EUGENE ORENSTEIN ORAL HISTORY

PAULINE KATZ: This is Pauline Katz and today is August 26th, 2011. I am here today with Eugene Orenstein at KlezKanada in the Laurentians in Canada and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Eugene Orenstein -- Professor Eugene Orenstein, do I have your permission to record this interview?

EUGENE ORENSTEIN: Yes, you do. Retired, so let's drop the titles.

PK: All right. (laughs) To begin with, I'd like you to briefly tell me what you know about your family's background, where you come from. Or where they came from.

EO: Okay. I am the third son, the youngest son, of Jewish immigrants from 1:00Poland. My late father was Avrom Orenstein, Abraham Orenstein, and he came from a town in the region of Poland known as Podlasie, called Węgrów in Polish, Vengrove, as the Jews call it in Yiddish, about sixty-five kilometers east of Warsaw. He was born into a strictly observant, religious, Hasidic family. My grandfather, my paternal grandfather, for who I'm named, was a Volker khosid, and he was a mekurev [member of an entourage], very close to the Volker rebbe. He was a Talmudic scholar of some substance and my dad was one of four children, 2:00two sons and two daughters. Not sure where he stood, as the oldest or next to the oldest. And in his early years, he was raised in this environment, very serious way. And he was very scholarly. So, after going to kheyder [traditional religious school], he was sent to a yeshiva, a Talmudic academy, when he was only ten or eleven years old. And he excelled in his studies. He attended a number of yeshivas briefly but finally settled in a place in Warsaw, which was a Hasidic yeshiva, because he had gone to Lithuanian-oriented yeshivas, too. And I don't know how much you want about this, how detailed. Anyway, he's kind of a 3:00classic life of the modern Eastern European Jewish experience because, at a very early age, about fourteen, thirteen, fourteen, he lost his faith under the influence of Haskalah works in Hebrew.

PK: Do you know what happened to make him lose his faith?

EO: Yes. He lived in the yeshiva. They slept on benches and he was the youngest student and --

PK: Just when you do this, it looks a little funny.

EO: Oh, I'm sorry.

PK: No need.

EO: And at night, the boys were supposed to be sleeping, they were passing something around and they wouldn't allow him to see it. Of course, he was very curious. But he was the youngest one and he was also extremely pious. So, they feared that he would report them to the inspector, to the mashgiekh, to the authorities. But he had an older friend, a landsman [fellow countryman], a 4:00fellow townsman, who was his protector in a way. He said, "Oh, he's a good kid. Let him see it." And it was "Hatoyre b'dat veha-hayim [The Torah of religion and life]" by Moshe Leib Lilienblum, a classic work of the lost person on the roads of life. And that opened his eyes, as they used to say, and it was downhill from there. So, he became an autodidact and joined the left-wing of the Po'ale Tsiyon, of the Social Zionist party and so on. My late mother, Tsirl, her English name was Sylvia [Klayman?]. She was the youngest child of also very religious parents. My maternal grandfather was a Techeilesnik [follower of the 5:00Radziner rebbe known as Ba'al HaTecheiles], that is a Radziner khosid [member of the Radziner Hasidic sect]. And he was from the cradle town of Radziner khsides [Radziner Hasidism], from Izhbits, Izbica Lubelski. And he was an administrator on a feudal estate. They lived early twentieth century, late nineteenth century, but was still, you know, great Polish landowner and he was in charge of the forest, of determining how many trees should be cut down, where, when? Should they be sent to the sawmill or should they be floated down the Vistula and sold in Germany and Danzig? All these things. And so, they lived in a village, I think it was in the part of Poland that had the large Ukrainian population. It was probably a Ukrainian village. There were only two Jewish families: my maternal family, the [Klaymans?] at one end and another Jewish family at the other. My maternal grandfather died when my mother -- because she was the 6:00youngest child -- she was only a year-and-a-half old. So, she had no visual memory of her father. Only stories. He died of tuberculosis. He was about thirty-nine or forty years old and he left my grandmother with five living children and very dire straits. And she had to divide up the babies, the younger family, and she took the older children to Warsaw and found employment as a seamstress and then managed to reunite her family. And they lived in dire poverty in one room, in an attic, in a garret in the heart of Jewish proletarian Warsaw. And my mother had to quit school. She went to work when she was eight years old. And so, that's --

PK: How did they come to the States?

EO: It's a complicated story. My parents were sweethearts. They met in Warsaw. And my mother had her older sister, who immigrated to the United States, to New York City. She was a revolutionary. She was a Bundist and she belonged to the Bund in Warsaw. My aunt, [Esther Ginyaz?], she left as a very young woman -- nineteen, something like that -- just before the outbreak of the First World War. And the thought was that she would find work and send money to bring her mother and her younger siblings. But, of course, the First World War broke out 8:00and she was separated from her family for seven years, which were seven years of misery and horror for my mother and her siblings and my grandmother. War and starvation and pogroms and revolution and counterrevolution and so on. But finally, very lucky, in 1921, she sent enough money to bring her mother, my grandmother, the only grandparent I ever knew, although I was only three when she died, and two of the siblings -- because one aunt had died of the Spanish influenza when they were preparing to leave. So, this was the last year of what is historically and accurately called free and unrestricted immigration. It was 9:00only for people of the so-called white race, Europeans and so on. There were plenty of restrictions, and even for Europeans, but -- and it was the year that the United States adopted immigration quotas based on racist thinking. So, my mother was very, very lucky. I'm lucky I'm here because of this, that my grandmother and two of her daughters immigrated through Ellis Island to New York in the fall of 1921. Now, my father had a different story. My father was nineteen years old in 1920 when the Polish-Soviet War broke out and he was drafted. He was an ex-yeshive-bokher [yeshiva student] and my father, to the last day of his life, could barely speak -- I don't know if he knew twenty words 10:00of Polish. And he was drafted in the army, which was a very difficult experience for anybody but particularly for a Jew and particularly for a Jew of his background. And my father had already become a Marxist and, as I say, he was a member of the left-wing Po'ale Tsiyon and he was a supporter of what was called Soviet Russia at that time and not of the independent Polish Republic. So, I guess, for personal reasons, he wanted to live a longer life and for political reasons, he did not want to fight the Bolsheviks. He deserted the Polish army. And, of course, this is a capital crime in war time. So, he went into hiding as my mother's brother, my uncle did. And they already knew each other thanks to my mother. So, they were in hiding and they could not emigrate legally because 11:00Poland forbade immigration of young men age sixteen to -- I don't remember the cut-off they -- thirty-five or forty-five. So, they left Poland illegally and they chose -- they had the opportunity, although they made the choice with incorrect information because at that time, a rumor circulated in Polish Jewry that if you immigrated to Cuba, which was a de facto colony of the United States at the time and you established one-year legal residence in Cuba, you could immigrate to the continental United States outside the quota system. This was not true but many desperate immigrants believed it and did that. So, my father and my uncle, his future brother-in-law, chose to immigrate to Cuba, which they did. And that's the story. And then, my father came to New York on a visit and 12:00married my mother and they both returned to Cuba but they finally decided, after a short period, to settle in the United States and -- where all of their children were born. The rest is history.

PK: How were these stories passed down?

EO: It's funny. Well, I don't know funny. It's a problem in the family -- as I mentioned at the beginning of this interview, that I'm one of three sons. Unfortunately, my oldest brother died in 1993. But there's a great difference in our ages. The first son was born in 1927, when my parents were very young. And 13:00he was succeeded by my middle brother, long life to him. There's only a four-year space between them and there is an eighteen-year and fourteen-year difference between me and my eldest brother and me and my middle brother, long life to him. I don't know what stories they told at that time. They were much younger. The intellectual climate, the political climate was a different one. My oldest brother was born with Yiddish as mother tongue. That is certainly true. And not because my parents didn't know English, but because principally, they were Yiddishists and they believed in an autonomous Jewish secular culture in Yiddish and they wanted their children to be Yiddish-speaking. But how much of this he absorbed, I don't know. My brothers have great musical talent. They were 14:00both professional musicians and they moved away from home physically and culturally, I would say, at a young age. But I was born at the end of the Second World War and my parents had to struggle with the Holocaust and what it meant to them. My father lost his entire family. No one else in his family immigrated. My mother, of course, lost her extended family. Luckily, the nuclear family all -- whole family immigrated. But the whole world into which they were born and which nourished them was destroyed. And so, they reevaluated and they talked a lot about their childhood and their youth, my father, in particular, and I was the 15:00repository of all of this. So, before becoming a formally trained and academic historian, I inherited tremendous historical material, baggage of all these family stories.

PK: Was that true of your friends, also?

EO: I'm not sure. When I was young, I didn't talk about things like this with my friends. But I do have impressions and I don't think that we can make a generalization because I have one very close friend from early-ish childhood who is the son of an American Yiddish writer. And he was very conscious of his background. And his mother was also a woman of great intellectual quality and so on. And I think that he also was heir to a lot of this past. But others came 16:00from other type homes and I don't know if there was such a stress on this. And I really don't know. I haven't kept up with many of the people of my childhood and I'd love to see them and maybe I would ask them that question.

PK: Can you describe the home you grew up in?

EO: Yes, well, it's a very unusual -- there's a film about it. It's very unusual. I was born in a housing development popularly called The Coops. And I don't know if I have to say anything about this, since it's already been recorded in a documentary film. But I'll make it short.

PK: From your perspective.

EO: Okay, I'll make it short. I'm sorry, your question again? How did we get to this part about what --

PK: I was just asking about the home that you grew up in.

EO: Oh, the home I grew up -- okay. There was a very interesting movement in 17:00Eastern European Jewish immigrant life in the 1920s: cooperative housing. And various movements established cooperative houses in the only mainland borough of New York City, the Bronx. I'm very patriotic, not because of the Yankees. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of North America opened a major cooperative housing project the same year that my, in quotes, project was opened very close to us, across the park, Mosholu Parkway. And it was Social Democratic, right-wing socialist, the terminology of that day and Yiddishist to a certain degree, perhaps. And the people who were non-partisan, they identified with socialism in 18:00some broad, general way. But they were very much committed to secular Jewish national culture in Yiddish. And they established a cooperative called Sholem Aleichem hayzer, the Sholem Aleichem houses. And the Po'ale Tsiyon, the Socialist Zionist Party and its mutual aid organization, the Farband, built two buildings right near us in the Bronx. And there was -- The Coops, of course, cooperative was -- workers' cooperative -- I forget. I should remember the official name. Now, the interesting thing is that initially, the initiative did not come from the Communist Party or Jewish communists. It came from two hippies of their day, whatever hippies were called in 1920s, who were Jewish anarchists, Yiddish-speaking anarchists. And they got this idea -- it was wonderful, all of 19:00these movements. I give them great credit. The Lower East Side was a terribly congested slum and this was the most beautiful accomplishment, to give young people establishing families the chance to live in wonderful conditions out in the rural Bronx, at that time. We were right across the street from Bronx Park and what is now the New York Botanical Gardens. So, it was started by a group of kind of left-wing radical Yiddishists and so -- but, the Communist Party, the Jewish section at that time, Yiddish-speaking section at first, of course, had a very negative attitude toward cooperativism in general. They said that to build a workers' cooperative of any type in the capitalist scene was utopian folly, it was a waste of time and energy, et cetera, et cetera. But when over two thousand 20:00mostly young people showed up at a meeting to organize a cooperative in the Bronx -- (Katz sneezes) zay gezunt [bless you, lit. "be well"] --

PK: A dank [Thank you].

EO: -- the Communist Party, of course, with its strategy of taking over, of controlling, moved in and gained control of the leadership. And so, The Coops became very much a communist enterprise, with a certain --

PK: How did your parents --

EO: -- with a certain Jewish coloration. With a certain Jewish coloration. Now, my parents had just been married. They lived with my grandmother and our other siblings and so on. And my father became a working -- both my parents became workers. And finally, they struck out on their own. They moved a block away from my grandmother and they had their own apartment for a very short time. But they 21:00heard about this plan and they were very enthusiastic. And they scraped together their meager savings and they became first cooperators. In fact, I have their membership card and they were number twenty-seven out of 750 families. They were number twenty-seven. And they --

PK: Just --

EO: -- yes?

PK: The cars can get really loud, so --

EO: Okay.

PK: So, since we're at a break -- all right.

EO: And they moved in to an apartment in the second court, on the fourth floor, a one-bedroom apartment when my oldest brother, [Yasi?], was only five months old, barely five months old. And they lived there for almost the rest of their lives. Not entirely, but for a very long -- well over fifty years. So, my middle brother, [Matty?], was born there in 1931. And I was born there in 1945. Now, 22:00the cooperative was lost. The cooperators actually voted, a majority voted, and I won't discuss the details. This is discussed in the documentary film and things have been written about it. But a majority of the cooperators voted to disband, to sell it to a private entrepreneur in 1943 during the Second World War. But the communist influence, the communist spirit and commitment of people remained very much. It was not a hundred percent. There were dissenters by this time. But it remained, throughout my childhood and my early teen years and so on. It had that character. And of course, Yiddish was very important. It is said that we had the largest secular Yiddish school in the United States, in the basement of the first court, Shul Eyns, School Number One of the International 23:00Workers' Order. And I went to the successor of that school because, of course, the United States government liquidated the IWO as a communist front organization in the early 1950s and the school movement went through a metamorphosis to survive and I went through that school system.

PK: Can you describe that school? Those schools? The metamorphosis or the metamorphosized --

EO: Well, yes. When I was a youngster, they were called the Yiddish progressive schools. And of course, they were run by the late Itche Goldberg, zikhroyne livrokhe [may his memory be for a blessing]. I started in nursery at the age of three. I probably have one of the longest shule [secular Yiddish school] careers in North America. (laughs) And after nursery and kindergarten, of course, it was an afternoon school. But we went five days a week. And I went through elementary 24:00school and then I went to mitlshul [high school]. And in the second year, the Bronx mitlshul was quite large, but the numbers were declining in my time, so it amalgamated with the Manhattan and Brooklyn schools in my second year. And we would study on Friday night in The Coops in the Bronx and all day Saturday in Manhattan. Travel downtown by subway for four years. And then, I did the college-level courses called hekherer korsn [advanced courses]. And I was invited to become a teacher while I was still studying and I was a -- oh, I think I was still a high school student when I started teaching high school Yiddish. High school. And I taught for nine years, until I accepted an appointment at McGill and settled in Montreal.

PK: Can you actually talk a little about what you learned in the progressive 25:00shuln [schools]?

EO: Well, this isn't an easy subject for me to deal with now, but I'll try to be honest about it. When I went to school as a child, to shule, I was happy. I was satisfied. I had some wonderful teachers. I had other type teachers. But I don't think I had complaints. But as I matured and I began to take Jewish Studies very seriously intellectually, academically -- and, of course, that became my chosen field -- I became very resentful of this education. Resentful that it had been 26:00imposed upon me and that I devoted so much time and devotion to it and resentful that I contributed to it as a teacher. Because I felt, as an adult, that the heart of Jewish identity and the Jewish experience had been cut out of it and it had been reduced to a very low, low level. Of course, let's hit the nail on the head: the Bible was not treated very seriously. Of course, we were told Bible stories, or we read, when we learned to read Yiddish, we read adaptations of certain stories. In fact, our classroom was decorated with paintings or 27:00reproductions of famous paintings of biblical scenes by non-Jewish famous artists and Doré and Jewish artists and so on. And some of our teachers really had a feeling for this and they conveyed some of it with a lot of warmth and respect. But there wasn't very much of it. And Jewish tradition, et cetera, et cetera. And even Yiddish -- and I don't think this is just the fault of the so-called left-wing because I've compared notes with my friends who went to the Arbeter Ring shule and to the Sholem Aleichem shuln and the Farband shule. Many of the teachers did not have a real grasp on what the meaning of Yiddish is and how the language should be taught. So, we were taught, generally -- there were 28:00exceptions, but generally, a very anemic, Germanized, Americanized Yiddish. A de-Judaized Yiddish, which now I understand is ridiculous. It's not Yiddish because, of course, Yiddish means Jewish and the whole raison d'être of this language is that it is a Jewish language to convey Jewish values and the Jewish experience, rooted in the Bible and in post-Biblical rabbinic literature, whether one is a believer in the traditional sense or not and that this was not really Yiddish. So, in that sense, I was very lucky, personally. My late father was a wonderful Biblical and Talmudic scholar. I don't say this simply because he was my father. There's no end to my admiration, because he ended his formal 29:00studies at the age of fourteen and he rarely entered a synagogue for the rest of his life, which is also very troubling to me. Not that I think that he should have been observant or a believer -- he knew the whole Bible by heart. You just had to recite one verse and he would continue without a text. He knew well over a hundred pages of Gemara Talmud by heart but he could interpret them. He had an immense love of the Hebrew language his whole life, as he loved his mother tongue, Yiddish. And he conveyed this to me. And he made it very clear to me that you could not be a cultured, educated Jew without a mastery of this. So, he 30:00inspired me and when I chose Jewish history as my field, I went on to try to fill in some of the gaps, linguistically and in a text sense and so on. But I really felt that all the secular shuln -- but, of course, the Left with a capital L or the communists were the worst offenders in this area. They went way too far off the tracks. I did not expect them to teach observance or to inculcate a belief in the divinity, but certainly, there should have been a much closer connection to the classical tradition. That's about what I can say.

PK: Before we leave childhood --

EO: Yes. (laughter)

PK: -- would you like to tell me a little bit about your summer camp?

EO: Okay, here I'll be honest: I have very little to say. I didn't go to summer camp very much. Tell you why. My brothers did, but they didn't go to Kinderland and that's also an interesting story. When I was eight years old, my parents owned a piece of property in Putnam County, two counties north of New York City. They owned it for quite a number of years because there had been a dream of creating some kind of Jewish collective, left-wing collective that never worked out but -- and in 1953, my father decided to have a summer home built on this property. And that was the love of his life, in a way. He was a worker. He was a fur worker. He worked very hard. He worked an eight-hour day, five days a week, 32:00going by subway from the Bronx to the fur market. Every morning, he got up at five a.m. And this was the time when subways were not air conditioned in New York and so on. And for a weekend, to get away in nature, we were in the woods, on a high hill we called a mountain. And he had a vegetable garden and planted fruit trees. He knew nothing about this, but he was going to be the pioneer. So, for a working family -- and my mother had become a housewife when she became a mother. She gave up working in shops and she worked very hard, I don't have to say that, but in another capacity. You needed money and -- both to keep up two 33:00homes and send the children to camp. But I had an uncle who was very deeply involved in the left-wing movement, my mother's sister's husband. And he owned a small factory, created the guilt of his life. And so, he had a little more means than my parents did. And Camp Kinderland was threatened with closure in the early 1950s. It had been affiliated with the International Workers' Order, of the Jewish Peoples Fraternal Order branch of the IWO. And so, very rapid moves had to be made to rescue the camp and the camp carried a mortgage and they couldn't cover the mortgage. So, the camp turned to supporters to contribute a 34:00certain sum toward the mortgage, to rescue the camp. And my uncle was one of the contributors. So that in the summer of 1954, my cousin, who was more like a brother to me because we were -- I hate to say, my late cousin. Died three years ago. He was sent to Kinderland for a brief period in 1954 and I remained in the country home. But in 1955, thanks to my uncle, I went with my cousin for a Kinderland experience, which I loved. I had a great time in '55 and then we went back in '57. So, my cousin was at Kinderland for three years and I was only there for two summers. But I was born and bred in that environment. And so, I came back as a staff member in 1962 and I worked for a number of years and it 35:00was a very meaningful experience for me as a counselor, '62 through '64. And then, '65, I went to Europe for the first time and I came back for my last summer in '66.

PK: Can you describe Kinderland in those days?

EO: Well, again, I view it now, having matured -- and coming to a different understanding of life and politics, I view it with a certain ambivalence. I had a lot of fun. It was very lively, socially. Great. And so, there were some wonderful people who have remained friends for the rest -- up to this day. But a struggle was going on. Very clear, I mean, if you knew -- and I was in the know 36:00because I was born into this. If you didn't come as an outsider but as an insider, you knew that there was a struggle going on between people who wanted Kinderland to be simply a left-wing integrated camp and people who were committed to maintaining its Jewish character without rejecting radical politics but insisting on -- that even though non-Jewish children were accepted and black children were accepted -- but that the understanding was that this was an environment in which Jewish culture, particularly in its Yiddish form, would be cultivated. And I was part of that struggle and obviously you know which side I 37:00was on. And my side lost. And that pains me. So, I have very good memories and also some negative memories.

PK: All right. Let's actually get into your general education.

EO: Yes.

PK: Where did you go to school? Actually, where did you go to school when you were a child?

EO: Okay, I went to public school, PS 96, which was the local neighborhood school for The Coops. And even though there's such a great difference in the ages between the three brothers, we all had the same first-grade teacher. (laughs) And I went to the local junior high school, which was brand new when I started, and I went to the Bronx High School of Science. And then, when I was going to go to college, I applied to many, as we used to call them, out-of-town 38:00schools. And I got into a number of them and I really would have loved to have gone but I felt that it was very unfair to my parents, who were working people of modest means, to saddle them with that financial burden. I did receive some kind of scholarship but it was not full scholarship by any means and it would be a great burden to them, so that I went to City College, which was free, municipal college. Played a very great role, not only in New York history and American history -- and I'm very happy about that. I was lucky. I had an excellent education there. I had some great professors, famous people. I had some very good (UNCLEAR) -- it's just as true of the Ivy League schools and so 39:00on. I guess my only regret is socially, I think, that leaving home and leaving New York City would have been a great experience, but that's not -- and then, I did my graduate work. I decided I was a historian very early in my life and I did BA honors in history at City College and then I went on to do my graduate work in Jewish history, in modern Jewish history at Columbia University. And I was very lucky to study with some wonderful, inspiring scholars and charismatic people, yeah.

PK: You mentioned that your parents used you as kind of the heir to their histories.

EO: Yes, yes.

PK: Did you recognize that when you were a child?

EO: I don't want to depend upon hindsight. I really don't remember now how much 40:00I recognize. I knew that both of my parents were wonderful storytellers. And what they told was extremely dramatic and often very troubling and tragic. And these things left an indelible impression upon me. Did I realize early on that this was feeding my imagination, the -- kind of putting me on the road to history? I don't know. It's very easy to say yes now, but I don't know how I thought about this when I was eight or when I was ten, so --

PK: One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot is that there were a lot of kids that grew up in The Coops --

EO: Yes.

PK: -- but not all of them went off to become Yiddish professors.

EO: Well, I was a professor of modern Jewish history, although I did teach Yiddish literature for a time. And even toward the end of my career, I guided masters, I've guided serious students in this area, but -- and I minored in Yiddish linguistics at Columbia with the late Uriel Weinreich, zikhroyne livrokhe, and I studied with great, great people. His father, Max Weinreich and so on. But that was not my main field, although I feel I have some expertise there.

PK: Well, I guess -- what was it that made you go into this, even Jewish history, whereas a lot of the other people who grew up in The Coops didn't?

EO: You want me to psychoanalyze myself and I don't know if I can do this. What can I say? From my earliest years, my father had a great impact on me. I think he was a frustrated historian. Had he had the opportunity to be born in another time and another place, he wouldn't have been a fur worker or mink operator. He would have been a historian. But he didn't have those opportunities. But I always say, and not simply because he was my father, he had a lot more knowledge than many PhDs I've met in my life and I've met many. So, I think he was an inspiration to me, and his interests. History was always being discussed. And 43:00not just Jewish history. World history, Western history. And from a Marxist perspective, my father remained a Marxist. And so, what should I say? That subconsciously, I was gonna live his life for him? That I was gonna be the compassionate son? It's silly to say these things. For me, I feel it sparked my imagination and I had -- I guess I have a certain inclination. I have a good memory and I -- my brothers were born and blessed with great musical talents. Not me. I'm a listener, not -- and there was a lot around me to encourage me to choose this path. But you say other people in The Coops. I know many people. Older generation and my generation. And I can tell you that whatever professions 44:00they've chosen, there's a high degree of interest in history among such people. The environment in which we were raised made us very sensitive to society, to the problems of society, how society works, and to history, that we did not arise from a vacuum and that -- and not simply in a Jewish sense. So, I think if you know a lot of these people, whether they're chemical engineers or painters or musicians or whatever they are, you'll find a greater interest in history and in social problems than in the general population.

PK: All right, let's -- actually, I'd like to talk a little about your connections with Yiddish.

EO: Yes.

PK: Zol mir redn yidish [Should we speak in Yiddish]?

EO: Oyb du vilst [If you want]. (laughter) Far vos nisht [Why not]?

PK: Vu hostu ersht [Where did you first] --

EO: Vinder zikh aleyn -- ikh hob gezogt, "Oyb du vilst." Ikh red keyn mol nisht keyn klal shprakh. Nor ikh hob gearbet a khoydesh in tel aviver universitet vi m'hot zikh getsvingn azoy tsu redn. Ober ikh vel redn azoy vi ikh hob geredt in der heym. [I wonder -- I said, "If you like." I never speak in standard Yiddish dialect. But I was working for a month at Tel Aviv University where they forced me to speak that way. But I am going to speak the way I spoke at home growing up.] (laughs) Ikh hof az ale veln mir farshteyn [I hope everyone will understand me]. (laughter) Yo, yidish iz mayn ershte shprakh. Tate-mame hobn geredt yidish in shtib, khotsh zey hobn oykh geredt english -- a besern, a mer defektivn, es vent zikh -- ober ikh ken beemes erlekh zogn yidish iz mayn mame-loshn. [Yes, Yiddish is my first language. My parents spoke Yiddish at home, though they also spoke English -- better, more faulty, it depended -- but I can truly say that Yiddish was my mother tongue.]

PK: Far vos iz yidish geven azoy vikhtik [Why was Yiddish so important]?

EO: Yidish iz geven di mutershprakh say funem tatn, say fun der mamen, ober ven 46:00zey hobn oysgearbet zeyer eygene identitet, yo? Vayl zey zenen geven beyde geboyrn un dertsoygn gevorn in frime mishpokhes, in dem altn yidishn lebn -- ober ven zey hobn aleyn bashtimt vos zey zol zayn in lebn, hobn zey oyfgeklibn di identitet fun a yidishn sotsyalist -- nisht nor fun a sotsyalist, fun a yidishn sotsyalist. Zey zenen geven di gaystike kinder fun ahod-ahom un fun zhitlovskin un fun dubnovn. Yo? Do zenen geven di lerers fun zeyere epokhe, un zey zenen geven di talmidim, ken men zogn. Un zey zenen gegangn mitn veg fun 47:00zhitlovskin. Zey hobn gemeynt az yidish iz beemes an iker. Az, far di ashkenazim un derikish far di mizrekh-eyropeyish yidn -- un di mizrekh-eyropeyishe yidn zenen shoyn geven a rov in di fareynike shtatn, un kanade un in argentine, un vi di velt hot nor an ek -- iz yidish an integrale teyl, a vikhtiker teyl. Zey hobn moyre gehat tsu zogn -- zey hobn keyn mol nisht gezogt -- ober ikh ken zogn. Ikh bin dokh a historiker, ikh hob dokh nisht keyn moyre. Zey zenen geven shprakh-natsionalistn, yo? M'hot zikh zeyer dershrokhn af links. Ale shatirungen, ahits efsher di poale-tsiyon, farn vort "natsionalizm" -- vayl m'hot glakh identifitsirt dem natsionalizm mit reaktsye, mit obskurantizm, mit shovanizm. Ober faktish zenen zey geven liberale, progresive natsionalistn. Zhitlovski hot zikh nisht geshemt. Un shprakh -- azoy vi far hebreyistn, iz 48:00hebreyish, vos iz gevorn "ivrit," iz geven an iker -- iz bay indz iz yidish geven an iker. Khotsh vi ikh zog, farn tatn, iz er keyn mol nisht geven geshtimt kegn hebreyish. Un ikh hob zeyer a gitn zikhorn un ikh hob zeyer frie dermanungen -- ikh bin alt geven dray yor, un yinger fun dray yor -- un ikh gedenk, vayl dos zenen zakhn vos m'hot mir nisht dertseylt. Di bilder un klangen zenen bay mir in kop. Keyner hot vegn dem nisht geredt. Un fun mayne same ershte dermanungen, ven m'hot mikh gelegt shlofn in a bet, nisht in kay -- oy, ikh gedenk shoyn nisht vi m'zogt "crib" af yidish -- "kinderbet," ikh veys -- in a bet. Un ikh lig in bet in der tate shteyt derbay un er zingt mir a vidlid fun 49:00khayim nakhmen bialik af hebrayish un ikh gedenk dos bizn hayntikn tog. [Yiddish was the mother tongue of both my mother and father, but when they developed their own identity, right? Because they were both born and raised in religiously observant families, in the old Jewish lifestyle -- but when they themselves decided how they wanted to live, they chose the identity of Jewish socialists -- not just socialist, but Jewish socialist. They were the spirited youth of Ahad Ha'am (Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg) and of Zhitlovsky and Dubnow. You know? These were the teachers of their era, and they were the students, you could say. And they followed Zhitlovsky's philosophy. They thought that Yiddish was central. That for Ashkenazi Jews and especially Eastern European Jews -- and many of the Eastern European Jews were by then already in the United States, Canada, and Argentina, and every corner of the world -- Yiddish is an integral part, an important aspect. They were afraid to say it -- they never said it -- but I can say it. I am, after all, an historian, so I'm not afraid. They were linguistic nationalists, right? They were very left-leaning. All shades, except maybe Po'ale Tsiyon, because of the word "nationalism" -- because they immediately identified nationalism with reactionaryism, with obscurantism, with chauvinism. But really they were liberal, progressive nationalists. Zhitlovsky wasn't embarrassed to say it. And language -- just like for Hebraists, Hebrew, which became "Ivrit," was central -- Yiddish was for us central. Even though, as I say, my father was never against Hebrew. And I have very good memories that are early memories -- from when I was three years old, and even younger that three -- I remember, because these are things they didn't tell me. The images and sounds are in my mind. No one talked about them. Among my earliest memories are from when I was sleeping in a bed, not a -- oh, I can't remember how to say "crib" in Yiddish -- "kinderbet," who knows? -- in a bed. So I'm lying in bed and my father stands nearby singing a Hayim Nahman Bialik lullaby in Hebrew, which I remember to this day.] (tearing up) Ikh bin an emotsyoneler mentsh [I'm an emotional person]. (pause) Ober ikh hob gehat di skhie mit a khoydesh -- s'iz nokh nisht keyn gantser khoydesh. Bin ikh geven in tel aviv un s'iz oysgefaln der zibn un zibitsikster yortsayt fun khayim nakhman bialik. Bin ikh gegangn afn altn beys-oylem in tel aviv. S'iz geven a haskure nokh bialikn. Un m'hot in hebreyish, farsteyt zikh, a shprakh vos ikh farshtey gants git -- [But I had the honor a month ago -- it wasn't quite a month ago. I happened to be in Tel Aviv for Hayim Nahman Bialik seventy-seventh yahrzeit. I went to the old cemetery in Tel Aviv. It was a memorial service for Bialik. And it was in Hebrew, of course, a language I understand quite well -- ] (tearing up) Un dos iz geven an iberlebung vos ikh vel keyn mol nisht fargesn -- vayl ikh hob gefilt bialikn un ikh hob gefilt dem tatn. [It was an experience I'll never forget -- because I 50:00felt the presence of Bialik and of my father.]

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

PK: So, let's get back to your work, your career --

EO: Yes.

PK: -- as a Jewish history, modern Jewish history professor.

EO: Yes.

PK: How'd you end up at McGill?

EO: How did I end up at McGill? Very good. I was on the job market and a magnificent person, a great scholar and intellectual and a wonderful human being, Ruth Wisse, Harvard University, who is a native of Montreal. Almost a native, right? She came to Montreal as a toddler and she was instrumental in establishing what became the department of Jewish Studies at McGill. And she started with Yiddish literature. Of course, then we expanded to Hebrew language and literature and Jewish history and Talmud and Jewish thought and other 51:00things. But in 1971, Ruth and her husband, Lenny, decided to go on aliyah, to settle in Israel. And she was vacating her position at McGill and they were looking for a person at McGill. And Ruth knew me. I imagine that she suggested my candidacy. And I was invited to try out for a tenure track position. It's odd, I don't know the details of this because I was invited to give a guest lecture in October 1970. For Canadians, this is a very important date: the October Crisis in Quebec and it was a very strange and scary time, my 52:00introduction to Montreal. And I gave a guest lecture in my area of specialization, the history of the Jewish labor and socialist movement in North America and also Eastern Europe and pre-state land of Israel. But it was a lecture about the US, American Jewish labor movement. And I was interviewed and I guess people liked me and I was offered the job. And I grabbed it. I was very happy, little knowing that I would spend forty years in Montreal. Being a New Yorker, born and bred and so patriotic, I thought I'd work at McGill for four or five years, establish a reputation, and come back home and look for a job in New York.

PK: What happened?

EO: I met a wonderful woman, fell in love and married, and we have two fantastic 53:00daughters. And Montreal is a great city, quality of life, especially to raise a family. The rest is history, but -- so, most of my courses, when I started teaching, were in Yiddish literature. I taught Yiddish literature in English translation. I taught an advanced course in Yiddish, Yiddish literature in Yiddish. But after a short while, Ruth's desire to remain in Israel did not materialize -- reason, and she and her family returned to Montreal and she returned to McGill. Well, luckily, I wasn't going to be fired. It was very good. People in the department said, Well, look, your real training, most of your 54:00training is in modern Jewish history and there's a position open. And that's a story in itself.

PK: Before we go there, who were the students that were taking these Yiddish in translation and Yiddish in Yiddish classes?

EO: Okay, when I arrived at McGill in September 1971, it was a wonderful time. First of all, I was twenty-six. Great time. It was a wonderful time in Montreal and for Jewish Montreal, in particular. Of course, not all students of Jewish Studies are Jewish, obviously, just as not all Jewish historians are Jewish. But let's be sociologically realistic. The overwhelming majority of students in Jewish studies, at McGill, certainly, were and remain Jewish, although we have 55:00had non-Jewish students. And I don't want to sound patronizing but this is an objective fact: my best students have been non-Jews. There was something very good about my Jewish students at the very beginning of my academic career. Some of them were still the products of East European immigrant homes and if not the parental home, the grandparents' home. But parental homes. So, I actually had students who knew Yiddish fairly well, not to mention that Montreal had a multilingual Jewish day school system but with Yiddish as a fundamental component. The Yidishe Peretz Shuln and the Yidishe Folks Shuln, they 56:00amalgamated in 1970. The Peretz Shuln Folks Shule. But those who really knew Yiddish well, as I have to credit my knowledge -- because they were born into Yiddish-speaking homes, with all due respect to good teachers and academic courses, et cetera, et cetera. Why was this great? Because we could actually read text. We could actually confront the text without having to resort to dictionaries all the time and translations and struggling over these things. Of course, as the years passed, such students became rarer and rarer until they became almost non-existent and one had to depend upon learning a language, mastering a language. So, those were some of my really good first students. And then, of course, I had students who came to this for intellectual interest, for 57:00other reasons, and some of them did very well, and I soon shifted over to modern Jewish history, which I specialized in. And I had lots of wonderful, wonderful students, very good people. Some went on to be lawyers and doctors and engineers and all sorts of things. And some actually went on to careers and significant careers in Jewish Studies.

PK: Can you describe a Yiddish -- were you teaching more Yiddish classes at the end of your career, as well, or --

EO: No. Once Ruth Wisse returned to McGill, she reclaimed all of her literature courses and I taught Jewish history. But we had a marvelous experience and I can't remember now, it's long ago, whether it was in the '70s or the very early 58:00'80s. We worked up a joint course called "The Shtetl" and I taught the historical component, we team-taught, and she taught the literary component, right? She presented various literary images of the shtetl [small Eastern European town with a Jewish community] and I tried to analyze from a historical, sociological, economic, et cetera point of view, the reality of the shtetl, to confront the two. And it was real team teaching. We were both present in every class and it's an unforgettable experience, the interplay between the two of us and the class. After a while, of course, our schedules became burdened. She withdrew to other courses, "The Shtetl" remained my course and so on. But I always yearn for that intellectual excitement of that ping-pong match on East European Jewry. So, what happened, of course, Ruth left McGill in 1993 for a 59:00chair in Yiddish literature at Harvard. Other people came in to do language. I never taught elementary language. We always had just instructors and so on. And other people have come to do literature and I shifted to my specialization. But when there was a rare case of an extremely talented, of a really serious student who wanted to do a master's in Yiddish literature or something to do -- I was the advisor and I'm very proud -- I don't know if I should mention names here, but particularly of one student who's finishing up at Harvard now, who did a 60:00magnificent study on Bashevis Singer. Not the run-of-the-mill popular -- but a truly in-depth, unusual study, which was an education for me, aside from being the mentor, the guide. So, I have done things in the field of Yiddish academically after I switched to my own field, but not very often.

PK: Now, in Montreal or in your life, do you use Yiddish very much?

EO: Not as much as I would like to, but I do, yeah.

PK: Who do you speak with?

EO: Sometimes I speak with my wife, who's a native Yiddish speaker. When the children were little, we spoke Yiddish to them. I have friends and colleagues who know Yiddish well, and I'm co-chair of the Yiddish Cultural Committee of the 61:00Jewish Public Library, yidishe folks-bibliotek, ha-sifryiah amamit ha-yehudit [Hebrew: The Jewish People's Library], in Montreal. And I speak Yiddish with members of the committee and the guests we invite as lecturers and so on. But the truth be told -- and of course, when my parents were alive -- but this is a long time ago, quarter of a century, spoke Yiddish with my in-laws. My mother-in-law died about ten years ago. My father-in-law, zol lebn un zayn gezunt [may he live and be well], is approaching his ninety-second birthday. We speak Yiddish with him. But sadly, the opportunities are not that great, especially to speak -- since we are both native speakers and steeped in this, to speak at the level at which we are accustomed and not at a student level, we 62:00hunger for such opportunities.

PK: Can you describe, in your experience, the difference between the New York Yiddish community and the Montreal Yiddish community?

EO: Yes. Sadly, the difference is diminishing, but when I arrived in Montreal in September 1971, it was an amazing -- and I daresay unique -- Jewish community in the Western world. First of all, Montreal is one of the rare places that had a secular Labor Zionist-oriented day school system from 1926, before any Jewish religious school, before any Talmud Torah became a day school, the Folks Shule 63:00-- and, of course, the Peretz Shule in Winnipeg, 1914. Day school. Remarkable. I've written a little bit about this. Other people have written about it. There were a number of exceptional Jewish intellectuals, Yiddishist intellectuals. The late Shloyme Vaysman, zikhroyne livrokhe, the Folks Shule, one of the pioneers of the Folks Shule. A great Hebraist but also somebody who really understood the significance of Yiddish. His colleague, Shimshon Dunsky, the translator of Midrash Rabbah into Yiddish, a wonderful scholar with a passion for Yiddish and hero, of course. And the late Yankev Ziper, Peretz Shule, and other people. I won't go on and on. And the Jewish Public Library, which will soon celebrate its 64:00centenary, most beautiful Jewish institution, founded by Reuven Brainin, Hebrew writer, also a Yiddish writer, but much more Hebrew than Yiddish writer. And Yehuda Kaufman, Evan Shmuel, who was my dad's teacher at the Jewish Teachers Seminary in the 1920s in New York, became a major scholar in erets-yisroel [the land of Israel] and then in the State of Israel. These were remarkable people of quality, of intellectual quality. And the Jewish Public Library, every week -- and we had this wonderful wall, the Honor Wall, of photographs of all the Yiddish and Hebrew writers and intellectuals who ever spoke from a platform of the yidishe folks bibliotek. Of course, there's a magnificent photograph of Sholem Aleichem himself on the top of Mount Royal sometime in 1915, I don't 65:00know, or late 19-- with the executive of the Jewish Public Library when it was young. People of this quality, the whole wall. And you could do something every weekend. You could hear something interesting in Yiddish or in Hebrew, something of great quality. And this did not exist in New York. I don't know how much of it is due sociologically to the smaller size of the community, the more intimate nature. Also, people speak about the linguistic cultural divide between French and English. I don't know if there's -- I wrote about this. I'm not sure if this was the decisive factor: the charisma of these people, the commitment of these people. Of course, dor khalekh v'dor bo, a generation dies and a generation 66:00comes, and that generation is all but gone now. And so, the cultural situation has changed. But the stamp is so powerful that we still have things of quality, although much more should be done in Hebrew and in Yiddish.

PK: We're nearing the end. (laughs)

EO: Okay.

PK: Gonna wait for this car. Oh, it's going to stop, of course, and not make any noise. Okay. Do you consider yourself an activist?

EO: Yes, of course, in a very modest way. I was born into activism: labor activism, social and political activism, cultural activism. And I think that my parents would be very upset with me if I had turned out to be a totally 67:00self-centered person or an individualist, so on. A commitment to ideals was the highest value that was inculcated in me. I don't see myself as a great organizer. I'm not a rabble-rouser. I'm not this. But, as I say, I am co-chair, for many years, of the Yiddish Cultural Committee. I have not lived solely in the academic ivory tower. I've been involved in various things. Culturally, particularly, and involving Yiddish, in particular. So, in that sense, that I just don't sit home or in the library and read for my own knowledge and 68:00satisfaction and pleasure. I want to be in the community and try to do things and try to encourage other people to do things. So, if you call that being -- well, it's certainly being active. If that's what an activist does, I'm also somewhat of an activist.

PK: Was there anything else that you wanted to touch on or talk about?

EO: No, if you want me to speak about my life, I could go on forever. But I'm very much in your hands. It's the question about what you're most interested in and what you feel is most important for this project and this archive, so --

PK: Well --

EO: -- I leave the last word to you.

PK: -- I only have one more question.

EO: Yes.

PK: But I would highly encourage you to come back.

EO: Yes.

PK: Come to the Book Center and do a full --

EO: Yes.

PK: -- interview. What is your advice to future generations of scholars, of 69:00specifically Yiddish or Jewish history?

EO: I have only one bit of not too deep advice but very important, I think, and it's something that troubles me greatly. Past generations of Jewish scholars were very lucky, in a way. They were born into a classical Jewish tradition. They were steeped in Bible and commentaries and Mishnah and Gemara and rabbinic literature. They had one greater or lesser knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic, sometimes Arabic. Many of them, of course, were also born in multilingual societies and they were multilingual. Many Eastern European Jews, Yiddish was 70:00mother tongue, Hebrew was very well-known. They knew German, they knew Russian, they knew Polish, they knew other languages. And it served them very well and they could create great works, works that now usually are only created by staffs of many, many people. Well, of course, they had other talents aside from their linguistic abilities and I'm not even looking for such renaissance people today. But if you go into Jewish Studies, any field, you must make sure that you have mastered, and I mean mastered, the necessary languages. It breaks my heart, and 71:00I know that this is not limited to Yiddish, but Yiddish is closest to me because Yiddish is my mother tongue and because, as I say, I grew in an environment in which Yiddish was very much an integral element of modern Jewish identity. People who are engaged professionally in this field and do not master the language -- and this is not the way. If you are serious in the field, the first thing you must do is immerse yourself, any way. Academic courses, intensive programs. Reading and reading and reading and never cease to read and so on. And to try to make use of the language, too. Whether one becomes a speaker or not, I 72:00cannot impose this. But to be able to have that unmediated connection to the material that you're working with, and not mediated by translation, not mediated by secondary, by an intermediary and so on, this is essential for quality scholarship. And this is the first desideraturm for any real scholar. That's it.

PK: Good! A sheynem dank [Thank you very much].

EO: Nishto farvos [You're welcome].

[END OF INTERVIEW]