LOIS GRABER ORAL HISTORY

HILLARY OSSIP:This is Hillary Ossip and today is April 28th, 2011. I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts with Lois Graber and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record this interview?

LOIS GRABER: Absolutely.

HO:Thank you. All right, so to begin with, could you tell me a bit about your family background?

LG:I come, myself, from a secular Jewish family. My grandfather was American-born. He was first generation American-born. And my parents spoke Yiddish, of course, just so we didn't understand them. I got married at eighteen 1:00and I married a European. He came here to America in 1949. They spent the war years -- they left Poland just before the Germans came in and went into Russia and spent nine years in Russia. And then, they were set to emigrate to Israel, but some relatives sent them papers to come to America. So, it was bashert [predestined], no? That he came to America. I met him. And I loved the family interaction. My in-laws, my mother and father-in-law, only spoke Yiddish. My sister-in-law and brother-in-law spoke some English. A lot of English. And we 2:00were able to converse that way and I was able to converse with my mother and father-in-law. Also, I learned a couple of words. Mostly, I thought they were all talking about me (laughs) when they got together. But it was a nice, warm feeling and the language was beautiful to me. And that's where Yiddish came into my life.

HO:And could you tell me a bit about just a typical evening in your home growing up?

LG:In my home?

HO:Yes.

LG:Oh, gee, now you're going to make me age myself. I can remember, as a little girl, sitting on the floor and playing with buttons and my parents were listening to the radio. And my brothers were playing and that was typical in our 3:00house, just family time together. And that was it.

HO:Yeah.

LG:Yeah.

HO:Where did your mother's family come from?

LG:My mother's family were refugees. They came from Russia and my grandmother, my mother's mother, passed away when my mother was only four. And my grandfather was American, so that side of the family were not happy with my grandfather. And after my grandmother passed away, she had a sister and that sister couldn't have children. So, she took my mother in. But my mother never knew that they weren't her parents. And so, she grew up speaking Yiddish in this griner [immigrant, 4:00lit. "green"] family. And they were actors and actresses in the Yiddish theater. And my mother had that background. But when she married my father, they kind of drifted away from the -- never away from the religion. The religion was always a big part of our lives. And for me, we moved a lot because it was around the Depression and my father had to follow where work was. So, we moved and we didn't necessarily live in Jewish areas. And then, when I was sixteen or fifteen -- not sixteen, fifteen -- my mother moved into a Jewish area and (laughs) I never knew I didn't feel comfortable, but all of a sudden I felt comfortable. 5:00And I made my good friends there and I belonged to the Jewish young men and young women's Hebrew association and my life became very Jewish after that, yeah.

HO:What were some of these places that you were moving from? Where were you born and then --

LG:I was born in Boston. My parents lived in Malden. Then we moved to New Jersey, then we moved to New York. Then we moved to Upstate New York, where my father couldn't find work but my mother did. Excuse me, and then we moved back to New Jersey, and then we moved in that Jewish area in New York. And I met my 6:00husband at that Y, but didn't know he was gonna be my husband until a year or so later.

HO:Could you tell me a bit about that?

LG:Yeah. My husband joined the Y, I guess, with a bunch of friends who then were drafted in the Army. But on his papers when he crossed over after the DP camps, he was made two years younger so that he could have food, different things on the boat. And so, he was, on his papers, too young to follow his friends in the Army. Besides, my mother-in-law would have plotzed if that happened. And I saw him at the Y. He was always interesting to me, but he was standoffish. And funny 7:00that my girlfriends and I used to call him a gangster because -- he just had an attitude about him, I guess. And then, my parents moved and we moved next door to who was going to be my sister-in-law and I had no clue. And I became very friendly with her and she had a very, very thick accent. And she kept saying to me, "Oh, I have a brother. Wait till you see my brother!" And I figured, Mm, I don't know. And one day, I was sitting on the stoop in New York with my girlfriend and a car drove up and she said to me, "Look who's in that car!" "Who?" She says, "The gangster!" So, he stopped the car and he said, "Did 8:00anybody move into that house?" And I said, "Yeah. We did." And he said, "Anybody else?" I said, "Yes, my neighbor." And he said, "Oh, that must be my sister." And I was floored. I was absolutely floored, 'cause he doesn't have an accent. And one thing led to another and he was my bashert. So, we're married, fifty-four years, and we have six grandchildren. And one is getting married in July and we've had a very nice life, yeah. And Judaism is the biggest part, the biggest joy of our life. I've always said to him that -- to everyone -- that I always felt that being Jewish was a gift that God gave me. And I hope I pass 9:00that on. I had three children, very young. I was married, I was eighteen, and had my daughter the following year and then had two more right after. And I feel so blessed that they had the opportunity to know their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, and to hear the Yiddish and to know the Yiddishkayt. And to me, the language bound us together somehow. All of my children are happy, thrilled to be Jewish. They love being Jewish. My grandchildren, I have six, they've all been to Israel. They lived there and went on Year Course and went to Young Judea. And 10:00my granddaughter is married, a boy she met in Young Judea. And a very, very strong Jewish ethic in our lives. And they love what they are, every one of them. They're strong Zionists. And the language, the language is just -- I feel that the Yiddish language, even though we don't speak it -- I took a course a couple of times and I can't pick it up. I'm not good with languages. But when I took Hebrew and they would ask me questions in Hebrew, I don't know where it came from, but I would answer and they would say, That's Yiddish. And I didn't know that I knew it, but I did, some. And I honestly think that's a glue that 11:00bound us all together, that language that we are familiar with and hear and love hearing.

HO:How was this sense of Jewishness and the importance of Yiddish instilled in you when you were younger?

LG:When I was younger?

HO:Yeah.

LG:I'm not sure how to answer that. I heard it; I knew it.

HO:Did you hear about life in Europe or --

LG:Well --

HO:-- your family? Or how did you get your sense of Jewishness? How did you --

LG:-- through my mother. And it's funny because her father was secular. He was American-born. But she had that other family and I knew all about that: growing up speaking only Yiddish. And she lived in the -- what is it, the East End or the North End in Boston? I forget. It's where Scollay Square was. Whatever. And 12:00we used to go up and visit my aunt all the time. She lived in one of those tenements. And just the family, the stories of the family and the closeness of the family.

HO:Do you have any stories you can remember that you particularly liked?

LG:From when I was a little girl?

HO:Um-hm.

LG:Oh, boy, I remember going to the Yiddish theater and meeting my family who owned the Yiddish theater in New York and watching the plays. And my mother told me she used to be in a couple of the plays. And I brought with me -- I have a book that her uncle who brought her up wrote. He was a playwright and he wrote this Yiddish play and he died before it was performed. And I've had that book 13:00for years. And I finally took it and xeroxed the whole book, 'cause it's falling apart, and the Yiddish writing is so beautiful. And I just remember treasuring the years that -- we had a lot of problems with anti-Semitism when I was a little girl. And I can remember I was maybe about eight years old, seven or eight. And I can remember my mother rolling around in a driveway having a fistfight with some woman who came and called us dirty Jews and whatever. And I can remember my mother fighting with her and the neighbors trying to break them up. And that was very impressive because I -- this is something she fought over. 14:00And so, there were a few times in our lives that we belonged to a temple. But we moved so often and not into Jewish areas. So, I didn't have the education I wish I did have. But I remember feeling that connection and that comfort with whatever Jewish -- a friend or the temple or whatever it was, yeah.

HO:Can you remember any special traditions your family had?

LG:No.

HO:Or do you remember any particular holidays that you might have celebrated?

LG:Well, when we were in contact with some of my mother's relatives, we did. And my grandmother. They were secular but they did have certain dinners for certain holidays. But I can remember I was eleven, twelve. We lived in Malden, one of the times we came back, and there was a shul on our corner. And I remember getting dressed up and going and standing -- I had no clue what it was about -- but standing in the crowds of people outside with a friend and just being part of that. And my parents didn't go but I did. That, to me, was comforting, nice, happy. So, I remember doing that, yeah.

HO:When did religion become a more important part of your life or more of a central aspect, since you're talking about how -- it became so important, especially as you had children and so on?

LG:Yeah.

HO:How did it become something for you?

LG:Well, I think that -- I remember the war time. I remember the blackouts. I was just a little girl; I was born in 1938. But I must have been four or five and I can remember the blackouts. And we would sit on our porch in the blackouts, just looking around. But I didn't know much about the war. And then, in high school -- or it could have been even junior high -- I went to schools that were pretty much Jewish and they started to show pictures of the Holocaust, 17:00films. And I can just remember the bottom falling out, you know, this -- and then, with the anti-Semitism that we had in the streets when we lived in Long Island, New York, that hurt a lot. We were afraid a lot. The kids once grabbed my brother, my older brother, and beat him up and put horse manure in his mouth. That was scary times. And then, my mother fighting like that, you know? But instead of turning me away, it turned me towards that, and when I saw those films in school, I was shocked. My bottom fell out and I was crushed. And from that time on, I became very Jewish. Not religious, but very Jewish. And then, 18:00when I married my husband, that solidified it. And then, we spent the summers every year in the country amongst all Yiddish speakers, all survivors of the Holocaust. And I just, in my heart, became one of them. And I always said that I was sorry -- I was ten years old when Israel became a state, but I don't remember that and that bothers me. We had just gotten a television but I don't know if it was on the television and I certainly wasn't reading the newspapers at ten. And I don't remember my family speaking about it. So, later on, when I started to read and hear and see -- and that just became -- that's the biggest 19:00part of my life, is being Jewish, Israel, and the Yiddish is underlying all in there. I went to London once and the plane was late. And we were on some kind of a trip. I think I had teenage kids, but I went with my mother and my sister-in-law and my father. And we were sitting in the airport, so tired. The plane left late, late, late at night and it was full of people going on that tour. And we were just in our little group but because we were there late -- and all of a sudden, we began to pick up on what other people were saying. And I kept hearing, "Oy, I'm so tired. Oy vey," all kinds of little Jewish sayings. 20:00And when we became aware that there were a lot of Jewish people on that trip, we came together. We started to feel comfortable, introduce ourselves, and we honestly became a cohesive group through that trip, just from hearing each other say the few little Yiddish words. I don't know if any of them were Yiddish-speaking, but they were Jewish, that was enough.

HO:Why do you think it is that you guys were all able to bond over being Jewish? What do you think that's about?

LG:I just think that we are a people, a community. We're bound together and I've always said that -- there were incidences where somebody was marrying out of the 21:00religion or something happened, which is happening more and more today. But I used to say, Someday, they're gonna remember and feel it and it'll come up. And it does. I've seen it in my own daughter. And I used to say, She doesn't know yet how important being Jewish is to her. But she found out all by herself and I didn't have to do much, although I guess I did, in my way. And we're just a group of people that cling, need each other. And I saw it by moving into areas 22:00that were more Jewish. As we moved ourselves and raised our family, we looked for areas where we could be, that we were comfortable in.

HO:Could you tell me a bit about your education?

LG:High school. I didn't have time for anything else. I got married at eighteen (laughs) and had children right away. So, that was my education. Over the years, I've taken some courses, some classes and lectures. I love lectures. I could sit and listen to people speak for ages. And I joined Hadassah and that's a big part of our lives, all of us. And one of my granddaughters was one of the first bat 23:00mitzvahs at the synagogue in Israel, in Hadassah hospital, with the Chagall windows, Abbell Synagogue. She was one of the first to be bat mitzvahed there. And we have a lot of family in Israel.

HO:Are they family that moved from the US to Israel?

LG:My grandson served in the IDF and he's living there now. He's coming home in June for the wedding. Who knows. But the others are my husband's family. After the war, the Russians allowed people to leave that came in. And he had an older brother. He's eleven years and fifteen years and seventeen years younger than 24:00his siblings. So, he was nine when he left Russia and his oldest brother stayed because he had children. He heard they were murdering Jews that went back to Poland, so he said to the family, "When you go somewhere and it's safe, send for me and I'll come with my family." He had children by then. By the time they came to America, that's it. He couldn't get out of Russia anymore. So, it was years, years -- I can remember my mother-in-law crying that she's never gonna see her son again. And we tried sending papers and everything. Forget it. And finally, they passed away, my in-laws. But then, I heard my sister-in-law and my husband saying, I'm never gonna see my brother. So, I said, "Gimme that calendar and I'm 25:00gonna point and we're going to Russia." And we did and my sister and brother-in-law came with us. So, it was forty-three years that they hadn't seen their brother. And we went to Russia. And it was funny because they could speak Yiddish, but they lived in Russia all those years and you begin to lose it when you don't speak. My husband lived in America and so, when we got to Russia, it was very hard to converse. They were speaking -- and my brother-in-law said to me, "I forgot English now." He's speaking Russian and Yiddish and everything like that. It was very exciting to meet them. And now, my brother-in-law has 26:00since passed away, but all his children are in Israel. And it's still -- when my husband speaks to them, he has to speak in Yiddish because -- they don't know as much Yiddish as he did, but they've learned Hebrew. He doesn't speak Hebrew, so the language is really funny. It goes round and round. But it always comes back to Yiddish. That's the one that they can make out, mostly, between themselves. And I don't even know why I went into that whole tangent, but --

HO:No, it's great. (laughs)

LG:-- anyway.

HO:What was Russia like or what was your impression of it? And did you meet the Jewish community there at all?

LG:It's strange, we met their family. My sister-in-law lived in Tashkent. My brother-in-law comes from a little mountain town called Kitab. And my nephew 27:00lived in Samarkand. So, we went to Moscow. We went on our own, not with a tour. And so, we were watched pretty closely. They sent us to Leningrad first. We had to stay there. Then, we went to Tashkent. We had to stay in a hotel. We had to be back at the hotel by noon -- by midnight -- and my brother-in-law could only come up in the hotel if he gave his papers at some little window downstairs. So, he would put his papers in, then they would let him come up, and then he could take us for the day to the family. And then, we had to be back by noon. On every 28:00floor, there's a desk with a Russian lady making sure you get back.

HO:What year was this?

LG:Hm?

HO:What year was this?

LG:This was in '87, I think. Not sure. Anyway. But during the day, when we were with the family and they were taking us from here to there to visit extended family, they had -- the minute we'd walk in, they'd put on Yiddish music. They had the Barry Sisters. The Barry Sisters, I think, did a concert in Russia years ago and they had the records. And we were laughing because it was in the summer, maybe in May, something like that. And they had matzahs they gave us. They cooked Russian food, but they were gone all day long. And when we came back home 29:00and we met a relative of the relative, she said, "No, they were out on the black market getting all kinds of stuff for you." We had caviar and they wouldn't allow the children to eat it. We didn't know. And we had butter. I went out in the street once looking for butter. Can't get it. But they managed to get it for us and it was quite interesting. Very backward country. I was amazed at -- you're an American, you hear about the big threat, Russia, and then you go there and they're so primitive. Very, very different than what we expected. But grey, 30:00grey. (laughs) I remember that whole thing as grey; everything was grey.

HO:Did you feel any particular connection to being there and having family who had originally come from Europe? Or no?

LG:No, no. No, there were incidences that happened that -- one of the little girls -- all the relatives came to stay at my sister-in-law's. And one little girl, we were giving them gifts, and one little girl ran upstairs. She was crying and we said, What are you crying, Brigina? And she said, "Papa hit me." So, my sister-in-law got all upset. "Why did you hit her?" Because she ran downstairs and she said out loud, "Mama has a diamond." Not supposed to do that 31:00in the street, you can't -- they disciplined her right away. And it was not a pleasant place to be, yeah.

HO:What about when you travel to Israel, though, to see that family now? Is that a very different experience?

LG:Very different.

HO:How so?

LG:Very different, yeah. They're free. They can say and do what they want. My brother-in-law, we managed to get him to America to visit us before they went to Israel. I don't know how that happened. We made out all kinds of papers and finally one took. So, he came and -- don't ask. It was a very difficult trip. One day, he said to me, through my sister-in-law and brother-in-law who stayed with us -- one day he said to me, "When will the police come?" And I said, "What 32:00is he talking about?" "The police. The police have to come because we're here." And I said, "No, no. There's no police coming." "Don't tell me. I know they're going to come." He wouldn't believe -- and when we drove them through Boston and we passed Commonwealth Avenue where all the students are out, I heard my sister-in-law say, "The homeless people." And I said, "No, no, they're not homeless! They're not homeless!" But they didn't believe a lot that we said. We went to New York and we were driving through the jewelry district and my sister-in-law said in Yiddish that she was ashamed to see the Hasidim. "Oy, it's a shame." And I said, "Why is that a shame? They're free here. They can dress 33:00like they want and worship as they want." No, she thought it was embarrassing. But then, she said to me through my sister-in-law, 'cause I never understood -- she used to love to wash my sink. And she said to me, "I grew up in Russia and I wasn't allowed to be Jewish. And it's different here. It's so nice." But then, they changed and they got frightened with what they said. And they said, No, no, we have everything there. Everything was there. We have everything. And then, I found out that when they go to America, they're briefed by the government before they go. Don't trust what you see; don't trust what you hear. And I disconnected 34:00from that country and I found out that they did, too. They didn't even want to go to Brighton Beach and see all the Russian stuff, no.

HO:So, when they were visiting or when you were visiting them, the language that was the common language was Yiddish.

LG:Yiddish.

HO:And what was that like, hearing it and --

LG:For me, it was frustrating a lot, trying to figure out what they were talking about. And I had to keep interrupting and saying, "Tell me! Tell me what they're saying!" Every meal was a feast, with toasts. Everybody stood up and made toasts and drank vodka. But I was left out of this and I said, "Tell me! Tell me!" And I was always pushing my sister-in-law who was trying to listen. And it was frustrating for me. There were many things that were frustrating. After my 35:00mother-in-law passed -- and I used to say, Maybe it's a good thing we don't really understand each other because maybe we'd be fighting. And then, after she died, I once said to my sister-in-law, "Arlene, what does 'oytser' mean?" And she said, "Oytser?" I said, "Yeah, oytser." She says, "It's like a treasure." And I said, "You mean to tell me that my mother-in-law called me that?" And even now, when I think of it, I could cry. And I think of -- I never thought she really had that much use for me. But I get farklemt [overcome with emotion] (laughs) when I think of the opportunity that went by that I didn't know that 36:00she said that, she called me "oytser." And my father-in-law was vocal, more vocal. And he was able to talk to me. Was a lovely man. And my mother-in-law was adorable, really. But that was an opportunity I will never get back and --

HO:But you said -- oh, continue.

LG:-- it just meant so much to me. Sadness. That language is, when you hear it from people that live in places that you would never go to or think of or -- and they come out and they're speaking maybe a little different -- accents, but they're speaking Yiddish. It's like, Wow, that's amazing. That's an amazing 37:00thing, yeah. Yiddish is widely used now -- words, on television. I hear newscasters saying things. And we always laugh at that and say, Oh my God, look what he just called him! I said, Woo, does he know? (laughs) But it's a wonderful language. It's an all-encompassing -- you know?

HO:Yeah. You said you took Yiddish classes, though.

LG:I did.

HO:So, what started or what sparked that?

LG:Probably that trip to Russia.

HO:When was it that you started taking them?

LG:Probably around 1987, '88, and I shlepped my son with me. He was younger, very young. And we went to a Workmen's Circle class. And let's see, what can I remember? I sang "Bulbes [Potatoes]." I can still sing it. But languages are 38:00hard for me to pick up. I took Hebrew for four years and in my head, I can speak Hebrew. Doesn't come out. But Yiddish is different. Hebrew is wonderful. That's an ancient language where -- and back. But Yiddish was a warm, funny, lyrical -- a warm language. I remember warmth, just warmth, just hearing it. When we were in the country, we used to spend every year in the Catskills. And we stayed at bungalow colonies that were all Jewish and all friends and a lot of Holocaust survivors. And one time, we brought a friend of ours up with his little 39:00children. And they had a phone booth and when the phone rang, the woman who had the office would answer the phone. And then, she would announce in Yiddish or in a thick accent, "Telephone!" And the little boy turned around, he said to me, "Everyone, even the telephone, speaks Spanish here." (laughs) I remember laughing at that. But the sound is music, that's all. It's music. And I honestly believe that helped my children with their Jewish feelings, their love of Yiddish. My granddaughter went to Hampshire and she came here for a Yiddish course. My grandson loves Yiddish and studies it and tries to pick up here and 40:00there. They used to bet, when my husband got a telephone call: Let's time it from when he stops English and starts Yiddish. And they loved it. They loved to hear it. And when they hear it, they know it. And I believe it was just monumental in keeping them Jewish.

HO:Going back to you mentioning that your mother's family was involved in theater, could you tell me a bit about that?

LG:Her mother, who was straight off the boat when she married my grandfather, she had two brothers, two sisters. And one of the brothers owned a Jewish 41:00theater in the Bronx. And his wife, I have her biography here. She was Anya Chernyak, she pronounced it. Her maiden name is [Chernuk?]. And she was an actress. And all the Yiddish actors and actresses would come and perform there. And her uncle wrote a lot of plays and I have an unpublished play here that I don't know what to do with. But I had a cousin who once translated it into English. I looked last night for that translation and I can't find it. But I have the play. But that was fun, when my mother used to take us to the theater and we would see the Yiddish actors and actresses and go backstage. That was big 42:00time. (laughs) That was very exciting.

HO:And where was the theater?

LG:It was in the Bronx. And in my childhood eyes, I want to say that it was somewhere near the Bronx Zoo, but I don't know if that's true. It's just what I think I remember, yeah.

HO:What was the atmosphere like behind stage?

LG:It wasn't Hollywood, I'll tell you that. It was just people, milling around and speaking Yiddish. And I remember my bobe [grandmother], I think my zeyde [grandfather] had passed away before I could meet him. But I remember my bobe, my mother's grandmother, this tiny little lady. Not Americanized at all.

HO:What was she like?

LG:She was quiet and everyone took care of her and huddled around her, the same as I saw my husband's mother with the family huddling around and taking care of the mother. Yeah, my mother-in-law was this much Americanized. But she was not at all, my bobe. Yeah, and we just knew her. Just -- I remembered dinners with them. I can't remember if they were holidays or not. Long time.

HO:Yeah.

LG:I'm an old lady.

HO:What were the dinners like?

LG:Oh, all the good Jewish food: chicken soup and chicken and -- always festive. 44:00Festive. It's all gone. And that's why I bless that my children had the chance to see it. And it's all gone now. There's nobody left. And so many times, I want to ask a question and there's nobody to ask it to anymore. And it's gone, yeah. Sad. Very sad.

HO:So, because you can't ask certain people, how do you pass on those stories to your children?

LG:I know more than my brothers. My brothers don't know anything. There's something about the family they want to know, they have to come to me. But I only know so much. Yesterday, I was thinking about my father's mother and I 45:00couldn't remember if she spoke with an accent. I know she was born in Europe. I know my grandfather was. But I can't remember. My grandfather was a big -- what's the word I'm looking for? Intimidating man, imposing figure, and we didn't talk to him much. He frightened me a little bit. And so, so many things. And now, my last cousin is gone, and there's nobody. And my sister-in-law is non-speaking -- anymore and everyone else is gone. So, there's really nobody. 46:00Nobody left. But I had it and my kids had it and we tell it to my children, my grandchildren. And it'd be nice if the language came back. It was a beautiful language. It is a beautiful language. Expressive, isn't it?

HO:Yeah.

LG:Oh, they could curse people! My God. (laughs) My aunt used to -- (laughs) she was wicked, the one who brought my mother up. She really was wicked. But she used to say such things. Years later, I found out what they meant and I went, Whoa, whoa! Bobe Annie, bad girl! (laughs) But what an expressive language.

HO:What do you do when you can't think of a word? Could you retell the story you 47:00were telling earlier about trying to figure out the word for bathroom, or if you have any other stories like that?

LG:Well, my aunt married into a family that were Europeans also, and she picked up the language 'cause she lived with her mother-in-law. And so, she's my Yiddish expert. I go to her. What was it? I read something in a book and I didn't know what it was. I had to call her. I forget. Farbre-- something about -- for Passover, if the matzah should touch water or something, there's a word. And I go to her. And I have papers going back because when I was trying to learn Yiddish, I would write down these sentences and find the words however I could. And then, I'd call her and we'd speak in Yiddish on the phone. And we'd just end 48:00up laughing and there were times I stumped her. That bathroom one was classic, 'cause even her mother-in-law didn't know it.

HO:Could you tell it again?

LG:That story?

HO:Sure.

LG:Yeah, I asked her once how you say bathroom and she had no word for it. And so, she called her mother-in-law and she asked her and she said, "Toilet." And I said, "No, that's an American word," or a universal word, whatever. But then, talking back and forth, we figured out that the word, you could use bodtsimer, which is a bath and a room. So, we put that together and she said, "I got a new word," and I taught it to her. And we had so much fun on the phone. I still have 49:00those papers with sentences written down. And it was a lot of fun, yeah.

HO:Do you speak Yiddish with your husband at all?

LG:No. (laughs) But my favorite songs are the Yiddish songs. I was just listening coming up here. And I have him roughly translate for me so I become familiar with the words and I can sing along with the songs. And with that, he gives me the flavor, not just the word. I have a favorite song -- it's "Yas" and Dudu Fisher sings it. And I just love that song. It's so beautiful. And he tells me it's about a little town, Yas. And I said, "Can you imagine the love and the voice for a little town where they eked out a living and it was around them, 50:00surrounded by enemies, and yet they can sing about their little towns with such love? And it's not the earth, it's not the town, it's the community." I said, "Could you imagine ever singing Sharon, (laughs) about Sharon? Or Easton?" I said, "Forget it!" It's not the same, it's not the same. It was that communal togetherness that whatever they had to go through, they go through, but they do it together. And that's what the Yiddish is. It's binding.

HO:Moving on to your children, once you started having children, where did you raise them and how did you raise them with -- or did you emphasize Jewish 51:00identity at all?

LG:Always, always. I raised them in the Bronx. And in the Bronx, almost everyone was Jewish or most of them. And they went to a little shul there, to Hebrew school. And then, we moved. My son was still little and we moved here to Massachusetts. I come from Massachusetts originally. And we moved up to Burlington, Mass. And I had no idea. My mother lived in Billerica. We moved near. So, we moved into Burlington and all of a sudden, we were in a completely non-Jewish area. The stores were non-Jewish. The town was non-Jewish. The people weren't Jewish. And not that they weren't nice. We had some very nice neighbors 52:00in Burlington. And I remember telling my son that he had to go to Hebrew school. There was a small Jewish community in the surrounding town and they had a Hebrew school in the basement of a church. And I remember saying to Michael, he was about eight, I don't know, seven, and I said, "Honey, you have to go here. You'll go to Hebrew school." He cried. He said, "No, I'm not going there. I want to be Jewish." And I said, "You still will be, honey." But he wanted to stay Jewish. And then, we moved out of there pretty quickly because -- it's a funny story -- next to us was a big lot. We lived in a hundred-year-old house that was a farmhouse for that whole area. And of course, it was broken up. And there was 53:00a huge lot next door. And one day, my husband came home from work and there was a huge sign on the lot, "Coming: The Church of Christ." And he drove up the driveway and he said, "We're leaving." And I said, "What?" He says, "We're leaving. Pack up." I said, "What, are you crazy?" He says, "No," and put the house up for sale. And a man bought it and said, "You have to be out in a week." And I did. We packed up three kids and a dog and moved in with my mother in Billerica. And then, we started looking for areas -- you know those little books that say how many temples, how many -- population, how many churches? And we found Sharon and it had more temples than the population. So, we said, That's 54:00where we're going. And we lived there, now, for thirty-two years. And now, we've moved and we live in Norton. But we live in a fifty-five and over complex and most of my neighbors are from Sharon. So, I'm still happy. And those years that we moved to Sharon, the kids went to temple, they went to USY, I remember. Yeah, my son was bar mitzvahed but not my daughters.

HO:How did you feel about that?

LG:Not my daughters?

HO:Yeah.

LG:I don't know. We came from the city and not many people were becoming bat mitzvah in the city. The girls didn't. And so, when I moved there, they went to 55:00USY but they weren't bat mitzahed.

HO:And what was --

LG:And obviously, I was not. My brothers were.

HO:Do you remember their bar mitzvahs?

LG:My brothers? Yeah. I remember them.

HO:What were they like?

LG:Well, my older brother didn't have a party. He just had a bar mitzvah. And he learned from a little teacher in Malden. And my kid brother, David, had a bar mitzvah. I remember he also went to some religious school for a while. And my kid brother had a little bar mitzvah, also from an Orthodox religious school, and we had a party for him.

HO:How were they different from, say, your son's bar mitzvah or your grandchildren's bar or bat mitzvahs?

LG:They were very different. There wasn't any kind of a big (laughs) celebration or thing. Nothing. Just small. My younger brother had a party at the house. Small. But my son had a big bar mitzvah and my grandchildren had big bar mitzvahs, all of them, except Danielle, we went to Israel. So, she became a bat mitzvah in Jerusalem.

HO:And how did that happen that hers was different from everyone else's?

LG:We were going to the Hadassah convention and Susie said, "Gee, why don't we try to get her bat mitzvah there, do her bat mitzvah there?" And we called the Hadassah office, we kind of were friendly with everybody. And they said, Sure, 57:00we'll do it for you. We'll do it at the Belz Synagogue. Luckily, my granddaughter did not care about the function. She said, "I'm burned out with those silly functions. I don't want any theme," she said. "I just want to go and let's do it there." So, she was happy and she did it there. Then, my youngest grandson had a bar mitzvah in Boston. But he did have a theme but the whole theme was Israel. And we did really nice things about Israel for that theme, yeah.

HO:So, when you were raising your children, did you celebrate holidays in a different way than when you were growing up?

LG:Yes, yes. We used to go to my in-laws. They had these long, drawn-out seders. 58:00And I remember going and saying to my kids, "You better behave. This goes on a long time. Nobody can be bad!" But my other sister-in-law had a little one and he was bad. So, they ran around with him while everybody was doing the prayers. It was just the women were talking and the men were doing the prayers. And it was cute, I remember, because in the Bronx, you didn't kind of open your door where you lived, but when you had to open the door for Elijah, (laughs) my mother-in-law used to open the bathroom door. And I said, "You kept him in the bathroom?" (laughs) And that was funny. But they were very lively talking -- the men were serious. They were doing it. But the women, no, now we do it 59:00differently. Now we all read, all of us. But it's fun. It's still fun. One year, I had all the children -- my grandson was in charge of the plagues. And he bought real stuff, frogs and every -- I said, "Don't you dare let 'em out on the table!" But we did that. And this year, with everyone grown up -- my youngest grandchild is in the -- what do you call it? Not the Army, the National Guard, and he's twenty. But I went into Hannaford, which is not particularly a Jewish store, but they had a package of masks and each mask was for a plague. And they had these cute little things on them, and I said to my husband, "I'm going to buy them and give each kid a mask." And he said, "What are you talking about? 60:00They're twenty, twenty-seven, twenty-six," and he wouldn't let me do it. And I'm still angry about it. Oh, yeah, the kids, every holiday, they used to make up a play. They'd go up in my room and raid my closet and put on all these things to make -- they were Joseph with the rainbow coats, and they used to come down, all six of them, and do a play for all of us. It was so cute. So, we really celebrate the joy of Judaism, really. And because my husband lived through the Holocaust and had many family who did, they know about that. But people say, No, 61:00it's so sad, what are you gonna tell them? The stories? But they know about it. They know very well about it. My grandson is working in Israel now and Susie spoke to him the other day. And he said, "No, I'm taking" -- he's a madricha [Hebrew: counselor] for a group of American kids. He says, "We're going" --- to some kind of a Holocaust program. So, they know but they still see the joy in Judaism. And it's nice, isn't it?

HO:How have you and your husband passed on the importance of Yiddish to your children or grandchildren? Or have you found that that's something that you want to pass on?

LG:Yeah, well, he keeps it alive. They're always asking him words and things. And I remember we got a little -- I think you sell it here, the little magnets with the Yiddish on it. And I would make sentences and they would come in and 62:00say, Ah, grandpa's playing cards tonight! So, they see it and they know it and they hear it and they love it. They love the Jewish music. And as a matter of fact, my granddaughter, for her wedding in July, is having a klezmer band. So, she's hooked in. That's nice.

HO:What do you think is the significance of Yiddish for people today and for people a generation before? How do you see the role of Yiddish?

LG:I see it historically. I mean, not everyone has the background that I do or my children do, having second-generation Holocaust survivors. They don't have 63:00that. They didn't know it. So, I think that Yiddish is important because it -- how do you say it? It's a history. It's a history of our people, all over the world, that had this common language. And it's expressive. It's more than just words. It's a feeling in the language that tells the history of our people, of our -- I mean, how far can many -- I'm touching the phone! How far can many people go back? Let's see, I was a second-generation American. Now you have third and fourth and fifth-generation Americans and sixth and seventh. And they 64:00don't know. They haven't heard that expressive language, talking about the times and knowing what happened. And I think it's a sense of history. And as I said before, it's belonging and a community, a whole community. It's not just people from Poland or Germany. There's people all over the world that spoke Yiddish and were able to belong to that community.

HO:How do you pass on that sense of community and history and all of that? How do you see that being passed on?

LG:You love it, you try to -- it's different. I don't know if my English is correct in how I want to say this. There isn't another people on this Earth with the history of our people. There isn't. People are gonna say slaves and this and that. And yes, it was terrible. It was worse than terrible. But there is not a people like our people that came up and -- when we were doing the seder this year, I stopped it in the middle, which I do a lot, and they go, Here comes grandma again! And I stopped them and I said, "Who today is the pharaoh, is 66:00Haman? Who today?" And one said, "Syria." And I said, "And Ahmadinejad? Is he our pharaoh and our hero?" So, what you're reading, the Exodus, is true to this day. There just isn't another people with the history of the Jewish people and that is something you need to keep and have, and have it inspire you. And what a wonderful people. We're still here. We're still here. Yeah. And that inspiration that can come from people, that can come through those things, and come up and 67:00be what we are today in a country that we've got? I'm getting chills just to think of that. And Hebrew is a miracle. But go back to Yiddish. Go back to Yiddish, to our people before Israel was a state, before they could go to Israel. And people that, if you read and know, people that met in the camps from all over the world but they could understand each other because they spoke some Yiddish. Yiddish was the universal language. It's just an amazing, amazing 68:00history that no one else has. You don't discard something like that. You just don't. You don't discard it. Is it right to say don't assimilate it? You can do whatever you want with your life, but don't discard this history of ours, because it makes you what you are today. It makes a certain -- because we know it's not everyone -- a certain acceptance today for Jews. Look how hard -- look what we've come through and look where we are. Two percent of the population, two percent of the world, and we're still the biggest thing (laughs) in the 69:00newspapers, in the reporting. We're still the biggest thing. And I just read an article at Hadassah hospital that they're doing cell -- and they're able to change the pattern of macular degeneration. This is Jewish people doing this. This is what we give the world, we -- tikkun olam [Hebrew: repairing the world], it's true. We do save the world in so many ways. And everybody has to take pride in that and feel it. That's because that's what -- oh, I get dramatic. The kids all say to me, Grandma -- but they love it. They do love it, yeah.

HO:You mentioning Hadassah reminded me: can you tell me a bit about how you got involved with them?

LG:With Hadassah?

HO:Yeah, and about --

LG:Years ago, I had gone to a few -- many years ago -- to a few Hadassah meetings. And I kind of wasn't happy with little parlor meetings with some of the women and I just didn't go back. And then, my mekhuteneste [son-in-law's mother] gave my daughter a life membership in Hadassah. Now, I remember that my grandmother, my father's mother, she lived in Everett, and after she passed away, I had her wallet for some reason. And I can remember a card in there for life membership in Hadassah. And then, Susie went to this -- couple of Hadassah 71:00meetings and she came back and she said to me, "Mummy, you really should go. These are nice women and they're so strong about Israel." And so, I said, "Okay, I'll go." And I went and I was hooked. I mean, Hadassah was my cup of tea. And if I wanted to volunteer and give any money or anything, I wanted it to go straight to Israel. The other organizations are wonderful, but I didn't want to give it to all these different things. I wanted my money to go to Israel and that's what it does. And Hadassah is wonderful. I've learned so much from them and they helped me learn more about Judaism because I did not grow up strongly 72:00with it. And they just helped a lot and I think that organization is tops, just tops. It's a warm, comforting thing, too, Hadassah. It's a very warm place to be, yeah.

HO:How long have you been involved with them now?

LG:Little over fifteen years, I think. Over fifteen years. Been to Israel with them. I've been to Israel maybe about nine times.

HO:Yeah, could you tell me a bit more about your interest in Israel?

LG:My interest in Israel? It's my home. The first time I went to Israel -- my husband, for our twenty-fifth anniversary, arranged a trip. And we had never been, but my kids had been. All my kids, I sent. And so, we went. And the story 73:00I tell is that when we got to the hotel, my husband said, "I'm exhausted, I'm gonna take a nap." And I said, "You're crazy. I'm in Israel. I am not napping and neither are you." And I dragged him out. We were in Tel Aviv. And we walked up and down Dizengoff Street and my eyes were seeing all the Hebrew and everything. It was amazing. And finally, I couldn't walk anymore and I said, "I need a cold drink." So, we sat down and when I sat down, the only way I can describe it is, did you ever see, if you're in the house or at a party and the music is blasting and you're not really paying attention but you feel yourself 74:00keeping up with that kind of rhythm? And I sat down and it was quiet on Dizengoff Street. And all of a sudden, I felt like somebody shut off the radio. And then, when you hear the silence, you go, Oh! You don't even know that you feel that wound up until they shut the radio. Well, when I sat down on Dizengoff Street, I immediately felt like somebody shut something and I was at peace. I was just -- and I started to cry. And I said, "I didn't know that I wasn't at peace. I didn't know until I came here." And I just love that country so. And I remember going home and I was crying, leaving. I had met all the relatives and 75:00we had a wonderful, wonderful trip. And I was crying. I cried the whole trip. One relative said to me, said to my husband in Yiddish -- we were walking in a mall and I was crying. I started to cry and he said, "She's so happy to shop she's crying?" And I said, "It's not that. It's just seeing what has been accomplished in this country." I'm in a mall, for goodness sake, in wherever it was, I don't remember, and seeing what they've done, and I'm just so full of pride. And when I was going home and getting on the plane, I was crying. And a steward came up to me and he said, "Are you okay?" And I said, "Um-hm." And he 76:00said, "Why are you crying?" And I said, "Because I'm leaving." And he was so good to me the whole trip back. And that's it. When I got back and I came to the airport and had to check in, they looked at my passport and the woman said, "Oh, you were in Israel. I bet you're glad to be home." And I said, "No, I was home." I said, "Now I'm just back." Well, she just gave me a look.

HO:Since you've traveled to Eastern Europe, you've been to Russia, and you've traveled extensively to Israel and you've lived most of your life in America --

LG:Um-hm. And sometimes, my husband gets annoyed with me because -- you know, if I had a lot of money -- and now I have time, but before I didn't have time -- 77:00but whenever I have the time and the money, I just want to go to Israel. I don't want to go anyplace else. Nowhere. Just Israel. And now, I'm afraid. I'm getting old and it's not so easy to walk. And I said, "It can't be that I've had my last trip there." But I think, in 2012, I am going to go -- Hadassah's gonna be a hundred years old and I want to go to Israel on the convention. Hadassah is treated like royalty in Israel. It's wonderful. So, yes, I always said if I had gone to Israel before my children -- one daughter was married, one was engaged -- I would have wanted to pick them up and move there. But once they were on 78:00their own -- they could leave me, which my grandson did. I can't leave them.

HO:How do you see the different cultural identities, I guess, of Jews there? How do you fit your identity into American Judaism or Israeli Judaism or Russian -- how do you see yourself in that?

LG:Israeli Judaism is a little different. They're Israelis and they know it and they're Jewish and they know it. And that's it. Here, in America, you have to work at it. You have to practice it. I have a girlfriend, she's my best friend and all her children, three of them, anyway, have married out. And she always 79:00says to me, How does it happen? But she lived most of her married life way up in New Jersey where there was not a Jewish community. None of their friends were Jewish. And just recently -- she has two grandsons that are Jewish. The rest are not. And just recently, I went there for a bar mitzvah, her first, with all her grandchildren. And we went Friday night to services and it was nice. I don't know all the prayers and everything, but I love to sit in temple. And I could see her getting antsy and upset and she turned around and she said to one of her children, "It's not usually as long as this. This rabbi is impossible." And she's like, making excuses instead of paying attention. They were giving out 80:00awards for Hebrew school and everything. You can sit through that; it's not terrible. And she wonders why her children are not Jewish. And I don't understand that. And then, at the little party that they had afterwards, I said, "Does Danny and Elise take -- are they active in the temple?" She said, "No." And I said, "Will he continue with school?" She says, "Are you kidding? He's out of here today." And she goes along with it. So, I say you have to work at it. It's worth it. Don't throw it away for goodness sake. Don't throw it away. It's 81:00meaningful. It's important. (knocking on door) I think we're done. (laughs)

HO:No, we still have fifteen more minutes. I don't know what they're doing, but I still have more questions for you.

LG:Oh. Anyway, (laughter) I think that that's the difference. In Israel, there are so many secular -- but they know they're Jewish and they live it. And here, you need to do it. You need to work at it. And that's the difference I see.

HO:Yeah.

LG:In Russia, it was something to hide, to do on the side, or to not do. They knew what they were. But I think one of my nephews from Russia had a bar mitzvah. I'm not sure. I think he did. There was a picture of him with a tallis. 82:00So, they were able to do some things, but not openly. And that was hidden and that's a shame. But they're all in Israel now.

HO:And what do you see as the future of Yiddish, either within or outside of Judaism?

LG:Well, I've been reading that there is a surge of people wanting to learn Yiddish. And hopefully, that's coming back. I don't know. I would like to be hopeful, but I don't know. People just want to partake of so many different things and that's low on the list.

HO:What would you tell people to make them want to learn it?

LG:I would tell them that there's a whole bunch of stuff to know about who you are and what you are and where you've come from. If you learn that language, it's gonna tell you. It's like reading, I think -- if you pick up and you read -- what's the word? Or you watch on television a documentary, that could be boring. But if you read a novel with the history in it -- I don't know if I'm expressing it correctly. But that's the difference I see with Yiddish, that it's personal. It's personal and it's warm and it's expressive. And it's not dry like 84:00reading. It's not. It's not a dry language. It's fun. It's really a fun language. And people would be surprised at how many Yiddish words creep into the American language.

HO:So, we have about ten minutes left. Are there any stories that I didn't ask the right questions about so you didn't tell them, but any stories that you would really like to tell? Or anything like a funny story from your childhood?

LG:From my childhood?

HO:Sure.

LG:Only that my parents didn't want us to understand what they were saying.

HO:What would they do?

LG:They would speak Yiddish. (laughs) But they never allowed me to embrace that, 85:00except the cadence, the sound. I can read Yiddish transliteration and get the right sound and accent. What was it, that team, Stiller and Meara, the comedians. He once said to her something about Hanukkah and she said, "Hanukkah." She couldn't get the "Ch" and he said, "No! 'Ch, ch,'" and he was going like that. And then finally, she sort of blurted out, "Hanukkah!" She said, "Oh, I hurt myself." (laughs) That made me laugh. It's funny. It's the sound I get, the sound and the words, yeah.

HO:Do you remember when your parents would switch from Yiddish to English and what would always spark that?

LG:I don't remember what would spark that. But I remember my ears perking up because, Oh, there's something they don't want me to know. But, no, I don't remember.

HO:Did you and your brothers ever figure out anything that they were talking about? Could you ever --

LG:No.

HO:-- couldn't trick 'em?

LG:Couldn't do it. (laughter) Couldn't do it. It's funny, when I try to say something now, I'll try to say something to my husband so whoever is in the house at the time doesn't understand. But he just ends up laughing at me. It's a mixture of some Yiddish, some Hebrew, whatever I can get in there. But we love to listen to him. I just love to listen to him speak Yiddish. He doesn't do it 87:00much. They forget, yeah. So, he's got a couple of people where we live now that speak Yiddish, so he can do it a little bit. But it was amazing. That was his mother tongue. And when I met him, I had no clue because he didn't have an accent. And the rest of the family does, very heavy accents. So, yeah, funny things. When I started to be friendly with his sister, I remember I was having something to eat at her house and I said, "Can I have a fork?" And she said, "What?" And I said, "A fork." And I saw her do this to her husband and I said, "What?" And she turned around and she said to him, "I told you that's not a dirty word." (laughs) And I didn't realize how they were only here -- if my 88:00husband came in '49 or '51, I can't remember which year, but we got married in '57. He was just here for eight years. So, where he didn't have an accent 'cause he grew up on the street in the Bronx -- but they did and they weren't so far from that. Many, many, many different stories, but they're mostly about my in-laws. I remember that my father and mother-in-law were visiting one of the uncles that brought them here that had been here from the '20s. And his wife spoke English and she spoke Yiddish, too. But she was sitting next to my father-in-law and she kept saying, "Listen, listen!" And then, they'd speak in 89:00Yiddish. And then, again, she'd say, "Listen!" So, when he came out, he said, "In English, my name is listen," because his name was Moishe but she was telling him to listen. So, I remember laughing at that, and I remember my sister-in-law said she went into a fruit store and she asked for a pound of poison and the man just looked at her. And she showed him, and he said, "Onions." And she said, "Oy." Her son went to pick one up and somebody said, "Don't touch it. It's poison." So, she called it poison. They were funny, those stories. My in-laws were adorable, they really were. And always some tensions, but I came to really 90:00love them. And they were adorable. The one English word my mother-in-law learned very well was condominium and that used to make me laugh.

HO:Why was that the one?

LG:Because she spoke Yiddish all the time but that big word, condominium, she knew. So, she used to shop by picture. She knew the picture on the package that my husband liked a certain cookie. But she was not English-speaking. And she called me "oytser."

HO:All right.

LG:Yeah.

HO:Well, thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]