THEODORE BIKEL ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney.  I'm here at KlezKanada with Theodore Bikel.  We're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project.  And the date is August 26th, 2011.  Theodore, do I have your permission to record this interview?  (pause) Do I have your permission to record the interview?

THEODORE BIKEL: Absolutely, yes.

CW:  A sheynem dank.  Di ershte frage iz: fun vanem shtamt ayer mishpokhe? [Thank you very much.  The first question is: where is your family from?]

TB:  Di mishpokhe shtamt --- es flegt zogn az di natsyonalitet iz geven estraykh.  Nor s'iz geven Bukovina.  Bukovina iz haynt in ukrayne.  Iz azoy: 1:00a mol iz es geveyn rusland.  Ven mayne tate-mame zenen geboyrn gevorn iz geven Austria.  In nayntsn-nayntsn, bay dem fortrakt fun versay, iz gevorn rumeynye.  Nokh der tsveyter milkhome, zeks-un-fertsikstn yor iz gevorn rusland.  Un haynt iz ukrayne. [My family comes -- they would say that their nationality was from Austria.  But it was Bukovina.  Bukovina is now in Ukraine.  It goes like this: once, it was Russia.  When my parents were born, it was Austria.  In 1919, according to the Treaty of Versailles, it became Romania.  After World War II, in '46, it became Russia.  And now it's Ukraine.]  (laughter)

CW:  Un vos iz geven zeyer parnose [And what were their occupations]?

TB:  Mit parnose, farshteyt zikh, mit yidn [In terms of occupations, of course, with Jews] -- (laughter) s'iz a modne zakh.  Mayn zayde fun der mames zayt iz geven a funktyioner funem estraykhishn regirung.  Dos heyst er hot gehaltn a 2:00tfise [it's strange.  My maternal grandfather was a functionary of the Austrian government.  That meant he was in charge of a jail] -- a jail, a tfise.  Un er iz geven der forshteyer fun der tsife  [He was the warren of the jail].  (making as if twirling tips of mustache that extended sideways from his face) Mit aza vontse -- oysgezen vi a tipisher estraykhisher baamter.  Un der tate hot shtudirt af der universitet in tshernovits.  Dos iz geven di vaytste mizrekhdike daytshe universitet in eyrope.  Nokhn krig -- bemeshekh der ferster velt milkhome, zenen beyde mishpokhes avek, antlofn fun di rusn keyn vin.  Un ikh bin geboyrn gevorn in vin, in gantsn.  Ober di gantse ibergebnkayt af 3:00yidisher kultur un yidisher shprakh in yidishe literatur -- dos iz geven alts af yidish in der heym.  Bifrat in gas hot men geredt af daytsh, in in shul hot men geredt af daytsh. [With a mustache like this -- he looked like a typical Austrian official.  And my father studied at the university in Czernowitz.  It was the German university that was the farthest east in Europe.  After the war -- during World War I, both families fled, ran away from the Russians to Vienna.  And I was born in Vienna, truly.  But the whole devotion to Jewish culture and Yiddish and Yiddish literature -- it was completely in Yiddish at home.  Even while we spoke German on the street, and at school.]

CW:  Un fun vos hot ir geredt in der heym [And what did you talk about at home]?

TB:  Mit der mamen: daytsh, un mitn tatn: kol-mine leshoynes -- yidish, hebreyish, un daytsh oykh.  Mit der bobe: yidish. [German with my mother, and various languages with my father: Yiddish, Hebrew, and also German.  Yiddish with my grandmother].

CW:  Un ikh veys az s'iz geven a sakh muzik in ayer shtub.  Vos far a min zang hot ayer tate gezingen? [I know there was a lot of music in your home.  What kind of songs would your father sing?]

TB:  Mayn tate iz nisht geven keyn profesioneler zinger.  Nor vos?  Er hot 4:00gekent a sakh lider, gehat a gute shtime, un mir hobn tomid gezingen in der heym.  Nisht nor in der heym.  Zuntik iz men aroys in di velder.  Un in di velder hobn geklungen yidishe lider in estraykh, in Vienna.  S'iz a modne sakh.  Nor vos?  Di lider zenen geven nit nor yidish, inem yidishn loshn, nor oykh ivrit -- bifrat, az mayn tate iz dort geven a groyser tsionist -- a poale-tsionist, geven a tsotsialist un a tsionist.  Di lider zenen geven af yidish, af ivrit.  Treft zikh oykh a lid af ukraynish.  Azoy hot men -- ikh 5:00hob zikh oysgelernt a sakh lider nokh eyder ikh bin gegangen in shuln. [My father wasn't a professional singer.  But he knew a lot of songs, had a good voice, and we were always singing at home.  Not only at home.  On Sunday, we went out into the forest.  And you could hear Jewish songs in the forests of Vienna, in Austria.  It's a strange truth.  What's more, the songs were not only in Yiddish, in the Yiddish language, they were also in Hebrew, especially, because my father was an ardent Zionist -- a member of the Poale-Tsiyon, so a Socialist and a Zionist.  The songs were in Yiddish, in Hebrew.  Sometimes in Ukrainian, too.  So we -- I learned a lot of songs even before I went to school.]

CW:  Un zey zaynen geven folkslider [And these were folksongs]?

TB:  (nodding) Folkslider, folkslider.  Di andere miney lider, vi azoy men ruft zey on "kunstlider," hot men bay undz nit gezungen a sakh. [Folksongs, folksongs.  We didn't sing the other kinds of songs that they call "art songs" much.]

CW:  Etlekhe frume lider oder [Any pious songs or] --

TB:  Frum?  Neyn. [Religious?  No.]

CW:  -- religyeze lider [religious songs]?

TB:  Frum zenen mir nisht geven.  Nor vos?  Di yomim-naroim kumen, hot mir di tate tsugenumen bay di hant un hot mir geshlept fun eyn shul tsu di andere zol hern dem khazn. [We weren't religious.  But you know what?  When the High Holidays came around, my father would take me by the hand and drag me from one synagogue to the other to hear the cantors.]  (laughs)

CW:  Un ir iz gegangen oykh, ir zayt gegangen oykh [And you went, too]?

TB:  (nodding)  Yo. [Yes].  (laughs)

CW:  Yo?  Un [Yeah?  And]--

TB:  Gehat a bar-mitsve un ale -- kol-mine gits [I had a bar mitzvah and all -- all the good stuff]. (laughter)

CW:  Un voser shtil oder min khazn hot gefelt ir merstns [And what kind of style or type cantor did you like best]?

TB:  Alts kind hob ikh nokh nit gevist nuantsn -- ver s'iz beser, shlekhter.  Ikh hob gevist a hekhere shtime [As a child, I didn't know about nuance -- whose voice is good, bad.  I knew a higher voice] (laughs) un a grobere shtime.  Dos hob ikh farshtanen af koyles.  S'iz nor shpeyter bin ikh gevu gevorn az a loyte shtime iz dafke nisht beser vi a shtilinke. [and a lower voice.  That's what I knew about voices.  It was only later when I grew up that I realized a loud voice is definitely not necessarily better than a quiet one.]

CW:  Tsi kent ir mir gebn a por verter vegn ayer shtub -- vi hot es gezet oys?  Vos hot ayer mame gekokht un -- [Can you say a bit about your home -- 7:00what did it look like?  What did your mother cook and --]

TB: Raykh zenen mir nit geven.  Dos iz geven vos m'rift on take "mitl-klas."  Es iz nisht geven -- nor vos?  Orem zenen mir oykh nisht geven.  Bay undz, tsu esn hobn mir tomid gehat.  Hingerik iz mir keyn mol nisht geven.  Di bobe hot gekokht beser fin mayn mame.  A groyse barimte forbaraytung fun makholim iz bay indz nisht geven. [We weren't wealthy.  It was really what we call "middle class."  It wasn't -- but we were also not poor.  We always had enough to eat.  We never went hungry.  My grandmother was a better cook than my mother.  We had no great expert of Jewish dishes in our family.]

CW:  Un flegt ir geflant di yontoyvim in shtub [And would you celebrate the holidays at home]?

TB:  Di yontoyvim hot men gehaltn.  Peysekh hot men gehaltn.  Mir hobn take 8:00gehat peysekhdik di gantse vokh -- nisht gegesn keyn broyt, nisht gegesn keyn khumets.  Nisht gehat keyn khumets in der shtib.  Nor farbisene frime yidn zenen mir nisht geven.  M'hobn gehaltn, gehaltn -- mer alts mineg vi alts religyeze gezetsn. [We observed the holidays.  We celebrated Passover.  We did eat for Passover the entire week -- we didn't have any bread, any chometz.  We didn't have any chometz in the house.  But we weren't bitterly observant Jews.  We observed, observed -- more for the tradition than religious laws.]

CW:  Un vu hot ir gelernt fun yidishe geshikhte un traditsye [And where did you learn about Jewish history and traditions]?

TB:  Iz azoy.  Ikh bin geven finef yor alt hot mayn tate ayngazhirt di hebrayishe lerer, er zol kumen bay undz in shtub mir gebn -- ikh zol zikh oyslernen ivrit.  Agev lernen ivrit, lernt men yidishe geshikhte.  Demolt hob 9:00ikh shoyn geleyent fin fir -- dray, fir yor alt shoyn aldings geleynt.  Di bikher in hoyz bay indz zenen geven tsionistishe bikher, tsotsialistishe bikher, yidishe bikher biklal.  Un oyf yidish -- say af yidish, say af daytsh. [It's like this.  I was five years old when my father hired a Hebrew teacher to come to our house to give me -- so I'd learn Hebrew.  While learning Hebrew, you learn Jewish history along the way.  I could already read from age four -- at three, four years old I could already read everything.  The books in our home were Zionist books, Socialist books, Jewish books in general.  And in Yiddish -- both in Yiddish and in German.]

CW:  Ikh veys az -- ir hot undz dertseylt az zaynen geven a sakh bikher in shtub.  Un voser bikher? [I know -- you just told us that you had a lot of books at home.  Which books?]

TB:  Yidishe literatur [Yiddish literature] -- Peretz, Sholem Aleichem, Mendele -- alts vos m'gefint bay yidn vos zey hobn lib tsu leyenen yidish, tsu retsitirn 10:00af yidish.  Mayn tate hot tomid retsitirt.  M'hot -- dinstik, far vos dinstik veys ikh nisht, nor dinstik hot men nokhn esn hot men zikh avekgezetst un der tate hot geleynt a monolog, a novele, a gantse teater pieze af yidish.  Sholem aleykhem, nor mendele oykh -- mendele oykh.  Perets.  Aldings -- mir hobn dos alts gehat bay indz in der heym.  Shpeter oykh in yisroel.  Yisroel iz es nokh nisht geven, ober geforn keyn -- s'iz es nokh geven palestina.  Ober mir hobn gehat ale yidishe bikher dortn. [Everything you would find in the home of Jews who liked to read in Yiddish, to recite in Yiddish.  My father was always reciting.  We had -- Tuesdays -- why Tuesday I don't know -- but on Tuesdays evenings after we ate, my father would read a monologue, a short story, a whole play in Yiddish.  Sholem Aleichem, though Mendele, too -- Mendele, too.  Peretz.  Everything -- we had everything at home.  And later also in Israel.  It wasn't Israel yet, but when we traveled -- it was still Palestine.  But we had all our Yiddish books there.]   

CW:  Tsulib dem bobn [Because of your grandmother] -- (laughs)

TB:  Yep.  Vi der tate iz nifter gevorn, bin ikh arayngeforn keyn tel-aviv un tsuzamengenimen ale yidishe bikher un geshikt keyn amherst, masatshusets [When my father died, I went to Tel-Aviv and gathered together all of his Yiddish books and sent them to Amherst, Massachusetts]. (laughs)

CW:  A koved [An honor].  (laughter) Un tsi zayt der mishpokhe geven [And was your family] -- sorry.  I'll try in English.  What organizations were you and your family involved in?

TB:  When I was a kid, Po'ale Tsiyon, usually.  I used to be part of a youth movement, the -- it was Maccabi ha-Tsa'ir, which was a sort of middle-of-the-road Zionist -- and then later, when we got to what was then Palestine, I went to an agricultural school, because I figured that's what the 12:00country needed, neglecting to observe that I have no talent or inclination to agriculture.  And then, I was in a kibbutz.  And the kibbutz realized that I wasn't a very good worker of the land and that I was better at singing songs about the work than I was about doing the work.  And so, they sent me to a seminar in Tel Aviv to learn stagecraft.  The idea was I should go back to the kibbutz and organize festivities, festivals, mount plays.  And each kibbutz sent a delegate to one of these -- to this seminar.  And -- but once I'd tasted professional theater, I knew I -- that's what I wanted to do with my life.

CW:  Can you tell me a little more about that seminar?  What -- who was there, 13:00and what did you learn?

TB:  The people who taught us were mostly from the Habimah Theater, both actors, playwrights also, makeup people, stagehands.  I mean, we literally learned everything, soup to nuts, at this seminar.  It was a three-week seminar.  It was very concentrated.  And I got friendly with them.  And when I realized that theater is what -- was what I wanted to do, I let them know it, and they accepted me, the Habimah, into their theater training program.  And all the students there from time to time got a taste of professional stage by being permitted -- "permitted."  They really needed bodies on the stage, so 14:00they -- they used us.  We were unpaid help.  And the first professional role I ever played, on any stage, was in a play called "Tevye the Milkman," a play without music, in Hebrew.  I played the constable.  I had twenty-nine words to say.  I counted them, twice.  And they actually paid me for that.  I mean, they paid me the equivalent of about five dollars for performance.  And I was very proud.  First time I played it, I brought home the equivalent of five dollars and gave them to my mother.  I was still staying -- living at home.  And my mother took an empty coffee can and put the money into -- I said, "Why are you doing this?  I'm living at home; I'm contributing to the expenses of 15:00the house."  And she said, "No, no, I'm keeping this money 'cause it's the first money you earned in the theater."  I had a suspicion she thought it was gonna be the only money that (laughs) I was ever gonna earn.  She could -- she might have turned out to have been right.  You know, this is a crapshoot that we -- in the theater.  So.  Anyway, that was the first professional experience.  And it was Sholem Aleichem, although in Hebrew.        

CW:  On the kibbutz, were you making up songs?  Were these songs you had learned in the youth movement?

TB:  This was a time when a lot of songs were being written, composed.  There were poets, and there were songwriters.  And a lot of the poetry, if it was singable poetry, was set to music by people who were actually quite well-known 16:00and well-respected in the community.  Musically, some of these songs were not always very original.  They were reminiscent of Russian tunes, for example -- of Russian music that was still in the ear of those who had come as pioneers from Russia.  And so, when they were tempted to set Hebrew poetry to music, the music that they had in their ear was Russian music.  And they just used that medium.  Only later that they developed something different and more unique to the area with echoes of the Arab shepherd's flute from across the valley being 17:00incorporated into the music.  But in the beginning it was sort of (sings) "Ba mafligot -- m'hakakhakim -- mafligot hasfinot [Hebrew: We come sailing -- from the gutters -- sailing on ships]" (sings wordlessly) -- very Russian. 

CW:  And was -- what about language on the kibbutz?  Was it solely Hebrew?

TB:  Hebrew.  It was Hebrew.  It was -- it was almost as a nationalist enterprise of waving a linguistic flag.  Yiddish was frowned upon.  Even though I was in a kibbutz where the people really hadn't come from a Yiddish-speaking milieu, the kibbutz that I was at, they came from Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary.  So, their inclination, if it was to speak 18:00something else other than Hebrew, would be to speak Hungarian, Slovak, Czech, or German -- which from time to time, they did.  But everything else, everything official, had to be conducted in Hebrew.  And the obligation was there.  That juxtaposition of Yiddish and Hebrew -- even in those days, I felt that as a thorn in my side.  I loved the Yiddish language.  I loved it then; I never ceased loving it.  And I felt that a great injustice was done to the language by the Israeli attitude of saying that Yiddish is a language of victims, a 19:00language of ghettoes, a language of yesterday, a language reminiscent of a time when Jews were persecuted without replying with any sense of strength.  And therefore, this is the new Jew, and he speaks Hebrew.  Period.  Forgetting that Jews are very intelligent human beings, and they're capable of quite a number of -- mastering quite a number of languages.  They never quite -- they never had the same attitude toward Ladino, for example.  I mean, there were thousands upon thousands of people who came from Sephardic communities who spoke Ladino, and Ladino never had that onus on it in Israel as Yiddish had.  Sure, 20:00the Ladino speakers also were exhorted to speak Hebrew, to do Hebrew, 'cause that's what's the language of the land, but they were not told that Ladino was the language of slaves.

CW:  So, I'd like to -- just to back up for one second.  I'm just wondering really what it was like to grow up in Vienna.

TB:  (sighs) There are several answers to what it is like to grow -- growing up in Vienna.  Sure, Vienna was a place of great turmoil in the end that forced us out, forced us to flee as refugees.  But Vienna was also the place of culture, 21:00of great culture, the place where I learned to love music, where I learned to love the theater -- where, for relatively little money, you could go and see anything, hear anything.  It was a center.  Even in Jewish terms.  Anybody, any Jewish lecturer who would come would not miss the opportunity to come and perform or appear in Vienna.  I owe a great deal of gratitude to that aspect of growing up in Vienna.  And I recently had occasion to tell the Austrian government that.  They gave me the highest honor that they have in the arts and sciences, and when I accepted, I told them that I will not sweep anything under 22:00the rug, and I will not forget the ugly and the bad that happened.  But I will tell them what I honored in my early youth.  And both are present in me and will remain there.  And anybody who asks me, I'll tell them.

CW:  So, what kind of -- would you often go to the theater and the opera and the symphony?

TB:  Yes.  Went often.  We went to the theater quite often.  (laughs) Way up there, where we could afford it.  But -- and to the opera less often.  My parents were not particular opera fans, although they took me there too.  Symphonies from time to time.  But it was mainly theater and lectures.  My father would run to a lecture every Monday and Thursday.  (laughs)

CW:  Jewish lectures?  Or just any lecture that was --

TB:  He was very -- his tastes were very Catholic.  He would -- he was interested in a great many things.  You see, his university education was interrupted by the -- by having to serve in the Austrian army as an officer.  And then, when the war finished, he was so dirt-poor he couldn't afford to go back to the university.  So, never really finished that part of his education.  But he made up for it by keeping at it. 

CW:  So, we've been talking about your background, and there's so much more (laughs) there.  But I'd like to talk about -- I guess Yiddish language for a 24:00minute.  What were the attitudes towards Yiddish in Vienna?  We talked about Israel, but --

TB:  Vienna, in contrast to many other places in the German-speaking ambit, was very much of an Eastern European city when it came to Jews.  And fully ten percent of Vienna's population were Jewish.  Ten percent!  There were a million inhabitants, and one hundred thousand of them are Jews.  And of those, I would venture to say about seventy percent came from Eastern Europe -- Poland, Romania, Russia -- all having ended up in Vienna, having fled there, having 25:00drifted there, having gone because you could make a better living there or because elsewhere there was -- the persecution was so great that you had to get away from it.  As a consequence, it was easy to find Jewish and specifically Yiddish areas in Vienna.  There was a whole district.  I mean, districts were numbered -- still are -- in Vienna.  So, the Second District, just the other side of the Danube Canal, was almost entirely Jewish.  In fact, after the Nazis came in, all the Jews were forced to just go to one school, and it was in that district.  We were no longer permitted to go to the school where we had been.  26:00Taborstraße [Tabor Street].  I remember it very well.  And there was Yiddish theater.  There were Yiddish literary circles.  And it was done openly.  It wasn't clandestine; it wasn't hidden.  It was there. 

CW:  Did you have mentors in your early years in music and theater?

TB:  No.  I didn't have any mentors.  I -- I'm sad to have to admit that everything that I learned was self-taught.  And that included playing the 27:00instrument, playing the guitar.  It included singing songs.  I never took a singing lesson in my life.  And it's a miracle that at my age of eighty-seven, my voice is as strong as it ever was, and clear, thank God.  So, I can still sing the same songs.  Sometimes, you know, some people tell me it may be even fuller than it used to be.  Did I have instruc-- mentors?  No.  I mean, I learned the languages, and I -- my father was a very important guide to me in recommending what I might -- what I should read, for example.  But -- and he knew the languages.  He would stand over me and (laughs) correct spellings and things.  Mentors in the sense of someone who took me under their wing and gave 28:00me master classes, no.  Never existed.  By the way, I don't recommend it.  I don't recommend that people should proceed just self-taught.  There's great value in learning, learning technique and learning it from people who master it.  It just -- some people have the -- call it the unfortunate ability of grasping things faster than other people can teach them.  I hear, and I retain things.  Things come to me, and I retain them.  I hope I still retain them next year when you talk to me. 

CW:  Un nokh zayn in yisroel, ir zayt geven in London, yo [And after you were in Israel, you were in London, right]? (Bikel nods)  In dem tsayt, hot ir gezamlt lider, vi an akt [During that period, were you collecting songs, intentionally]?

TB:  Ikh hob tomid gezamlt lider.  Vu s'iz nisht geven, ver s'hot gezingen, hot ongeheybn zingen ergets andersh, hot oyfgehert zingen bay mir in shtub, oder bay mir -- ikh veys -- in gas lebn mir, mit mir -- gezingen mit mir, far mir.  Kh'hob oysgelernt, oypkopirt a por verter tekst -- tomid. [I've always collected songs.  Wherever I was, whoever was singing, starting singing somewhere, ended up singing in my home, or near me -- I don't know -- in the street next to me, with me -- sung with me or for me.  I was always learning, copying down a few words of text -- always.]

CW:  Un fun vemen?  Fun vemen? [And from whom?  From whom?]

TB:  Ver es iz nisht geven.  In london -- ikh zing dokh af a sakh leshoynes.  30:00Dos heyst -- zenen geven dortn mentshn fun ost, fun mizrekh-eyrope, mentshn fun dorem-afrike, mentshn fun oyfstralye, fun irland, fun skotland.  Fun ale zey zenen gevorn khaveyrim mayne, zingers -- oder geshpilt an instrument, klezmers.  Tomid hob ikh zikh bakhavert mit zey un gelernt zeyere lider un zey hobn fun mir gelernt mayne. [From whomever.  In London -- I sing in many languages.  Meaning -- there were people there from the east, from Eastern Europe, people from South Africa, people from Australia, from Ireland, from Scotland.  I became friends with people from all those places, singers -- or people who played an instrument, musicians.  I was always befriending them and learning their songs and they learned my songs.] 

CW:  Un oykh ir flegt geyn in pariz, yo [And you also used to travel to Paris, right]?

TB:  Yo, in pari -- pariz iz do zeyer noent fun London.  Az men fort, iz a sho 31:00tsayt -- men flit, a sho.  Iz -- in pariz zenen geven tsigayner, rusisher tsigayner.  Zey zenen avek fun rusland -- a sakh mentshn zenen avek fun rusland, ober tsigoyner bifrat.  Un di tsigayner hobn ongeheybn -- zey hobn nokh gemist makhn a leybn.  S'i do geveyn nakhtklubs mit tsigaynerishe lider, rusisher.  Un ikh bin dortn gezesn yede nakht ven ikh bin geven in pariz.  Un ikh zits mit eyn gluz shampan -- hob nisht gehat mer gelt -- un mit dem eyn gluz, hob ikh gekent zitsn seks, zibn shu un hern di lider. [Yes, in Paris -- 32:00Paris is quite close to London.  It's an hour's journey -- if you fly, an hour.  So -- in Paris there were Roma people, Russian Romani.  They had left Russia -- a lot of people had left Russia, but especially the Roma.  And the Roma started -- they had to make a living.  There were nightclubs with Romani songs, Russian.  And I sat there every night I was in Paris.  I would sit with one glass of champagne -- I didn't have more money than that -- and with that one drink, I could sit and listen to the songs for six, seven hours.]

CW:  Un zaynen in dem tsayt geven etlekhe personazhn, kharakters vos ir hot -- gedenkt mer [Were there particular personalities, characters from that time that you remember -- stand out]?

TB:  A sakh mentshn, a sakh mentshn, say in teater, say in film, literatur -- peter yustinov -- di regisorn fin filmen, fin barimpte filmen [Lots of people, lots of people, from theater, and also film, literature -- Peter Ustinov -- film directors of famous films] -- Lewis Milestone, "All Quiet on the Western Front."  Zenen ale gevorn khaveyrim un ikh hob zikh bakent mit zey.  Ikh bin mit zey gefurn aher un ahin.  Zey hobn gehat mer gelt vi ikh, hobn mir gekent zitsn nisht nor mit eyn gluz nor mit zeks glezer -- s'iz geven a vunderbare 33:00tsayt.  [They all became friends and I got to know them.  I traveled with them here and there.  They had more money than I did, so we could sit not only with one drink, but with six drinks -- it was a wonderful time.]

CW:  Vi hot ir -- tsi iz do geven a moment in vemen ir hot gezogt, "ikh'l zingen af yidish mer vi andere shprakhn" oder "ikh vil zingen yidish-muzik" [How did you -- was there a moment when you said to yourself, "I want to sing in Yiddish more than other languages" or "I want to sing Yiddish music"]?

TB:  Der bashlus iz geven zeyer laykht.  Vayl ikh bin gevu gevorn az ikh bin der eyn-un-eyntsiker vos hot a nomen un er ken es.  Dos heyst ikh hob a khoyv, a shuld -- ikh muz es tun.  Dos vos ikh hob es lib tsu ton iz an andere zakh.  34:00Nor ikh muz es take ton vayl af mayne pleytses hot men ibergelozt epes.  Kh'hob zikh geratevet fun di natsis un ikh freg zikh tomid, far vos?  Far vos?  Far vos bin ikh do, andere zenen -- hunderter, toyzenter, milyonen zenen umkegumen in der shoa, un ikh zits do un ikh leyb.  Nu?  Vos iz der tsvek fun leybn?  Mayn lebn, fun mayn leybn?  Far vos hot men mir bazunder aroysgeklibn az ikh zol blaybn lebn?  Trakht ikh -- efsher miz ikh epes tin mit deym.  Mit dem leybn miz ikh epes opton.  Un vos ikh ken, vos hob ikh di mitlen?  M'hot mikh 35:00mitgegebn mitlen -- nisht tsi arbetn mit di hent, nisht tsi arbetn mitn bodn, nor tsu arbetn mitn kop un mitn kol, mit der shtime, mit der meglekhkayt tsu shraybn, tsu fartaytshn, tsu iberzetsn fun eyn loshn afn andern -- tsu gibn mentshn vos biklal kenen nisht, veysn nisht fin yidn -- ikh ken zey vayzn dos bild fin mayne yidn.  Un dos bild iz bay mir in gezang, dos bild iz bay mir in der poesye, dos bild -- iber dem bild ken men leyenen, ken men shraybn, ken men zingen.  Un dos tu ikh. [The choice was easy. Because I came to be know as the 36:00one-and-only person who had a name who knew it.  That means I have a duty, a responsibility -- I must do it.  The fact that I like it is a separate issue.  But I really must do it because I something was left on my shoulders.  I was saved from the Nazis and I always ask myself, Why?  What for?  Why am I here when others -- hundreds, thousands, millions were murdered in the Shoah, and I sit here, alive.  So?  What is the purpose of life?  My life, of my life?  Why was I chosen to survive?  I think -- maybe I have to do something with it.  I have to do something with my life.  And what do I know, what are my tools?  I was given tools -- not to work with my hands, not to work with the soil, rather to work with my head and with my voice, my voice, with the possibility to write, to interpret, to translate from one language into others -- to present to people who don't know anything about Jews -- I can present them a portrait of my Jews.  And this portrait lives in me through my song, this portrait lives in me through poetry, this portrait -- I can read, I can write, I can sing about this portrait.]

CW:  Tsi hot ir a balibster poet oder shrayber [Do you have a favorite poet or writer]?

TB:  A sakh, a sakh.  In yidish? [Many, many.  In Yiddish?]

CW:  Yo [Yeah].

TB:  Papirnikov, sutskever -- vunderbare, vunderbare poetn.  Moderne nokh -- geven -- nokh haynt lebt eyne -- beyle shekhter-gotesman lebt nokh haynt un zi shraybt un zi zingt.  Gezint zol zi zayn, biz hundert-un-tsvantsik. [Papirnikov, Sutzkever -- wonderful, wonderful poets.  Modern ones, too -- there was -- one is still alive -- Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman lives to this day and she writes and sings.  May she be healthy and live to 120.]

CW:  It's hard to know where to go now.  I wanted to ask you a little bit, because of your work not only in Jewish music but also in folk music, in general about the idea and this term of "cultural revival."  Sort of -- what is your 37:00take on that whole idea, and what does it mean to you?

TB:  When you speak of cultural revival, you mean revival of -- revival of folklore, revival of --

CW:  Music, yeah.

TB:  -- things that you thought were -- that one thought were no longer widely available that all of a sudden become popular again?  (pause) It's cyclical.  Culture is cyclical.  It comes in waves, and waves -- like the waves of the ocean, there's ebbs.  And there's waves again.  Sometimes it takes decades, even centuries, for the wave to once more swell.  I remember at one of the 38:00first Newport Folk Festivals, which I was a co-founder of, we had found a man who we thought had -- everyone thought was dead.  His name was Mississippi John Hurt.  He was an old black blues singer from Mississippi, with a battered felt hat and a battered old guitar.  And he was absolutely wonderful, the way he played and sang.  And at one point during the festival there was, like, a press conference.  And Mississippi John Hurt sat at that press table.  And one of the press people asked him what he thought of the renaissance of folk music.  And he didn't quite know the meaning of the word "renaissance," so they said, "A 39:00revival.  All of a sudden you have a hundred and eighty thousand people in one week.  What do you think of the revival of folk music now in the 1960s all of a sudden?"  And he looked at the questioner with a twinkle in his eye, and he said, "Daddy, it ain't never been away."  And I agree with him.  It had never been away.  It's there.  It's in the background.  It's in the -- if you know how to find it.  Comes a time when -- and especially in America, where we tend to latch onto things and make them the vogue of the moment.  When somebody finds something and tells it to somebody else, that process used to take months, 40:00sometimes years, before it spread around.  Today, with the electronic world that we have, I find this song that had been lost that nobody knew still existed.  Somebody puts it on the internet, and the next moment, practically, thousands of people learn it, sing it -- if not learning it, listen to it.  So, the -- I think the process has been compromised by the fact that we have tools with which our psyche does not know how to cope.

CW:  (pause) What are the -- I mean, what does that mean for -- what are the 41:00implications of that?

TB:  Several, I guess.  Tools are meant to be servants of what we do.  The danger is they become our masters.  And there's a new class of high priests: the only people who understand how to work those tools, how to control those tools, how to improve them and how to apply them and to make them workable.  And only they know how to create them and how to fix them when they go wrong.  So, we have a new class of people, of technocrats, who have become -- I mean, the machines are now our masters, and the technocrats are their high priests.  42:00And there's a great danger in that, I feel, because -- what do I tell a techno-geek about Yiddish poetry?  What do I tell him about where to find a tear, where to find a laughter, where to find a soul that's hidden in that -- in those lines of poetry?  What is mediocre, what does not speak to you, what does -- what is less concerned with truth, less concerned with truth and more with appearance?  I mean, the machine cannot fathom those things and cannot -- literally.  I mean, maybe a day will come when it will.  And I'm not so sure that I'd like that day to come.  To find equality, to find respect -- what does 43:00a machine know about respect?  To respect a poetry, to respect, for example, intellectual property, to respect the rights of a person who wrote a song, not to have the song disseminated all over and not one recognition and not one penny given to the person who wrote it.  That is disrespect in the highest.  And I -- not for nothing was I -- I'm still president of a performers' union.  You know, sure, we love what we do so much that we'd rather do it for nothing rather than not doing it.  But for the world to take that for granted and to exploit 44:00it?  It -- this is not an easy time for creative artists.  Certainly, if they want to -- you know, we have wonderful, wonderful playwrights.  And with very few exceptions, they have stopped writing for live theater and started writing for television, writing for film.  Because only there they can make money.  Only there they can be protected, somehow.  My wife, who's a conductor and a great musician, always -- and she's right.  There was a time when I collected songs; I had no idea who wrote them.  I just collected them.  I even have a songbook out that -- and she says to me, "Isn't that one of Gebirtig's songs?  45:00Why doesn't it say that on the sh--"  I said, "Frankly, when I collected it, I had no idea who wrote it," and at the time, it didn't occur to anybody -- this is a folk song.  I didn't know the difference between the public domain or what we call unknown, popular, whatever.  I didn't know the difference.  And to my shame, didn't care.  But I should have cared, and I do care now.  And I hope I can make (laughs) other people care.  Now, you deal with books.  Books always have the right to protect the author, to say, This is copyrighted.  This is -- you can quote a passage for purposes of what, of criticism, publicity, whatever not, but you can't copy an entire book and disseminate it and to hell with the 46:00author.  Then -- because after a while, people will stop creating.  They will throw up their hands and say, Why am I doing this?  For what?  Don't I have children to feed?

CW:  Well, I wanted to just ask specifically about Sholem Aleichem.  And because of your -- so many roles as Tevye, but also because I know that you've been doing some recent plays with him.

TB:  Um-hm.

CW:  I guess, why -- first, why is Tevye so quintessentially Jewish?  I mean, why has he become known as that?

TB:  A long time ago they had a character in a drama called Everyman.  It's 47:00the same character.  Why was he called Everyman?  Because one could identify him with a lot of people.  He is not -- he's individual, but he's emblematic of a whole slew, of a whole class of people.  Tevye, a poor Jew in a poor environment, literate but not very learned, always striving to quote, often misquoting, eking out a living, managing with humor to squeeze out some laughter in the midst of sadness.  Can be said of many Jews, but no one better than 48:00Sholem Aleichem knew how to express this in his writing.  And Tevye was an important figure that he wrote.  Apparently he did meet a Tevye-like character in his travels, Sholem Aleichem did, and decided not only to write him but to embellish, to enlarge upon him, as it were.  No, enlarging would be the wrong word, because he made him exactly what he was, not larger.  But he placed him firmly in his environment, and he made a larger audience capable of understanding that small environment.  'Cause Sholem Aleichem knew better than 49:00most that the detail of the shtetl [small Eastern European town with a Jewish community] is essential when you want to understand what the shtetl was, what the life was in the shtetl, that it was essential to know that Shabbos was inviolate, that it was essential to know that you didn't mix with meat.  And it was essential to know that you wanted to marry off your daughters the best way we could, but that in the end, love had to trump convenience.  I mean, all of these things -- and -- and that there's a point in which you can stop, which you must stop bending.  So, look at Tevye's three daughters.  Okay, the first daughter, she could have made a very rich match with a butcher.  But no, she 50:00loved a very poor tailor, and Tevye gave in.  And the second daughter fell in love with a revolutionary student, a Jew, who actually was arrested and sent to Siberia, and she follows him to Siberia, and the father gives his blessing, even though he knows he probably won't see that daughter again.  Comes to the youngest daughter, who marries a non-Jew.  He can't bend.  That far he cannot bend.  It has to stop there.  Now, if you want to realize the essence of what makes even the poorest Jew the proudest that there is, you have to look at Tevye.  So, I -- I look and I listen to Tevye.  And of course, the Tevye 51:00stories are so much more and so much deeper -- and so much darker -- than what you see in "Fiddler on the Roof."  "Fiddler on the Roof," after all, is a musical, and a musical is meant to please a lot of audiences, and therefore it was kept much lighter.  But there's great tragedy in Tevye as well, and we have an inkling of it, but not to the fullest extent.  Anyway.  It -- I was very grateful -- as I told you, I shipped all my father's Yiddish books, including twenty-four volumes of the collected works of Sholem Aleichem, to Amherst.  But then, when it came for me to do research on my play, "Sholom Aleichem: Laughter Through Tears," I needed to read it again in Yiddish.  And I called Aaron Lansky, and lo and behold, I got a set -- it's not the same set, but it's a set 52:00of collected works of Sholem Aleichem -- back.

CW:  Yeah.  I guess I'm wondering -- very general question, but what inspires you?

TB:  Genuineness inspires me.  Excellence excites me, but things that move me tend to also -- to inspire me.  Things that are brilliant and don't move me, I can admire, but it's not the kind of admiration that I can say that, Wow, I want to do that.  Sometimes I may say, I'd like to see that once more and see if there's more behind it that I haven't seen the first time around.  But things -- and they happen -- that I listen to or that I see that evoke -- my breath 53:00stops.  And I say to myself, I wasn't prepared for that.  I wasn't prepared for that.  Now that inspires me.  And in turn, makes me say to myself that in my work, I -- there have to be such moments that I can cause to happen to an audience, to one listener; it doesn't matter, a whole audience or one li-- it's the same to me.  And occasionally, it happens.  The other day I gave a lecture and some people obviously were moved by what I had to say and how I said it.  54:00If you've never been inspired, I doubt whether you can inspire others.  If you've never been moved, I doubt that you can move others.  If you don't understand what it is that you're doing or what -- if you don't understand it, they won't. 

CW:  You use a term in an article I came across, the "anti-phoenix crusade."

TB:  Mm. 

CW:  Can you tell me a little more about that?

TB:  Yeah.  The phoenix is a mythological bird.  Phoenix sprang out of the desert, out of the void, one day, saying, Here I am.  No parentage, therefore no yesterday, and no memory.  There are people who treat themselves to a 55:00phoenix-like existence, pretending to themselves and living as though there had not been anything before them.  I think it's pernicious to do that, because unless you had a yesterday, you really cannot pinpoint your place in today or have some kind of a forward movement toward a tomorrow.  But to negate the yesterday or to even pretend that it was never there to begin with, that's a phoenix-like existence.  I'm on the warpath against it.  Now -- Jews, specifically -- I mean, people sometimes misunderstand when I talk about these 56:00things, and they think that I'm engaged in an exercise of nostalgia.  But I'm not.  Jews -- we are not a people of nostalgia.  We're a people of memory.  There's a difference.  And the memory is important.  Now, to focus only on the memory is also wrong.  It's not wrong for a curator of a museum, but it's wrong for a human being who (laughs) wants to be able to live and to draw on yesterday in order to be able to function and to know and to fashion his or her brain, intelligence, creativity, and all that.  So, looking only at yesterday is not helpful.  You have to mix it with -- you have to find parallels in your life 57:00and in other people's lives.  You have to know -- why do you know that war is wrong is because past wars have proved it.  Yeah.   

CW:  Considering your amazing political work, I want to ask the question of the place that the performing artist can play in change, in social change.

TB:  Performing artists play a number of roles.  Among them is the ability to articulate what the inarticulate cannot, to say it when others could not say it, 58:00or to say it better when others said it worse.  The performing artist who presents the dream of a better world finds an echo in an audience.  Now, sometimes they say that the art forms that we are engaged in have gotten to a point where everything has to be naturalistic.  A door has to be a real heavy door, and it has to slam with a sound that sounds like a door, that you can no longer pretend that this is a door.  Naturalism paints everything that is.  59:00Art is supposed to paint things that might be.  When you speak of dreams, your doors don't have to be made of real wood.  It's not easy -- if this is -- if art, certain art, certain art forms -- are critical of the society in which we live, we are doing that, I hope, in an effort to look toward a world that is better than what we have.  It's easy to present what we have.  Show it!  Fine.  Is there a purpose?  Is there a purpose?  Do we show you the cruelty 60:00of war, for example, in order to say, "Isn't that nice?  Killed seven hundred people.  Whoops!  Wonderful."  Or, "Killed seven hundred people today; how terrible.  And why did I need to do that, and what of the families of those?"  Don't misunderstand me.  It's not the only purpose of a performing artist, is to convey, subliminally or other ways, messages -- political, historical, socioeconomic.  Because we also have other functions to perform.  We make the burdens of the day lighter for people who have a heavy life.  We make them 61:00laugh.  We make children clap their hands.  That's what we also do.  So, when you ask me about social purpose of the arts, that's one of them.  And you don't do it all the time, and not in everything that you do.  But when you do it, woe betide those who attack you because you've done it, that you're not entitled to do it -- you're a performer; you're supposed to be pleasing to everybody.  Well, I have news for you: if you please everybody, you please nobody at all, least of all your sense of dignity and purpose. 

CW:  Has there been a performance that you have been particularly proud of in that way of inspiring change?

TB:  Oh, there have been several performances, and some of them I can't even call them performances, but occasions, where I felt that my voice could say things that needed to be said right there and then and in the way that -- in which I was able to say them.  The most recent example that I give you, a few months ago I was invited to -- on a trip that started in Paris and was a one-day trip from Paris to Auschwitz.  We got to Auschwitz, and what was interesting, it was a group that had in it many, many leaders of Muslim countries: from Africa, from North Africa, from Bosnia.  The Egyptians couldn't come because 63:00that's when the Tahrir Square happened.  But they were scheduled to come.  Moroccans were there.  The Jordanian ambassador was there.  The archbishop -- the cardinal of Paris was there; the formal chief rabbi of Israel was there; the grand mufti of Bosnia was there.  A planeload of people like that.  And Gerhard Schröder of Germany was there.  My wife and I were there.  After we toured Auschwitz-Birkenau, there was a little -- "a little."  It wasn't so little.  It was arranged that three of the clergymen speak: the chief rabbi, the cardinal, and the imam.  I wasn't on the program.  And I told the 64:00organizers that there's something that I needed to do.  And I said for them to trust me enough to do the right thing.  And after the imam spoke, I told the assembly, over two hundred people, that I needed to do something in the language that was almost murdered here, along with hundreds of thousands of victims.  And I sang "Zog nit keyn mol az du geyst dem letstn veg [Never say that you are walking the final road]."  They were stunned.  And the eight survivors who were there stood up during the entire song.  And I almost lost it, because at 65:00that time and in that place and with that language, there was a need.  And only I could fill it there and then.

CW:  (pause) I just have a few more questions.  But I wanted to just give you a moment, if there's anything that you wanted to say in this interview, topics that we haven't talked about.  You've written your book, but I wanted to give you an opportunity.

TB:  I don't know.  Whatever you say is too little, and sometimes you say too 66:00much.  I find it important to cherish the books.  Nowadays I read books on an iPad, simply because I don't want to shlep three or four books on long trips.  But not everything can be done on an iPad.  And it's important to use what we have.  We have a wealth of -- a veritable treasury that has been left to us, that has been miraculously, miraculously preserved from the pyres of the 67:00Inquisition and the pyres of the Nazi Holocaust.  And for the Book Center to have gone out to rescue books that were abandoned -- not burned, not destroyed by some evil force, but abandoned by neglect.  Neglect is an enemy.  Apathy is an enemy.  Stay engaged.  It always seems to me that if somebody inherits books, and they can no longer read them because they're not familiar with the language the books were written in, don't throw them away.  Find someone who will cherish them, who will use them.  It's God's work.

CW:  I just want to ask about -- given your career and time working with Jewish material especially, what trends have you noticed in attitude toward Yiddish language and culture over your lifetime?

TB:  Strength.  (pause) I just -- often in the fact that we are small, and our pretense to insignificance sometimes (laughs) helps us.  Dos pintele yid [The essence of a Jew, lit. "little dot of a Jew"], so -- you know, we are describing 69:00ourselves as -- like that.  Dos pintele, little dot of a Jew.  It minimizes who and what we are, but knowing full well that it's hyperbole, in reverse.  But it helps.  I remember the story of -- Golda Meir had -- one of her assistants at one point was very obsequious to her and made very -- and she said to him, "Don't be so humble; you're not that great."  (laughs) I feel that's a wonderful story.  And I (laughs) often feel that about my Jews that I love 70:00dearly, (laughs) but I say, "Don't be so humble; you're not that great."

CW:  Have you -- I mean, considering the different places that you've worked in and the places that you've performed, have you noticed different attitudes towards Jewish and Yiddish -- specifically Yiddish -- culture?

TB:  Minimally there are nuances, but frankly, it's hardly possible.  It's probably in direct ratio to whether Jews live in those places.  If you go to places where there are absolutely no Jews and there's no experience of Jews, then there's no preconceived notion, not even a prejudice.  Well, sometimes people that have no Jews are pretending to be anti-Semitic, not even knowing 71:00what it is that they hate or why.  But frankly, wherever I go, I do what I do without rega-- I don't tailor my performances to places.  I'm not fashioned by geography.

CW:  And where do you see this movement of klezmer music or Jewish folk music going?

TB:  Jewish music can -- it's been plodding along.  And then, klezmer music 72:00was an important tool because it was the ability of young Jews to connect with their roots without having to learn a language.  Because it was all instrumental, instrumental music to begin with.  It's no longer that.  Now there's a lot of text, a lot of words.  And I'm only worried that we're creating too many hybrids.  Just as folk music then developed into folk rock and then punk rock and then -- so all of a sudden, the origin kind of tended to be lost.  And I don't frankly want to be -- want us to become klez-rock.  I 73:00mean, that's not something that I would relish listening to, nor would I want people to think that that's the genuine article.  It's an evolution of something.

CW:  I guess we should probably end here.  But I want to ask, what advice do you have for people, the next generations, from your experience?

TB:  Advice for people what?

CW:  The next generations. 

TB:  Oh.

CW:  Or a message.

TB:  As Sholem Aleichem said, "You have to survive, even if it kills you."  Stay alive.  And by that, I don't mean just physically alive.  Stay alive 74:00thinking.  Stay alive creating.  Stay alive making it count, the fact that you're here, the fact that you are capable of things.  Create and share what you create with other people.  Don't hog it.  Spread it around.  Just like manure.  I have different advices to give for North America than I do for Canada because I find that the atmosphere in countries differs so very much.  British Jews are different from American Jews.  South African Jews, of whom we have many now in the United States, are different again.  Jews who emerged from the former Soviet Union -- Oy, gotenyu [Oh, dear God]!  We have a great 75:00divergence there.  Many of them have become rabid nationalists.  Now that they are no longer subdued and subjected to persecution as they were in the Soviet Union, they have now turned around and think that they're free to persecute others.  And I find it atrocious, objectionable to the extreme.  And if Avigdor Lieberman thinks that I'm talking about him, he's right.  And his ilk.

CW:  Well, a sheynem dank [Thank you very much].  (laughs)

TB:  Okay.  Good. 

CW:  Good.

TB:  Call me a cab.  (laughter)           

[END OF INTERVIEW]

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