PAULINE KATZ ORAL HISTORY

LESLEY YALEN:This is Lesley Yalen, and today is May 6th, 2011. I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, with Pauline Katz, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Pauline, do I have your permission to record this interview?

PAULINE KATZ:You do.

LY:Great. Thank you. So, tell me about how you learned Yiddish.

PK:I learned Yiddish in a very unusual way. My parents, who did not grow up speaking Yiddish, took Yiddish classes in Boston and decided that it was 1:00important to them that their children speak Yiddish. So -- not immediately. My mom apparently was hounded by many friends of the family for nine months (laughs) to speak Yiddish with her daughter. And she did! And I grew up -- they only spoke Yiddish in the house until -- I guess until math started (laughs) and my mom couldn't help me with arithmetic in Yiddish. But, yeah, Yiddish was the language of the home. S'iz take mayn mame-loshn [It's really my mother tongue].

LY:So how did your parents learn Yiddish well enough to do that? How long did they study?

PK:That is beyond me. My dad grew up with Yiddish in the house, that his grandfather and grandmother were both Yiddish writers, and that was just around. It was what they knew. But he's terrible with languages. So (laughs) they didn't 2:00speak Yiddish exclusively, or Russian, for that matter. So it wasn't a part of Yiddish language. Yiddish culture, very, very important; Yiddish language, not so much. But he does understand a lot better than he speaks it. In my mother's house Yiddish was not spoken, but they did send her to the Workmen's Circle shule [secular Yiddish school]. And so she learned Yiddish there and especially learned Yiddish songs, and loved them -- and when they moved to Boston, decided that she wanted to know what she was singing. So they took Yiddish classes, and as far as I can tell -- maybe they only had, like, two or three years of Yiddish; I'm not sure of how much Yiddish instruction they had. But what happened was there were no more levels. (laughs) And their class was sitting there going, Uh, what do we do now? So they happened to have a house in Somerville, same house that I grew up in -- and they invited people to the house 3:00once a week to shmooze and have a leyenkrayz [discussion group] and all sorts of stuff, that by the time I was born -- or actually when I was born it was still once a week. When they had more children (laughs) or whatever happened it became once a month. But it happens that I was born on a Sunday, and this group would meet on Monday. And apparently all Monday they were getting calls from people that -- all the men would call and ask if they're still having vinkl [group, lit. "corner"], and my parents would say yes. And all the women would call and ask if we're having vinkl, and is it with or without a baby? (laughs) So apparently my mom would answer the door with her one-day-old in her hands and then got a little tired and went to sleep. And then apparently I stayed and hung out with all the Yiddish speakers that -- yeah, this group, I guess that's how 4:00their Yiddish continued to get better.

LY:So how did it feel to be raised in Yiddish?

PK:I don't know. What's funny -- I don't think I ever really saw it as something very different -- yeah, I don't know. Apparently when I went to preschool that was where I first learned English. And my mom sent me to preschool along with a glossary of words that I knew in Yiddish for the teachers to -- like, if I was very upset or something, to try and understand what's happening. And I never thought about the fact that I was the only Yiddish speaker. I was the only Jew 5:00in my classes in public school. It didn't seem like -- it was just another part of that whole world, that I'm slightly different than everybody else. But it wasn't, Oh, makes me Yiddish special different. And I also had -- my Yidish Vokh friends, they all grew up speaking Yiddish. It wasn't a very odd thing. And a lot of my friends in especially high school -- middle school and high school, spoke other languages. So why shouldn't I speak another language? It just makes sense.

LY:Did friends ask you about it when you were young, and -- about what is this language that you're speaking?

PK:Kinda. I just remembered something. I used to go to the YMCA day school, and I was convincing this other little girl that I was an alien. And (laughs) I 6:00don't know why, but she didn't believe me. So finally I needed to speak in my alien language, and of course I chose Yiddish. And the planet that I was from was called "Perl," my name in Yiddish. There was a moon surrounding it, "epl," "apple." I don't know. I mean, I definitely loved that I spoke another language, and I used that. But, yeah, it wasn't -- I don't know. (laughs)

LY:It was like a special language between you and your family.

PK:Yeah. But I also -- I did love -- and I still do love -- I love to go shopping and speak Yiddish with other people from the Book Center, just in general. I love having the chance to notice people and talk about them, (laughs) just whatever, in this language that no one else understands. And it gets very 7:00funny because then I'll be at Yiddish Break. I'll be sitting there, and I'll want to say something to the person sitting next to me about someone else, and then I'll realize, Nope, can't use Yiddish. Everyone speaks it here. (laughs) But yes, it definitely was this language that I got to play in and play with people with.

LY:So tell me about the Workmen's Circle community that you've been involved with for so many years.

PK:Yeah. It's been -- apparently my mom's been running a Warsaw Ghetto Uprising thing with the Workmen's Circle since I was a baby. So I guess that was my introduction to the Workmen's Circle. But I'd say shule that I went to, the shule in Boston, from kindergarten through seventh grade. And it was wonderful. 8:00I learned about Yi-- Jewish holidays, but I learned about them with that twist to it. I learned about -- I mean, fifth grade -- it's still part of the curriculum -- learning about sweatshops. And then when I was in fifth grade -- it started with the sixth graders -- a protest against some company in Boston area, where we'd arrange a protest against this company that uses child labor. That's changed; now it's more about labor in general and going beyond sweatshop labor and into things that are happening in the United States right now. But it's still a part of what's there. And other things -- after shule I graduated and joined TASC, Teens Acting for Social Change, which was also part of the Workmen's Circle. And here was a chance to, again, learn more about organizing, learn about being a progressive Jew -- and in some case not (laughs) being a 9:00progressive Jew, just being a person who cares about these values and feels that it's possible to change the world. Yeah, the Workmen's Circle -- I still go back and substitute teach or just go do things with the New York branch and work with these amazing kids who just get it, or that -- I mean, if they're at the Workmen's Circle shule, I think their parents are doing something also to guide them in these directions. But they're so interesting and interested in making a better world. So yeah, the Workmen's Circle has been a very big part of -- apparently that's where my first Yiddish classes were, my official Yiddish classes, that my parents and a couple other parents got together and hired a 10:00Yiddish teacher, and we would meet at the Workmen's Circle, and we would do Yiddish classes and have kinder-vinkls [children's groups].

LY:So what is the shule like just on a practical level: how often do you meet, where do you meet, what is it like?

PK:It was every other Sunday-ish, and at ten thirty in the morning -- which was so early, so not okay. I wanted to sleep in -- for all of two and a half hours. (laughs) It seemed like it was the longest thing in the world. And we got bagels in the middle because, Gvald [Wow], how could children go two and a half hours without bagel and shmirkes [spreads] and cream cheese? I just remember my class was, I think, fourteen people, and we were all very close. I think of the 11:00fourteen, six of us all went to Camp Kinderland and were very, very close from that. And shule was like a mini camp reunion every two weeks. We would meet at the Workmen's Circle in Brookline, and it's still where it meets. It actually -- it's fun. I was just there last Sunday, and not much has changed at all. It's still this building that I feel like I grew up in. We had chorus there. My parents also run a Yiddish Sing, where people just get together and sing Yiddish songs and -- my brother and I used to play in the other room and do our homework (makes air quotes and laughs) as everyone's singing in the other room. Yeah. It was definitely my playground.

LY:It sounds like it also really shaped your Jewish identity.

PK:Oh yes. Yes.

LY:How so, do you think?

PK:It was the only Jewish community that I was aware of that -- preschool I had was a religiously Jewish preschool, so I had friends from that who were religious, but that didn't happen in my home. And a lot of the stuff, the -- I mean, Shabbos in general, the only place that I have any connection or understanding of that comes from preschool friends. And that was different, or that wasn't what I felt comfortable in because it's not what happened in my house. And with the Workmen's Circle we would celebrate the High Holidays 13:00together as a community. We would celebrate Passover together as a community. And here I suddenly have people my age who are doing the same thing, that their families don't do that stuff either, but we do consider ourselves very Jewish, that we could band together and try and understand what we were doing differently from everyone else. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we would -- the Workmen's Circle does their own services, and we rent out a church because Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur never fall on a Sunday. Group of kids that would always sit together up in the balcony and go through these services and in this very, I don't know, community way that allowed me to grow up with other people who were 14:00being Jewish in the same way, as opposed to public school, where I was the only Jewish kid. And I feel like having the Workmen's Circle and having the shule classes and the other friends and just the information there and available, I took that to public school and taught all my friends about Passover and about Rosh Hashanah in the weird way that I was doing it. But with an understanding of the fact that it was weird, that I knew that this isn't what religious Jews are doing all over the world, but this is what I was doing. And I was gonna tell people about that.

LY:It sounds really nice.

PK:Yeah. It was.

LY:And it sounds like a lot of your Jewish identity was very intimately tied up with progressive politics --

PK:Very.

LY:-- through the Workmen's Circle.

PK:Yeah. We'd talk about Tikkun Olam. We would talk about -- in the seder it 15:00says that you need to feel as if you were personally liberated from Egypt. Well, if you were just liberated from Egypt, how about the person who is now being liberated in Egypt? That there are these amazing holidays, and there are these amazing traditions to traditional Judaism, but at least the Workmen's Circle or the feeling that I get is that we need to now recognize what that's saying. Just saying the words is not enough. And especially if you don't understand what the words are saying -- that, like, the three-day Jews of Yom Kippur, Passover, and Rosh Hashanah -- it's not enough. You need to know what it is that you're celebrating and what it is that you're fighting for, that -- I mean, there's so 16:00much that -- the cup shouldn't be happy at any Jewish event. There is suffering in the world. And yes, you can relate it to the Temple was destroyed, but you can also say, While there is suffering, no one should be unequivocally happy -- that that is such an amazing progressive idea coming out of traditional Judaism. I feel that it's completely Jewish to have progressive values.

LY:And it seems like Camp Kinderland was another big part of that and part of forming your Jewish identity.

PK:Yes. (laughs) Big time. Although in a very different way that -- I mean, Camp Kinderland -- I grew up with the history of Camp Kinderland, of the communist versus the socialist Kinder Ring, which my mom went to (gasps) a mixed marriage.

LY:So tell us about that a little.

PK:Okay. (laughs) Well, basically, Kinderland and Kinder Ring used to be one camp. The Workmen's Circle camp was Camp Kinderland. And in the '20s there was another major split in the Communist Party, which became the communists and the socialists, and a lot of the communist members of the Workmen's Circle were kicked out. And through lots of different tellings of the story, somehow the communists ended up keeping the camp. And the Workmen's Circle still wants to have a summer camp because they want to help their kids get out of the city for the summer. And they find a piece of land right across the lake from Camp Kinderland, and they form it Kinder Ring. And there are these two camps that absolutely hate each other. And this gets very, very bad in the '50s. It gets worse -- it goes back and forth. Camp Kinderland moves in the '70s and 18:00eventually reaches its home in Tolland, Massachusetts, where it is now. And a lot of -- I mean, the campers today barely know about Kinder Ring and Kinderland fights. The Kinderland still has a shule that isn't connected with the Workmen's Circle shule, but they work together all the time, that -- I mean, there's just this understanding that raising children progressively is important -- Jewishly progressively -- is important. But growing up I thought that Kinderland was the Workmen's Circle camp because all of my friends went to Kinderland. None of us went to Kinder Ring. But, um -- camp was a little different. We had a Yiddish word of the day. That it was Jewish very differently than shule was. That we 19:00didn't talk about Jewish holidays. The only time that we really talked about Jewish things was around Holocaust commemoration. But still it wasn't specifically Jewish. We would talk about anybody who rose up and fought. We would talk about anybody who was a hero of the, uh -- of the Holocaust, I guess. But besides the Yiddish word of the day there was very little that was specifically Jewish. And camp, I think, worked hard to do that, that there was this idea that if we're promoting diversity, then camp should be diverse. And so while it is a traditionally Jewish camp, it's definitely not a "Jewish camp," or only Jewish camp, only for Jews. But the progressiveness and the education 20:00around movements was huge. I mean, we would have the Peace Olympics. And my first year I remember -- I guess the theme of the summer was youth groups? So it was SNCC, Young Lords, Soweto, and then my team was the Brigadistas. And there was -- it's a normal color wars event where camp breaks up into four different teams; they each get four different colors. But, speaking as a counselor, you make sure that your campers know they are not on the red team. (laughs) They are on the Brigadistas, which happens to wear red. And the Brigadistas -- I was eight, so I think I might butcher this, but I believe that it was a spreading literacy movement in one of the Latin American countries; I don't remember which one. But it was -- I vividly remember -- I was part of the cultural presentation 21:00at the end, that -- the whole thing lasts three days, and there is sports, but there's also cheering. And all these cheers that we would come up with, and -- on the last day you have a presentation where your team shows the other three teams what your team was all about. And I remember it started with someone coming out and giving a, like, two-second, really, really, really fast explanation of who the Brigadistas were. And they're about to walk off when I, being the young voice, jump up, and I said, "A Briga-- what?" And they say, "A Brigadista, the student form of the Alphabetistas." And then I say, "An Alphabe-- what?" And at that point I never remember the rest of it because one of the other counselors would just start laughing hysterically, every time, and I didn't get what was so funny. (laughs) But -- I mean, it was so amazing. The 22:00cheers were amazing. We had SNCC, and their cheer was (chanting) "The Student! Nonviolent! Coordinating Committee!" And that was it. They would just say that over and over again. But later that year I'm learning in fourth grade about the civil rights movement. And on my test it says, "What does SNCC mean?" And I was just sitting there going, (chanting) "The Student! Nonviolent! Coordinating Committee!" that -- I knew this. Yesterday I was passing the Haymarket in Northampton, and it just popped in my head: when Haymarket was a team, they'd go, (singing) "Haymarket. Someone's calling your name. Haymarket. I think I heard it again. You're wanted in Haymarket Square. If they're fighting for eight hours, I'll be there." It was just crazy. You know, here we are at summer camp, 23:00and playing soccer, and you've just won a goal, and all of a sudden your team starts chanting that as the, Yay, we just scored a goal? It's nuts! I don't know. There's so much beyond the Olympics that talks about what culture is and what is important to us. And it might not be important to your family for generations, but it's kind of this idea that this was the type of camp -- even if we are not speaking Yiddish at camp, the founders were. We are going on with the spirit of what they were doing. And it's pretty exciting to still be a part of and to have continue.

LY:So how many years have you been involved? And are you still going?

PK:This summer I'm taking my vacation and working at camp for a week. And that 24:00will make fifteen consecutive summers.

LY:Wow.

PK:Yes. I've loved camp so much. It's been -- it's funny. My grandparents had a mini panic attack earlier this year about the fact that they -- who will they be visiting this year? That my brother -- oh, well, my brother will be at camp this summer. But at the time he wasn't sure if he'd be at camp. And we finally figured out that my cousin Jacob will be coming back from Dubai to go to camp, because once camp gets you, you're stuck. (laughs) You even have to fly in from the Middle East to be a part of what is happening at camp. And they've been at least visiting someone at camp for over twenty years, with my oldest cousin Veronica. And both of them went to camp. My dad and his sister went to camp. All three of my cousins went to camp. My brother and I went to camp. And now Yasha's 25:00going to camp, and -- or Jacob. It's been a very big family thing. My grandfather's older sister was there, the first summer the camp existed. That it's been a very important part of our family's history and our lives, that -- he tells stories about camp, about (laughs) during the Spanish Civil War, to teach the kids about what was happening in the Spanish Civil War, they played a huge game of Capture the Flag, where it was the fascists versus the rebels. Now, you don't want the fascists to win this game. So they picked one bunk. Against the rest of the entire camp, one bunk was going to be the fascists. And of course it's zeyde [grandfather]'s bunk. So, (laughs) he apparently -- they, of course, didn't want the fascists to win. But they also didn't want to lose their 26:00kids. So they made this whole plan, and they ended up taking the flag into the lake, which was neutral territory, and (laughs) my grandfather says he remembers Itche Goldberg and other directors of the camp standing on the edge, begging them to please just come back; let's finish this game. And they negotiated terms. And the way I remember it, every Friday they'd have this whole procession that -- at the time, Lakeland, which was the adult side, and Kinderland would get together, and everyone would -- there'd be this whole procession. And they decided that at this procession the bunk of fascists would follow along. They were caught, and now they're on this march of shame through camp. And at the end they realize that they should not be fascists and decide to join the movement -- 27:00which is also still happening at camp. These ridiculously cheesy, wonderful plays would happen, where everybody's working to make change on their own, and it's not working, so they band together, and they rise up and beat the oppressor. That was definitely still goin' on. (laughs)

LY:So, speaking of your family history --

PK:Um-hm.

LY:-- maybe we should talk a little more about that, starting with your great-grandfather on your father's side, Moishe --

PK:Yup. Moishe Katz.

LY:-- Katz. So tell me a little bit about him.

PK:Oh boy. (laughter) I could probably go on forever. I did a project on him for my shule graduation -- we needed to do a year-long project on something to do with Judaism. So seventh grade I devoted to reading up on who this Moishe Katz was. And I made a book about it, and it was all very good and great, and I put 28:00it down. And then for my senior thesis when I graduated from college, I decided, Hey, I should check out my book. (laughs) And I again did a project on my great-grandfather. So this one I think I can get. He was born in Belarus, but they moved to Nikolayev, in the Ukraine, when he was three. And there he gets involved in a lot of -- in 1903 there was a huge pogrom in Kishinev, and the Jewish world was rocked by it. And one of the things that happens is a lot of self-defense movements start popping up. And he and a friend of his decided -- they'd heard rumblings that there would be a pogrom in Nikolayev. And so he and 29:00his friend started a self-defense group. And they had another friend from school who happened to work in a stamp-making factory and made them a stamp, an official-looking stamp, of the Self-Defense League of Nikolayev. And they wrote a letter notifying the town that if a pogrom would occur, they would take action. There would be retribution from the Self-Defense League. And they (laughs) also wrote a letter to the wives of the officials, saying that their husbands would be killed if such an action would occur. So nothing happened. But they also made this huge fuss, that everybody's going, Wait a minute, who's this Self-Defense League? So one of my great-grandfather's teachers apparently came up to him one day and asked him -- or figured that he was involved in this group 30:00somehow and told him that there were a couple of Jewish business leaders who wanted to help supply this self-defense league, and would he arrange a meeting with the leaders -- the leaders of this group who were five kids, basically, at this point, between the ages of fifteen and twenty, I believe. And he says okay. He goes back to the leaders, and he comes back to his teacher, saying, "They've appointed me to be their liaison," and then they were funded. And they would go to the city. They would get guns and just things that they actually would be able to defend themselves, and they would practice shooting in the woods. So the people would be hearing these guns going off and everything, and apparently this turned into a gigantic thing for the rumor mill. And at one point my 31:00great-grandfather hears that there were thousands of people in this self-defense group that have millions of rifles and ammunition, and he just started laughing. But what's amazing is that he writes this all down. And he was a writer for the "Forverts," for all sorts of Yiddish organizations and newspapers. And in the '50s, with McCarthyism happening, he decided, Enough is enough. And he writes a book, "A dor vos hot farloyrn di moyre" -- "A generation that lost its fear." And he talks about in the book that there was all this stuff that was happening in Russia, and it's his personal story of why he became a communist, why he felt that that was the way of getting rid of the tsar, and why he felt that this was 32:00going to be the path for the Jews, that the Jews would be saved through communism. And my grandfather, Lyber Katz, has been translating this, and I used the translation for a lot of my research, for all the different projects. So it's just really neat to be able to point to my great-grandfather and say, "This is what he was doing in his late teens," that I -- I got a yerushe [heritage] going on. (laughs)

LY:So was he in his -- how old was he when he wrote the book?

PK:I don't know. His first grandchild was being born. So yeah. They were -- and my great-grandmother, around the same time, in '53, publishes her book of 33:00children's poetry. And that's been also very interesting because for Yiddish class here at the Book Center I've been reading it. It's been just very interesting because I'll be reading along, and it's this wonderful little story of Marek, who has this great imagination. And then all of a sudden he comes up with this shooting game. They're gonna shoot the fascists. (laughs) And it just felt so out of place. And you keep reading, and this kid Yashka's family was taken away by the fascists, and he was living in the forest all alone for a couple of days until a partisan found him and brought him to the orphanage, and the book just suddenly takes on this completely different tone. And the day that 34:00I read that I called a lot of the (laughs) people in the family. I called my grandparents; I called my parents; I called my aunt and uncle. It was a lot of fun. And they all said, Yeah, (laughs) your great-grandmother was not subtle. You know, this was -- there were older -- it's so interesting to me that they choose the '50s to be talking about this and to be talking about fascism and how you need to fight it wherever it exists and all these different things in the middle of the McCarthy era when they are both very proudly members of the Communist Party. And -- yeah.

LY:Here in America?

PK:Um-hm.

LY:Your great-grandparents were --

PK:Yup. In America.

LY:-- here at the end of their lives?

PK:They came -- oh. That's another intense story. So my grandfa-- I'm still not very clear of how everything happens, but my grandfather and my great-aunt are 35:00both born in the United States. And then in the early '30s -- no, '20s -- in the '20s they go back to Russia -- I mean, to build the State of -- well, actually, to build a state of Israel. Not Israel, but my great-grandfather was part of expeditions to find the Jewish homeland within the USSR, that they are going to be -- I mean, what becomes -- ah! Birobidzha. That they're going to build a Jewish homeland that is communist. And apparently he was in some exhibition that was checking out Siberia. But in the early '30s there's another break within the Communist Party, and the "Freiheit," which my great-grandfather was very, very 36:00involved in, which was the communist magazine in New York -- newspaper in New York -- the treasurer left with some money, or there was something -- the "Freiheit" was in trouble. And my great-grandfather was sent back to the States. Now, he thought this was just gonna be a year, tops. It turns into two. And my great-grandmother Esther says, "I'd like to be near my husband." So she and my grandfather come back to the States. My great-aunt is still in Russia because she was in university. I'm not sure. She might have been married already. That she had a life, and she wasn't going to be leaving it because the family was gonna be coming back within a few years anyway. And the Iron Curtain fell. And 37:00my great-grandfather keeps trying to get back to Russia, through the war, through everything, is trying to go back, trying to go back, that that's where he wants to be. And members in the State Department and people who knew him and knew what was happening in Russia -- that was not public, but they had some idea of what was happening, and they wouldn't let him -- they would block him at every turn every time he tried to go back. And apparently when Stalin's crimes in the big Khrushchev speech, when Stalin's crimes become public, that's when he -- we don't knew if he withdrew from the Communist Party or if he just withdrew and stayed a member, but was no longer active in the Party, -- I mean, hearing that all his friends were murdered by Stalin. And in the '60s, in '61 I think, he went back to Russia, finally, and saw his daughter and had dinner with the 38:00friends of the murdered writers and culture makers and died that night. Because he was an American citizen who died in Russia, they did an autopsy, and they said that his arteries were so clogged they couldn't believe that he would -- been living for six months. Yeah, it was just this thing that he had to do, and then he died.

LY:So how does it feel when you're reading their books now, your great-grandfather and your great-grandmother; what does it mean to you?

PK:It's making me understand my family a lot better. (laughs) Where did all this 39:00crazy, very, very Jewish progressivism come from? It's not that the Workmen's Circle injected it. How did it happen just from the beginning? And it's really fascinating to get this idea of what it was. To have it laid out in the formative years of joining the Communist Party is so fascinating for understanding my grandfather, for understanding my father, for understanding myself. I was a history major, and I think that a huge part of that is because I had my family's history so easily at my fingertips that even if I couldn't read my great-grandmother's writings, I could hear them, that someone could recite them to me, and I would understand them. That it was so easily there, and I 40:00think that's a huge part of why I believe that if you know your history you'll know who you are and where you're going. That there's just something to having my past, yes, in an oral tradition, but also in a very physical, written way, understanding where I come from and who I am. It's amazing.

LY:So speaking of where you come from and where you're going, just want to ask you about what it's been like to work here as a fellow at the Yiddish Book Center, and -- yeah, how that fits in with your life.

PK:It's been amazing. It's been -- growing up I had this huge sense of Yiddishkayt around me and just all this different stuff. And there was this wonderful, very weird bubble (laughs) that, like, I had my different lives, but 41:00Yiddishkayt and Yiddish language was always a part of that, that my parents -- my mom will still speak Yiddish with us and -- not talking about math, but in other ways. And when I went off to school I very specifically went to school with the idea that I was leaving, that I knew that I was leaving that world and going to a world that I knew nothing about, going to the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania. I mean, it was really big. And the thing that I found was lacking was Yiddish. That I had a great time, and I found little progressive havens -- and I had a great time talking to people with very different political views than I did, and then going out and dancing and just having a very good time with people who ideologically we just didn't agree. But there was no Yiddish at all. 42:00And I was coming into Jews who had no interest in Yiddish and Yiddishkayt. And that was also very strange and different, that the people in the Hillel were not interested in Yom HaShoah. They were more interested in having Israel's sixtieth birthday than having a program for Yom HaShoah. And that affected me (laughs) in a big way, to be in this place where Jews didn't care. That I had non-Jewish friends who cared and Jewish friends who didn't. That was just so weird to me that all of my very close friends who politically we don't agree at all started saying, Ts'gezunt [Bless you] when I sneezed, or with each other when the other one sneezed. That they really embraced the Yiddish that I was giving them, but I 43:00wasn't getting back any Yiddish in return. So it's been amazing to come to the Book Center and if I feel like speaking Yiddish today, I can. (laughs) It's been wonderful to just have a place where I don't need to figure out time zone and whether or not my friends in Michigan will be able to talk to me in Yiddish right now, that I can just look over into the next cubicle and start speaking Yiddish. And that has been amazing. Working at the Book Center in general has been wonderful, to be so connected to all these really neat stories, that I've been working on the oral history project and learning where other people come from and learning about how their story is so similar to mine and so different from mine. That seeing people with very different beliefs about Yiddishkayt. And 44:00they have strong beliefs about Yiddishkayt, and it's so exciting to have that conversation -- of course, I'm having the conversation with a computer, (laughs) but it's still very exciting to have a lot of my ideas challenged or -- I don't know, to see what everyone else is doing and everyone else is thinking has been so much fun, to be working on that project.

LY:And what do you see as the future of Yiddish, for yourself or for the world?

PK:Well, I've definitely known for years and years and years that my kids are speaking Yiddish. And actually that's one of the -- there're two -- three -- major things: I'm having kids, they're going to Camp Kinderland, and they're speaking Yiddish. Other than that I'm negotiable. (laughs) But it's just -- I 45:00don't think that Yiddish is dying. I like the Manger quote about Yiddish has been dying for hundreds of years and will die for another hundred years. I mean, people -- just today we were talking about how in the '30s someone's bemoaning how Yiddish is going to be gone; everyone's turning to Polish; Yiddish is going to die. It's not dead. And it's not going to. That there are people in the world who care about Yiddish and care about keeping not just the culture that happened alive but creating new culture. That the klezmorim [klezmer musicians] are going crazy! It's amazing all the Yiddish poetry that's coming out and all of the music that people are creating to go with that poetry, or the rethinkings and recreations of the old stuff is now coming out in a new way. Which is so -- traditional (laughs) that, I mean, that's exactly -- we have the Ansky 46:00exhibition where we're listening to the original recording of a song, and then you're listening to the recording of a more contemporary artist singing that same exact song in this new way. That's been happening all along. And it's so funny to me for people to be saying, like, Well, that's made-up Yiddish culture, that what's happening, what's coming out today isn't real because it's not coming from people who only speak Yiddish. Well, neither did they. (laughs) It kills me every time. I feel like there is so much happening in the Yiddish world. And one of our work-studies who works on the oral history project in post-production mentioned a couple days ago that she's so happy she met me because now I just gave her a little outlet into a couple websites she should check out to find out about Yiddish culture. And all of a sudden she's learning 47:00about all these things that are happening. It is a very exciting world that people still seem to say, Oh, well, it doesn't exist because I have my blinders on, and I don't see it. It doesn't matter if you have your blinders on. It exists. I am living in it. And it's really a lot of fun, that I think that Yiddish culture is very vibrant. I think that -- apparently I now have a couple of followers, that my mom set a really amazing example in raising me and then my brother in Yiddish, and a lot of other people who grew up not speaking Yiddish but learned Yiddish as adults and for whom Yiddish is very important have decided they're gonna do the same, that it's going to take a lot of effort, but 48:00they want to do it, and I think that the more people who decide to do it, the more resources will be out there. We're seeing it with the Yiddish teachers, that everyone's going to share all of the stuff that they come up with because that's the other, to me, defining thing about the Yiddish world: the people who make it want you to have it, (laughs) that there's this amazing sense of, Okay, you want to translate this poem? Let me go way out of my way to help you translate that poem. That it's just so giving. I mean, I'm not saying that the Yiddish world will continue because it will, that we're working towards it, and that work is part of -- is grabbing the new people and bringing them in, and there is a very conscious effort to bring others in and prove to them that they 49:00are more than welcome in this world as well, that this is a Yiddish world fir alemen [for all people].

LY:That's such a positive and wonderful place. It might be a good place to stop for now.

PK:Sounds good.

LY:Thank you.

PK:(laughs) Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]