JEFF VEIDLINGER ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: So this is Christa Whitney. Today is December 19th, 2011. I am here in Washington, DC at the Association for Jewish Studies Conference with Jeffrey Veidlinger. We are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record the interview?

JEFFREY VEIDLINGER:Yes, you do.

CW:Thanks. Can you tell me briefly what you know about your family background?

JV:Well, my father was born in Budapest, and my mother was born in Halifax. My paternal grandparents are from Budapest -- or from Hungary, at least, as far back as they know, from a town called -- I don't know if I'm pronouncing it 1:00correctly, but from Kisgyarmat, which is currently in Slovakia, and it's a little village -- probably just had a handful of Jews back in the early twentieth century when my grandfather moved to Budapest. And I've actually been back to Kisgyarmat as well as to Budapest. But I've been to -- not back -- I had never been there before -- but I went to Kisgyarmat several years ago and saw just a little town with a -- the Jewish graveyard is still there, and we were able to go visit that. So, that's my paternal side. And my maternal side, my mother was born in Halifax, my grandfather was the rabbi of Halifax, and he himself was from Poland, from the town of Wołomin. And my grandmother was also from Poland -- my mother's mother -- was also from Poland, from the town of Nasielsk. And they moved to Canada, I guess in '36, they must have moved. My uncle was born in Poland and my mother and my mother's sister were both born in 2:00Halifax. And my grandfather served as the rabbi of Halifax until sometime, I guess, in the early 1970s, when he moved to Toronto and served as the rabbi of the Baycrest Retirement Centre in Toronto, where he was working until the day he died.

CW:Are there any great family stories that have been passed down through your family?

JV:Hm. I don't know. I can't think of any right now. Any great family stories? I'm sure there are. (laughs) Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm sure there are, but I can't think of any offhand. Well, I can tell you -- you know, my grandfather spoke about, you know, leaving his family behind in Wołomin, and he went to study in 3:00a yeshiva in Warsaw, and he left his family behind and said goodbye to them and went to study in Warsaw in the yeshiva. I always imagined them as very far apart -- that this is, you know, a big distance to travel. When I first went to Warsaw, I wanted to go visit Wołomin. Of course, Wołomin's just on the railway line, just on the outskirts of Warsaw right now. It makes you realize how small distances have become, that -- you know, you realize that this whole idea of them traveling, of them leaving the little city to go to the big town is, you know, today just right off the subway, really, almost. So, they're still very close. But (laughs) I can't think of other great stories offhand.

CW:Well, if you think of any, you can --

JV:Yeah, yeah.

CW:-- let me know. And what about your house felt Jewish growing up?

JV:What about my house felt Jewish? Well, I grew up in a fairly Jewish house, I guess. As I say, my grandfather was a rabbi and was working as a rabbi while I 4:00was growing up. And my grandmother, my mother's mother, was also, you know, very religious, and her family are all Hasidic and Lubavitch. My own family was -- you know, or is pious, but not -- you know, we had Shabbat dinner all the time, and we belonged to an Orthodox synagogue, although we ourselves weren't really practicing Orthodox. My father puts on tefillin every day still. And I guess -- you know, they still do Shabbat all the time. So, I grew up in a pretty Jewish house.

CW:And who were the people in your home growing up? You mentioned that your grandfather came at some point. Was he around as you were growing up?

JV:Well, he came -- he was around as I was growing up. I guess -- I can't -- I don't know exactly what year he came, but I was born in '71, so he was there, my 5:00whole life he was there. Maybe he moved to Toronto in the '60s, actually. But you know, they had this Halifax connection. So, in my house was me and my parents and my sister: I have a younger sister and I have an older brother.

CW:And what were the languages that were around?

JV:Well, English was the language that we spoke. And my father's first language is Hungarian. And his grandmother actually lived in Australia. And he spoke Hungarian with his mother. And his -- actually, I guess my -- (laughs) my grandfather lived with us as well when I was growing up. I guess for the first six years of my life, we lived in a duplex, and the five of us -- well, four of us, my sister wasn't born yet -- immediate family lived on the upstairs of the duplex, and my grandfather lived on the downstairs of the duplex. My grandfather 6:00was also from Hungary, so he and my father -- I can't remember what language they spoke with each other. I presume they probably spoke English with each other, but I actually can't remember. And then, my mother's parents spoke Yiddish, but I think they still spoke English to each other. But Yiddish was their -- was their first language. And they occasionally spoke some Yiddish. Certainly, they spoke some Yiddish with each other, but I imagine they spoke English primarily with each other. They had been living in Canada for a while already.

CW:Was there any particular aspect of Jewish culture that was important to you as a kid?

JV:You know, it's -- it permeated our entire life, so it's hard to separate what was what. You know, now as an academic, you can see what the religious life was, and I think in terms of what religious life is, what cultural life is, what's 7:00secular, Hebrew, Zionist, Yiddish, Holocaust awareness. It's hard to think back as a kid and differentiate it that way, 'cause, you know, we had it all. My father was a survivor -- he was a survivor of the Holocaust -- and, you know, and my mother's side was -- again, they were a rabbi, and I went to a Hebrew Zionist school that also taught Yiddish -- it was a Labor Zionist school and, you know, was -- had some affiliation with Hashomer Hatzair, and I myself was affiliated with HaNoar HaTzioni, with the Canadian Young Judaea. There were all of these different -- you know, Zionism and -- and Hebrew and Yiddish all interacted freely with each other in my childhood, so it's hard to differentiate (laughs) one from the other, frankly.

CW:Yeah. Can you describe the neighborhood growing up? Who were the other families in your area?

JV:Well, I grew up in Toronto, in an area that was mostly Jewish. The first 8:00house that we lived in, I guess, they were mostly Jewish, and then we moved to another area -- well, same general area, but different house, which was -- also most of the people in the area were Jewish -- and a fairly well-to-do area. But yeah, I guess that's (laughs) all I can think of.

CW:And how much Yiddish did you learn in the Bialik school?

JV:I don't know. Enough that I didn't think very much at the time, to be quite honest. You know, our days were -- the mornings were in English, and then in the afternoons, it was all Hebrew, from first grade on. So, from first grade, we already had the afternoons in Hebrew -- we were learning Hebrew in the afternoons. And then, I guess third grade, they added Yiddish and French. And so, the Yiddish was probably, I don't know, maybe an hour, two or three times a week, and same with the French. I guess I didn't think I learned that much of it. But I did. I mean, we used the "College Yiddish" book was what they used. 9:00And when I -- and then I didn't use Yiddish again until graduate school, and then I kind of just realized I could understand things that were written in Yiddish -- I could read Yiddish and I understood them -- and that's when I started using Yiddish again, I guess on a professional basis. So apparently, we learned more than I thought we learned. I mean, we finished "College Yiddish," which I guess is what they do now, you know, in many colleges where they teach Yiddish still. So, we went through that. And I guess it does get ingrained in you. I mean, clearly, the languages that you learn at a younger age work -- you know, are retained in your memory better than those you learn later, even if it is only in a kind of haphazard way of a couple hours a week. So, something retained.

CW:Yeah. In your academic career -- or in your formation, education -- were 10:00there any important academic mentors or influences on you?

JV:Yeah. You know, I went to -- I did graduate work in Russian history -- was my intention -- and I'd applied for graduate work in Russian history and went to Georgetown University, right here in DC, which is not a place to do Jewish history, being a Jesuit university and all. And I worked there with a fellow, Richard Stites, who was my advisor, a professor of Russian cultural history. And basically, we had an assignment our first semester there as graduate students to go to the Smolensk archives, which were captured archives -- or archives that had been captured by the United States Army and were available in Washington. We had to go find a document and write about the document. And I had studied Russian for a few years in university, and I was expecting to use Russian, but I was going through them, and that's when I found some documents in Yiddish and just kind of thought for fun, Oh, let's see if I can read them -- I hadn't read 11:00Yiddish in many, many years -- and then saw that I could read them. So, that's what I wrote on those documents. They had to do with a Yiddish musical performance somewhere in Smolensk province. And when my advisor saw that and said, "Hey, you can read Yiddish, why don't you use Yiddish?" That's when I started -- became interested in Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union and wrote my first book on Yiddish theater in the Soviet Union. So, that was Richard Stites, who was, I think, very influential for me and changed how I look at culture in general and history in general. And he passed away last year, unfortunately. But he was really a vibrant fellow, and very influential to me academically. And then, before that -- I mean, 'cause I also -- so I decided to do Russian history my last year at McGill. I went to college at McGill, and my last semester, I took a course on Hasidism with Gershon Hundert. And Gershon was also influential in a funny way. And I took that course -- I was just telling Gershon yesterday, actually -- that the only reason I took that course was because my roommate was 12:00taking it, and I had lived with him a couple of years, and we decided it would be fun to take a course together. So, he was taking it and then I took it. But the only reason he was taking it was 'cause (laughs) there was a girl that he liked in the course. So, he was taking it just for her, and then I was taking it just for him. But actually, it was quite an influential course for me in the end, because I hadn't done anything with Jewish studies for a very long time -- since I was at Bialik, so since elementary school -- and to get back to it and see that there's this whole new way of studying it, an academic way of studying it, and that actually, you know, Judaism is a lot more interesting and Jewish history is a lot more interesting than I'd imagined it was based on how I learnt it in elementary school also got me interested in that direction.

CW:Did you ever, since elementary school, formally study Yiddish?

JV:No. The only formal Yiddish I had was in elementary school. And then, as I say, I could read it. I hadn't spoken it, hadn't tried to speak it. I could 13:00listen to it. I had some tapes that I would listen to of the Yiddish theater and get taught from that. But then I didn't do anything until I started going with Dov-Ber and Dovid Katz to Ukraine, and I was just kind of being plopped into this world of Yiddish that I was completely unaccustomed to. So, I hadn't spoken Yiddish probably until I landed in Kiev with Dovid and Dov-Ber. I probably hadn't said a word of Yiddish in, I don't know, twenty-five years or so -- if I do the math right, something like that.

CW:I want to talk about that project definitely, but first, how did you decide that -- I mean, you mentioned that you got interested in it, but is there another part of the story of how you made Jewish topics an academic focus?

JV:Well, you know, it came about, I think organically. I was immersed in Judaism 14:00my whole life, so it's not so surprising that I went in that direction, although as I say, I had no intentions of doing so. I had wanted to do Russian history; I found Russian history relatively interesting and wanted to do that. But I was also in elem-- I was in college at the time, you know, the Berlin Wall was falling, and it looked like Russia was gonna be an interesting place, so that got me interested in it. There was a professor also at McGill, Valentin Boss, who taught courses on Russian history, and I found it really inspiring and interesting, and went that way. And I guess, the Jews are an integral part of Russian history, and it's hard not to -- it's hard to study Russian history without looking at the Jews, in any case, but particularly, you know, if that's where the influences are, where -- you know, my own family background is not Russian, but Budapest and Poland are close enough, and Poland was part of Russia at one point, so that kinda counts.

CW:And I'd like to talk a little bit about the AHEYM Project. Can you first sort 15:00of describe what it is?

JV:So, "AHEYM" is the little acronym that we came up with. It stands for Archives of Historical and Ethnographic Yiddish Memories, and it also, of course, means "homeward" in Yiddish. And the project began -- the idea -- and it's a Yiddish oral history and linguistic project, to interview Yiddish speakers in situ, mostly in Ukraine; we've also done interviews in Moldova, Slovakia, Romania, and Hungary. And it grew out of work that Dovid Katz had been doing since the -- I guess early '90s, I think, he started interviewing Yiddish speakers in Lithuania and in Belarus, looking at Lithuanian Yiddish. And Dov-Ber Kerler, who is my colleague over at Indiana University, had studied with Dovid. And Dovid invited us to come along and work on expanding his project into 16:00Ukrainian Yiddish, which is Dov-Ber's area of expertise. So, we went with Dovid a few times to Ukraine and conducted interviews with Jews living in -- mostly in the area around what was, at one point, Podolia and Volhynia and interviewing Yiddish speakers about their lives there. And at this point -- and then we started -- this was in 2002 that we went with Dovid, and now we've been going at least once a year, sometimes twice a year even, interviewing Yiddish speakers in that region. And at this point, have about eight or nine hundred hours of interviews with, I think, about three hundred and fifty people -- many of them we've interviewed multiple times -- but mostly in, again, Volhynia, Podolia -- what was Volhynia and Podolia -- some in the Transcarpathian area and Moldova, Romania, and a couple in Slovakia, as well, and a couple in Hungary, as well. So, it's an oral history and linguistic project. We ask them questions much like (laughs) the questions you're asking me. We ask them questions about their life 17:00experience. We look for -- they have to be Yiddish speakers, and being Yiddish speakers, that means they were mostly born in the 1920s, some in the 1930s, some in the 1910s, at least in the earlier stages of the project. And we ask them questions about what it was like to be Jewish growing up in the Soviet Union. We ask them about their lives, about their family, about what they remember about the town they were living in. We ask them to show us around the town and get videotapes of that. We interview them about their war experiences, and then what it was like to rebuild after the war, and talk to them about contemporary Jewish life in Ukraine as well, all in Yiddish. And then, there's a segment of the interviews that's linguistic, where we ask them a series of words in Russian that they then translate for us into Yiddish. And Dov-Ber can use that to map -- to make various linguistic maps that he's interested in.

CW:Can you describe that first day, when you arrived in Kiev and were sort of 18:00plopped into a Yiddish world?

JV:Yeah. I mean, I guess the first day we were in Kiev, and conducted a few interviews in Kiev. And there were -- we were working, actually, with Anatoly Kerzhner, who is a local Yiddish enthusiast in the Ukraine, a young fellow who was working with us in Kiev. And we went to the synagogue there and interviewed a few people, and conducted very long interviews and were very excited that we could find some Yiddish speakers in Kiev. But we were actually anxious to get out of Kiev, as well, and to go back to smaller towns. Our goal was really to interview people in small towns who were born in the same town, or who were living in the same town that they were born in. I guess for linguistic reasons, that way you can really map what type of Yiddish you're interviewing in, and also for, you know, the oral history purposes, it makes sense to interview people about the local history of the town that they're actually living in. So, 19:00from Kiev -- after a couple days in Kiev -- we went to Zhytomyr. And Zhytomyr also has a very lively Jewish culture, relatively speaking, so we went to the synagogue there and were able to interview people, and then went to smaller towns, to Shargorod, to Bershad -- I think we went to Tulchyn that first visit, to Nemyriv, Zhmerynka. And it's a, you know, a whole new world. I was amazed that there were still Yiddish speakers in these regions. I hadn't imagined that there were that many people still speaking Yiddish, and in places like Shargorod even in 2002, there were still streets that were Jewish streets, where the majority of the residents living in the streets were Jewish, and they all spoke Yiddish. And there were even some young people who were speaking Yiddish and were very happy to speak to us. I was amazed at how willing people were to share their stories with us. I'd imagined it was gonna be a lot more difficult to elicit information from them. I had these visions of people being afraid of 20:00outsiders -- and particularly growing up in the Soviet Union, talking about Jewish life. But that wasn't the case, actually. Everybody was very eager to share their stories with us, and to share their stories with us on videotape, as well. So, that first -- I think the first time we went, it was for maybe ten days, maybe twelve days. It was a short period of time, but it immediately became apparent to us that this was something we could do on multiple occasions, where we could keep going back. So, we applied for some funding, and from the National Endowment for the Humanities, we got enough funding to keep going back. And the Atran Foundation also gave us some funding. And we were able to continue going back, year after year, and then eventually expanded from that core region of Podolia -- what was Transnistria during the war was the area that we were focusing on in that initial period -- we were able to expand in it into Volhynia and eventually into Transcarpathia, and then into Moldova and Hungary and Slovakia and these other regions. And now it's getting -- I didn't go this past 21:00summer, but Dov-Ber did with some students of ours, and there are still people there. It's diminishing. I think everybody thinks that when they go they're interviewing the last people, and, you know, (laughs) at a certain point, they really are gonna be the last Yiddish speakers there. But, you know, I think you get different things as you go later. You know, we're doing the same area that Ansky did when he did his expeditions in 1911, 1912, 1913. And obviously, we're -- no, we're not gonna get the wealth of information that he got, but we get different types of information, and we learn the experience of Soviet Jewry in the small shtetlekh [small towns in Eastern Europe with a Jewish community], which is a story that hasn't been told. This is a community that's mostly forgotten about in the historical scholarship. They're forgotten about in the Jewish community. Even when we think of Soviet Jews, we tend to think of the Soviet Jews who are living in the big cities, and those who are living in these small towns and trying to retain some semblance of a Jewish life in the midst of the Soviet Union tend to get forgotten. So, I think the project is, you know, 22:00trying to tell their story, and trying to show the diversity of Jewish life that existed in the Soviet Union, but also in the world writ large.

CW:Are there any -- I mean, you've interviewed a lot of people already for that project. Are there any people that stand out for you personally? That --

JV:Yeah, I mean, there are -- you know, many. I think the stories of survival -- and not only survival of the war, but just survival of what they've lived through, is really remarkable -- that people, you know, can manage to persevere and retain their identity through what these people have survived. You know, the oldest people that we interview were born right at -- we interviewed, you know, one person who was born in, I guess, 1918, and this isn't his memory, but what 23:00he knows of his childhood is that he -- his whole family was killed during a pogrom in 1919. And he has an injury on his arm that he can show, where a bullet ricocheted off his arm when his mother was killed with him in his mother's arms. And this is -- he was -- I guess he was about fifteen months old at the time. And a local priest then went to this mass grave where his family had been shot and found him as a fifteen-month-old baby, injured, in his dead mother's arms, and took him into an orphanage, and then he was eventually brought back to the town that he was from, brought up with his grandfather. So, this is the -- you know, the earliest people, they were -- lived through that. Then, they lived through the civil war over the next couple of years, and then collectivization in the late 1920s, and the famine in the early 1930s -- in '32, '33 -- and then right when the famine ends, then there's the Great Terror and all of the mass arrests of the late '30s and the closure of synagogues in the '30s. And then, 24:00right when they get over that -- right, when Soviet power is actually establishing itself, as electrification and they're getting out of that poverty, then the war begins. And they live through the war, and then after the war, there's anti-Semitism, and then economic stagnation and poverty. And it's -- it's a lot to live through. So, I find those stories in particular to be meaningful stories, just to show what people are able to endure, to live through.

CW:What questions are -- or what kind of information do you -- have you found that you can learn through oral history that you haven't been able to learn otherwise?

JV:I think one thing you get is thick detail, that you get the experience of 25:00everyday life. The people can tell you what it felt like to do something. And they can give you, you know, little tidbits that you can't otherwise get. One of the things that we focus on is Jewish life, and people talk about what Jewish life meant to them, even though, you know, the synagogues were closed. If you look at the official documents, for instance, you can see in some random town the synagogue was closed in 1937, and that's it. It seems as though, you know, Jewish life has disappeared. But in fact, if you speak to the people, they still regarded themselves as Jewish. Sometimes they had secret prayer minyans that functioned -- sometimes secret prayer minyans that the secret police knew about and recorded also in documents. But you can see that people attribute meaning to different things. One of the fascinating things I find is how people attribute meaning to food. And if they talk about Jewish life in, you know, the '20s and '30s, at a time when it was very difficult to express oneself openly as a Jew, they talk about the importance that food had. And then, to them, that's what 26:00they ascribe meaning to, and it evokes nostalgia, it evokes images of -- you know, of their parents' lives. Many of their parents were killed during the war, and when they think back to their parents, they think of the food that was served. And that's a very important stimulus to memory. So, people will attach meaning to what they're able to attach meaning to. And that's what you can't determine from documents; you can't see what people are attaching meaning to and what they value.

CW:Beyond your academic interest, has your experience doing these interviews affected your own personal Jewish identity?

JV:I'm sure it has affected my own personal Jewish identity. It's hard to know exactly how. But I'm sure it has. I often say, I just got into this purely for academic reasons, but then, you know, people point out that, you know, there's 27:00probably a personal element to it, too, given that I grew up going to a school that taught Yiddish and that my father's a Holocaust survivor and that my mother's family's from Poland. There's probably some personal relationship (laughs) to the matter that I can't discern. But so, there's something. But I couldn't state exactly what. (laughs)

CW:I guess more broadly, how, if at all, do your academic interests and your personal life intersect or relate?

JV:Well, that's a hard question to answer without going into clichés. But they are -- I mean, they're very intimately related. And I think I find this meaningful because of the diversity of Jewish life. You know, I think I relate 28:00to the fact that I live in a small town now, and how you can express yourself Jewishly living in a small town -- you know, I live in Bloomington, Indiana -- and how you can maintain Jewishness without being surrounded by it. As I mentioned, I grew up in a very Jewish neighborhood, and it was effortless to be Jewish and to express yourself that way. And I went to a Jewish school and, you know, all of my friends were Jewish, and everybody I knew growing up was Jewish. And that's certainly not the case now, and it's not the case for my kids. My daughter is in fifth grade right now, and she's the only Jewish kid in fifth grade in her entire school. And I realize that they're getting a very different experience. And we have to work a lot harder to give her some sense of Jewish identity. And exactly what that Jewish identity means is also very difficult to 29:00determine -- whether -- to what extent it's a religious identity, to what extent it's a cultural identity. And this is what I said to you earlier -- when I grew up, I didn't have to think about that, because it was all there -- so everything that we did was permeated with various different types of Jewish identity. You know, all of my earliest memories revolve around things that happened at Jewish holidays with my family or at the -- you know, I have early memories of the synagogue, of going to my grandfather's synagogue, where he was the rabbi. And, you know, so that becomes a part of who you are -- whereas with my own kids, we have to work hard to instill that. And it's often hard to do when they've got other priorities -- when they've got gymnastics practice on Friday nights and someone has to balance a whole bunch of different things. And, you know, it's related to my academic life, I think. I'm seeing how other people did that when they weren't even allowed to do it. We're allowed to go to synagogue; we just 30:00don't. (laughs) When I, you know, look at people who weren't allowed and still managed to retain some semblance of Jewish identity -- even though it's not a Jewish identity that we would completely recognize as Jewish today, but it means something to them, and I think what's important is to instill that somehow.

CW:And how do you go about doing that?

JV:That's a good question. (laughs) I'll find out in twenty years when my kids tell me. You know, I think as the -- since, you know, my own professional life is so intricately related to Judaism, the kids get it through that. And they know that I'm the director of a Jewish studies program, and they know what that means. And they, you know, hear -- I often work on my work at home, and since a lot of it involves listening to Yiddish oral histories, they hear, as they say, old people speaking Yiddish coming out of my office and interrupting while they're watching "SpongeBob" or whatever -- in the background, they hear these 31:00old people talking Yiddish. And so, you know, it's -- I think in a way, it permeates their home life, as well. You know, they went to a -- they went to the Jewish preschool that we have in town, which is actually run by my colleague Dov-Ber Kerler's wife, Didi. And she runs the religious school and she runs the preschool, and they went to that. And they have a relationship with her through that. But it's a small Jewish world in Bloomington. And the kids feel a part of that. They go to a Jewish camp, much like I did. And you try to give them what you can.

CW:What was it like when you went back to the town that your -- that you actually did have family connections to?

JV:You know, remarkably uneventful. (laughs) The first one I went to was 32:00Wołomin, when I was in Poland, and I took a cab there; I was with a friend of mine, and we took a cab there. And then, you know, the cab driver asked us where in Wołomin we wanted to go. Well, I don't know. And then, you know, you get there and there's really nothing left of old Wołomin. You know, the city, I'm sure, was completely destroyed during the war, and it's all new buildings. And so, we went to Wołomin, we kind of wandered around, didn't quite know what to do, and then went back (laughs) in the cab and went back to Warsaw. There was really nothing to it. When I went to Kisgyarmat, we went with a film crew, and actually, that's on video. And it was 4:00 p.m. in December and it was pitch black. And so, we went there in the absolute pitch blackness and went into the local bar. I was with the whole AHEYM crew -- Dov-Ber was there and our cameraman was there and our driver -- and we went into -- the city is just a bar, and I guess a tire repair shop or an auto repair shop. And we went into the 33:00bar, and there was somebody there who got into a big conversation with us -- in Hungarian, which I don't speak -- but he was speaking anyway, and we had an interpreter with us, and the interpreter explained who we were and what we were doing, and they were very excited. They claimed that they remembered my great-grandparents and that they know who they were -- and that, Oh, yeah, they were Jews in town, they owned this little inn sort of thing, so they took us there and showed it to us. And it's all on video. And it's funny, 'cause the video, we're in pitch black and looking at this building in pitch black, also -- that's supposed to have some meaning to me, (laughs) but really doesn't. Oh, and then the mayor came out and we met the mayor. And the mayor was very nice to us. And I called my father on the cell phone -- since I don't speak Hungarian, again -- but he spoke to the mayor (laughs) and explained to the mayor what we were doing. The whole thing was kinda silly (laughs) and didn't have much meaning, but I guess that's kinda the point: what are you going back to? You know, it's 34:00as though -- why did I make -- 'cause we were several hours out of our way that I made us go to go visit this town that I didn't really know. I didn't even know (laughs) who we were going to see. Was it my great-grandfather was born there or my grandfather or my great-uncle? (laughs) I didn't even know. But somebody was born there, and I had heard of this town, so we went there. And it was just all pitch black in some rundown town, and you don't really know what you're looking for. So, I don't know, I found it -- the meaninglessness of it, I guess, has its own meaning: that you can't really go back, that you're looking for something, but you don't know what you're looking for. I guess that's the meaning of it.

CW:(laughs) As a historian, is there -- are there things -- lessons or connections that Jews today can learn from the people that you're interviewing?

JV:Of course there are. What they are is a more difficult question to answer. (laughs) But I think, you know, again, the theme of perseverance comes up -- and, you know, understanding -- I'm also always interested in relations between Jews and their neighbors, between -- in this case, you know, Jewish and Ukrainian relations, which are very complex. And a lot of the people that we interview attribute their survival to the help that their Ukrainian neighbors gave them. And, you know, they've continued to live in Ukraine, so their children have often married Ukrainian women or Ukrainian men and merged in that way. And yet somehow, Jewishness means something to them. And when you -- you know, when we interview people and ask them -- what it means to be a Jew is one of the questions we commonly ask, and people give abstract answers of the nature that it means to believe, to be devoted, to endure -- to endure your suffering 36:00is a common answer that we get. And people, you know, ascribe meaning to it, and it gives them something to live for and some way of understanding their experiences. And they do feel a need to preserve something of what it means to be Jewish, even in those difficult circumstances. So, I think if they can do it, then surely we can do it. (laughs)

CW:I'd like to ask a couple of questions specifically about Yiddish. I'm wondering what you see the place of Yiddish in the academy today?

JV:I think it plays an important role in the academy. I think the place of, you know, Yiddish and Jewishness are intricately related in important ways. And more and more, you know, young people in the world today are getting a lot of their Jewish education from universities. Certainly, I think, young people in s-- 37:00young people's relationship with synagogues has been declining, and I think even summer camps aren't having the influence that they once did, and more and more people are turning to the universities, and that their first meaningful relationship with Judaism comes from universities. At least that's what I see at Indiana University, which may not be the way it is at other universities. But we're encountering a lot of people who are committed to Judaism, and they're first encountering this through the university. And Yiddish is an integral part of that Jewish identity. It's not all of it, of course. There's other, you know, languages that are of equal importance. And, you know, it's only a small segment -- well, not a small segment; it's only a segment of the Jewish population that used Yiddish. But it's become an important part of Jewish identity in America that serves particular purposes in America. There's a whole genre of literature that they need Yiddish to learn. But by and large, it's something the graduate 38:00students are getting at more than undergraduates, and our Yiddish enrollments are higher at the graduate level than at the undergraduate level. And graduate students use it sometimes out of a love of the language, but I think more often for utilitarian purposes -- in order to get at documents, in order to get at sources that they wouldn't otherwise be able to get at. So, I think for literature purposes, in order to read the literature and to get at sources, is why people are using Yiddish in the academy today. And I think what's, you know, maybe changing is, there's a turn towards understanding the variations of Yiddish and the different Yiddish dialects -- where the, you know, standard, you know, YIVO Yiddish is, I guess, still mostly what's taught, but people are beginning to understand that there's a lot of other ways of speaking Yiddish, and that since Yiddish wasn't standardized until late, it has a lot of different modes of presentation.

CW:And where do you see the academic's role in cultural transmission?

JV:You know, as I said, I think it's important, because this is where many students right now are getting their cultural transmission. And we have a dual role of serving with academic identities, and that means being critical, and that means approaching things with a critical eye and analyzing things, and on the other hand, presenting students with a narrative, with something that they can take home as a cultural tradition. And we have to carefully maintain that balance. But I think it's an important thing, and we are trying to -- you know, trying to show them the value of whatever tradition that they're from, but we're also trying to show them the diversity of it.

CW:Have you noticed any changes in the students in your department -- or in Jewish studies, for that matter -- since you were a student yourself?

JV:You know, it's hard for me to say, because where I was a student myself -- I think that McGill had a very different Jewish population than Bloomington, Indiana does, so it's changed. You know, in that sense, it's changed significantly, that the group of students that I went to McGill with were -- you know, grew up in largely Jewish homes like I did, with -- the Jewishness permeated, whereas in -- the students that we get at Indiana University -- we also have a very large Jewish student population, but it's a different type of Judaism. And part of it is a Canadian versus American thing. But they generally -- I've seen changes, certainly in the -- I've been there now thirteen years in 41:00Bloomington, and I've seen changes in those thirteen years, I think, where we're getting students now with -- we're getting more students who are actually more knowledgeable in Judaism than we used to, and we're getting students more committed specifically to Jewish studies than they used to be. And that may be we're just attracting students from different segments, but I've seen -- I think our student body right now is stronger than it's been in the past. But that may be the particular -- something particular about -- about the way our Jewish studies program is going.

CW:And what is it like for you to be -- to run a Jewish studies program in Bloomington, Indiana?

JV:Yeah, it's an interesting thing. One wouldn't think that (laughs) there would be such a big Jewish studies program in Bloomington, Indiana. But it's interesting to run. I mean, Bloomington has a -- because of the university, it's 42:00got a lot of different ethnic and area studies programs that are functioning as part of the university, and Jewish studies is one of those. You know, the program was built up by Alvin Rosenfeld. It was the first Jewish studies program at a public university. And it has, you know, a lot of positions and has been doing very well for itself, certainly over the last twenty years. Right now, we have about -- we have about forty-five majors and another forty-five certificate students and another thirty-five or forty or so minor students, and then twenty-five doctoral minors and three master's students, so it's got a wide variety of students doing various degrees in Jewish studies. And Indiana is certainly not the place that one would expect them to be doing that. But our students predominantly come from out of state. It used to be about eighty percent of our students were out of state; now with -- you know, it's becoming more difficult to go out of state, so I'd say it's now about seventy, sixty-five 43:00percent of our students are out of state. But still, a good contingent are. And they come to Indiana University -- I think a lot of them are coming specifically for the Jewish studies program, so they're not the typical population of Indiana. And, you know, they come because it's a place -- you know, they don't necessarily want to stay where they're from, but Indiana is a safe place to be. It's a very nice college town in that respect. And they know that it's got this Jewish environment that -- through the Jewish studies program and the Hillel and various other things like that going on campus, they can retain that, as well.

CW:You mentioned that you use -- that you listen to these oral histories quite often. Do you use Yiddish in your daily life otherwise?

JV:I, you know, read in Yiddish. I do a fair amount of reading in Yiddish, and 44:00then listen to the oral histories. I don't generally speak it. There are a contingent of people who speak Yiddish on campus -- you know, a lot of Dov-Ber's students and some of our graduate students. And they have a Yiddish reading group that I sometimes go to; I usually don't. So, generally -- no, I don't generally use it otherwise in my daily life. Well, I do have the opportunity to, but there's so much else to do. (laughs)

CW:(laughs) Yeah. What are sort of the challenges and delights of teaching Jewish studies at the university level?

JV:I like it for a variety of reasons. We have --- yeah, I find that the students that we get tend to be very engaged students who are coming -- you know, our Jewish studies program has a really good tradition of placing students in Jewish social services, in the Jewish professional world, and so a lot of 45:00them come specifically intending on working in the Jewish professional world, and so are immediately engaged in the material. And they're interesting to work with. But we also get a bunch of students who are taking Jewish studies courses for very random reasons. And their interaction and the way these different groups interact is really interesting. Some of the ones -- you know, we get some Christian fundamentalists who take it, who take the course. It's also because they're interested in the Jewish people and their history. And we get people who take courses -- you know, who come in with all types of preexisting stereotypes about who Jews are. You know, sometimes they come in thinking that all Jews are Einsteins and they want to learn how to be like that, and other times they come in thinking all Jews are Madoffs and they want to learn about that. And it's kind of our role to show them that there are Jews who -- well, there was one Jew who was Einstein, there was one Jew who was Madoff, and then there's, you know, many others, and that Jewish history is -- has a lot of different elements to 46:00it, and to engage them in that. And it's interesting to see the students from different backgrounds interact with each other and learn from each other. I think that's the great thing that a university can do, is a lot of these students grow up within a very compact environment, and they're only interacting with people who think the way that they think. And this works for the Jewish students who are coming from, you know, the East Coast, and it works with the, you know, local kids from Indiana, who are also coming in -- there are non-Jewish kids who are coming from small towns in Indiana, and the university classroom gives them the opportunity to interact for often the first time with people from diverse backgrounds who think differently than them. And that's a really fun thing to partake in and to help them work out.

CW:How do you see the role of the academy -- you've talked some about how academics are sort of transmitting culture; how do you see that working with 47:00Jewish organizations in this issue of cultural transmission?

JV:You know, our role is a difficult one, because our role is to challenge them -- you know, again, to get them away from the stereotypes and away from the notions that they're coming in and to challenge their beliefs. And I hope that challenging their beliefs will also often serve to strengthen their beliefs. And I hope it works in both ways. So, the Jewish students who come in interested in, you know, working in the Jewish professional world -- I think our role is to challenge them about whether this is what they want to do and whether this is the direction that they want to go, the same way -- you know, that -- we do the same thing with the Christian fundamentalists or whoever else there may be. And often, it just reaffirms their own beliefs. And other times, it, you know, convinces them to go in different directions. But we work closely with a whole 48:00bunch of agencies -- with local agencies in Indiana, of which there are, you know, many more than you would think, anyway. And we work very closely with Hillel, with the Hillel Center and doing activities with them. So, I think we all serve -- you know, we really -- as individuals, we have a common goal, but as institutions, the goals are different between academia and other Jewish institutions and federations and professional services.

CW:I'm curious about what you think about the term "Yiddish revival" -- how people have various opinions on that --

JV:Um-hm.

CW:-- term. What do -- how do you feel about that term?

JV:You know, you can always say there's a revival of anything. I think there is exciting stuff going on in the Yiddish-inspired world right now. I don't know 49:00how much of a -- you know, how much of a Yiddish revival it is. But I think Yiddish is a pretty fast-growing language in reality, and it's not because of what the academics are doing, but if you look at the Hasidic world, you know, they're the ones having lots of kids and they're speaking Yiddish. And I think in that respect, Yiddish is a very fast-growing language. What we do in academia is a very small part of that. And I think there is a lot of exciting stuff going on -- and, you know, films that are using Yiddish and music that's using Yiddish. And particularly the cultural material that's trying to move forward instead of trying to evoke a past. And, you know, in the klezmer world, I think there is a klezmer revival. And there are some really great klezmer musicians and klezmer bands that are taking Yiddish songs and Yiddish ideas and then reworking them in novel ways. And that's what's exciting. You know, a revival may be a little bit much, but there's certainly -- people are being inspired by 50:00Yiddish culture in very interesting ways and are pushing it in new directions that certainly our grandparents' Yiddish would be quite foreign to.

CW:Do you have a favorite klezmer group?

JV:I have many favorite klezmer groups. I've done some work with Michael Alpert, and so I'm a big fan of Michael Alpert. And Alan Bern, we've also worked with. And I'm also a big fan of the stuff that Alan's doing, and the stuff that Michael's doing, I think, is really exciting. But there really is a lot out there. I mean, there's a lot of good stuff going on -- not only in, you know, the Yiddish music, but in theater, in film. You know, we're doing a film with Pearl Gluck, who did the "Divan." And we're doing a film on the oral histories that we've done with her that is interesting. And she does really fascinating stuff with Yiddish -- she did the film on Williamsburg and the film on "Divan." And then there's writers who I think are using Yiddish culture in interesting ways -- Michael Chabon, of course, and Dara Horn. So, there's a lot of -- and 51:00that's the type of stuff that's forward-looking that I think is interesting, where they're taking Yiddish as an inspiration, but they're not trying to recreate some lost past, although that can be interesting, too. You know, I think the Klezmer Conservatory Band at one point was really trying to recreate stuff, which -- and they were doing it in very interesting ways, whereas the Klezmatics, you know, are trying to push things in different ways. And Brave Old World is trying to be innovative. And Alan Bern's "The Other Europeans," which I really think is a fascinating project, is pushing things in new directions and looking for new musical synergies, which is all very interesting, too.

CW:Having worked in Eastern Europe and in the States and probably elsewhere, too, do you see major trends or differences in attitudes towards Yiddish in those different regional areas?

JV:Well, you know, certainly in -- yes, I do. And I think in the United States, there's a real nostalgia for Yiddish, and a nostalgia for a Yiddish world that has disappeared, and it's another world -- you know, the old life, the old European life. And there's a desire to evoke some imagined past out of -- you know, this is associated with the interest in Chagall and all that, to think of the shtetl as some magical place that's intricately related to Yiddish culture. The people that I work with in Eastern Europe -- I mean, Yiddish is still a part of their life, and Yiddish for them is still an integral part of their communal identity, but I don't think it evokes quite the same level of nostalgia for this imagined, you know, fairy -- fairyplace land. You know, part of it was that one couldn't go back. Unlike Irish immigrants, say, who came to America or Italian immigrants who came to America at the same time that Jewish immigrants did, they 53:00could go back to Italy and they could go back to Ireland. They could see how the cultures developed. And it developed -- you know, the American Italian culture developed in tandem with Italian culture, whereas for the Jews coming from Yiddish-speaking Europe, they were cut off from the rest of Yiddish-speaking Europe, so they developed quite differently, and then came together again with the fall of communism and the fall of the Soviet Union. And now there's a lot of interesting, you know, interactions going on between Jews from the former Soviet Union and Jews in America and Jews in Israel and, you know, émigrés from the former Soviet Union who are living in America and Israel. And that cultural interaction is really bringing about a whole new explosion of activity -- you know, again, my own collaboration with Dov-Ber, who -- he was born in Moscow, and so that comes out of that. So (laughs) -- what was the question? (laughs) What were we talking about?

CW:(laughs) We were talking about just this question of transmission and the 54:00different attitudes towards Yiddish in --

JV:Right.

CW:-- in different areas.

JV:Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, I think even -- you know, even in Israel right now, Yiddish is making a revival, that there's new interest going on in Yiddish at the Hebrew University and at Tel Aviv University. And now, you know, there's -- that wasn't there previously, I think, but Hebrew has become comfortable enough that it's going to be the language of Israel that they can -- they can allow some space for Yiddish, and there's nostalgia in Israel for it. And then, Canada also has a very different relationship with Yiddish, because Yiddish culture in Canada has sustained itself much more than the United States, where there, you know, are people like me who went to a school where we learned Yiddish in Canada. And there were, you know, consistently Yiddish-speaking communities in Montreal. And I think a lot of the academics working in Yiddish right now in America are from Montreal and from that community, as well. So, 55:00definitely, there's different relationships to Yiddish in different countries.

CW:I just have a couple more questions, but I'm wondering if there's anything that you wanted to add to any of these topics we've been talking about?

JV:Not that I can think of. (laughs)

CW:Can you think of any great family stories? (laughs)

JV:I haven't thought of any great family stories. You'd think I would have in all of this time, but -- (laughs) no, I can't think of any, but --

CW:That's okay.

JV:-- I will as soon as you turn the camera off, no doubt.

CW:That's okay. (laughs) I'm wondering about this issue that you raise about sort of this not being able to go back phenomenon, of Jewish American culture sort of developing in a situation where there wasn't -- and especially with Yiddish, that there's no Yiddishland that one can go to. What do you, in your 56:00opinion as a historian, see as the implications of that for American Jewish culture?

JV:It has meant -- this is changing now, but it has meant that Yiddish culture in America has emerged somewhat as a closed entity. I mean, Yiddish has been characterized historically by the dynamism of transnationalism -- to use that term -- but has been characterized by all of these different cultures interacting with each other and merging with it -- you know, whether it's linguistically, with the influence of Slavic elements into Yiddish, or whether it's just on a broader source that Yiddish culture has looked in different directions -- you know, taken from Polish culture, taken from Russian culture or from Romanian culture, from German culture, and, you know, is a fusion language, but also is a fusion culture. And in the last half of the twentieth century, as 57:00it developed in America, it ceased to interact as vibrantly with other places. And I think what's happened now, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the new waves of immigration, is now it is becoming exciting again, because of that revived interaction now with Russian Jews who are immigrating now in three, you know, different continents, be it in America, in Europe, in Israel. And what's going on with -- you know, Alan Bern's project in Weimar now, you know, such an unlikely place to have a Yiddish summer institute. And it's doing -- you know, culture and dance and music, all coming out of Weimar is indicative of what happens once the world opens up again. So, I think there was a -- in the postwar period, for about forty years, there was a stagnancy to Yiddish culture, where 58:00it was mourning the loss of the Yiddish community, but unable to really move forward, because it was lacking that international and transnational interaction that really makes Yiddish culture what it is.

CW:Well, two more questions. What do you see as the future of Yiddish?

JV:We'll see. I think it will continue to inspire, you know, artistic productions in various ways, and it's certainly going to continue in the foreseeable future as a language of use in the Hasidic communities. And that will most likely be its future. (laughs) But I don't foresee, you know, any huge revival of Yiddish. I don't foresee my children (laughs) using much Yiddish in their lives. But yeah, the Hasidic community, they're the ones -- they're the ones keeping it alive. And, you know, for all of our Yiddish enthusiasm, we need 59:00to appreciate they're the ones who are actually doing the work of keeping it alive.

CW:And as a closing question, what advice do you have to students of Yiddish today?

JV:What advice do I have to students of Yiddish today? I think to take advantage of the opportunities -- you know, there are a lot of new Yiddish educational opportunities that are coming about, and it's a -- in that respect, it's a good field. That there's -- you know, they should go to Vilnius, they should go to Weimar, they should go to the National Yiddish Book Center, they should come to Bloomington. You know, it's amazing how many different places there are -- they could go to Tel Aviv -- how many places there are right now where you could study Yiddish. And it is a very nice community of graduate students studying Yiddish, that it's an international community, and many of them know each other. And I look at my students, who -- you know, I know people from all over the 60:00world through these Yiddish centers. And that's -- you know, to me, more important than learning the language itself is the people that they've met and the connections that they've made. And again, this is the internationalism of the language, but that Vilnius summer program brings people really from all over the world, and from many different backgrounds to Vilnius to study Yiddish. And I think that that's, you know, always been an integral component of the language, and it's good that it's becoming an integral component of the culture again. I think it's a good development that Yiddish isn't only being taught at YIVO or at Columbia anymore, and is being taught in places like Weimar and Vilnius, and is attracting people who -- you know, who don't come from backgrounds that necessarily would have studied Yiddish before. You know, our own -- I have a graduate student who just finished her PhD, and she's Lithuanian, and she first encountered Yiddish through Dovid Katz in Lithuania 61:00and then came to Indiana University to do a degree in Yiddish. I've got another Yiddish student who's of German background. And I think it's good for it to be a language that's not exclusively studied by Jews, but is actually studied by the other people who contributed to the culture that made it Yiddish, and Germans have their own relationship to Yiddish, and Lithuanians do, as well. And I think it's important for them to contribute to Yiddish studies, as well. And I think it's a good opportunity for anybody studying Yiddish to make those connections and to realize that and to partake in that international community of Yiddishists.

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

JV:(laughs) Thank you.

CW:Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]