JIM HOBERMAN ORAL HISTORY

EMMA MORGENSTERN: So this is Emma Morgenstern, and today is June 26th, 2011.  I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, with Jim Hoberman, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project.  Jim, do I have your permission to record this interview?

JIM HOBERMAN: Yes.

EM:  Great.  Thanks.  Okay.  So, can you start by telling me briefly about your family background?

JH:  Sure.  I was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1949.  My parents were also born in New York.  My father's parents were born in -- well, his father was 1:00born somewhere in Bessarabia, the southern Ukraine; came to the United States very early in the twentieth century.  And his mother was born in a -- I hesitate to call it a suburb -- a kind of Jewish slum on the outskirts of Warsaw, called Maków.  And she also came around the same time.  My mother's parents were born in New York, although their parents were immigrants.  So, my grandfather's parents -- his mother came from Slovakia and was Hungarian speaking, and his father came from Bohemia.  I mean, this is obviously still 2:00when the Habsburg Empire is intact.  And my mother's mother's parents came from -- they said -- Alsace-Lorraine.  They were German speaking. 

EM:  Okay.  And what part of New York did you grow up in?

JH:  When I was young, my parents lived in -- I guess then it was Yorkville, East Seventy-Seventh Street.  You know, the Third Avenue L was still up.  It was basically a Czech and Hungarian neighborhood.  And they had gotten this apartment from cousins of my mother who were Viennese and who had stayed with 3:00her family right before the war.  In other words, you know, they had found relatives in the US who sponsored them in 1938.  And then they had gotten us -- they knew about -- they found these neighborhoods and so on.  They got this apartment, and my parents got it after they moved out.

EM:  Okay.  And who did you grow up with?

JH:  My parents, and I have a younger sister.  And by the time she was born we had moved to Queens.

EM:  Okay.  What was Queens like at that time?

JH:  Well, we lived in a very new housing development called Fresh Meadows, which was constructed by Metropolitan Life Insurance, the same people who developed Stuyvesant Town.  And in fact, my parents wanted to get an apartment in Stuyvesant Town, and they were on the waiting list, and they needed to move 4:00because the apartment that we had was relatively small.  And so, they moved out to Queens.  Neither of them could drive, so it was strange to be living out there.  And -- but it was a great place for kids.  I mean, there was a lot of space to run around in and so on.  It was a mixture of three-story apartments.  There were some garden apartments, or duplexes, they were called, and a few high-rise buildings.

EM:  And would you say that you grew up in a Jewish home?

JH:  Well, you know, what I would say is that I cer-- I grew up in a Jewish environment.  The neighborhood was probably half Jewish, half Catholic.  But 5:00the Catholic kids all went to -- virtually all went to parochial schools.  So, the public schools that I went to -- certainly the elementary school and, to a certain degree, the junior high school -- were very, very Jewish.  The elementary school was almost a hundred percent Jewish.  And my parents were secular.  And the only holidays that we celebrated were Passover, which was a big deal, with two seders, one with my mother's family, one with my father's family.  And to a degree, I mean, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  I mean, the schools were closed, though, those days, so there was nothing involved with that.  I went to Hebrew school for a year, but I really was not that interested in it.  And that was my -- I went because most of the other kids I knew were 6:00going, so I was sort of interested in it.  But I didn't care for it.  My parents certainly didn't care.  I never had a bar mitzvah.  I also had to go to school -- I mean, the school was so Jewish that there would be nobody there on these mi-- you know, Simchas Torah, you know, Shavuos, (laughs) there would be -- I would be the only kid in class, 'cause my parents made me go to school.  They were sort of, like, astounded that people were staying home.  And I remember there was an Italian girl, Barbara Denardo.  And so, we'd be the only kids on these holidays throughout junior high school.  So, if you ask what my Jewish background was, I -- to me, I had no sense of Jews as being a minority.  I mean, I knew there was a difference between Jews and Catholics.  7:00I was aware of that.  And -- but I was growing up in really a Jewish milieu.  And it's not as if my parents didn't have a Jewish identity.  They did.  I mean, it was something that I was aware of.  My father's mother was an Old World person, and he had lots of relatives that were not particularly observant but still very Jewish.  And -- I mean, it's interesting.  I realized at a certain point that there was not a single religious functionary in either my mother's family or my father's family.  No rabbis, no cantors, no mohels [ritual circumcisers], no shochets [ritual slaughterers], nothing.  But you know, these families were very Jewish.  There also was almost no 8:00intermarriage.  Everybody was Jewish.  So, it's a situation I think that is probably unique to growing up in New York in the 1950s.

EM:  And how did they express their Jewish identity if they weren't religious?

JH:  (long pause) You know, that's -- difficult to describe exactly.  I would say it's part of a gestalt.  I mean, they had a certain worldview, which I think grew out of their identity.  I would say that they both -- both of my parents were politically aware.  By the time I was born, I would put their politics as sort of, like, left New Deal politics.  But they were -- had a 9:00critical view of things.  I mean, they were both -- had an interest in civil rights in the '50s and a sense that there were injustices and inequalities, that I came to associate with a Jewish point of view.  I mean, my father had been in World War II, so he had -- and then actually had been in Germany in the late part of the war -- so I knew about Hitler growing up.  I mean, I knew about the persecution of the Jews.  And also, my mother had this experience with relatives coming over in the late 1930s and staying with her family.  And they didn't have a large apartment, so it was really -- I mean, they just had these foreign people staying with them.  And so, I was aware of that.  And she would 10:00have described them as refugees.  And in the neighborhood, also.  There were a number of people who we thought of as refuges, who were mainly German Jews or East European Jews, who came here after the war, had accents and so on.  I mean, the term "survivor" did not really exist then.  Not the term "Holoc--" -- you know, neither did people speak about the Holocaust.  But I was aware of these things that happened.  And I really don't remember anybody ever sitting down and telling me about them; I just knew about them.  I do remember that during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, when I was about seven years old, but -- that my mother had some kind of response.  It triggered off something in her 11:00as if -- that reminded her of the situation in the '30s.  She said, "Oh yes, there'll be a lot of refugees now coming over."  And in fact there were -- Jews who came from Hungary after 1956.  But as I said, their -- my parents' focus was secular and American.  I mean, I was aware of Israel, too.  I had no relatives there.  I thought that -- I remember thinking that maybe somehow that's where we came from, because I knew it was a Jewish place, but it was not something that anybody, either in my family or my extended family, ever thought of going to.  Everybody was very happy to be in the United States and specifically in New York. 

EM:  Was all of your family in New York?

JH:  Pretty much.  I mean, there were people who moved out.  I mean, I had cousins who moved to different areas.  There were people on both sides of my 12:00family who were -- did various things in the garment industry.  And so, I had an uncle who (laughs) moved out of New York to places where there was no union to set up a little factory -- in Altoona, Pennsylvania, for a while, and then in Hudson, New York.  And my mom had an uncle who moved to Texas.  But everybody pretty much -- I had an aunt; they moved to -- actually, not far from here -- to -- her husband was a chemical engineer, got a job in North Adams, Massachusetts.  But it still was very -- everybody was not only in New York but was in cert-- you know, my mother's family all lived in Brooklyn, and my father's family lived in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. 

EM:  And did you all speak English?

JH:  We did.  I mean, my dad would -- my grandmother would sometimes speak to 13:00my dad in Yiddish.  And -- which I heard.  I mean, I don't think -- I think that he probably understood Yiddish.  I don't remember him speaking to her in Yiddish.  But there was a lot of Yiddish in her -- even in her English and in the ways that she referred to people and so on.  I mean, these characters, you know, relatives -- they sort of -- she uses a kind of Yiddish terminology.  So, I heard that.  And on my mother's side -- actually, my great-grandmother, who was alive during my childhood, I think had kind of learned Yiddish once she was -- grew up -- Hungarian might have been her first language, but she also would speak Yiddish when she felt like it, or some form of Yiddish.

EM:  Can you give some examples of Yiddish phrases you heard your grandmother use?

JH:  (sighs) Well, I remember that there was a relative who she referred to always as der alte, as if that was the -- you know, like, the old guy.  Um -- geez.  That was -- I mean, there were a lot of words that were just used in our family that I never really thought of where they came from, but which were obviously a Yiddish -- derived from Yiddish.  Some of them probably came from my mother's family, which meant that there was some kind of Germanized Yiddish?  I mean, who knows.  But they -- one was -- you know, like the word "shmey-drey [thingamajig]," which sounds like -- I mean, I've asked people about this.  It probably was an American coinage because if you think about it it's, you know, "drey," "to spin," and it's odd that the "shmey" comes first.  It 15:00would be "drey-shmey."  But anyway, the way I heard it was "shmey-drey," which just meant to do something aim-- to be aimless.  To be an aimless child, you know, like hanging around.  That would be something -- "What are you shmeydrey--"  And they could turn it into, like, a verb.  "What are you shmey-dreying around the house?"  But -- I mean, certainly terms like "nosh" and things were just used as if that was normal English, without any -- there was another term also applied to kids that my mother used, and she pronounced it, "ausgelösn [German: dissolved]," which is a kind of German word.  I mean, it would be -- in Yiddish, it would be something closer to "oysgelosn [melted]."  But it's something that's like a kid -- when a kid goes wild, you know, is acting too -- being obstreperous.  So, I don't know where -- we thought of these things as family words, basically.  That's how it was explained to me.  I didn't think that much about it, to tell you the truth.  16:00It just was there.  It was interesting to me when my grandmother was speaking to my father in a foreign language.  But it's hard for me to remember specifically what she would have been talking about.

EM:  Okay.  So, I know you're a film critic. 

JH:  Um-hm.

EM:  When did you first become interested in film?

JH:  (sighs) Well, probably -- I mean, I always liked going to the movies as a kid.  I think that the first movie that I really took seriously -- or let's say I got -- I started getting interested in movies in a serious way, I guess, when I was a young teenager.  I would say that "Dr. Strangelove" is the first movie that I actually went to see a second time because I was so interested in it.  And then, when I was in high school I really got interested.  I used to take 17:00the -- go into the city, Manhattan, and go to the Museum of Modern Art and other revival places and go to the movies a lot.  And that just continued when I went away to college and so on.

EM:  Can you tell me a little bit about college?  Where did you go to school?

JH:  Yeah.  I went to -- well, then it was called Harpur College, and then while I was there it became the State University of New York at Binghamton, and now they call it Binghamton University, which is -- I can't think of it that way.  And it was a state school.  I was a bright kid, but I was not a very diligent student.  I was interested in what I was interested in.  And that wasn't necessarily school.  But I did very well on the Regents Scholarship exam.  And at that time, that was the entrance exam for the state university.  18:00So, I did so well on that I immediately got -- knew that I could go to the state school.  I had assumed that I was gonna go to Queens College, which is where most of the kids in my neighborhood went.  We didn't live that far from it.  My mother went to Brooklyn College.  City Col-- I mean, that would have been, like, the normal thing to do.  But I got into a state school, and it was -- cost my parents nothing.  And so, I went there.  And that was very interesting too, because that -- I should say that I became -- my consciousness of myself as a Jew was enhanced by being outside of New York, in a paradoxical way.  Even when I was in high school I didn't have -- it's not like all my friends were Jewish.  I mean, particularly in high school, there were other ethnic groups.  The high school that I went to in Queens, Francis Lewis -- Franny Lew is what 19:00they call it now -- was split between Jews, Catholics, who were either Irish or Italian, and African American kids.  Although there was an interesting kind of internal division in the school because there were different degrees that were presented.  You know, academic, general -- different kinds of diplomas -- academic, general, and commercial.  And the academic diplomas were very, very heavily Jewish.  But most -- but, you know, by that time I had -- my friends were all sorts.  And they were -- in particular, I had a number of Irish friends, kids who had gotten kicked out of parochial school, which -- and so they were very interesting.  So -- but when I got to Binghamton, I don't know whether it was the idea of being out in America, which I had never really seen, 20:00and -- you know, Binghamton, New York was a very depressed area.  It actually was -- while I was there, or shortly before, it was included as part of Appalachia.  Robert Kennedy was the senator from New York, got it included.  It was a very depressed area.  Nothing like New York.  And the school itself was kind of not in the -- it was sort of out in the countryside a little bit.  But it was filled with kids from New York and the suburbs, most of whom had never been away from their -- away from home before, except to go to summer camp or something.  And so, there was a very high percentage of Jewish kids there.  And that must have somehow been -- made me think about a number of things.  Also, I met a lot of kids there who were the children of survivors, which was 21:00then that I heard that concept.  There really were a -- or at least I became friendly with an unusual amount of them.  So, I learned about some things from them.  I was very interested in their backgrounds.  In Queens, a lot of the kids that I knew were red diaper babies, were political kids.  And so, I made that association also very -- I mean, I knew a lot of kids who went to these Jewish communist summer camps and so on.  And there was more of that in Binghamton, too.  So, it was paradoxical to have this that -- to get more of this -- and even enhanced Jewish identity outside of New York.  But it never translated into any religious feelings whatsoever.  And never has.  I mean, I have to say that I don't even -- these aren't issues that I ever think about.  I enjoy Passover to this day.  My kids like it.  I mean, I would feel like I 22:00was missing something if I didn't go to a seder.  But it's something else.  It's a historical holiday.  And that's my sense of what Jewishness is for me.  It's a historical construct.  It's a particular tribe that has a certain history.  The history is extremely important, and that's where the identity comes from.

EM:  Can you tell me a little bit about this Passover tradition?

JH:  You mean when I was a child?

EM:  Both.

JH:  Well, you know, Passover is a lot of fun for kids anyway, I think.  I mean, that's -- and I think that that's probably true in general.  And it was fun for me because my mother's family was different than my father's family.  My mother's family -- they were the ones who had this German Jewish component.  23:00And also they were just better off.  I mean, they weren't all German Jews, but there was this element there, and we used to go to my -- I think that the seders were held at my mother's uncle's house.  And they were sort of Reform Jews.  They belonged to -- there were these big Reform synagogues in Brooklyn and that all had these names that to me seemed hilarious, like, you know, Temple Garfield.  They were named after places.  But, I mean, they had these non-Jewish names.  And my mother's aunt was very active in the Sisterhood and so on.  And he was a doctor.  And they had what we would call a private house in Brooklyn.  So, they actually would do, like, a seder, some -- you know, not an Orthodox, but a seder.  And in the meantime, my mother's father was a total skeptic, as was my mother.  So, there was always this interesting back and 24:00forth.  I mean, it was fun for a kid, that this was going on.  And that was -- but that -- and then my father's family was something else.  His mother lived in this -- had an appetizing store.  Oh, that's another way I knew I was Jewish.  My grandmother had an appetizing store, which was the equivalent of a Jewish bodega.  And then, it ultimately became a bodega.  It was just like this hole in the wall in Inwood, New York where she sold smoked fish.  And she would always give us the ends.  So, we always had a lot of smoked fish in the -- when I was a kid.  But she had a small apartment, and -- a one-bedroom apartment.  And the entire living room would be taken up -- she would somehow get these tables together or something like that.  It took up the entire living room.  You couldn't -- everybody was sort of, like, wedged in.  And that would be my father's brother and other miscellaneous relatives, whoever was around.  I mean, it was a much funkier thing.  And that was conducted in Hebrew.  My 25:00uncle would go through the Haggadah, and we used these Maxwell House Haggadahs.  My grandmother, because she had a store, (laughs) had this giant collection of Maxwell House Haggadahs, which I really liked.  I liked the pictures in them.  And it -- you know, it was more -- it was a longer seder.  But on the other hand, they were as -- she would always be in the kitchen preparing everything, doing the whole thing herself.  And as long as she heard something going on, she didn't -- she was happy.  She heard that -- you know, my uncle would be -- Hebrew, and then sometimes my father.  And I remember one time -- and they would skip over stuff.  They just -- they were like -- they did their own version of it.  And I remember one time one of her brothers was there -- my uncle Harry, I think.  And not somebody I know.  I mean, my father 26:00had an enormous family.  He probably had thirty first cousins or something like that.  So, there were always relatives who -- that were turning up that I hadn't known and so on.  And he didn't get it.  He didn't see what they were doing.  He wanted to participate too, but he was so slow and going through this whole thing.  We -- everybody was -- "platsing [bursting at the seams]."  That's a word that my family would have used, my mother would have used.  Just waiting for the -- we thought he was so dumb.  He didn't understand that you can, like -- (laughs) you speed it along.  You keep it going, but you speed it along.  So anyway, I loved this stuff.  I always looked forward to it.  And I liked the contrast of the two seders.  It's not like I preferred one to the other.  I sort of liked that they were so different.

EM:  And how did that evolve when you went to college?

JH:  Well, then I didn't -- I certainly was never -- I mean, if I was home I guess I would have gone.  Then my grandmother moved away -- she gave up her apartment.  She went to stay with her daughter out of the city, and my parents never made a seder.  I think that I got -- probably didn't attend any seders in college.  And then, when I got married, my wife's family used to have something that they called a seder, although to me it wasn't anything like a seder; it was just going there with some relatives on Passover.  So -- you know.  I mean, we used to do that.  It was a family thing.  But when we had our own kids, we just invented a sort of seder -- you know, for ourselves -- which continued, and does continue to these days.  I mean, sometimes we would go to seders at other 28:00people's houses, but we basically worked on something. 

EM:  And what's that one like?

JH:  Well, we made our o-- it's in English, for the most part, except for some of the blessings and so on.  It's -- we made up our own Haggadah, based on a number of things, which is actually not all that unusual.  There are, like, three thousand variants on the Haggadah.  My sister, who lives in Berkeley, had developed something, or she was aware of something.  There was a kind of feminist Haggadah and a progressive one, and we took elements of that.  And I knew people who were Yiddishists by that time, and so I was familiar with the 29:00Bundist Haggadah.  We just -- we created something out of that, which really emphasizes the moral and historical aspects of the -- meaning of the holiday.  With music and so on.  It's fun. 

EM:  Sounds fun.  (laughs)

JH:  Yeah.

EM:  All right.  So, going back a bit to your college days, you studied film and literature as an undergrad --

JH:  Yeah.

EM:  -- you said?  So, can you tell me about that?

JH:  Yeah, I mean, I became a -- I was interested in writing.  And -- I didn't know what else, really.  You know, I liked to read novels.  I mean, I was happy to be a lit major.  It seemed something that could be -- would be fun for me.  Again, I was still a kind of indifferent student.  I was interested in 30:00what I was interested in, and that was -- those were the courses that I liked the most.  I was active in the film society, however.  That was -- but there was no film department.  And then, late in my undergraduate career, a film department was kind of born out of the English department.  And so, I was very -- I was -- I think the first person, or certainly one of the first few people, to graduate with a degree in that.  I just took all film courses for, I guess, the last three semesters that I was there.  And that's how I got my degree. 

EM:  And did you go straight to graduate school?

JH:  I did not.  I went back to New York.  I did a number of things.  I was a cab driver.  I worked for the Board of Water Supply as a photographer.  I 31:00was on unemployment for a while.  I was trying to be a freelance writer.  Did other -- I was a census taker.  I did a bunch of things.  And this was in the early '70s.  It was still possible to live pretty cheaply in New York.  And I was -- had no interest in what you might call a middle-class career.  I mean, I just was not -- I was doing what I was doing.  I was involved in various underground film and theater things and stuff, and I was happy doing that.  And then, at a certain point -- and I don't remember exactly what triggered it off -- I decided to go to graduate school in film at Columbia.  And -- but I was 32:00already -- I was in my mid-twenties or maybe even a little -- late twenties -- when I did that.  And I paid for it myself.  I took out a loan, and I got jobs, and I got a degree from there.  So, that was my graduate education. 

EM:  And was that -- in that interim period, was that when you were a photographer for YIVO?

JH:  Yes.  I had that job -- that was one of the -- that was a work-study job that I got.  And by that time, however, I already had -- Yiddish culture was one of my interests.  And I should say that that was something that -- I was trying to figure out how I became interested in that.  And to tell you the truth, I'm not really sure.  It was one of these things I became aware of, that there was this other language.  I do remember that I had a friend who, instead 33:00of going to Hebrew school, was going to a Sholem Aleichem school.  And got bar mitzvahed in the middle of the week.  And I thought that was very cool.  And this was -- so already -- you know, I was thirteen.  I don't think that -- like, to have made this distinction that he was learning Yiddish, not Hebrew.  I thought that was -- this seemed to be politically more -- I wouldn't have used the word "progressive" then.  But it seemed to be more political.  I mean, the whole thing in -- I have to say that one of the things that was a big turnoff to me about Hebrew school was what I would have perceived -- but again, this is not a word that I would have used.  I don't know how I would have described it.  But it seemed very chauvinist to me, very nationalist.  Very -- and I didn't get it.  I mean, there were all these -- to me, it was all these privileged middle-class kids.  You know, what was the big deal?  I just could not connect 34:00with it at all.  Whereas what my friend was doing just seemed -- the whole thing seemed very interesting.  And in a funny sort of way, more authentic.  But I didn't have enough -- I wasn't motivated enough to tell my parents, "Yes, I want to go to the Sholem Aleichem shule [secular Yiddish school] like Mattie," or something like that.  I wasn't gonna take it that far.  So, I do remember this interest going back to -- very early.  And then, we would sometimes take my grandmother downtown for -- we would always take her -- every other Sunday we would take her out for dinner someplace.  She lived in Upper Manhattan, but sometimes we would go downtown.  We'd go to the dairy restaurants or the Romanian restaurants down there.  Even in the late '50s and early '60s, there 35:00still was a pretty strong remnant of Jewish life in the Lower East Side.  You know, lots of signs in Yiddish in these places.  And so, I always enjoyed that.  I mean, even when my dad -- when we first bought a TV set, we went down to Delancey Street or Orchard Street to buy the TV.  (laughs) So, there was -- I was aware of this other wor-- you know, this Old World that existed there.  And that just was with me.  I saw a Yiddish talkie in 1969 at college because there was a film teacher who showed us one.  And this was, like, so funny to us, so astonishing to see this.  And it was a terrible movie.  It was a real shund [art deemed of inferior quality] movie.  It was "Catskill Honeymoon."  But there's a scene in it where -- so it's one of the last Yiddish talkies ever made, and there's a scene where a number of young women, they're singing a song 36:00about hitching up to Monticello on Route 17.  And it was so delightful because, of course, our school was on Route 17.  We had to drive through Monticello to get there.  I mean, the whole thing was so crazy.  So that -- I was immediately fascinated that this existed.  And I was already very sympathetic to movies that were made outside of Hollywood: How did it get made?  Who was it for?  This, that, and the other -- I mean, the whole thing was very interesting to me.  So, this is already almost ten years before I went to work at YIVO.  So, I enjoyed myself very much at YIVO.  I loved working there.  I mean, it was a fascinating place to me.  I mean, I really was so fond of the -- I would have thought of them as old-timers, although some of them weren't even really all that old.  And observing this whole Polish Jewish thing right there was, like -- that was a lot of fun.

EM:  What exactly were you doing for them?

JH:  Well, there was a big show that went up, called the -- at this time -- 37:00called "Image Before My Eyes."  Famous show.  And you know, the technology of course was so primitive then that they -- (laughs) it's before CD-ROMs or anything -- they wanted a slideshow made on it.  And so, I knew how to do this.  I had worked as a photographer for the Board of Water Supply and so on.  So, I was the photographer.  I would -- I had a light box, and I would photograph the artifacts, and made a slideshow.  It was easy.  It was fun to do that.  And I would talk a lot to the people that worked there.  And of course, the thing was that it was such an eccentric place.  The building was sold, so it's not the sa-- now it's the Neue Galerie.  Which, you know, at the time when I -- the first time I went there, I was so taken aback with what had happened to it.  But -- you know, because I was -- they would ask me to do 38:00things, like if they needed a light bulb changed.  'Cause I was an American boy.  I could do this stuff.  It was so funny, that the level of the technological expertise was so limited there.  It really was like a cliché.  And not that I was so tremendously handy myself, but still, I mean, in that context I was very handy.  And soon after that -- or maybe even just before that -- I got involved in programming Yiddish film.  So, the two things complemented each other. 

EM:  Were you ever able to learn Yiddish?

JH:  I taught myself to read it.  When I was at Columbia, I did take a course -- I was in the School of the Arts, in the filmmaking school, and you got very few electives.  I mean, there were some things you could take outside of there.  And so, one semester I did take an elementary Yiddish course, which was 39:00sufficient for me to get the alphabet down and to learn a few things -- not very many -- some things about the grammar and the alphabet and so on.  And once I started researching "Bridge of Light," which was sometime after -- I mean, that was already in the '80s when I started working on that -- I did retain enough of it, or was able to build on that, so that I could go through Yiddish newspapers and figure out things that somebody could translate for me.  So that I -- and I also was able to fill out the call slips in Yiddish at YIVO, which makes a huge difference.  Doing research at YIVO -- I mean, I also knew the place from the inside.  So, I knew how they could just torture people (laughs) who were doing resear-- just what a nightmare it could be.  So, that -- I knew enough Yiddish 40:00for that.  I never felt comfortable speaking Yiddish, other than expressions that I knew from childhood or things like that, or terms.  But when I was working on the book I could understand some.  I could read some.  And when I -- to this day, when I look at the movies with the subtitles, it's like reading poetry (UNCLEAR), you know, with the -- you know how you can -- so I can -- it hel-- I can see that, and then I can hear things that aren't translated and so on.  And that was -- that's the extent of it.  I had it more twenty-five years ago when I was working on this book than now.  But there's a little bit still there.

EM:  Who was in your Yiddish class?

JH:  At Columbia?  Gee, I don't remember.  The teacher was Mordkhe Schaechter 41:00-- he was a friendly guy.  I really don't remember who the other -- the students were, or what brought them there.  I think this was before they really developed a Yiddish program at Columbia in conjunction with YIVO.  He may have had a connection with YIVO, but he was really -- he was in some lang-- I don't know what that -- I can't even think of what department it would have been in.  So, I don't have -- he used the Uriel Weinreich text, and that's basically what I remember.  It was a lot of conversational stuff, which is probably how I got proficient at reading it.  Because I didn't even know the Hebrew alpha-- I mean, I had learned -- I had one year of Hebrew school, so I guess I had learned some things.  But it's not like it had stuck with me at all.

EM:  So, when did you become a film critic?

JH:  Well, I was a freelance -- I mean, I -- by degrees.  I had this job with the city, at the Board of Water Supply.  I got laid off, which had never happened in the city before.  This is in 1974, when the city went -- was gonna go into default.  They laid off all the junior people, the people working out of title, and so on, and -- which I was.  But I did get unemployment insurance, and -- which was very nice.  It was like having a -- like getting a grant or something.  And during that time, I started freelance writing.  It was a very -- and so I wrote articles for various places.  A lot of them had to do with film.  And I wrote a number of pieces for the "Village Voice," and at a certain 43:00point, they needed somebody as a third-string film critic.  And I knew a lot about avant-garde film.  I knew a lot about -- I was never primarily interested in Hollywood movies.  I was always interested in other stuff.  And, in fact, I did an article for them on Yiddish -- it was a cover story, in the mid-'70s.  Because, as I said, I had been interested in them since 1969, when I saw this movie.  And if you were attentive, you could still in the '70s find theaters in New York -- in Brooklyn, mainly, but also in the Bronx -- where around the holidays they would show Yiddish films.  And I would go.  And I would always be the youngest person by like -- I mean, the next youngest person would probably be three times as old as I was, you know.  But I would go to the -- so I did -- I wrote an article about this for the "Voice."  And so, they knew that 44:00I knew about all this film stuff, and they gave me this job.  And I just -- at the time, it wasn't something I had set out to be.  I was actually interested in other things.  I was interested in making movies and theater stuff.  It was a way to pay the rent that was fun for me.  But it worked out so well.  And I got so much satisfaction and also so much positive feedback from the world that it just became what I did. 

EM:  And you still are working at the "Village Voice"?

JH:  Yeah.  Yeah, I'm still there.

EM:  And what's it like there?

JH:  Well, it's very different than when I started.  And it's actually -- from my perspective, you know, it's -- I would say it's bittersweet.  I mean, I'm glad to have a regular paycheck in this economy, and particularly since print 45:00journalism is in terrible shape.  Film criticis-- all these things are -- it's very hard.  I mean, somebody starting out now would have a much, much harder time than I did, certainly.  But on the other hand, it was such a more dynamic, vibr-- it was a real place when I started there.  And there really were brilliant people working there.  And it was just a great place, a great environment then.  And it's just depleted.  So, it's sad.  I can't -- if I think about that, it's too much for me, really.  I mean, it's like -- it would be melodramatic to say that it would be like working in a graveyard.  But it definitely is like living in the afterlife of something.  And I don't want to.  It's painful for me to dwell on it.  But I'm not depressed.   Happy with 46:00my work.

EM:  And so, you talked about this cover story that you wrote about Yiddish film.  In what other ways is your main work connected to your work with Yiddish and Jewish film?

JH:  Well, the thing is that -- you know, things followed from that cover story, which I did because it was something I knew about that was fun for me to do.  They got very exci-- even to this day, people are still like, "Oh, there's Yiddish --?"  I mean, it's amazing that they still could not realize that this stuff exists.  And in 1975, '76, it was -- there was a novel aspect to it.  It was a result of that -- that story actually was a -- had repercussions in the world.  For -- on the one hand, it turns out that Sharon Rivo was already negotiating to get this collection of Yiddish films, unbeknownst to me, when 47:00this came out.  And it sort of was like an incentive.  I mean, she was able to use this, I think, to get funding.  "Oh, look, it's -- they're writing about this in the papers," and so on.  Although I didn't find that out till much later.  But it got somebody else interested, a guy -- a psychoanalyst in New York.  I remember his first name is Arnie.  I'm forgetting his last name then, who was kind of a Yiddish buff.  So, he then saw this; he got very interested.  He organized this thing with a bunch of Jewish organizations, of -- it's so funny to think of all these things together.  And this was a sort of -- (laughs) this was another kind of education.  YIVO, the American Jewish Congress, the 92nd Street Y.  Oh God.  The Workmen's Circle.  Like, all these -- you had to, like, have ten groups to get together to have a festival of Yiddish films.  I mean, why you would need so many -- and everybody in the Jewish Museum, they all had -- I mean, it was just a crazy kind of thing having 48:00to do that.  But there was a series that was held at the 92nd Street Y, because the -- the music director there was a guy named Omus Hirschbein.  Do you -- does the name ring a bell to you?  His father was Peretz Hirschbein, the Yiddish playwright.  And even though he was a totally American guy, he had a lot of yikhes [ancestry].  I mean, he came from -- his mother was a Yiddish poet and so on.  And so, he -- in fact, his father wrote the "Grine felder [Green fields]," which was the first movie that we showed there.  So, there was -- that was very successful, and that went on for three years.  And as a result of that, Sharon was sort of continuously restoring new films.  And she opened "Tevye" at a theater, the Film Forum, in New York.  And a curator who I knew from the Museum of Modern Art saw it, and then she said, "Oh, we have to do a 49:00whole season of that."  And you know, museum time is its own -- so, I mean, if she had this thought in 1980 or '81, the show -- (laughs) ten years later, there was this show, which was a very complete show.  And I did the book for that.  And so, that was the period that I was really most engrossed in.  Although I continued to have an interest in -- my book was reissued recently, and I added a new chapter and so on.  And so -- just last week I was in Montreal.  There was the International Yiddish Theater Festival.  I was up there doing some lectures and so on.  So -- that's how my interest evolved.  I also would write about things.  I mean, I was the sort of de facto theater critic at the "Forward," the English-language "Forward," in the early '90s.  And I wrote articles on a lot of different things for them during the early part of their existence.  And 50:00on Jewish-related things occasionally for the "Voice."  So, I wrote for the -- actually the -- a couple of articles for the "Pakn Treger," if it's -- does it still exist?  Yeah?  Okay.

EM:  Yeah, actually the new issue just came out.

JH:  Oh, okay. 

EM:  (laughs) And so, what kinds of surprising or challenging things did you learn in that time working on Jewish and Yiddish film?

JH:  Well, I mean, a lot of it would have been surpri-- it's hard for me to sort of sort that out.  I certainly learned a tremendous amount about East European Jewish history, just in the -- and -- but I sort of set out to learn that.  I mean, you have to learn that material to be able to put these movies in context.  I was always -- my basic thing was always -- confronted with any 51:00one of these movies -- and they're all different, in a way -- was, like, How did this come into exis-- like, what brought this into existence?  And what did people think of this when it came out?  That was always what I was most motivated to work on.  So, consequently, I think that I -- by asking those questions and trying to answer them, I became educated in that part of Jewish history, and also in Yiddish culture and literature, although in translation.

EM:  And moving into some more personal things, how did you meet your wife, and when?

JH:  We had gone to the same school, so we knew each other then.  But we then 52:00really got together a few years after that.  And have been together since.  So, we've been together since the -- we got married in 1974, so we've been together a long ti-- you know, thirty-five -- more.  Thirty-seven years.  We have two kids, who are grown now.  What else?  She's a -- works for the New York City Department of Education, as a social worker. 

EM:  And how did you create a Jewish home for your family?

JH:  You know, not through anything more than just a certain acknowledgment -- I mean, she also came from -- her background is not dissimilar from mine.  She grew up in the Bronx.  Her father's family were more recent immigrants, so 53:00there was a lot of Yiddish.  And her father was actually fluent in his version of Yiddish.  I mean, so she heard a lot of Yiddish as a kid.  But again, not a single -- I mean, we were amazed when we thought about this -- not a single -- no rabbis, no cantors, nothing.  And I think that this is actually something worth exploring.  Because I don't think that she and I can be all that unusual.  And my -- one explanation for that is that the -- we have, in a way, sentimentalized the -- like, they'll say, The great generation of immigrants, the people who came in the 1890s and before World War I.  'Cause most of them, 54:00they were the poorest, the least educated, and the youngest Jews.  They were the people who had the least to lose, and the most to gain.  And so, their attachment -- even though they -- you know, it's like they were Jews the same way that they breathed air.  I mean, what else could they be?  But their -- connection to the tradition that existed in Eastern Europe was in some ways the most tenuous.  And they tended to settle in such -- and particularly in New York -- I mean, the critical mass was -- you know, when I was a kid, they would give the population of New York as eight million, and they would say there were two million Jews in New York City.  I mean, that's astounding, if you think of it.  And so, that critical mass creates its own environment.  I mean, it's so 55:00different for somebody to -- since I've met people who grew up all across America, there's -- they know every Jewish family in town.  It's a very different thing.  So, this is what I'm saying, is that -- so that our kids, they knew they were Jews.  They knew we were Jews.  They knew their grandparents were Jews.  I mean, they -- for a while, when I was wor-- in the '80s, when they were very young, I used to go to KlezKamp.  I was sort of -- kind of on the staff there.  It was good.  Because you never -- even as secular as we were, we all naturally hated Christmas.  I mean, we couldn't stand it.  And it's very hard when you have kids, because they're just -- that's when you become aware of the -- that it's this thing that goes on, this 56:00magical thing, and that you don't care about.  I had this argument, this ongoing argument, with my younger daughter about a Christmas tree.  She wanted one.  And the thing is that "No, no, you can't -- we don't -- you can't --"  I mean, it was -- and then finally, because of some circumstances that -- when you're just, Okay.  You can ha-- what's -- and now you -- what was the big -- why did I -- you know, what was the problem?  And then after that she ceased to be -- oh, I know what it was.  It was somebody who lived downstairs from us who had a Christmas tree, and the kids used to -- the kids used to go down there and trim it for her, the whole thing.  Anyway.  It was nice to go to KlezKamp 'cause it was always over Christmas week.  So, you could just avoid that whole thing.  They timed it very well.  You just -- you know, you were out of the city.  The kids would do this stuff, and -- so that's probably the Jewish education that they got.  And my younger daughter, I was in residence in Israel 57:00for a period, and she went with us there, so she got that.  And they've had all the seders and so on.  But they didn't have bat mitzvahs.  Their -- my older daughter is getting married.  Her -- she's marrying a guy who is basically Jewish the way -- you know, identifies as Jewish.  And my younger daughter, I don't think she's probably ever had a Jewish boyfriend, but she's actually more identified -- identifies herself more as Jewish.  I mean, that's the way it is.  My sister married a non-Jew, and became more Jewish as a result.  Which -- so, that's -- I don't know how to ex-- that's what it is.  It's something that they're aware of that was emphasized to the degree that it was part of my 58:00work, or just part of the way that my wife and I saw the world, that they absorbed.

EM:  Can you tell me a little bit about KlezKamp at the time when you were going?

JH:  Oh, yeah.  Do you know anything about it?

EM:  Yeah, yeah.

JH:  Yeah.  Well, it was set up -- in those days, it was run by this guy, Henry Sapoznik, who I had met -- I don't know if he was at YIVO.  He must have been -- I don't think I knew him from YIVO.  I think I knew him from someplace else.  But to my mind, he was the guy who -- I know he wasn't the first new klezmer musician.  But he seemed to be the one who was, like, the key figure somehow in this -- in the klezmer revival.  Which to me is an amazi-- that's the most amazing part of the interest in Yiddish and Yiddishkayt, that it would 59:00include this place and the National Center for Jewish Film and all these other things, because they really took something that was, like, almost not the-- had virtually vanished, and made it come back in an extremely organic way.  And so, that was -- KlezKamp was basically -- I mean, really, it was set up as a way for all these musicians to get together and jam.  And that was -- but there were all these other -- it was a Jewish thing; there had to be classes; there had to be this, and that, and the other thing.  So, people, like -- I would go up there, and I would do a little seminar for whatever it was, a week or something, five days or a week, in -- I would prepare something, Yiddish film.  Which I could do.  I've done a lot of teaching, and it was fun.  I would show the movies and talk about them.  And for me, it was actually even doubly useful, 60:00because this is when I was working on the book in the late '80s.  And there would always be people there who it was good for me to interview.  I would always find out information from the people that they had there, actors or old-time klezmorim [Jewish musicians] and so on.  I mean, it was really -- I enjoyed it.  It was a lot of fun.

EM:  And you also said you went to Israel.

JH:  I went to Israel.  I was on the -- well, I had been to the Jerusalem Film Festival a number of times.  And they have a -- for a while they had a competition.  And so, I was there for, I guess, two weeks, doing -- looking at movies and giving talks and so on.  They put me up in the Mishkenot -- is that the -- I don't know, there's some place.  It's very prestigious to stay there.  It's something that somebody had built, like, on the -- before -- in 61:00the days of the yishuv [Hebrew: Jewish community in Palestine prior to 1948], somebody had built -- some rich person had built some kind of villa, you know, with different apartments, and very famous people stayed there -- it's still something.  It's on a very beautiful spot.  And supposedly if you've stayed there once, you can always go.  I don't know if that's really true, if I can always go back and stay there.  But that was great.  And I actually was there -- (sighs) I mean, that time it was -- actually, it was at a great time to be there.  It was really at a very optimistic moment.  It was right shortly after Oslo.  I mean, there was -- the Palestinian Authority was -- to my sense of it, very friendly.  I mean, there was a lot of going to places on the West Bank and 62:00Ramallah and so on.  It was before -- it was when Rabin was the prime minister.

EM:  And did you find that Israel was part of your Jewish identity?  Or --

JH:  I liked being there always.  I mean, the thing -- I don't know -- it just seemed to me to be to be a Jewish place, which is something that has -- that I've always liked.  I mean, I -- even though I was not religious and had very little tolerance for that, I always enjoyed being with Jews.  I mean, I just -- you know.  And I attribute this to my father's -- you know what I mean?  To these family things.  I mean, it was always fun for me.  I just -- so I found this really -- you know, I've been there a number of times.  The thing that struck me the first time was that it was -- like, every kind of Jew you could ever imagine was there.  But, like, with bells on.  Like at a more heightened 63:00level of awareness.  And I think that -- my own feeling is that people can't understand Israel unless they've been there.  And that Israelis understand Israel much better than Americans.  (laughs) That's my sense of it.

EM:  Okay.  And I know you've been teaching.

JH:  Yeah.

EM:  Can you tell me a little bit about where you teach and what you teach?

JH:  Yeah.  Well, I've been teaching -- my most -- I started teaching in the '80s at NYU as -- during the summer, teaching courses.  And also occasionally during the year at the department of cinema studies.  And then, I also began teaching at the Cooper Union, which is an unusual school in New York.  It's free.  There are only three kinds of degrees: architecture, art -- studio art 64:00-- and various types of engineering.  In some res-- I mean, it's an amazing place.  Amazing students there.  And so, I started teaching there, in the humanities division, which is where they have electives and things, and teaching a film history course.  And I've been doing that pretty continuously for twenty years.  Occasionally I would take a semester off.  One semester I taught at Harvard.  That was interesting too.  So, that's my -- Cooper Union is my main affiliation, and film history is what I teach there.

EM:  Did you ever do any Jewish film courses?

JH:  I did.  I taught one at NYU one semester, at their -- it was their idea, and I was glad to do it.  It was a very good course.  I'd be glad to teach it 65:00again sometime.

EM:  What was the mix of students like?

JH:  In that course?  Well, I think I probably had -- it was graduate and undergraduate.  It was a nice size.  It was somewhere between twelve, maybe fourteen.  I mean, it was a manageable size.  I would say -- let's say there were fourteen students.  Probably twelve out of the fourteen were Jewish.  There were some -- mostly American; there were a couple of Israeli students.  I was sorry there weren't more, that -- but that's -- Jews are interested in Jews.  I know that.  So, that was okay.

EM:  And what do you like about teaching?

JH:  I like it because I can show things to people that I'm enthusiastic about.  I like to talk.  I like -- you know, I like talking to younger 66:00people.  And also, it's stimulating.  It makes you think, in a way.  I mean, I think it's incre-- actually, it's incredibly valuable.  I learn a lot from students.  I mean, whether they mean to, you know, just by what they -- how they are, what they say.  It's always interesting.  I like to ask them about stuff.  I'm always curious.  So, I think it's good.  And you know, writing is a very solitary occupation.  I mean, I like newspapers also.  I'm very sad that the whole ambi-- that the -- because of computers and the internet.  It's not just that they've eroded print.  They've eroded the newspaper as a social 67:00milieu -- as a workplace.  I mean, it's just not the same thing anymore.  So, I like that kind of interaction.  And I feel like I still get that from teaching.  I like to be able to engage with people over ideas and so on.

EM:  And do you find that your students now are interested in Jewish and Yiddish film?

JH:  Yeah.  Well, I -- it's not -- I've never taught this at Cooper.  Because it's a much more general film history thing.  I did find the students at NYU were -- seemed to be interested in that course.  I mean, it was -- to judge from their participation in class and the work that they did.  But the -- I must say that in the lectures and so on that I do on Yiddish film, it's always 68:00an older audience.  And to me, this is -- it's so funny, because when I started out doing this, in the '80s, I was in my -- still in my thirties.  And so, it didn't seem that strange to me that everybody was twice as old.  And now I'm as old as that audience must have been, and they're still older than me!  I mean, I -- (laughs) it's like I still am like a kid, talking to them about this stuff.  I mean, it's so odd.  But that's the way.  So, in answer to your question, I don't know.  I mean, there obviously are young people who are interested.  But somehow, when you show these films somewhere -- when I was in Montreal, again, it was these older people who were there.

EM:  Do you ever write on contemporary Yiddish film?

JH:  Well, yeah.  I'm actually gonna write something this week on "Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish."  Have you seen that?

EM:  I haven't seen it, but --

JH:  But you've heard of it.  Yeah.  That's opening in New York.  And there's also a documentary on Sholem Aleichem, which is opening in New York.  So, I'm gonna write about those.  Yeah.  "Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish," I really support.  I mean, that was -- I really liked that film.  And in a way, I felt that -- you know, it's hard for me to be objective, because, you know, from my point of view it was so interesting in so many ways.  Not least of which the filmmaker, Eve Annenberg, really was just like -- didn't even know this tradition existed.  She was just working out of some other dynamic.  And made this movie.  But from my perspective, as somebody who's a historian of this, it just was remarkable and exciting to see this happen.  So.  But that's 70:00really -- I mean, there are very few recent Yiddish films, so -- new stuff.  Although somebody in Montreal told me that she was also working on one, so maybe there'll be more.

EM:  And would you say there's something like a Jewish film these days?

JH:  Well, that's a very tricky question.  I mean, yes.  Some of them are Israeli.  But I would make a distinction.  Of course, all Israeli films are gonna be Jewish films, in a way.  But I -- there's a film that I saw in Cannes.  The English title is "Footnote."  And it's about this -- it's a kind of very dark comedy about a father and son, both of whom are Talmudic scholars, and this kind of rivalry that they get into -- which struck me as an amazingly 71:00Jewish film.  As opposed to being -- of course it's an Israeli film, but its perspective on things was something that I would see as intensely Jewish.  And there are other films that -- from time to time -- not necessarily made in the United States -- that are full of Jewish content.  But, you know, from my perspective, Kafka is a very Jewish writer.  Maybe the most Jewish writer.  But he never uses the word "Jew."  So, you know. 

EM:  And so, we've talked about you writing articles, writing books, editing.  I think you've done some editing; is that right?

JH:  Yeah.  I mean, not in a systematic way.  I've filled in as an editor.  I've been -- I edited a couple of anthologies of things.  So, I've functioned as an editor, yeah.

EM:  And you've also curated exhibits, and you've taught.  So, what's your favorite of those?

JH:  (sighs) Well, let me see.  Let me think of it in terms of things that I 72:00feel like I haven't do-- that I would want to do more of.  I mean, I would be glad to curate again.  That was -- curating the show at the Jewish Museum in particular was arduous but really rewarding.  And so, I would like to do more of that.  I mean, I still like writing, and I still like teaching.  So, I'm not tired of those things. 

EM:  What kind of exhibit would you theoretically like to curate?

JH:  Well, actually -- you know, I co-curated the exhibit at the Jewish Museum with Jeffrey Shandler, whose name you may know.  He's a Yiddishist and a historian of Jewish media and so on.  And we had an idea for a follow-up show, which -- I don't know.  I don't wanna say it was too Jewish for the Jewish 73:00Museum, but it was -- they didn't really -- we wanted to do something on -- specifically on Yosl Cutler.  He was a -- and Zuni Maud.  They were Yiddish artists, Bohemians, and they had a puppet show that they did in the '20s and into the '30s, and they -- it involved a kind of artsy Catskill retre-- I mean, there was -- in other words, these guys were sort of at the center of a kind of left-wing Bohemian Yiddish culture that existed between the wars.  And we wanted to do something -- to focus on -- use them as a way to put a light on 74:00this culture, which we felt was insufficiently known about and appreciated.  And I don't know if it was too Jewish, whether it was -- came too close to somebody else's turf, whether the fact that we were sort of freelance -- who knows.  But it never got further than just a few proposals and meetings and so on. 

EM:  Um-hm. So, you mentioned earlier that Jewishness is more of a historical construct to you.  That's what it means to you.

JH:  Yeah.

EM:  Can you talk about that more?

JH:  Yeah.  I mean, I think that -- well, there are two ways to talk -- I would say that for me, you know, history is what there is.  I mean, that's how I understand things.  And I would say that it's also a way of looking at 75:00things.  And it's not just things that happen in the world; it's people's personal histories.  I mean, that's my understanding of Freud and psychoanalytic theory, that somebody's personal history is what -- you know, your childhood is something that you continue to play at.  You have to know your -- where you came from as an individual to really find out who you are.  And I think that that's a very Jewish perception.  I mean, you know, the Jews basically invented the idea of history as a force, something that goes on.  And if you -- whether you think it's God that's creating this history, or whether you think there's other things that are at play, it still is an identity that's 76:00based on history and the knowledge of history.  So, I think that that's something that I didn't even have to, like, come to.  I mean, I maybe had to come to the fact that I knew it, but I think that it was something that I was born into, a sense of that.  That historical identity was really crucial.  As I say, I was -- you know, knew that my grandparents came from someplace else, even before I really understood -- you know, I didn't know what Poland was, particularly.  But I knew that there was this thing that happened.  There was this process that I was a part of.  And so, that's -- I guess that would be my sense of it.  And -- you know, there's philosophies of history, why things 77:00happen the way they do and so on.

EM:  And what does Yiddish specifically mean to you?

JH:  Well, I think of Yiddish as being like a place that people basically carried with them, since there are only a few sort of anomalous examples of sort of autonomous Yiddish regions.  I mean, it was -- you know, as a place, as a culture, a way of thinking, it's something that -- the tragic thing is that Yiddish didn't really -- it didn't die out, like Latin.  It still was in its -- it was still developing.  To take another example, which is not as tragic, but just -- you know, like silent movies.  Silent movies are an art form in and of 78:00themselves.  There's nothing -- no reason why silent movies couldn't have continued, except that somebody developed another technology, and then the marketplace decreed that that was what was going to -- I mean, there's no reason why Yiddish wouldn't have continued to develop.  Although there are reasons why it might not have continued to develop -- forever, historically, if it weren't for World War II.  So, that's -- that adds a tragic dimension to the culture.  And so, it's something that's like a phantom limb for -- that you feel, but it's missing.

EM:  That's very interesting.  (laughs) So, we just have a few minutes left.  79:00So, is there anything we didn't touch on that you'd like to mention?

JH:  No, I think I got to say what I wanted to say.  I mean, I feel strongly that it's possible to have a secular Jewish identity, and I think that Yiddish is also probably key to that.  I think it was in my case, that I recognized this as something that was intensely Jewish, that had nothing, necessarily, to do with religion.  That -- you know, in my own case, I realized at a pretty early age -- I mean, certainly before I was thirteen -- that I just -- I didn't believe in God.  And my reasons for coming to that were actually, I would later find out, extremely Jewish.  Because I just was very concerned about the end of 80:00the world when I was a kid in the '50s.  I was really convinced that there was gonna be a nuclear war.  I lived in New York City, and we had these ridiculous shelters in the apartment basement and stuff.  But I saw that there -- (laughs) I read that people were building fallout shelters, you know, out of the suburbs.  And kinda saying, Well, that's not fair.  Why are these people gonna live in their fallout shelters?  How could Go-- I mean, it sounds like so -- it's such a childish thing.  But it just, like -- the unfairness of it just convinced me that that was -- you know, that there was a basic unfairness in the universe.  And so, I was not interested in, like, a superior force.  And never missed it after that.  You know?  Never really thought about it much.  Hence -- but still had this sense of identity.  So, I think that that explains 81:00probably some dynamic in my own thinking about these things.

EM:  And do you have any advice that you would give to future generations of Jews, people interested in film, any --

JH:  Yeah.  Well, I mean, I think that -- I really think that -- you know -- I mean, this is gonna sound corny.  I just think that people should try and find things to do that they want to do that they enjoy doing.  Follow interests that engage them.  I think that -- you know, it's -- people do have to earn a living.  It's not as if money is nothing, and economic security is nothing.  But I think that this other stuff ultimately is more important.  In a more just world, we would all have economic security and could do -- follow our specific 82:00interests and desires and goals and so on.

EM:  Okay.  And I have a last question, which is: do you have a favorite Yiddish word, phrase, or song?

JH:  Oh my God.  I should have (laughs) had you ask me to think of this.  So, so many things that -- I'm gonna mention one, but it's not really my favorite, but it just came: shlep.  I mean, that's a concept that is, like, so deep in my childhood.  I mean, both my parents -- "I have to shlep this around."  And just, like -- it just -- the combination: it's funny, it has this sense of resignation, but it also is making light of a burden, in a way.  So.  Let's go with that.

EM:  All right.  Great.

JH:  Yeah.

EM:  Well, anything else before we close?

JH:  Nope.

EM:  Okay, great.  Thanks so much.

JH:  Yeah, sure.

[END OF INTERVIEW]