddish question but I've been very involved with the Holocaust Center here, on the Yom HaShoah committee. And I've been the co-chair and at one point, I said to myself I don't think I should really have that role because I don't feel what they feel. For me, I definitely lost relatives in the Holocaust but I didn't know them and my parents weren't suffering the way their parents did. So, I feel like there still is a divide. But I first felt it in Yiddish school.

CW: Looking back, how did that sort of practically manifest within the kids, between the kids, you and the other kids?

JR: Well, they spoke Yiddish at home. They were better at Yiddish than we were. 48:00It just -– like they were one group and we were the other. So, I can't explain. We just were two different worlds. Not all of them stayed in the Jewish world, which was another interesting thing and I don't -- I couldn't tell. But once in a while, I'll run into somebody and I'll find out that she's not married to somebody Jewish and doesn't really care about her past anymore, that kind of thing. So, yeah.

CW: So, beyond school, did you ever attend Yiddish cultural events in either of those cities?

JR: Yes. Okay, first of all, in New York, after going to elementar-shul [elementary school], I went to mitlshul [high school], which was -- that opened up a world for me. Not so much a Yiddish world but it was down almost in 49:00Greenwich Village and I was thirteen, fourteen. And I would take the subway with two other friends of mine or two other classmates and Yiddish school became more interesting then. We read a lot of poetry that meant a lot to me. We had some excellent teachers. Joseph Mlotek -- you know what? I don't recall who else taught there but it was interesting and we would sometimes get invited to community events. And I also would attend my grandmother's poetry readings when I was in probably junior high and high school. So, that was -- and I remember them being boring. (laughs) But now I appreciate that. I had that unique experience. And then, in Montreal, same thing. I remember when my grandfather 50:00died, there was a whole -- a few weeks later, there was a whole tribute to him and it was speech after speech in Yiddish. So, yeah, I am involved in some way still. And then, in my own work, I do read Yiddish works. My Yiddish is not so great. But when I'm editing something, I can tell -- if I'm comparing a translation to the original, I can sometimes -- I sometimes have to consult the original to see if it's been translated correctly. So, in that way, I do.

CW: You attended two Yiddish summer camps?

JR: Yes.

CW: Just at those, Kinderwelt and Boiberik --

JR: Right.

CW: -- can you just say what you remember from those?

JR: Okay, the first one, Kinderwelt, was a shock to me because it wasn't really 51:00Yiddish. My parents thought they were sending me to a continuation of my Yiddish school and I'd meet other children of poets (laughs) and things like that. Well, I got there and it was my first exposure to suburban culture. I mean, it was upstate but everybody knew how to do sports and I had grown up in the Bronx where sports were really limited. There were no teams or swimming. We had gym in class but we downplayed that. And here, it was overplayed, I thought. And I felt very inadequate compared to these kids who knew how to play baseball and tennis, even, things like that. So, Yiddish was really minimal. Boiberik was a little better and I went there the year after I had gone to Kinderwelt. But neither of 52:00them instilled more Yiddish culture in me than -- compared to what I thought it would. So, I didn't have positive experiences there.

CW: Yeah, so then I want to ask -- from this association with your grandparents and the Yiddish that you were exposed to growing up, once you left home, what was Yiddish about your life?

JR: Okay. Culturally, part of it is jobs that I had. I went to graduate school in Toronto and at some point, I got a job working at Canadian Jewish Congress 53:00Toronto archives. And I had to prepare finding aids for documents, like write up a little description of something that was in a file or everything that was in a file. So, a lot of it was in Yiddish. And also, at that time -- I mean, it's peripherally Yiddish but I began editing. And I started working with Holocaust survivors who would get my name from somebody. And it wasn't Yiddish but Yiddish was kind of in the background. And I would help them write their memoirs or I would edit a story they wrote, that kind of thing. And then I got a doctorate in English, in eighteenth century English, which has nothing to do with Yiddish. But the teaching market was really bad and I just grew more and more into the 54:00field of editing. And Yiddish came into my life more -- I should say we moved to Montreal, we lived in California for a while. My husband's a Conservative rabbi, which -- of course, my parents had trouble with that but they liked him a lot.

CW: Can you just tell me briefly how you met?

JR: We met, okay, I have a cousin in Toronto who became -- I wouldn't say who’s religious, if you want to use -- she didn't become Orthodox. She went to Jewish theological seminary, married a rabbi. And her husband is a classmate of mine. So, we both kind of -- she also comes from the Montreal side of the family. And we just -- I think we never found a place where we really fit in in terms of our 55:00backgrounds of Yiddishness and fitting it into a Jewish world. It was like that world didn't exist. But we met Jews and they tended to be more religious. So, I met my husband in New York through them. And we ultimately moved here and there still is a Yiddish culture here. There's the Jewish People's School, which my grandfather helped to found. Still exists. It's now called Jewish People and Peretz Shul 'cause the two, the Peretz Shul and the Jewish People's School combined. So, that part of my Yiddish life continues. And then, when I came here, I was already editing more than teaching. And while here, I met Gershon 56:00Hundert, who is the editor-in-chief of "The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews of Eastern Europe." And he's a professor at McGill. He had heard of me and asked if I would consider editing for that. So, that began my traveling back and forth. So, I have read and edited every article in the two-volume "Encyclopedia of Jews of Eastern Europe" and although it's written in English, there's so much about Yiddish culture in there. So, I felt like this represents, culturally and language-y, exactly where I’ve come from.

CW: What was it like working on that project for you?

JR: It was fascinating. It was hard work 'cause a lot of it was translated and not translated so well. But was also -- there were so many articles. I forget 57:00how many but the volume is -- it's two one-thousand-page volumes. And I just felt like I was connecting with what I read. And for the first time, I was reading about places that were not just shtetls and were not Holocaust. It was to show continuity. I was reading about social movements, I was reading about poets and writers and religious, anti-religious, not religious, just culturally -- the whole spectrum of Jewish life in Europe, in Eastern Europe, from the beginnings to even past the war. There are articles about life there now. So, as I read it, I kept having this dream that I'm reading about all these writers. 58:00I'd love to read what they wrote. And then, when the project finished, I asked around at YIVO if there was something else I could do. And "The YIVO Encyclopedia" was published by Yale and they were organizing the "Posen Library" at that point. And the "Posen Library" collects works from all over in Jewish culture, from religious to not religious, from literature to philosophy, journalism. And I became the executive editor of that. And that's a very long-term, ongoing project. And that's where I've really come back into touch with Yiddish. Certain volumes less so, but the ones that I've worked on till now have all the major Yiddish poets and writers and journalists. They have interesting selections of writers coming here and then going back to visit the 59:00Soviet Union in the 1930s and what they saw and what happened to Yiddish culture there. So, it's really, really an interesting collection.

CW: Well, I know there have been a lot of articles in the case of "YIVO Encyclopedia" and writers, I'm sure, and --

JR: Yeah.

CW: -- in terms of "Posen." But are there particularly things that you've read or edited that stood out or had an impact on you personally?

JR: Hmm. I've enjoyed the things from Russia, especially, to see what happened to Yiddish culture under communism and the pressure to get rid of Hebrew -- and Yiddish writers who were part of the anti-fascist organization who came over to 60:00America during World War II and then ultimately got killed by Stalin. So, I've enjoyed watching the transition in literature there. And also, in the Posen Library, some of the Yiddish writers in communist countries looking back at what they've given up and feeling sad about that. So, yeah, I like the cross-cultural works best, yeah. And they have Malka Lee in "Posen Library, Volume Eight," so --

CW: Do you think that either of your grandparents, Malka Lee or Aaron Rapoport have an audience today?

JR: Malka definitely, possibly because, as I said before, she's become a 61:00feminist icon because her mother rescued her poems from the flames. Whether Malka was a feminist, I think -- she didn't think in those terms. But, yeah, she's definitely read. There are people writing about her and she's being translated. I just heard through my aunt that they're translating her autobiography into Polish in Poland. So, she's definitely gotten an audience. Aaron, a little less so, although he's in the volume called "Proletpen." And occas-- he's not as famous as she was but hopefully somebody will discover him. So, yeah, there's was definitely an interest. Maybe it's an academic interest. But they are -- she, especially, is known, yeah.

CW: So, I'm curious, from your perspective, I mean, you have a professional 62:00perspective and also a personal perspective growing up with familial contact to these Yiddish intellectuals. How has the status of Yiddish changed over your lifetime?

JR: Okay. I don't want to be pessimistic but I don’t feel like it is going to be anything except a culture to be studied. It's not being lived. I know there are people, and I know some of them, who teach their children Yiddish and speak it at home. But I don't know where that's going. They tend to lose it as they get older. They certainly can't live in Israel and function fully in Yiddish. It's never going to be a second language of a country. So, I'm not optimistic. I am 63:00optimistic that there will be scholars and that there will be translations. But I don't feel good about it. It's not continuing. I know Yiddish Book Center and YIVO are really making efforts but it's going to have to take a lot to make people turn Yiddish into what it was. So, I don't feel good about it. So, I feel like my own Yiddish is watered down and it's not something I do more than peripherally. My sister and I'll sometimes just have a conversation. But our grammar's all wrong, everything -- the vocabulary isn't there the way it was.

CW: For you personally, how does Yiddish fit into your broader Jewish identity?

JR: Yeah, very much so but as a cultural background. I think what my son is doing in Montreal, having established the Museum of Jewish Montreal, he's involved -- but again, the way I am, it's more cultural, like this is what was. And let's show what was, let's translate, let's even learn it. But I don't see anybody living in Yiddish, I mean, except for some people who purposely do it.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

JR: I found -- I don't even know what newspaper this was in. But it says it's her last poem and this was a children's magazine.

CW: Is that the "Grininke beymelekh [Little green trees]" or --

JR: No.

CW: -- a different one?

JR: This is called "Mayn eynikl [My grandchild]." So, it's about me and she was already not in great shape. It was her last poem. It would have been in the 65:00early '70s. And the poem's about how I was going to Israel and how I'm named after her mother. So, those are two things that were very important to her. So, this is her last poem, apparently, "Mayn eynikl." So, that would have been -- I don't know what year. This was written as a -- obituary. It says she died in -- doesn't even say. But it was 1976.

CW: Wow.

JR: I have a picture of Malka and me and I'm wearing a Camp Boiberik shirt. And this is at Lee-Ra colony. So, yeah.

CW: Great.

JR: She always wore a dress. She always had her hair pulled back. And she was 66:00always smothering me. I think if people want to know more about her and they don't know Yiddish, they should read the translation of how she grew up and came to America in that book. This is my grandfather's book, "Dvore di nevie [Deborah the prophetess]." And, as I said, it has a little biography of him and a picture. Okay, then, what else do I have? "Life is With People," the book my mother did research on. What else?

CW: Is there another picture there?

JR: Of what?

CW: You have two pictures (UNCLEAR).

JR: Yes, I have -- (laughs) I don't know how to fit this in context but this is a picture of my father meeting President Nixon, which was like -- he did it 67:00through a job he had. And, of course, we hated Nixon. But there was ambiguity, like he had made it in America by actually meeting the president. So, this was a big family heirloom.

CW: How did that come about?

JR: My father was working as -- in the development office at -- I think this was Fordham University and he managed to get a grant for building maybe a sports stadium. And for some reason, somebody in the Nixon administration had been involved in it in some way. Maybe he was a graduate. So, my father was invited to meet Nixon. What else do I have? My mother's autograph book that I found yesterday from when she was a kid and she went to Jewish People's School. And I haven't read these but there's a whole -- there are a lot of inscriptions. This 68:00is from Yud Yud Segal, the Yiddish poet from Montreal. This is Dr. Zhitlovsky, who was a Yiddish educator who came to Montreal. So, the fact is, my mother's a kid and she felt it was important enough to put these pictures into a -- autograph book. Who else is -- Melech Ravitch, who's a founder of Jewish Public Library. And there's some other autographs, as well. And then, I have first volume of "YIVO Encyclopedia." I have the second one, as well, of course. And it's also online. And then, this is what I'm working on now, the "Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization," which will ultimately have ten volumes and 69:00cover every age of Jewish civilization. And that's been my biggest connection, again, back to the Yiddish world. So.

CW: Great. Just a couple questions --

JR: Sure.

CW: -- wrap-up. I'm wondering when you find yourself thinking about your grandparents.

JR: Okay. All the time in Montreal. I moved here and I feel like I've come from here. I don't feel like I moved to a city that I didn't grow up in. My grandparents are buried right nearby, so I will sometimes just be there and see their graves. And I will often drive by where my mother grew up. I meet people who go to Jewish People's School. I see family names on various places in the 70:00city. So, I feel very connected. And, yeah, I find myself thinking about them a lot, I really do. And sometimes, as I said, I'll meet people in synagogue, for example, who went to school with -- who studied under my grandfather. And they draw the connection. So, I do feel very connected. And in New York, I just feel it at YIVO. Sometimes I will tell someone I'm related to Malka Lee. Oh, my son studied at McGill and he didn't know Malka, of course. And he said to his professor, “Malka Lee was my grandmother" and she kissed his hand. (laughs) So, there is that yikhes [ancestry] that we do feel sometimes, definitely.

CW: In your role as editor -- I mean, taking the role of editor, what is your view of your grandparents' writing?

JR: I was a little shocked to see how passionate my grandmother’s writing -- remembering from her childhood, maybe -- or she wrote it. She has one poem about being scared of being raped during World War I, of women hiding in the attic and the mothers wishing they could reabsorb their children, their daughters back into their own wombs. I'm amazed at how well she wrote in her twenties and thirties and her images of World War II –- World War I -- are quite vivid and shocking. Her later poems are full of sadness about her mother and her lost 72:00brothers and sisters. So, yeah, I think she's really good. And I don't know much about my grandfather's works 'cause I haven't read them. I did read Malka's autobiography in Yiddish. It took me quite a while but I was hoping to go to the town she grew up in. It didn't work out in the end 'cause of the Ukrainian revolution a few years ago. But I do hope to go there one day and I did get a good sense of what the town was like just from her reading. So, yeah, I think she will stand the test of time if she gets more works translated. So, yes.

CW: And we like to close by asking if you have any advice for people curious 73:00about this Yiddish world, wanting to enter into it.

JR: I think you're doing the right thing with your outreach to college students, with your internships, with the Yiddish -- the collection of books. Is that still really going on?

CW: We still do get donations, yeah.

JR: And are you encouraging people still to --

CW: To?

JR: Like if they find books, to -- yeah.

CW: Yeah. We still receive donations, yeah.

JR: Yeah. I think that has had a major impact on people. And I think the fact that you're not in New York is -- somehow you're distinct and that's been -- and that's put it on the map in a way. It's not just one more New York institution. 74:00So, yeah, I think there should be more Yiddish classes in universities. There certainly are in adult education, in communities, in JCCs, synagogues, places like that. But where it's going, I'm not sure. There is some Yiddish in Israel, more than there used to be, so --

CW: Great. Well, thank you so much.

JR: Okay.