Keywords:1910s; 1920s; America; Bundism; Bundist; Eastern European Jewry; Ellis Island; emigration; family background; family history; father; First World War; grandparents; immigration; immigration quotas; immigration to Cuba; Jewish Bund; Jews in the Polish army; Marxism; Marxist; mother; New York; Old World; parents; Po'ale Tsiyon; Poale Tsion; Poale Tzion; Poale Zion; pogroms; Polish Jewry; Polish-Soviet War; political affiliations; Soviet Russia; U.S.; United States; Warsaw, Poland; World War 1; World War I; World War One; WWI
Keywords:American Jewry; brothers; childhood; family background; family history; family stories; historical transmission; Holocaust; immigrants; immigration; Jewish secular culture; musicians; parents; passing down stories; Second World War; sons; transmission of stories; World War 2; World War II; World War Two; WW2; WWII; Yiddish language; Yiddish speakers; Yiddishism; Yiddishists
Keywords:"The Coops"; Bronx High School of Science; City College; college; Columbia University; education; family dynamics; family history; family stories; father; historian; historical studies; history major; history scholars; junior high school; Marxism; Marxist; Max Weinreich; modern Jewish history; municipal college; New York City; parents; public school; schooling; undergraduate education; Uriel Weinreich; Yiddish linguistics; Yiddish studies
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 weare going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's WexlerOral History Project. Eugene Orenstein -- Professor Eugene Orenstein, do I haveyour 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 froma 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 ofWarsaw. He was born into a strictly observant, religious, Hasidic family. Mygrandfather, 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 tothe oldest. And in his early years, he was raised in this environment, veryserious way. And he was very scholarly. So, after going to kheyder [traditionalreligious school], he was sent to a yeshiva, a Talmudic academy, when he wasonly ten or eleven years old. And he excelled in his studies. He attended anumber of yeshivas briefly but finally settled in a place in Warsaw, which was aHasidic yeshiva, because he had gone to Lithuanian-oriented yeshivas, too. And Idon'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 veryearly age, about fourteen, thirteen, fourteen, he lost his faith under theinfluence 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 verycurious. But he was the youngest one and he was also extremely pious. So, theyfeared that he would report them to the inspector, to the mashgiekh, to theauthorities. 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 andlife]" by Moshe Leib Lilienblum, a classic work of the lost person on the roadsof life. And that opened his eyes, as they used to say, and it was downhill fromthere. So, he became an autodidact and joined the left-wing of the Po'aleTsiyon, of the Social Zionist party and so on. My late mother, Tsirl, herEnglish name was Sylvia [Klayman?]. She was the youngest child of also veryreligious parents. My maternal grandfather was a Techeilesnik [follower of the 5:00Radziner rebbe known as Ba'al HaTecheiles], that is a Radziner khosid [member ofthe Radziner Hasidic sect]. And he was from the cradle town of Radziner khsides[Radziner Hasidism], from Izhbits, Izbica Lubelski. And he was an administratoron 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 theforest, of determining how many trees should be cut down, where, when? Shouldthey be sent to the sawmill or should they be floated down the Vistula and soldin Germany and Danzig? All these things. And so, they lived in a village, Ithink it was in the part of Poland that had the large Ukrainian population. Itwas probably a Ukrainian village. There were only two Jewish families: mymaternal family, the [Klaymans?] at one end and another Jewish family at theother. 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 visualmemory of her father. Only stories. He died of tuberculosis. He was aboutthirty-nine or forty years old and he left my grandmother with five livingchildren and very dire straits. And she had to divide up the babies, the youngerfamily, and she took the older children to Warsaw and found employment as aseamstress and then managed to reunite her family. And they lived in direpoverty in one room, in an attic, in a garret in the heart of Jewish proletarianWarsaw. And my mother had to quit school. She went to work when she was eightyears old. And so, that's --
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 NewYork City. She was a revolutionary. She was a Bundist and she belonged to theBund in Warsaw. My aunt, [Esther Ginyaz?], she left as a very young woman --nineteen, something like that -- just before the outbreak of the First WorldWar. And the thought was that she would find work and send money to bring hermother 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 ofmisery and horror for my mother and her siblings and my grandmother. War andstarvation and pogroms and revolution and counterrevolution and so on. Butfinally, very lucky, in 1921, she sent enough money to bring her mother, mygrandmother, the only grandparent I ever knew, although I was only three whenshe died, and two of the siblings -- because one aunt had died of the Spanishinfluenza when they were preparing to leave. So, this was the last year of whatis 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 wereplenty of restrictions, and even for Europeans, but -- and it was the year thatthe United States adopted immigration quotas based on racist thinking. So, mymother was very, very lucky. I'm lucky I'm here because of this, that mygrandmother and two of her daughters immigrated through Ellis Island to New Yorkin the fall of 1921. Now, my father had a different story. My father wasnineteen years old in 1920 when the Polish-Soviet War broke out and he wasdrafted. He was an ex-yeshive-bokher [yeshiva student] and my father, to thelast 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 experiencefor anybody but particularly for a Jew and particularly for a Jew of hisbackground. And my father had already become a Marxist and, as I say, he was amember of the left-wing Po'ale Tsiyon and he was a supporter of what was calledSoviet Russia at that time and not of the independent Polish Republic. So, Iguess, for personal reasons, he wanted to live a longer life and for politicalreasons, 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 asmy mother's brother, my uncle did. And they already knew each other thanks to mymother. 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 thecut-off they -- thirty-five or forty-five. So, they left Poland illegally andthey chose -- they had the opportunity, although they made the choice withincorrect information because at that time, a rumor circulated in Polish Jewrythat if you immigrated to Cuba, which was a de facto colony of the United Statesat the time and you established one-year legal residence in Cuba, you couldimmigrate to the continental United States outside the quota system. This wasnot true but many desperate immigrants believed it and did that. So, my fatherand my uncle, his future brother-in-law, chose to immigrate to Cuba, which theydid. 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, aftera short period, to settle in the United States and -- where all of theirchildren 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 inour 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 afour-year space between them and there is an eighteen-year and fourteen-yeardifference between me and my eldest brother and me and my middle brother, longlife to him. I don't know what stories they told at that time. They were muchyounger. The intellectual climate, the political climate was a different one. Myoldest brother was born with Yiddish as mother tongue. That is certainly true.And not because my parents didn't know English, but because principally, theywere Yiddishists and they believed in an autonomous Jewish secular culture inYiddish and they wanted their children to be Yiddish-speaking. But how much ofthis 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 andculturally, I would say, at a young age. But I was born at the end of the SecondWorld War and my parents had to struggle with the Holocaust and what it meant tothem. My father lost his entire family. No one else in his family immigrated. Mymother, of course, lost her extended family. Luckily, the nuclear family all --whole family immigrated. But the whole world into which they were born and whichnourished them was destroyed. And so, they reevaluated and they talked a lotabout 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 academichistorian, I inherited tremendous historical material, baggage of all thesefamily 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 ageneralization because I have one very close friend from early-ish childhood whois the son of an American Yiddish writer. And he was very conscious of hisbackground. And his mother was also a woman of great intellectual quality and soon. 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 Ireally don't know. I haven't kept up with many of the people of my childhood andI'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 Idon't know if I have to say anything about this, since it's already beenrecorded 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. Andvarious movements established cooperative houses in the only mainland borough ofNew York City, the Bronx. I'm very patriotic, not because of the Yankees. TheAmalgamated Clothing Workers of North America opened a major cooperative housingproject 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-wingsocialist, 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 Jewishnational culture in Yiddish. And they established a cooperative called SholemAleichem hayzer, the Sholem Aleichem houses. And the Po'ale Tsiyon, theSocialist Zionist Party and its mutual aid organization, the Farband, built twobuildings right near us in the Bronx. And there was -- The Coops, of course,cooperative was -- workers' cooperative -- I forget. I should remember theofficial name. Now, the interesting thing is that initially, the initiative didnot come from the Communist Party or Jewish communists. It came from two hippiesof 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 terriblycongested slum and this was the most beautiful accomplishment, to give youngpeople establishing families the chance to live in wonderful conditions out inthe rural Bronx, at that time. We were right across the street from Bronx Parkand what is now the New York Botanical Gardens. So, it was started by a group ofkind of left-wing radical Yiddishists and so -- but, the Communist Party, theJewish section at that time, Yiddish-speaking section at first, of course, had avery negative attitude toward cooperativism in general. They said that to builda workers' cooperative of any type in the capitalist scene was utopian folly, itwas 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 theBronx -- (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 Coopsbecame 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 othersiblings and so on. And my father became a working -- both my parents becameworkers. And finally, they struck out on their own. They moved a block away frommy 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 togethertheir meager savings and they became first cooperators. In fact, I have theirmembership card and they were number twenty-seven out of 750 families. They werenumber 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 monthsold, barely five months old. And they lived there for almost the rest of theirlives. Not entirely, but for a very long -- well over fifty years. So, my middlebrother, [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, andI won't discuss the details. This is discussed in the documentary film andthings have been written about it. But a majority of the cooperators voted todisband, to sell it to a private entrepreneur in 1943 during the Second WorldWar. But the communist influence, the communist spirit and commitment of peopleremained very much. It was not a hundred percent. There were dissenters by thistime. But it remained, throughout my childhood and my early teen years and soon. It had that character. And of course, Yiddish was very important. It is saidthat we had the largest secular Yiddish school in the United States, in thebasement 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 frontorganization in the early 1950s and the school movement went through ametamorphosis 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, zikhroynelivrokhe [may his memory be for a blessing]. I started in nursery at the age ofthree. I probably have one of the longest shule [secular Yiddish school] careersin North America. (laughs) And after nursery and kindergarten, of course, it wasan 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, theBronx mitlshul was quite large, but the numbers were declining in my time, so itamalgamated with the Manhattan and Brooklyn schools in my second year. And wewould study on Friday night in The Coops in the Bronx and all day Saturday inManhattan. Travel downtown by subway for four years. And then, I did thecollege-level courses called hekherer korsn [advanced courses]. And I wasinvited to become a teacher while I was still studying and I was a -- oh, Ithink I was still a high school student when I started teaching high schoolYiddish. High school. And I taught for nine years, until I accepted anappointment at McGill and settled in Montreal.
PK: Can you actually talk a little about what you learned in the progressive
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 wassatisfied. I had some wonderful teachers. I had other type teachers. But I don'tthink I had complaints. But as I matured and I began to take Jewish Studies veryseriously intellectually, academically -- and, of course, that became my chosenfield -- 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 resentfulthat I contributed to it as a teacher. Because I felt, as an adult, that theheart of Jewish identity and the Jewish experience had been cut out of it and ithad been reduced to a very low, low level. Of course, let's hit the nail on thehead: the Bible was not treated very seriously. Of course, we were told Biblestories, or we read, when we learned to read Yiddish, we read adaptations ofcertain stories. In fact, our classroom was decorated with paintings or 27:00reproductions of famous paintings of biblical scenes by non-Jewish famousartists and Doré and Jewish artists and so on. And some of our teachers reallyhad a feeling for this and they conveyed some of it with a lot of warmth andrespect. But there wasn't very much of it. And Jewish tradition, et cetera, etcetera. And even Yiddish -- and I don't think this is just the fault of theso-called left-wing because I've compared notes with my friends who went to theArbeter Ring shule and to the Sholem Aleichem shuln and the Farband shule. Manyof the teachers did not have a real grasp on what the meaning of Yiddish is andhow the language should be taught. So, we were taught, generally -- there were 28:00exceptions, but generally, a very anemic, Germanized, Americanized Yiddish. Ade-Judaized Yiddish, which now I understand is ridiculous. It's not Yiddishbecause, of course, Yiddish means Jewish and the whole raison d'être of thislanguage is that it is a Jewish language to convey Jewish values and the Jewishexperience, 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 notreally Yiddish. So, in that sense, I was very lucky, personally. My late fatherwas a wonderful Biblical and Talmudic scholar. I don't say this simply becausehe 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 ofhis life, which is also very troubling to me. Not that I think that he shouldhave been observant or a believer -- he knew the whole Bible by heart. You justhad to recite one verse and he would continue without a text. He knew well overa hundred pages of Gemara Talmud by heart but he could interpret them. He had animmense love of the Hebrew language his whole life, as he loved his mothertongue, Yiddish. And he conveyed this to me. And he made it very clear to methat 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 tofill in some of the gaps, linguistically and in a text sense and so on. But Ireally felt that all the secular shuln -- but, of course, the Left with acapital L or the communists were the worst offenders in this area. They went waytoo far off the tracks. I did not expect them to teach observance or toinculcate a belief in the divinity, but certainly, there should have been a muchcloser 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 Kinderlandand that's also an interesting story. When I was eight years old, my parentsowned 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 ofcreating some kind of Jewish collective, left-wing collective that never workedout but -- and in 1953, my father decided to have a summer home built on thisproperty. And that was the love of his life, in a way. He was a worker. He was afur 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 atfive a.m. And this was the time when subways were not air conditioned in NewYork 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 plantedfruit 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 amother. She gave up working in shops and she worked very hard, I don't have tosay 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 deeplyinvolved in the left-wing movement, my mother's sister's husband. And he owned asmall factory, created the guilt of his life. And so, he had a little more meansthan my parents did. And Camp Kinderland was threatened with closure in theearly 1950s. It had been affiliated with the International Workers' Order, ofthe Jewish Peoples Fraternal Order branch of the IWO. And so, very rapid moveshad to be made to rescue the camp and the camp carried a mortgage and theycouldn'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 thecontributors. So that in the summer of 1954, my cousin, who was more like abrother to me because we were -- I hate to say, my late cousin. Died three yearsago. He was sent to Kinderland for a brief period in 1954 and I remained in thecountry home. But in 1955, thanks to my uncle, I went with my cousin for aKinderland experience, which I loved. I had a great time in '55 and then we wentback in '57. So, my cousin was at Kinderland for three years and I was onlythere for two summers. But I was born and bred in that environment. And so, Icame 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. Andthen, '65, I went to Europe for the first time and I came back for my lastsummer 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 hada lot of fun. It was very lively, socially. Great. And so, there were somewonderful people who have remained friends for the rest -- up to this day. But astruggle 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 aninsider, you knew that there was a struggle going on between people who wantedKinderland to be simply a left-wing integrated camp and people who werecommitted to maintaining its Jewish character without rejecting radical politicsbut insisting on -- that even though non-Jewish children were accepted and blackchildren were accepted -- but that the understanding was that this was anenvironment in which Jewish culture, particularly in its Yiddish form, would becultivated. 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 andalso 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 theages 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 Istarted, and I went to the Bronx High School of Science. And then, when I wasgoing 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 havegone but I felt that it was very unfair to my parents, who were working peopleof modest means, to saddle them with that financial burden. I did receive somekind of scholarship but it was not full scholarship by any means and it would bea 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 andAmerican history -- and I'm very happy about that. I was lucky. I had anexcellent education there. I had some great professors, famous people. I hadsome 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 leavingNew York City would have been a great experience, but that's not -- and then, Idid my graduate work. I decided I was a historian very early in my life and Idid BA honors in history at City College and then I went on to do my graduatework in Jewish history, in modern Jewish history at Columbia University. And Iwas very lucky to study with some wonderful, inspiring scholars and charismaticpeople, 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. Andwhat they told was extremely dramatic and often very troubling and tragic. Andthese things left an indelible impression upon me. Did I realize early on thatthis was feeding my imagination, the -- kind of putting me on the road tohistory? I don't know. It's very easy to say yes now, but I don't know how Ithought about this when I was eight or when I was ten, so -- 41:00
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 guidedmasters, I've guided serious students in this area, but -- and I minored inYiddish linguistics at Columbia with the late Uriel Weinreich, zikhroynelivrokhe, and I studied with great, great people. His father, Max Weinreich andso 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? 42:00
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 thinkhe was a frustrated historian. Had he had the opportunity to be born in anothertime and another place, he wouldn't have been a fur worker or mink operator. Hewould have been a historian. But he didn't have those opportunities. But Ialways say, and not simply because he was my father, he had a lot more knowledgethan many PhDs I've met in my life and I've met many. So, I think he was aninspiration to me, and his interests. History was always being discussed. And 43:00not just Jewish history. World history, Western history. And from a Marxistperspective, my father remained a Marxist. And so, what should I say? Thatsubconsciously, I was gonna live his life for him? That I was gonna be thecompassionate son? It's silly to say these things. For me, I feel it sparked myimagination and I had -- I guess I have a certain inclination. I have a goodmemory 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 tochoose 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, tothe problems of society, how society works, and to history, that we did notarise from a vacuum and that -- and not simply in a Jewish sense. So, I think ifyou know a lot of these people, whether they're chemical engineers or paintersor musicians or whatever they are, you'll find a greater interest in history andin 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 vim'hot zikh getsvingn azoy tsu redn. Ober ikh vel redn azoy vi ikh hob geredt inder heym. [I wonder -- I said, "If you like." I never speak in standard Yiddishdialect. But I was working for a month at Tel Aviv University where they forcedme to speak that way. But I am going to speak the way I spoke at home growingup.] (laughs) Ikh hof az ale veln mir farshteyn [I hope everyone will understandme]. (laughter) Yo, yidish iz mayn ershte shprakh. Tate-mame hobn geredt yidishin shtib, khotsh zey hobn oykh geredt english -- a besern, a mer defektivn, esvent 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 alsospoke English -- better, more faulty, it depended -- but I can truly say thatYiddish 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 beydegeboyrn 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 oyfgeklibndi identitet fun a yidishn sotsyalist -- nisht nor fun a sotsyalist, fun ayidishn sotsyalist. Zey zenen geven di gaystike kinder fun ahod-ahom un funzhitlovskin un fun dubnovn. Yo? Do zenen geven di lerers fun zeyere epokhe, unzey 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 ashkenazimun derikish far di mizrekh-eyropeyish yidn -- un di mizrekh-eyropeyishe yidnzenen shoyn geven a rov in di fareynike shtatn, un kanade un in argentine, un vidi velt hot nor an ek -- iz yidish an integrale teyl, a vikhtiker teyl. Zey hobnmoyre gehat tsu zogn -- zey hobn keyn mol nisht gezogt -- ober ikh ken zogn. Ikhbin dokh a historiker, ikh hob dokh nisht keyn moyre. Zey zenen gevenshprakh-natsionalistn, yo? M'hot zikh zeyer dershrokhn af links. Aleshatirungen, ahits efsher di poale-tsiyon, farn vort "natsionalizm" -- vaylm'hot glakh identifitsirt dem natsionalizm mit reaktsye, mit obskurantizm, mitshovanizm. 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 yidishgeven an iker. Khotsh vi ikh zog, farn tatn, iz er keyn mol nisht geven geshtimtkegn hebreyish. Un ikh hob zeyer a gitn zikhorn un ikh hob zeyer friedermanungen -- ikh bin alt geven dray yor, un yinger fun dray yor -- un ikhgedenk, vayl dos zenen zakhn vos m'hot mir nisht dertseylt. Di bilder un klangenzenen bay mir in kop. Keyner hot vegn dem nisht geredt. Un fun mayne same ershtedermanungen, ven m'hot mikh gelegt shlofn in a bet, nisht in kay -- oy, ikhgedenk shoyn nisht vi m'zogt "crib" af yidish -- "kinderbet," ikh veys -- in abet. 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. [Yiddishwas the mother tongue of both my mother and father, but when they developedtheir own identity, right? Because they were both born and raised in religiouslyobservant families, in the old Jewish lifestyle -- but when they themselvesdecided how they wanted to live, they chose the identity of Jewish socialists --not just socialist, but Jewish socialist. They were the spirited youth of AhadHa'am (Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg) and of Zhitlovsky and Dubnow. You know? Thesewere the teachers of their era, and they were the students, you could say. Andthey followed Zhitlovsky's philosophy. They thought that Yiddish was central.That for Ashkenazi Jews and especially Eastern European Jews -- and many of theEastern European Jews were by then already in the United States, Canada, andArgentina, and every corner of the world -- Yiddish is an integral part, animportant aspect. They were afraid to say it -- they never said it -- but I cansay it. I am, after all, an historian, so I'm not afraid. They were linguisticnationalists, right? They were very left-leaning. All shades, except maybePo'ale Tsiyon, because of the word "nationalism" -- because they immediatelyidentified nationalism with reactionaryism, with obscurantism, with chauvinism.But really they were liberal, progressive nationalists. Zhitlovsky wasn'tembarrassed to say it. And language -- just like for Hebraists, Hebrew, whichbecame "Ivrit," was central -- Yiddish was for us central. Even though, as Isay, my father was never against Hebrew. And I have very good memories that areearly 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 andsounds are in my mind. No one talked about them. Among my earliest memories arefrom 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 bedand 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'man emotional person]. (pause) Ober ikh hob gehat di skhie mit a khoydesh -- s'iznokh nisht keyn gantser khoydesh. Bin ikh geven in tel aviv un s'iz oysgefalnder zibn un zibitsikster yortsayt fun khayim nakhman bialik. Bin ikh gegangn afnaltn beys-oylem in tel aviv. S'iz geven a haskure nokh bialikn. Un m'hot inhebreyish, farsteyt zikh, a shprakh vos ikh farshtey gants git -- [But I had thehonor a month ago -- it wasn't quite a month ago. I happened to be in Tel Avivfor Hayim Nahman Bialik seventy-seventh yahrzeit. I went to the old cemetery inTel 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 aniberlebung vos ikh vel keyn mol nisht fargesn -- vayl ikh hob gefilt bialikn unikh 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 humanbeing, Ruth Wisse, Harvard University, who is a native of Montreal. Almost anative, right? She came to Montreal as a toddler and she was instrumental inestablishing what became the department of Jewish Studies at McGill. And shestarted with Yiddish literature. Of course, then we expanded to Hebrew languageand 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, tosettle in Israel. And she was vacating her position at McGill and they werelooking for a person at McGill. And Ruth knew me. I imagine that she suggestedmy candidacy. And I was invited to try out for a tenure track position. It'sodd, I don't know the details of this because I was invited to give a guestlecture in October 1970. For Canadians, this is a very important date: theOctober 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 ofspecialization, the history of the Jewish labor and socialist movement in NorthAmerica and also Eastern Europe and pre-state land of Israel. But it was alecture about the US, American Jewish labor movement. And I was interviewed andI guess people liked me and I was offered the job. And I grabbed it. I was veryhappy, little knowing that I would spend forty years in Montreal. Being a NewYorker, born and bred and so patriotic, I thought I'd work at McGill for four orfive 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 afamily. The rest is history, but -- so, most of my courses, when I startedteaching, were in Yiddish literature. I taught Yiddish literature in Englishtranslation. I taught an advanced course in Yiddish, Yiddish literature inYiddish. But after a short while, Ruth's desire to remain in Israel did notmaterialize -- reason, and she and her family returned to Montreal and shereturned 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 astory 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 Montrealand for Jewish Montreal, in particular. Of course, not all students of JewishStudies are Jewish, obviously, just as not all Jewish historians are Jewish. Butlet's be sociologically realistic. The overwhelming majority of students inJewish 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 anobjective fact: my best students have been non-Jews. There was something verygood about my Jewish students at the very beginning of my academic career. Someof them were still the products of East European immigrant homes and if not theparental home, the grandparents' home. But parental homes. So, I actually hadstudents who knew Yiddish fairly well, not to mention that Montreal had amultilingual Jewish day school system but with Yiddish as a fundamentalcomponent. The Yidishe Peretz Shuln and the Yidishe Folks Shuln, they 56:00amalgamated in 1970. The Peretz Shuln Folks Shule. But those who really knewYiddish well, as I have to credit my knowledge -- because they were born intoYiddish-speaking homes, with all due respect to good teachers and academiccourses, et cetera, et cetera. Why was this great? Because we could actuallyread text. We could actually confront the text without having to resort todictionaries all the time and translations and struggling over these things. Ofcourse, as the years passed, such students became rarer and rarer until theybecame 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. Andthen, 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 modernJewish history, which I specialized in. And I had lots of wonderful, wonderfulstudents, very good people. Some went on to be lawyers and doctors and engineersand all sorts of things. And some actually went on to careers and significantcareers 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 Ican'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 thehistorical component, we team-taught, and she taught the literary component,right? She presented various literary images of the shtetl [small EasternEuropean 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, toconfront the two. And it was real team teaching. We were both present in everyclass and it's an unforgettable experience, the interplay between the two of usand the class. After a while, of course, our schedules became burdened. Shewithdrew to other courses, "The Shtetl" remained my course and so on. But Ialways yearn for that intellectual excitement of that ping-pong match on EastEuropean 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. Inever taught elementary language. We always had just instructors and so on. Andother people have come to do literature and I shifted to my specialization. Butwhen there was a rare case of an extremely talented, of a really serious studentwho wanted to do a master's in Yiddish literature or something to do -- I wasthe 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 atruly in-depth, unusual study, which was an education for me, aside from beingthe mentor, the guide. So, I have done things in the field of Yiddishacademically 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 colleagueswho 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 withmembers of the committee and the guests we invite as lecturers and so on. Butthe truth be told -- and of course, when my parents were alive -- but this is along time ago, quarter of a century, spoke Yiddish with my in-laws. Mymother-in-law died about ten years ago. My father-in-law, zol lebn un zayngezunt [may he live and be well], is approaching his ninety-second birthday. Wespeak Yiddish with him. But sadly, the opportunities are not that great,especially to speak -- since we are both native speakers and steeped in this, tospeak 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 inthe Western world. First of all, Montreal is one of the rare places that had asecular Labor Zionist-oriented day school system from 1926, before any Jewishreligious 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. Therewere a number of exceptional Jewish intellectuals, Yiddishist intellectuals. Thelate Shloyme Vaysman, zikhroyne livrokhe, the Folks Shule, one of the pioneersof the Folks Shule. A great Hebraist but also somebody who really understood thesignificance of Yiddish. His colleague, Shimshon Dunsky, the translator ofMidrash Rabbah into Yiddish, a wonderful scholar with a passion for Yiddish andhero, of course. And the late Yankev Ziper, Peretz Shule, and other people. Iwon'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, Hebrewwriter, also a Yiddish writer, but much more Hebrew than Yiddish writer. AndYehuda Kaufman, Evan Shmuel, who was my dad's teacher at the Jewish TeachersSeminary in the 1920s in New York, became a major scholar in erets-yisroel [theland of Israel] and then in the State of Israel. These were remarkable people ofquality, of intellectual quality. And the Jewish Public Library, every week --and we had this wonderful wall, the Honor Wall, of photographs of all theYiddish and Hebrew writers and intellectuals who ever spoke from a platform ofthe yidishe folks bibliotek. Of course, there's a magnificent photograph ofSholem 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 wasyoung. People of this quality, the whole wall. And you could do something everyweekend. You could hear something interesting in Yiddish or in Hebrew, somethingof great quality. And this did not exist in New York. I don't know how much ofit is due sociologically to the smaller size of the community, the more intimatenature. Also, people speak about the linguistic cultural divide between Frenchand English. I don't know if there's -- I wrote about this. I'm not sure if thiswas the decisive factor: the charisma of these people, the commitment of thesepeople. 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 situationhas 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 myparents 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 thehighest value that was inculcated in me. I don't see myself as a greatorganizer. 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 inthe academic ivory tower. I've been involved in various things. Culturally,particularly, and involving Yiddish, in particular. So, in that sense, that Ijust 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 thingsand 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 alsosomewhat 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 inand 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
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 scholarswere 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 rabbinicliterature. They had one greater or lesser knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic,sometimes Arabic. Many of them, of course, were also born in multilingualsocieties 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 andthey could create great works, works that now usually are only created by staffsof many, many people. Well, of course, they had other talents aside from theirlinguistic 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 havemastered, 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 becauseYiddish is my mother tongue and because, as I say, I grew in an environment inwhich Yiddish was very much an integral element of modern Jewish identity.People who are engaged professionally in this field and do not master thelanguage -- and this is not the way. If you are serious in the field, the firstthing you must do is immerse yourself, any way. Academic courses, intensiveprograms. Reading and reading and reading and never cease to read and so on. Andto 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 thematerial that you're working with, and not mediated by translation, not mediatedby secondary, by an intermediary and so on, this is essential for qualityscholarship. And this is the first desideraturm for any real scholar. That's it.