Keywords:1840s; 1850s; 1860s; 1940s; American Civil War; American Jews; anti-Semitism; Bavaria; Bavarian Jews; Brest; Brest-Litowsk; Brzesc nad Bugiem; Cleveland, Ohio; Czech Jews; Czechoslovakia; family history; German Jews; immigration; Jewish immigrants; Jewish soliders; Poland; Polish Jews; World War 2; World War II; WW2; WWII
Keywords:academia; American literature; Bible translation; English literature; French language; Jewish students; Jewish writers; Jews in academia; multilingual; multilingualism; poetry; translation; university education; university student
Keywords:1970s; 1980s; cultural translation; feminism in academia; gender in poetry; Jewish academics; Jewish authors; Jewish feminists; Jewish womanhood; Jewish women poets; Jewish women writers; Jews in academia; women Yiddish poets; women Yiddish writers; Yiddish in translation; Yiddish literature; Yiddish speaking academics
CHRISTA WHITNEY:Okay, this is Christa Whitney, and today is December 17th, 2012.
I'm here at the Association for Jewish Studies Conference in Chicago withKathryn Hellerstein. [pronounces as "Hellersteen"] We're going to record aninterview --
KATHRYN HELLERSTEIN: Hellerstein. [pronounces as "Hellerstine"]
CW:Hellerstein. Sorry. Kathryn Hellerstein. And we're going to record an
interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do Ihave your permission to record this interview?
KH:You certainly do.
CW:Thank you. So, as a place to start, can you tell me briefly what you know
about your family background?
KH:You'll have to stop me, 'cause I know a lot. Okay. On my mother's side of the
family, my great-great-great-grandparents came to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1840, from 1:00a small town in Bavaria. And also on my mother's side, another set ofgreat-great-great-grandparents came to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1854, from Bukovan, atiny little hamlet outside of Prague. On my father's side of the family, hisparents came to the United States from Brest-Litovsk, Brisk de-Lita, in --around 1900. As they were both teenagers, they came separately. And my -- can Igive names? Yes? Okay. So, I'll backtrack in a minute. But my father's motherwas named Celia Zeiger, and she was the daughter of Rivka Soloveichik and 2:00Menachem Zeiger. And therefore, she was a descendent of the great rabbinic Briskfamily, the Soloveichiks. My father's father's name was Samuel KopelHellerstein, although his name initially had been -- or his family name had been-- [Bar-Hoftik?] Hellerstein, and they were all -- he was a descendent of theBar-Hoftik family, also a rabbinic family in Brisk. My -- I'm going to return tomy mother's family in a moment. My grandparents -- as young teens, I think theyhad known each other in Brisk, but they re-met in the United States. My 3:00grandmother had gone to New York; my grandfather had gone to Pittsburgh, wherehe had relatives. They -- my grandfather became a peddler, wandered through theback roads of western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, southeastern Ohio. And heended up buying out a general store, the Finkelstein store, in Dillonvale, Ohio,a coal-mining town. Went back and got my grandmother, they got married, and theymoved to Dillonvale, Ohio, where they raised five children. They moved toCleveland in 1929, when my father was thirteen. My father's name was HermanKopel Hellerstein. He was the fourth -- actually, he was the fifth of sixchildren, but his oldest brother died as an infant. And he went to high school 4:00in Shaker Heights, Ohio, went to college at Adelbert College at Western ReserveUniversity, medical school at Western Reserve University, became a -- well, I'mreally going in one line here -- (laughs) became a -- was inducted --volunteered for the American army, became a medical captain, fought in theEuropean theater during World War II, and was the chief medical officer in the3rd Armored Division of Patton's -- wait -- the 7th Armored Division of Patton'sThird Army, which liberated Bergen-Belsen along with the British. Backtrackingto my mother's side of the family --
CW:Sure.
KH:-- I just want to give the names --
CW:Yeah.
KH:The first set of great-great-great-grandparents that showed up in Cleveland,
5:00Ohio, in 1840, leaving Bavaria, were named Ella Strauss and Samuel Loeb Colman.They changed their -- they married in Cleveland because they were not allowed tomarry in Bavaria. There was a law saying one son from every Jewish family couldmarry. This was the second son. His elder brother had the privilege. They leftso they could marry. They went to Cleveland 'cause they had landsleit [plural oflandsman (countrymen)] in Cleveland. And set up a store, a dry goods store, inwhat's now downtown Cleveland. There's actually still a little alleyway on themap in Cleveland called Colman Alley. There's just dumpsters there now, butthere was once a store there, I think. And they had -- well, they had a lot of 6:00daughters. I think they had thirteen daughters, all born in Cleveland, Ohio, oneof whom was my great-great-grandmother, Leah Colman. She married a man namedEdward Rosewater, who was the child of the other set ofgreat-great-great-grandparents that I mentioned at the beginning. Their nameswere Herman and Rosalia Rosenwasser, and they came from Bukovan, in -- thehamlet outside of Prague. And they came to Cleveland with their sons. I thinkthey had two sons, Edward Rosewater and Marcus Rose-- well, it was Rosenwasser,Rosenvasser, at the time. My -- Edward Rosenwasser changed his name toRosewater. He was thirteen when he showed up in Cleveland, Ohio. And he -- the 7:00short version of this very long story, which I'm writing about in an interestingway, is that he apprenticed himself to a telegrapher at the age of fifteen,which must have been 1856, and traveled all over the United States, especiallyin the South, setting up telegraph poles and learning this cutting-edgetechnology. And ended up -- during the Civil War, ended up in the telegraphoffice of the War Department of Abraham Lincoln's White House. And he happenedto be on duty the night of January 1st, 1863, and telegraphed out theEmancipation Proclamation. He left Washington shortly thereafter, went back to 8:00Cleveland, married Leah Colman, who he had been corresponding with during thewar -- his time in the telegraph office -- and took her off to Omaha, Nebraska,where he had an opportunity to work for the Pacific Railroad Company. He foundedseveral newspapers but ended up being the founder and editor of the "Omaha Bee,"which was one of the major English newspapers, Republican English newspapers,that lasted into the middle of the twentieth century. He was very successful andhad many -- had three daughters and two sons, all of whom had children. Hisoldest daughter was the mother of my grandmother. Okay. So. 9:00
CW:Great.
KH:That was probably too much information, but -- (laughs)
CW:Where did you find all this out, on your own research or your --
KH:Oh, my -- yes. Well, the family is well-documented. My parents were keepers
of family history, and one of my brothers and I are working on a book on EdwardRosewater, and I want to write a book about Leah Colman Rosewater and herdaughters and her granddaughters. And I want to write about Jewish women in the Midwest.
CW:Were there times in your family when you would sit around and hear family
stories that accompanied these documents?
KH:It wasn't so organized; what can I say? (laughs) Um -- oh dear.
CW:Or are there any family stories that have been passed down?
KH:Well, there are a lot of stories. But you want me to tell them? I -- let's --
CW:Well, if you have a -- let's go somewhere else, and then if we have time --
KH:Yeah, let's go somewhere else right now --
CW:-- we can come back. (laughs)
KH:There's -- because I sort of want to stay on the Yiddish topic, because this
is related but not central.
CW:Sure.
KH:I guess one thing I could say is that I have found, Yiddish-wise, in recent
months as my siblings and I, my five siblings and I, are clearing out myparents' -- my late parents' -- home, we have found a stash of Yiddish lettersthat my father's parents, Celia Zeiger Hellerstein and Samuel Kopel Hellerstein,wrote to him when he was in the army in Europe. And the letters were all inYiddish. I said that already, right? Yiddish letters. And these -- we didn't 11:00know they existed. I found them just about a month ago. So, I will have morestories when I read them.
CW:Definitely.
KH:And on the other side, rather than stories, in terms of objects that are
connotative and full of meaning and -- but the meaning, I'm not sure of quiteyet -- we have found a number of siddurim [prayer books] and -- or siddurs, andBibles -- well, some of them are khumeshim [Pentateuchs] and Tanakhs, and someof them are Bibles, in English, including the New Testament, that belong to theRosewater-Colman family. And they have inscribed in them family births anddates, and often these are inscribed in -- it's not exactly Yiddish. They'reinscribed in Hebrew letters with German spellings. And then, there are some 12:00Yiddish phrases thrown in. So, I'm sort of trying to figure out how -- whatYiddish, what German, the Czech and Bavarian branch of my mother's family spoke.If they spoke Yiddish in the mid- to late nineteenth century.
CW:Wow. Would you say you grew up in a very Jewish home? What about your home
felt Jewish?
KH:Well. Okay. It goes back to my family background. My mother grew up in
Cleveland, the daughter of Nellie Rosalie Elgutter Feil and Harold Stein Feil --those were my maternal grandparents -- both of whom had grown up -- how am I 13:00gonna put this? -- both -- anyway. My mother grew up in Cleveland as a member ofwhat is now Tifereth Israel but what was then called The Temple or Silver'sTemple, which was what I would call a -- it's a very distinguished and oldReform congregation in Cleveland. The Rosewater-Colman families wereinstrumental in founding not the beginnings of what turned into that particulartemple, but rather, what turned into what was later known as Fairmount Temple,another big, important Reform temple in Cleveland. So, my father's parents, as Isaid, were both children or grandchildren of rabbinic lines. My grandfather 14:00reportedly -- Samuel Kopel Hellerstein reportedly had been a yeshive-bokher[Yeshiva student] in Brisk, although I have no documentary evidence; I just knowwhat my father said and what he wrote in his autobiography. And yet when theycame to America, they -- and settled in Dillonvale, Ohio -- they were the onlyJewish family. Certainly the only Jewish family with children. And there was asmall Jewish community in Wheeling, West Virginia, which was a short train rideaway. But it was hard, I think, to maintain a fully observant household. Andanyway, they were both rebellious. My grandfather who ran a general store -- adry goods store -- and then eventually went to -- when they moved to Clevelandin 1929, owned a trousers factory, was actually -- had wanted to be a doctor and 15:00wanted a secular education. He couldn't pursue that in the States for financialreasons and circumstances. But his sons both became doctors. And what does thishave to do with religion? And my grandmother, the daughter of a Soloveichik andtherefore the granddaughter of other Soloveichiks, worked in a sweatshopbriefly, supposedly was a foreman -- the forelady of the sweatshop for a while,and I think became a -- turned towards -- I'm gesturing left -- towardssocialist tendencies. But ended up as a socialist Zionist. And so, they weresecularists, and my father grew up secular. When his parents moved him and his 16:00three sisters and one surviving brother to Cleveland when my father wasthirteen, in 1929, his parents said, You have a choice, now that we're -- theymoved to Cleveland to be nearer a Jewish community. And they said to the son, myfather, You have a choice. You can learn for your bar mitzvah, or you can go tothe Arbeter Ring shule [secular Yiddish school] and learn how to read Yiddish.And he, and then his younger brother Earl after him, chose Yiddish. So. We grewup in a Reform family. We did not keep kosher. I didn't know what keeping kosherwas until I was an adult, really, a youngish adult. We went to Sunday school. 17:00I'm the oldest of six children. And we went to Sunday school at The Temple, orSilver's Temple. And the temple did not actually have bar or bat mitzvahs at thetime. This was in the '50s and the early '60s. And so, instead of becoming baror bat mitzvah, my siblings and I were all confirmed, which took -- a ceremonythat took place on Shavuos -- although I never put it all together until muchlater, either. And it was a ceremony that did involve learning some khumesh,some prayers, you know, in Hebrew. So, I had a Reform Jewish education. But morethan that, I have to say that my Jewish education was very much more about a 18:00sense of morality and eth-- not an ethnicity, to a degree, but a kind of distantnod towards ethnicity -- but ethical precepts, and also my father's -- also myJewish identity and the Jewishness in our family was very much shaped by myfather's memories of the trauma of having been a soldier in the war, an officerin the war, Second World War, and having been a liberator of a concentrationcamp. And long ago, when I was in graduate school in the '70s, I came home toCleveland for a vacation, and my father had been going through -- I have more to 19:00say about my parents in a minute -- my father had been going through some filesfrom his office. He was a cardiologist, a very prominent cardiologist. And mymother was a very accomplished pediatrician, I should just say. And during thisvisit home, he set up on the dining room table an old Dictaphone and player, andhe pulled out a red, translucent disk, about this big, looking like anold-fashioned record, but it was made out of this sort of jelly-like redplastic, and put it into the machine. And I heard -- some of my brothers werehome with me at the time, too. And we heard my father dictating in the early'50s, dictating patient records into the Dictaphone, you know, for his secretary 20:00to type up and put into the files. And suddenly in the background of my father'smedical, professional voice came the shrieks and shouts of small children. Myfather paused in his dictation about some patient whose name luckily I can'tremember, 'cause it would be breaching patient confidentiality if I could, and-- but kept the Dictaphone running. And he turned, I guess, when he wasrecording this, and he yelled, "Hey, kids, what are you fighting about? Comehere and talk into the Dictaphone with me, and tell me what your problems are."So, it was me -- I must have been six -- my brother David, who was four and ahalf, and our littlest brother, John -- well, then Johnny, who was three. And we 21:00all sort of shuffled over to the dining room table, where my father had beendictating his patient records, and my father started interviewing us to try tocalm us down and figure out why were fighting. Well, why were we fighting, Idon't know. But what he said was -- and I hesitate to say this on tape, 'cause Idon't want anyone, ever, to call me this -- but he said, "Kathy --" -- 'causethat's what I was when I was a little kid. Don't ever call me Kathy! (laughs)Whoever's listening to this interview. He said, "Kathy, what did you do today?"And I said, "I went to temple." And he said, "What did you do in temple?" "Iwent to Sunday school." "And what did you learn in Sunday school?" And I said,"I learned that the Nazis want to kill the Jews." So, I was six years old, andthis was what came out in a -- out of my mouth when I was thinking about my 22:00Jewish identity. So. I'll stop that story there. (laughs)
CW:Great. Well, I want to skip forward a little bit, 'cause there are lots of
topics that I want to be sure to cover. So, how did you become interested in --I'm not sure which came first, Yiddish or translation, as an academic focus?
KH:Okay. There's a story here, too. All right. I promised you when I filled out
CW:Wow. That's a great story. (laughs) So, you then started learning Yiddish.
Was -- did you go directly to the YIVO program? I know you did that program. Howdid you learn the Yiddish language? How'd you go about that?
KH:Well, so -- okay. Sorry. More stories. But --
CW:That's okay.
KH:-- so I -- so, how am I gonna learn Yiddish? I'm at Stanford University. It's
an English department of fifty-some people. Two people who were Jews, I think.Two women. The women were not Jewish, but two women professors. Maybe there wasa third who was sort of in linguistics. And a couple of instructors. But -- andtwo Jews. One was a professor; one was sort of an acting professor, an adjunctprofessor. And no Jewish Studies program. This was way before -- way, way before 33:00Stanford had a Jewish -- anything Jewish Studies. Although there were theinklings -- a few years later, the inklings of the beginnings of a JewishStudies program. Anyway. I went to the religion department at Stanford, and Ifound a professor, Professor Berman, whose wife -- he was a professor of Bible.But his wife, Hannah Berman, was an instructor of -- well, she was an Israeli,and she knew Yiddish. She had grown up speaking Yiddish in Israel. So, I beggedProfessor Berman to -- to lead me in another independent study project, whichwas to read -- to allow me to go to the Stanford library and read every book 34:00about Yiddish that the library had. Which, unfortunately, wasn't all that much.But there was something. There was a small Yiddish collection there. And then, Ibegged him to let me sit and work with his wife. So, I would go to HannahBerman's house and sit in her living room with her and drink tea, and we wouldread together. But this -- I'm also telling this story in a backwards way.Because -- let me backtrack. Maybe you'll just erase this whole little segment.And -- let me backtrack. So, I -- so Donald Davie; I get mad at Ezra Pound; Isay I'm gonna learn Yiddish. So, I think first, I did find Larry Berman. LarryBerman. I read whatever there was about Yiddish in the library at Stanford,Green Library at Stanford. And then, I discovered in the winter -- it must have 35:00been the winter of '76 or early '77 -- I discovered that there was a gradstudent at Stanford in the computer sciences department, which was then arelatively small and unimportant part of the university -- which is pretty funnyif you think about it in retrospect now -- named Ray Finkel, who was teaching anad hoc Yiddish grammar course through the linguistics department. At Stanford,if a graduate student wanted to study a language that wasn't taught or supportedin one of the departments or in the major normal curriculum, they could petitionthe linguistics department to help them pay for an instructor who would teachbasically an independent study course in the language. Well, there was already a 36:00course up and running, and I entered it in the winter quarter. It was me -- as Iremember, me and two women who were -- I was in my twenties, and they were intheir thirties or forties -- who wanted to learn Yiddish for personal reasons,not for academic reasons. And they were sort of in the middle of "CollegeYiddish," Weinreich's "College Yiddish," and I just jumped in and sort of ranthrough the beginning chapters somehow, inadequately, but taught them to myselfand jumped in in the middle and joined this class. I guess somehow, at the sametime I was -- I then was also connecting with Hannah Berman, with whom I sat andread Sholem Aleichem, which was way beyond me. I mean, I couldn't really readit. But we would just look -- she would hold the book on her lap -- she was 37:00pregnant -- I would sit next to her. We would both look at the old, blue,falling-apart -- one of the seven-volume, thick edition of Sholem Aleichem -- Ican't remember which date it was American publication -- and we would sit, andwe would read sort of word by word. She would read a phrase, and then I wouldlook at the text, and I would read it out loud. And then, she would translateit, and I would try to figure out which English words went with which Yiddishwords. It was pretty bizarre. But I -- we did it. And then, shortly thereafter,I had a friend, an older -- slightly older friend/acquaintance, who had been atBrandeis working on a master's degree, I think, while I was an undergraduatethere -- I didn't know her well, but I had known her a little bit -- named 38:00Marcia Falk. And she was in the PhD program at Stanford, also in the Englishdepartment, and she was just finishing her doctorate -- her doctoraldissertation on -- which was a translation of the "Song of Songs." She wasworking with John Felstiner in the English department, one of the two Jewishfaculty members in the English department. And Marcia -- I bumped into her oneday, and she said, "I'm going off to Israel for a year to work on mydissertation and live and whatever." And she said, "And I heard that you'restarting to work on Yiddish, and I've heard that you're interested intranslating Yiddish poetry." She said, "I have somebody I want you to meet." So,she introduced me to Malka Heifetz Tussman, who was in her eighties, living in 39:00Berkeley, California. And it worked out beautifully. I -- Malka very generouslyagreed to take me on as her pupil. She always called me her pupil. And --(imitates Malka) "Keti, du bist mayn pyupil [Kathy, you are my pupil]." AndMalka, she refused to take any payment. I tried to offer her -- I didn't haveany money, but I still tried to offer to pay her. I thought it would be a -- youknow, a professional thing to do. But she said, "Look --" -- she said, "We are-- the payment is to you read my poetry, and I'll read your poetry. And we --and I'll teach you Yiddish poetry." So, for every Friday for a number of yearsin the late '70s, I would take the -- I would either drive my grandmother's 1968 40:00blue Plymouth Valiant, or I would take the shuttle bus that ran between theStanford library and the Berkeley library, and -- the UC Berkeley library. And Iwould go up for the day and spend the day with Malka, sitting at her rounddining room table, reading poetry. We would cook together. Sometimes I wouldhelp her go grocery shopping at the supermarket across the street. But she was-- her eyes were diminish-- her vision was diminishing, and she was a stalwartand a tiny, birdlike, beautiful, beautiful woman. But she was a little shaky onher feet, so it was good to have somebody else there to help her pick groceriesup and carry them home. And then, we would cook together and make sort of -- now 41:00that I think about it, I don't think we ever called it this, but I think it wassort of a Shabbos -- it was a Shabbos dinner at lunchtime. Or mid-afternoonlunchtime. And we worked together, and we read together. And she introduced meto all of her poetry. I was worki-- I had decided at that point to read andtranslate Moyshe-Leyb Halpern's first book, "In New York." And she was veryimpatient with Halpern. She thought he was sort of crude, and he was toosarcastic. She was a very ironic writer, very witty and ironic writer herself,and sexuality was not something she was afraid of addressing in her owninteresting ways. But she found Halpern a little harsh and a little too out 42:00there. So -- but she respected my desire to work on Halpern. And so, she helpedme go through my translations. And I was very arrogant, and I thought I knew alot more than I did. And I made some grievous bloopers in my translations. Andshe wouldn't -- you know. She'd mince no words. And she really made me humble,and rightfully so, about what it means to translate a poem. And what it means toreally learn and respect a language. So, I worked with Malka for -- (sighs)gosh. I -- you know what? I'm losing my sense of the exact dates. But we workedtogether for a number of years on Fridays. And after I left Palo Alto -- Ifinished my PhD in December of 1980, went to Israel, following Marcia's 43:00footsteps inadvertently, but went to Israel for six months to study Hebrew in anulpan. And then, came back to Palo Alto in the summer of '81 and stayed theretill the -- through March of '82, teaching freshman English at Stanford andworking further with Malka. But after I left and went to Chicago, and then to --taught at Wellesley College for four years, I kept in very close touch withMalka, and we wrote and spoke on the phone frequently, and I visited every timeI possibly could. And she was my mentor and my friend and my inspiration. Oh!And I left -- of course I left YIVO out of it altogether! (laughter) The summer 44:00of '77, I went to YIVO for the -- and I think I was in the lower-levelintermediate class, based on -- you know, I got that far based on my work withRay Finkel, who's now known as Refoyl Finkel, and my work with Malka and my workwith Hannah Berman. And just the sort of stubborn determination that I had tolearn Yiddish. And I -- that was a turning point summer for me, too. The YIVOprogram was fantastic. It was absolutely just riveting, stunningly wonderful.
CW:When you were -- I mean, YIVO went through various periods, and what was the
scene in the YIVO program in '77 when you were there? 45:00
KH:Oh God. It was great. Well, I don't know if you saw in the "Forverts" just a
couple of weeks ago or a month -- maybe a month -- maybe it was inSeptember/October 2012? There -- I think Rukhl Schaechter -- I think found apicture, the class picture of the summer of '77 YIVO class. And she emailedeverybody she knew who might be able to help identify any of these people. And Iwas in the picture. I was front and center, looking very thin and very (laughs)young. If only. And very California. And I could identify a lot of the people.But then other people helped her as well. But Steve Zipperstein was in thatclass. Eric Goldman. Jonathan Boyarin. I mean, we weren't all at the same level. 46:00Aaron Lansky was there. Aaron. Hi, Aaron. (laughs) There -- it was anextraordinary class. Josh Waletzky was the music teacher, and every Yiddish songthat I still know I owe to him. And other people too, of course, but Josh wassort of the beginning. He got us singing. It was -- Irena Klepfisz was the sortof grammar review person. She did those first two cram-it-all-in review of"College Yiddish," right before the actual YIVO classes started. MordkheSchaechter was my teacher of language, and we used his -- the manuscript versionof what turned into the "Yidish tsvey [Yiddish II]" textbook that he produced.And Steve Lowenstein was the -- who's a -- he was working on his book on the 47:00Jews of Washington Heights, I think, at the time. But he was our Yiddishliterature teacher. Yiddish wasn't his first interest, but he was wonderful too.So, it was fantastic. And if you look at the photograph, if you can get yourhands on it, it was a big class. There were a lot of people there. I mean, therewas also a guy there who was a British guy -- I don't remember his name, and Icouldn't find him -- I thought I found him in the picture, but then somebodytold me I was wrong. But I remember him saying that he had -- he was a tailor. Imean, he was a -- this was his profession. And he had made some of theperformance costumes for the Rolling Stones. So, that was one of the things Iremember. You want one more thing I remember?
KJ:That for one of the afternoon programs, somebody came up with a copy of a
print of "The Dybbuk," the film, which was -- this was pre-videotape, VCRs, andpre-DVDs, and pre-streaming and Netflix. And so, there was a reel-to-reel copyof the film, which was fairly rare. I mean, there weren't very many copies. Idon't know the full history of the preservation of this. But this -- we watchedit one afternoon. And I believe this was one of the first screenings of "TheDybbuk" that had been presented since -- the '30s? The '40s? I don't know. Andif my memory serves me right, the stars, the two actors who had played the male 49:00and female leads in the film, were living in the New York area. And whoeverorganized that program brought them to watch the screening as well. And after wewatched the film -- and it was a crackly, jumpy, sometimes blurry, sometimes dimprint of the film, but it was unlike anything I had ever seen and probablyanybody else in the room as well -- the two actors were brought onstage todiscuss what it meant to -- what it was like to watch the film, what it had beenlike to be in the film, what they -- and I just remember they both said, in oneway or another, that they too had not seen the film since the -- soon after its 50:00screening, and that everyone in the film but them had been murdered during thewar. And they had been in the United States -- again, this is my recollection.Some fact-checker can go check it someday -- but they had both been in theUnited States doing a publicity tour for the film when -- in late August 1939,and September 1st, 1939, they realized they couldn't go back. And they didn't.So, they survived, and the film survived, but the cast, the crew -- nisht do[not here]. (laughs)
CW:Wow. Well, I'd like to switch here -- we just have a little bit more time --
to ask you about Yiddish in the academy, which I have a couple of questions about. 51:00
KH:Can I just ask you a question?
CW:Sure.
KH:Is this gonna be the last topic? 'Cause I'd rather talk a little bit about my work.
CW:Okay.
KH:Or both?
CW:Well --
KH:I can do both. Maybe I'll do short answers.
CW:Yeah, maybe we --
KH:Okay.
CW:-- I'll just ask you one question about this, and then we can -- I'll give
you time to talk about whatever you'd like. I'm wondering -- I mean, you've beeninvolved in Yiddish in academic ways for now a while. Where is Yiddish now, andhow has it changed in its position in Jewish Studies and the academy?
KH:(pause) Hm. There's about twelve different ways I can answer this question.
Okay. Well, as I said in my sort of autobiographical monologue just now, you 52:00know, I started doing Yiddish when there was no Jewish Studies at Stanford. Andthe only place to study Yiddish in the United States was actually -- in a PhDprogram -- was at Columbia, in the 1970s. And there might have been some classeselsewhere, perhaps at City College. And McGill, of course, had Yiddish -- someYiddish -- at the time as well. And Hebrew University had a Yiddish department.But otherwise, there was very -- there were very few places where one couldactually study the language in a university setting, or do any kind of seriousresearch and writing on Yiddish-related topics. And today there are programs -- 53:00there are Jewish Studies programs at innumerable colleges and universities inthe United States -- Ivy League, distinguished state universities, colleges --some colleges have Jewish Studies departments or programs. And Yiddish isincluded in -- not all of these places, but in one way or another in many ofthem. You know, there probably was somebody teaching Yiddish at Brandeis when Iwas an undergrad there, but it was below the radar. I didn't -- I wasn't awareof it. Or interested, actually. The end of the 1990s through the first decade 54:00and a half of the twenty-first century, there's been a real boom in Jewishstudies, and Yiddish has sort of ridden the wave, to have a mixed metaphor.
CW:And what do you think of the term "Yiddish revival"? And do you think there
is one?
KH:(sighs) I think you have to define the term really carefully. So, I mean,
it's pretty obvious that in secular, academic, modern contexts, Jewish contexts,Yiddish is not reviving as a vernacular language on a widespread basis. From 55:00what I understand and know, in certain Chasidic communities, you know, enclavesin the States and elsewhere -- and Israel, to some degree -- and maybe in Europe-- there, Yiddish is a first language, and these are communities where there's aburgeoning population, and Yiddish is being used to -- for whatever reasons, Iunderstand it to be separating the population from the modern world and modernJews, who may also be Yiddish speakers. So, Yiddish is not gonna come back as itwas, but it may come back in a new way, in the religious communal context. Onthe other hand, there's a revival in popular culture through the klezmer boom 56:00that -- I don't know if it's peaked. I don't really -- I'm not a scientist inthis at all. But it's -- and then there's also been a revival academically ofinterest, academically. And the question is how that plays itself out. I mean,there are students. But Yiddish classes -- Yiddish language is taught in, as Isaid, a number of places, but most of us teaching Yiddish language inuniversities have a real issue in retaining students beyond the first semesteror beyond the first year. And students' motives for taking Yiddish varytremendously. But learning Yiddish is a major commitment, like learning anyother language is. And students often don't follow through beyond a beginner's 57:00level. And so, "revival" is a relative term. On the other hand, as the -- we'reat the AJS right now, and I've just heard two panels of incredible papers byscholars ranging from recent PhDs and grad students up through senior people inareas of linguistics and literature and cultural studies and history, andthere's just such -- there's a boom of research and creative thinking andlearning and translation. So, all of the above and none of the above. I don'tknow, that's my --
CW:(laughs) Yeah. Well, I have some questions that I want to ask about your work
in translation, especially of women Yiddish writers and also in teaching of 58:00Yiddish, but we just have a few more minutes. So, maybe --
KH:Why don't you ask me --
CW:-- I'll ask --
KH:-- the questions --
CW:Okay.
K:-- and then I'll answer them --
CW:Sure. However you want.
KH:-- the way I want. Yeah.
CW:(laughs) So, I'm curious sort of what drew you, I mean, to -- from working
with Malka Heifetz Tussman to then later making the translation of Yiddishwriters, women Yiddish writers, a central focus of your academic work.
KH:Well, my dissertation was on Moyshe-Leyb Halpern's book "In New York" -- his
first book, "In New York," came out in 1919. Part of the dissertation was atranslation. I translated the book, the whole book, and then wrote a critical --a big critical book-length essay on, or series of essays, on this series of --on this book of poems and its context and genre. And in the early '80s I was -- 59:00and that actually came out as -- a selection from my dissertation came out as abook in 1982, with the Jewish Publication Society. The book is called "In NewYork: A Selection." And I was writing articles about Halpern and hoping to writea book about him, but Ruth Wisse was working on her wonderful, great book, "ALittle Love in Big Manhattan." And I -- it was sort of not the moment for me totry to -- I just -- I didn't follow that route. So, I changed directions. And Iwent to the women poets, partly because Malka showed me the anthology of EzraKorman's "Yidishe dikhterins [Yiddish women poets]" one afternoon when I was 60:00working with her at her dining room table. And she told me that she had refusedto be in this anthology. So, I was intrigued. And we read some of the poems init. We read Kadia Molodowsky's poems, Rokhl Korn's poems, Celia Dropkin's poems,together in -- from other books. And Malka had been friends with both Korn and-- close friends with Rokhl Korn and friendly, professional friends, with KadiaMolodowsky. And so, I was reading their poems and reading Malka's poems. And Ididn't actually know -- all right. Anyway. I didn't understand why Malka wouldhave refused to be in the anthology. She told me -- this is what she said, but Istill didn't quite get it; she said, "I'm a poet; I'm not a woman poet." And shereally was quite adamant about not framing poetry with gender -- in terms of 61:00gender. So, I -- that piqued my interest. And a few years later, somebodyinvited me -- Lewis Fried invited me to contribute an essay to a book he wasediting, co-editing, on Yiddish studies of the moment, in the early to mid-'80s.And I wrote an essay called "A Question of Tradition: Women Poets in Yiddish."And sort of did a survey of a number of Yiddish women poets, and tried to sortof make sense of what it meant for -- where women poets fit into the traditionand why Malka might have not wanted to be part of this. I'm trying to cut to thechase. Well, this turned into a very long project, which is now about to appearas a major -- if I must say so myself -- scholarly book that's coming out from 62:00Stanford in, God willing, in the fall of 2013. And which has the title "AQuestion of Tradition: Women Poets in Yiddish." And I've also done an anthology,which is -- I'm putting the final touches on, which will be a companion book --a separate publication, but related to this, also to be published by Stanford.So, I turned to the -- well, I guess -- and also, I should add, the short answeris I became a feminist. I didn't think of myself as a feminist, for some reason,in the '70s, for complicated -- there's another story behind that, but I can --it involves Adrienne Rich, and I'll have to tell you another time, but I didn'tthink of myself as a feminist. But then I just be-- I went into the world. Itaught at Wellesley College. My eyes were opened. The world was not what I 63:00thought it was. And I realized that feminism was a helpful tool for coping withan unbalanced reality. And that's where my interest started and emerged from.And now, though, my interests are turning -- I continue my work on women Yiddishwriters. I'm interested in prose writers as well as poets. And I'm also veryinterested in cultural translation as a topic. And my new project is called"China Through Yiddish Eyes: Translating Cultures in the Early Twentieth Century."
CW:Wow. Well, looking forward to these publications! (laughs)
KH:Please, God.
CW:And we're out of time for today, but maybe some other time we can explore
64:00lots -- this -- there's so many more questions that I'd love to ask you. But Ireally want to thank you and say a hartsikn dank [thank you very much] fortaking the time to talk with me and for -- with the Yiddish Book Center today.