TROIM KATZ HANDLER ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY:So, this is Christa Whitney, and today is March 11th, 2013, and I am here in Boca Raton, Florida, with Troim Katz Handler, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Troim, do I have your permission to record this?

TROIM KATZ HANDLER:Avade [Of course].

CW:A dank [Thank you]. Okay, lomir onheybn mit di bobe-zeydes [let's start with your grandparents] --

TKH:Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna speak in English.

CW:Sure.

TKH:I had a very strange arrangement, when I was a child. I was born in Los Angeles, and brought back to New Jersey when I was an infant. And my father, 1:00Menke Katz, Yiddish poet, said he could not write with a family around him. And I also had a younger brother, Noah, almost two years younger. And, so, my mother, Noah, and I moved in with the grandparents, and my father, Menke -- I was never allowed to call him father. My mother was Khashke. My grandparents were mame [mother] and tate [father]. We stayed in Passaic, New Jersey, with them. My grandfather was a Lubavitcher, kosher butcher, and they never learned English as long as they lived. So, naturally, Yiddish was the household mame-loshn [mother tongue]. And they -- both grandparents were born in 1880, so I had an ekhte yidish [authentic Yiddish], you know. And my mother went to New 2:00York every Friday, to spend the night with my father, and then, on Saturdays, we would meet -- my father, my mother, Noah, and I, at his parents' house, which was also in Passaic. And the meeting was not typical of a father and children. Menke would lecture at us in Yiddish for about four hours, about literature, and everything else. We -- it was not a normal parent-child relationship. And he was an avid Yiddishist. And my mother used to memorize his books, and she would stand up and deklamir, you know -- recite his books in Yiddish. And, while she was practicing, at a very early age, I was told to follow the text in Yiddish, 3:00to be sure she had not omitted a word. And it was four hours, every week, that we spent with our father, till I was eleven, and Noah was nine. And my mother worked in a sweatshop, and she was also a writer. She wrote short stories about life in the sweatshop. And her stories were published mainly in the "Freiheit." She even won an award for one of them, called "Marta." It was a contest in which every entrant was given a number, and the readers voted. And she also wrote for a magazine at the time, which was "Der hamer." And it was a very hard life for her, but she was so convinced that Menke was the greatest Yiddish writer who had 4:00ever lived, that she was willing to put herself -- not only second place -- I would say in tenth place. She was an autodidact. She read a great deal in Yiddish -- read to me in Yiddish. And my grandparents were different in the sense that it was a shidekh [arranged marriage], and my grandmother was very intellectual. And she read "Der tog." And, three times a week, she would force me to sit down, and listen to B. Z. Goldberg's column. And he was sort of a Walter Lippmann -- you might not know that name; it was way before your time -- Walter Lippmann political analyst. And she was just crazy about B. Z. Goldberg, who was Sholem Aleichem's son-in-law. So, I got the Yiddish intellectual side from her. She had translations of Guy de Maupassant, and all sorts of classical 5:00writers. And he was not -- my grandfather was not at all interested in those things, because, in European society, for one thing, the butcher was considered the lowest, when it came to being educated. And my mother and father were vegetarians, as were Noah and I. And we got our yenike -- our sustenance -- from these grandparents, who ran a butcher store. So, one end of the table, they were eating meat, and at the other end, we were eating butternuts and avocados, and so on. Anyway, the marriage broke up when I was in eighth grade, and --

CW:Your parents, yeah.

TKH:Yeah. And I didn't see my father until I accidentally met him on a bus, when I was sixteen, and he didn't know who I was. And --

CW:Well, let's go backwards for a second, here. I -- can you -- what do you know about your grandparents' life in Europe, and --

TKH:Okay. Very hard, because tate, as I used to call him, left Homel' -- you know, these were the Lithuanian lands. The grandfather came from -- it's now called Belarus, at that time it was called White Russia. And my father's parents came from a little town near Vilna, but the accent was very similar. Only some words were different. For instance, the word for an "ear," for my mother was "oyer." The word for an "ear" for my father was "ever." So, there were some discrepancies. When it came to my Jewish education, my grandparents insisted 7:00that my brother go to talmud-toyre [Talmud Torah] after school. And I was sent to the shule. And that was the Workmen's Circle shule. Now, the Workmen's Circle was a very happy place for me to go to. It was in a private house, with a big porch, and there would be a cherry tree in the springtime. But, although I learned how to read and write, the books were all written phonetically, when it came to the Hebrew element. So that turned out to be a huge disadvantage for me, in later years, because, every time I came to a Hebrew-derived word, I just stopped dead. And the other thing was that, although we had dancing, and chorus, 8:00we never learned any grammar. I thought I knew Yiddish, because we spoke it at home. So, I married very young, and, when I was nineteen, a friend called me up and said that there's an ad in the "New York Times" for someone who knows Yiddish, and I thought I was qualified. And my husband, Fayvel, was going to school under the G.I. Bill of Rights at that time. I went for the interview, and I was interviewed by Gedalye Sandler, who was with the Jewish People's Fraternal Order of the IWO. Now, my parents had left-leaning interests. My father was never political, but his social life was with the Yiddish intelligentsia, and he 9:00was surrounded by Yiddish writers of the Left. And, when I went for the interview, Gedalye asked me, "Do you know Yiddish shorthand and typing?" And I had never heard of it. So, I said no, and he said, "Sorry, we need somebody with those skills." But, a few days later, he called up and he said, "We can't find anybody with those skills. Would you like to go to school? And we will pay for it." So, that was in 1946, and they sent me to a class which was taught by Jeanette Bailin. And she taught shorthand and typing, and her father was a Yiddish writer. And, in that Jewish People's Fraternal Order, they had a section for their shules, and they had different people in charge of various 10:00departments. But my job was to take dictation from the Yiddish writers. So, Reuven Saltzman was the head of it, and he dictated me. And, of course, Itche Goldberg was head of the shules. And David Davidovitch was the -- also one of the heads of shules. And there was somebody named Reuven Yukelson. And the only trouble was, I soon discovered, that I did not know grammar. And with these men, if you didn't know that a prepositional phrase gets a different kind of ending, and so do all the modifiers, you had to retype the whole thing. And there was no such thing as Wite-Out, and if you were doing what they called a stencil, you would have to redo the whole stencil. So, I very soon -- for my own purpose of 11:00broyt mit puter [bread and butter] -- had to learn the grammar. And I learned a great deal of grammar. And, at the same time, at night, I was going to NYU, studying to become an English teacher. So, I stayed there five years, and it was -- I call it a "university for one," because it was just amazing, how much I absorbed at that age. And then I became pregnant, and stayed home. And we moved from Passaic, New Jersey, to Long Island. And there I started to teach in the shules, because my connection with the shule movement was through the office. And they said to me, As long as you're living on Long Island, we need a shule 12:00teacher. And I knew nothing about teaching; I was not interested in teaching. Anyway, I ended up being a shule teacher for ten years. So, it -- we -- I taught Yiddish, and my husband taught Jewish history. And the McCarthy period hit, and the shule movement was in grave danger. The IWO was shut down by the New York State Department of Insurance, cause they sold insurance. And each shule became independent. It's interesting that I was not allowed to mention the Holocaust during those ten years. The people who made up the curriculum decided that it would frighten the children. It was still too recent and too raw, so we never mentioned it, and we never taught it. When -- I guess it was in the '50s -- I 13:00decided to further my Yiddish education. So, I went to Uriel Weinreich, no less, at Columbia, and I showed him what I was doing in my shule work, and he said, "I would like to give you a scholarship, so you can attend classes in the Columbia program," which was brand new. And, it so happened, there was only one other person in my class, and it was Mikhl Herzog, who eventually became head of the Yiddish department at Columbia. Now, Mikhl was from Canada, and he had been working with Holocaust survivors in Canada, and he had also gone to Hebrew school when he was a kid. So, he knew the Hebrew element in Yiddish, and I did not. And when Giniger started giving us things to read, I was at a terrible 14:00loss, and there weren't many dictionaries. You know, we had Harkavy -- that was about it. We didn't even have a Weinreich dictionary yet. And I finally wrote a letter to Giniger, my teacher, and I said, "I'm sorry, I just cannot go ahead with this quest, because I am not prepared." And he wrote back, and said, "You are insulting my talents as a teacher." So, for a while, I tried to keep up with him and Mikhl Herzog, and, when I had homework, I used to drive all the way to Borough Park, where my father was living, with his then-second wife and baby Dovid. Dovid was born in 1956, and, of course, my father spoke only Yiddish to 15:00Dovid. His mother -- the child's mother was American-born, hardly knew Yiddish at all. But Menke instructed everybody in this Borough Park neighborhood -- you know, the pharmacist, the mailman, they were all Jews -- to speak only Yiddish to this child. And so I would drive to Borough Park, with all the words that I didn't know, of -- you know, Hebrew-derived -- in order to be able to do my homework for Giniger. And those were nice sessions, because I became closer to my father. Now, how we met, and how we reunited, is a story I really don't have to go into, except to say that, when I started working for Itche, I didn't know that one of his teachers was Menke Katz. So, that's how I found my father, when he dictated a letter to me, "Tayerer menke [Dear Menke]." And I found my 16:00father's address. So, as I said, that's a whole other story. Anyway, getting back to my Columbia courses, I did continue for a few years with the Yiddish, and then, as far as Yiddish goes, I was really taken up more with being a mother, and with, uh, well -- I was studying Yiddish, but it was in a haphazard way. And then I became an English teacher, and so on. And I did take courses at the Workmen's Circle in New York, and my teacher was Avrom Zaks, who was a perfectionist. He made you memorize all the readings, and, as you get older, 17:00it's a little harder to memorize things. And I taped every one of his classes, and then, all week, at home, I would play his classes every single day. Well, as far as my career in Yiddish went, it was on a back burner, till I was retired, in 1986. Nineteen eighty-six, I said to myself, It's time to get back to Yiddish. And I saw a notice, in the "Forverts," that Mordechai Schaechter was organizing a group that met Sunday mornings in New York. So, I went there, and I studied with him in a haphazard way -- I don't think you could call it following a real curriculum. And then, after my father died, I signed up for the immersion 18:00summer Columbia program. Now, in between, I must say that I reunited with my father, because he had Dovid, and he wanted Dovid to have playmates, and my children were about the same age. So we met, I'd say, once a month. And, aside from that, Menke wanted Dovid to learn, not only Yiddish naturally, but he wanted him to learn Hebrew naturally. Now, my father was an ardent Ashkenazic Jew, and was very much against these Sephardim, and their accent. So, he decided to move to Israel with his wife and Dovid, and he got a job teaching Yiddish in an Orthodox school in -- they call it in Yiddish, Tzfas. In English, it's Safed. 19:00And the Orthodox don't believe in using Hebrew for everyday things -- it's reserved for the language of prayer. And so, he was working in this Yiddish school, and his wife was teaching English. And, when Dovid was three, my father was walking along the street -- in Israel -- talking to Dovid in Yiddish, and a policeman arrested him for speaking Yiddish on the street to his child. Because, in 1959, the war on Yiddish was intense, in Israel. They weren't allowed to have their own newspaper. If a kiosk dared to sell a Yiddish newspaper, it was burned down. They had a newspaper for the Holocaust survivors in German, in every other 20:00language, but Yiddish was forbidden. So, Tsanin -- I just happened to hear it -- there's a Jewish channel here in Florida. Last week, they had this marvelous program on Yiddish in Israel today. And Tsanin was interviewed, and he said, on the Black Market, he got red paper; he got blue paper; he got green paper -- and, every day, he would put out an issue of a Yiddish newspaper, but it had a different name every day. And that's how they were able to get a Yiddish newspaper out. Anyway, getting back to this arrest, the policeman who arrested him spoke broken, ignorant Hebrew, whereas my father was on the radio regularly, talking about Kabbalah, in perfect Hebrew. Well, the police chief was very embarrassed, and he took out a bottle of wine, and they made a l'chaim [Hebrew: toast, lit. "to life"], but, when my father got back to their apartment -- which 21:00he had -- Menk had bought -- he said to Dovid, "I've had enough of this anti-Yiddish -- and we're going back to America." And that's when they left and came back. Now, Menke is one of the few writers who had children who learned how to speak Yiddish. I've met a lot of writers, and I've met children of writers. No child speaks Yiddish to his father and mother. They all gave in. They all assimilated in that way. But, even though I had this crazy upbringing with Menke, I would never dream of speaking to him in anything but Yiddish. I would never dream of speaking anything but Yiddish to Dovid today. And, even when we Skype, we speak only Yiddish. And then, we had a strange experience -- both Dovid and I -- when our father died. He had never been sick. You know, he was 22:00riding a tricycle, and a bicycle, and climbing mountains. And then he died, twenty-two years ago, suddenly. And after the funeral, Dovid went back to Oxford -- he had started the Yiddish program at Oxford when he was twenty-three. He was there eighteen years. And that night, after the funeral, I woke up in the middle of the night, went to the kitchen table, and wrote my first Yiddish poem. Easy, as if it were being dictated. And I was not in touch with Dovid much, because, you know, he was in Europe. And I didn't know, at the same time, he started writing Yiddish fiction. He had written many books of academia, in English, but it was only when our father died -- I guess we were afraid of being criticized, perhaps, before that -- that we both turned to Yiddish. And my husband got up in 23:00the middle of the night -- "What are you doing?" I said, "I don't know, I'm writing Yiddish poetry." And I kept writing, and writing, and writing, till I had seven hundred poems. And I -- I started to send them out to the "Forverts," and to the "Khezhbn," and to other places. And I also, around that time, became active in the International Association of Yiddish Clubs. And we moved to New Jersey, to a retirement community, twenty-two years ago. I started a leyenkrayz [reading circle], and at that time, I had twenty-two members. And, at the same time, we moved to Florida, and I started a leyenkrayz here, and we had twenty-two members here. At any rate, getting back to Dovid first, a year later we met, and I told him, "I'm writing Yiddish poetry." And he said, "I'm writing 24:00Yiddish fiction." And we were both amazed, and he has since published four books of Yiddish fiction, in addition to English books, too -- history of Lithuania, things like that. And I sent out my poetry, and it was, thankfully, published. But I felt, really, nobody was reading it. And, unless you have an environment, when you're a writer, the light goes out. So, October 7th of 2007, I wrote a Yiddish poem, and I said, "That's it, and I'll never write again." And I have not. [BREAK IN RECORDING]

TKH:When I first started, we had many Holocaust survivors, and we read wonderful books. We read Bashevis. We read I. J. Singer, and the greatest one of all, in 25:00my opinion, was Elie Wiesel's "Un di velt hot geshvign [And the world remained silent]," in Yiddish. It's nothing like the English. It is powerful. But, gradually -- you know what happens -- people get older, and the leyenkrayzn began to dwindle in numbers. So, I always had the habit of giving out vocabulary lists before every reading assignment. And I would -- I have three Yiddish typewriters by now -- still typewriters, no computer -- and I would type the word, mostly the Hebrew-derived words, in the first column. Second column, in klamern [parentheses], I would have the pronunciation. And the third column, English. And the students did the work. They wrote their definitions between the lines, and it was just wonderful. But there were times when, regardless of how 26:00many dictionaries you have, especially if it's from Scripture, you cannot find a word. At such times, the Holocaust survivors were invaluable enrichment. They're just irreplaceable. No book could possibly replace them. Well, this year, in Florida, four of my survivors went into assisted living. And same thing in New Jersey. So, this year, in Florida, I came to a meeting, and I had three people. And I said, "The time has come. I can't worry about somebody having a doctor's appointment, missing it," so I have shut that one down. I'm hoping, next September, to revive it. And in New Jersey, same thing happened -- assisted living took them away. But I still have a group there. There's one P.S. I'd like 27:00to give you, about Itche's Yiddish. When I started with him, in 1946, if there was a choice in dictation between a word that was German-derived, or loshn-koydesh [Hebrew, lit. "holy language"]-derived, he always took the German-derived. They were against Hebrew. So that didn't help my lack of Hebrew background. And I worked for him five years, and then, after I was retired as an English teacher, I said to myself, My greatest job was working for Itche. Maybe he'll take me back. By this time, you know, I was in my late 50s. So, I went to him, and I said, "Could you use me? I can still take shorthand and do Yiddish typing." Very fast to type Yiddish, because there are no capital letters. It's a 28:00different keyboard, but it's quick. And this time, I found that, whenever he dictated, and there was a choice, he always picked the word that was Hebrew-derived. So, his language had evolved to the point where they were very pro-Israel by this time -- originally, they were not interested in Israel. And I thought it was fascinating. Now, with me, for years and years, whenever I came to a word that was Hebrew-derived, I had to stop, and look it up, and write it ou-- and I just sometimes looked up a word five or ten times before I finally learned it.

CW:So, I'm -- actually want to go back to hear a little more about your -- your grandmother, that you grew up with. It's --

TKH:Oh, yeah?

CW:-- this shidekh is interesting (Katz Handler laughs), and it seems like, in a 29:00way, she -- well, as you said, she was sort of where your Yiddish intellectual life came from.

TKH:Well, my mother, also.

CW:Yeah.

TKH:But my mother, although she wrote many stories, unfortunately, she died at 38, and she left no book. So, my grandmother was my mame. And --

CW:Can you just describe her, yeah?

TKH:Yeah. She stood up in the butcher store all day long, plucking feathers out of chickens, helping her husband. They did not like each other -- many fights. But, when she came home, she was -- I would often see her with a broom across her lap, and her hair in her eyes, and she would be reading till one o'clock in the morning. And she was an inspiration -- at the same time, was very upsetting to see what a woman was reduced to. Because my grandfather gave her a certain 30:00number of dollars per week to run the house, and out of that she saved a tiny bit each week. And, when I had to go to NYU, she had money saved up for me (laughs). So, I admired her. I adored her. I also loved my grandfather, although I recognized that, intellectually, he was very limited. But he was so good to me, and when my mother died, and I had no father anyplace -- because he was forever a bachelor -- they adopted my brother and me legally. They changed our last names from Katz to their name, which was Blacker.

CW:And your tate or grandfather, he -- did you -- was it a frum [religiously observant] household, because --

TKH:Yes.

CW:-- of his --

TKH:He had to, because he was a kosher butcher. So, on the one hand, my mother 31:00and father were filling me with all this --

CW:Menke.

TKH:-- they weren't really communist. They used to call themselves "sympathizers." And, on the other hand, at the same table -- you know, like Friday nights -- my grandmother would bentsh likht [bless the candles], and keep a kosher home, and get the house ready for Passover. So, in a way, I was lucky that I had the complete world -- and they were Lubavitchers. And, every year, at Simchas Torah, my grandfather and his friends used to leave Passaic, and go to -- maybe it was -- I don't know where it was, Borough Park, or someplace -- to dance in the street with the Torah. (laughs)

CW:And do you remember any of the yontoyvim [holidays] that stand out in your memory from --

TKH:Hanukkah, of course, because we got presents (laughs). And Rosh Hashanah, because we went to shul, and I had to sit upstairs with the women. And the thing 32:00that really upset me was when my brother had a bar mitzvah, and I had nothing. So, I was sitting upstairs with my grandmother and all the other women, and he was downstairs, and he gave his droshe [sermon] in Yiddish: "Ikh dank mayne bobe-zeydes, di gute malokhim in mayn lebn [I thank my grandparents, the good angels of my life]." And I was thinking, He hated Hebrew school. A committee came to the house, and said they couldn't discipline him. They used to have to chain him with handcuffs to his desk -- that's how wild he was. He hated it. I would've loved to have had the shule and Hebrew school. It would've helped me with my Yiddish, but, because I was a girl, I got piano lessons. So, that's the way things were. And, of course, in 1927, thanks to the Reconstructionists, they had their first bat mitzvah, which my grandparents never said. They called it a 33:00"bal-mitsve," you know. And I've never heard that anyplace else, but it was definitely a "bal-mitsve." And --

CW:And -- can you describe Passaic a little bit? I mean, in --

TKH:Oh, Passaic.

CW:-- Jewish history, it's actually a, kind of, important --

TKH:Yeah, it is.

CW:-- place, so --

TKH:Well, we had the Botany woolen mills, and the Forstmann woolen mills. And they were philanthropic toward the town. There were sixty thousand people, one third Jewish. And the Jews stayed together. And the Italians stayed together. And the Blacks -- God knows where they were, you know -- the other end of town. And there was a shule for every minor denomination of Yiddishkayt. My grandfather went to the Lubavitcher shul. My father's father went to Chevra 34:00Tehilim, because they were from Lithuania, and they had a different attitude. And, you know, they never mixed, any of these groups. And I remember, at Pesach time, I always got a new suit to wear, and a hat. And the kids would gather in the courtyard of the shule, with our new clothes, to parade around, and it was really a very nice place to grow up. We were near the Erie Railroad -- two blocks away -- and, for fifty-two cents, you could take the train to Jersey City, and then your ticket was good for a ferry ride to New York. And, when you got there, it was five cents to take the subway, and then you were in Times Square (laughter). So, it was wonderful, and a very tight-knit Jewish community.

CW:And -- so, who -- so your -- the home that you grew up in, what -- can you 35:00remember what it looked like, and --

TKH:Oh, yes, because my grandfather bought it -- I believe -- well, my mother came to this country in 1923. My grandfather had left them nine years before, which was typical. You know, he was going to make his way, then send for them. But World War I intervened, and my grandmother had a very rough time for nine years. But, during that time, there was the revolution, and Jews had a much better life, which is, I believe, why my mother became radicalized, and her two sisters also. And they needed to have teachers, and my mother was very good at botany. So, she -- they appointed her teacher of botany in the school. She was fifteen. And, when she was dying, at thirty-eight, she was in a coma, and she 36:00started speaking Russian. And I said to my grandmother, "What is she saying?" She says, "She's reciting the parts of the plants" (laughs) "in Russian." But, you know, they didn't have to worry about pogroms anymore. And, at one time, the communists gathered together the pogromtshiks, the ones who had tortured them, and they told the Jews in my grandmother's town, "Tell us which ones hurt you. What did they do?" And my grandmother said she was afraid, because she was afraid this wouldn't last. But she had to point out the ones -- and, by the way, my mother, in 1905, was born under the bed. Because there was a pogrom, and the beds were high, and my grandmother was giving birth. So, she climbed under the bed to give birth. And that's where my mother was born. And I was the kind of kid who would rather sit with the old people, and listen to their stories, than 37:00go out to play. So, in later years, when my aunt would -- who was born in Russia -- would say, "What year did I come to America?" Or ask me questions, I was -- I've never been in Russia. I was the one who knew everything. So, I've -- I'm sorry I've never been to those countries, but Dovid did something wonderful for me. You know, we have different mothers, but he was going around, taping native Yiddish speakers, who were old. And he decided to go to my mother's village of Uvarovitchi in White Russia, with a photographer and a chauffeur. And he spent three days in my mother's village, asking questions. And making a record for me, so that I would -- it was just endless tapes, so that I could see the place. And it -- it still had houses with outhouses, and no running water.

CW:So, for you, sort of, between -- as you were saying, both ends of the table, you know, frum, and then, you know linke --

TKH:Left-wing, yeah.

CW:-- sympathizers, maybe -- how did you navigate that, sort of, both ends of the spectrum, as a kid?

TKH:Well, I sort of remained neutral (laughter), which was the safest -- the safest way to be. And, when I was in Itche's office, everybody was a left-winger, but it sort of rolled off my back. I was more interested in the Yiddish. And the same was true of my father. My father wrote for the "Freiheit," because all his friends were there. But when the news came out, in 1952, that the Yiddish writers had -- were missing -- they didn't know they had been murdered, on August 12th -- he went to Novick -- Paul Novick was editor of the 39:00"Freiheit" at that time, and he banged on his desk, and he said, "Where are those writers?" And Novick didn't answer him. So he left the shule movement -- he had become, eventually, a shule teacher, in the mitlshul [high school] -- and he moved to the Workmen's Circle, and he became a Workmen's Circle teacher.

CW:So this image of Menke -- of your father, you know, lecturing to you is really strong (laughs) --

TKH:Four hours, every Saturday.

CW:So, can you just -- I mean, what would he talk about? What --

TKH:Well, he talked about literature --

CW:-- was his mannerism?

TKH:-- and poetry, and my mother would not only recite his books, you know -- talk about putting yourself last -- but she also was writing long stories for the "Freiheit." She wrote a series -- thirty-two days, two long columns a day -- 40:00called "Katsovim." "Katsovim" means "Kosher butchers." So, she was a vegetarian. Menke and Chaske decided, when they were about seventeen, watching what was going on in my grandfather's butcher store, that they were gonna -- never eat anything that had to be killed. So, no meat, no fish, no fur, no leather. My father wore a rope belt, and they wore sneakers, and really far out. But, I get lost in memories, and I have lost your question.

CW:Oh, just -- I was asking about his lectures.

TKH:Oh, his lectures. And so, her stories, "Katsovim," she used to go to meetings of the Kosher Butchers Association, to take notes. And she wrote this fiction -- I'm really guilty, because I have not published it -- and it was -- it ran in the "Forverts" -- in the "Freiheit," I should say, thirty-two days -- 41:00and after she had finished reciting his poetry, she would read us the latest installment from the "Freiheit." And we would discuss that. So, it was at his mother's house -- my father's mother -- and they sort of put up with us, because, I guess, they felt that my father had to get married. And that he would have had another life, but -- okay.

CW:So, can you describe Menke Katz? What did he look like, and --

TKH:He was a ladies' man. Forever and ever a bachelor. Even in Tzfas, when they lived in Tzfas, he once told the story: he was walking through the cemetery, and they have a belief among kabalistn [Kabbalists] -- that, when the meshiekh 42:00[messiah] comes, it's a very good place to be buried, because meshiekh is going to bring all these people to resurrection first -- maybe the Mount of Olives cemetery, but this is one of the top ones. So, he saw a woman leaving a note on the tombstone of her dead husband. And my father read it, and that was it. They met (laughter). And once, when my daughter Claudia was working for a chain called Bolton's, which is like Marshalls -- she was a buyer at that time -- the girl next to her, every day, would talk about this wonderful man she's seeing, day after day after day. And then, when she said, "And I told Menke," and Claudia said, "You told whom?" She said, "That's my grandfather." And the girl refused to believe it. So, okay, he was glamorous, and he was -- his first book, 43:00"Dray shvester," "Three Sisters," was about how he seduced these three sisters. Now, my mother had two sisters. And he was thrown out of the Prolitpen for that book. And I think it was B.Z. Goldberg, who wrote, "I have a book in front of me with a black cover, but the insides are worse than the cover." And, at one point, when I was in the Yiddish program with Mordechai Schechter, he said to me, "You know, I read 'Three S--' I read 'Dray shvester,' and it's a magnificent book, with wonderful vocabulary." I have never read it. I don't hope to read it. But he was obsessed with sex, and he used to tell me that, in the Kabbalah, there is sex on every page (laughs). Well, he saw it. Maybe other people didn't see it. He never belonged to any synagogue, but every Saturday, he would pravet 44:00shabes [celebrate Shabbos] at home, by reading "Pirkei Avot," the, you know, "Our Fathers," and he was very interested in the Scripture, and he translated "Shir hashirim," which is "Song of Songs." But he was a maverick. He didn't fit into any loophole. And my kids enjoyed him. He was a wonderful grandfather, although he was an absentee father. And the kids still talk about him all the time.

CW:What was he like as a grandfather?

TKH:Well, he would come with Rivke, which is, you know, Dovid's mother, she -- who is Dovid's mother -- and bring Dovid. And always the same presents: "Chutes 45:00and Ladders," you know the game? "Chutes and Ladders." He forgot that, last time, he brought the same thing. Always a bag of gifts, always the same gifts (laughs). And always talk to them about literature. And then my daughter Shelley learned a number of folk songs from him, and, when she was seventeen, she was hired by Columbia, during the summer program, to teach folksinging. She played the guitar. And she produced an album called "Lider fun mayn zeydn [Songs from my grandfather]," in which she sings and plays the songs that she learned from her grandfather. So he was a wonderful grandfather.

CW:Um --

TKH:And as for Dovid, he was an amazing father.

CW:Yeah. So, can you tell me a little bit more about -- about Khaske, about your mother?

TKH:Well, Khaske was a tra-- her life was a tragedy. She met Menke when she was 46:00very young, and they had to run away to California, you know, where I was born. They brought me back a year later. She had such great faith in his talent, that she would do anything to help him be a writer.

CW:How -- why did they have to run away to California?

TKH:Well, in those days (laughs), that's what you did to hide the fact that she was expecting. And my name -- he was always delighted that I never changed my name. I'm the only "Troim" I have ever met, and he once introduced me by saying, "This is my daughter, Troim. She never changed her name." He thought I would. And I always wished he had spelled it T-R-O-Y-M, you know, the way the YIVO does, because I've had so much trouble with my name being mispronounced. And, 47:00before he died, I said to him, "You know, I'm going to change the spelling of my name, T-R-O-Y-M." "No, no! In the Kabbalah, it says that if you change the spelling of your name, you change your destiny." So I didn't dare.

CW:Do you know how you -- how they chose that name?

TKH:Well, I didn't have a name till I was three months old. On my birth certificate, it just said "Baby." But "Troim" is a dream of hope. And I notice -- see, I went to Oxford -- I taught at Oxford, two summers, because Dovid -- you know, I had an in. So, Dovid wanted me to teach conversation. And one of the teachers was Yitskhok Niborski, and he just loved my name. And I notice, now, when I get the "Tam-Tam," which is the newspaper that comes out of Paris, or other information about the Medem Center, they now have a theatre in Paris 48:00called the Troim Teater.

CW:Oh, sheyn [wonderful].

TKH:And -- and he always used to tell me he loved the name.

CW:So, I also -- your father, sort of, became -- well, he was born in Svencionys.

TKH:He was born in Svencionys, but he always said, "That was an accident." His town was Michaleshik, and he wrote so many books about Michaleshik. I notice that many writers keep writing about their childhood. And that's what he did. He never really got out of Michaleshik. And recently, I was reading -- oh, Dovid went to Michaleshik, that was it. And my father used to tell about how there was a ferry to cross the river, but it wasn't a regular ferry. It was pulled on ropes on the shore, or something -- I don't know. And Dovid went to Michaleshik 49:00to see that ferry. And he used to go back to Michaleshik -- he became Menke, in a way. Now, Dovid has this beard -- why? Does anybody ever ask? In Jewish tradition, when a son loses his father, he's not supposed to shave for a month. Well, with Dovid, it's twenty-two years. So, he has this horrible long beard, and he looks wild, and every time he goes through an airport, they pull him out, cause they think he's a terrorist of some sort. But he has devoted his life to Yiddish. And, of course, now, he's practically given up Yiddish, because -- although he was never political -- when he looked out of his window, in Vilnius, and he saw a Nazi parade going by -- and that was only a few years ago. And when 50:00the government came to arrest three members of the Vilnius staff, you know, because, in their 90s, they wrote memoirs, in which they stated that they had been partisans of the woods, and that, in order to get food, they had to rob the gentile farmers, and that, once, a farmer came out and caught them, and he had a gun -- they killed him. So, they -- all three of them wrote this in their memoirs, and the government arrested them. And one escaped to Israel. But Dovid, since then, he's devoting his life not only to saving them, but he goes around to different countries, and he gives lectures on what he calls "obfuscation." I don't wanna get into politics too much, but the Lithuanian government, for instance, says that the Gentiles suffered as much under the fifty years of communism as the Jews did under the four or five years of Holocaust, and that 51:00those two are equal holocausts. So, Dovid is spending his life, now, fighting that.

CW:Yeah. So, when -- obviously he's younger than you, and you --

TKH:Oh, my God.

CW:-- knew him when he was growing up.

TKH:When he was born.

CW:But, so, have you always been close with him?

TKH:I adore Dovid. I have adored him since the first time I ever laid eyes on him. I feel he is sui generis, you know -- one of a kind. And when we're together -- as I said, we speak only Yiddish -- and I just follow him with adoration, in everything that he does. I know he's made a lot of enemies in his life, but I think that's because he won't compromise on anything. And people don't like a person who won't give in. So, although I was twenty-nine when he 52:00was born, we've always been close, even now. I asked his mother to come and live in Century Village, near us, and she does. And when he comes to Century Village -- and he comes practically every year -- he comes to see her, and he comes to see us. And now he has a woman from Belarus that he brought over, to take care of her -- Irina, and they speak only Russian together. So, he's just so interesting to be with. For instance, we went to a local restaurant in West Palm Beach, and all the waiters were Eastern European, speaking Russian. And he said to me, "They're not from Russia. Their Russian is too good -- too grammatically correct. They're from other eastern countries, where they learned Russian in school." You know, being with him is always a learning experience, and an 53:00adventure. And sometimes, when he sees me, he picks me up, and he swings me around. I feel I'm gonna break every bone in my body, but he's so exuberant. And in Oxford, he would walk into a pub -- every gentile waiter knew him, and they would all scream, Dovid is here! And he's funny, and he was on BBC for -- he had a program -- I don't know whether you saw it -- and afterwards, in the London papers, they wrote that he should be a chat show host, you know, 'cause he's really funny.

CW:Yeah. Well, I -- I'm --

TKH:By the way, he never met the other brother.

CW:Oh, really? I was wondering about that.

TKH:Because my other brother was schizophrenic, and he ended up in a mental hospital, and died young. And Menke had never told Dovid that there was a 54:00brother. And by the time he was told, my brother was a few months away from death, so that was it. So, I have these two brothers who never met (laughs).

CW:How did you meet your husband?

TKH:In a book club (laughs). Well, he was also interested in history -- Jewish history. And I've always been interested in Jewish history. And his father died while he was in the navy. My mother died during that same period, and when he came home, we were both adrift. You know, my grandparents had adopted me, but I really -- I wrote letters to him all during World War II. And we decided we would get married -- he said to me, "Let's get married." He had no place to go. 55:00His father had died. His mother had moved in with a sister. We've been married sixty-six and a half years (laughs). So, although his father was American born, he went to Oxford for two summers (laughs).

CW:And what do you remember from the war years? I mean, corresponding with your --

TKH:Every letter was a book review. You know, we were both reading a lot -- he was on a ship, and I was going to high school. And I would read a book and send him a review. And he would read a book and send a review. And it was all books, so -- now he's teaching Jewish history every week in Century Village -- non-Biblical. His last lecture was about the popes, and how each one treated the Jews. You know, it's always about Jews. We have a Black woman in the class, 56:00who's fascinated, and who comes. He did one lecture on Jewish faces of Chicago, and various subjects that interest him. He reads books -- he doesn't just go on the Internet. He's constantly reading books. So, we discuss the books, you know.

CW:And, when you had your own -- when you started your own family, how did you decide, sort of, what kind of Jewish home you wanted to have, or create?

TKH:Well, we were both secular. And, of course, we made the easy -- the usual mistake: we lived in a gentile area. And my husband didn't know Yiddish. So, we went to a shule, which was an hour away, and took the kids. And I was teaching there, and he was teaching there. And, when you go to a shule once a week, and you have to learn the holidays, you know -- you go from one holiday to the next. That's what the education is. And it -- there was dancing, and they really 57:00didn't learn much Yiddish. And we didn't speak Yiddish to them. Although, when my daughter Shelley -- the one who sang the album -- went to college, she took Yiddish at Stony Brook. And I think my other daughter took Yiddish at Binghamton. But, you know, it's not the same as having an environment.

CW:Right.

TKH:So, we're to blame. But, as I said, Menke not only taught his children to speak Yiddish, but when he was a Workmen's Circle mitlshul teacher, I was in the room. He would get telephone calls from kids in the US, who were in his classes. They all spoke Yiddish to him on the telephone. So, he was a marvelous teacher.

CW:Can you tell me a little bit about Menke's writings? Sort of --

TKH:Well, he hates rhyme. He's against rhyme. He wrote a whole pamphlet called, "Against Rhyme." And, since he was having a lot of love affairs, he has a lot of sex. And I felt, when I started writing erotic poetry, out of the blue, that it was sort of a message. I was -- he was dictating my poetry. That's the way it felt for quite a while. Why am I writing all this sexy poetry? (laughs) You know, it -- and, of course, Frank -- Feivel -- doesn't like it. Once, he was very, very sick, and I read him one of my poems. The second day, when he felt a little better, he said, "Never mind" -- didn't want to hear.

CW:So, are there any particular -- I mean, bef-- when -- when you were writing, were there any particular times of day -- I know, the first time was middle of 59:00the night, but --

TKH:Oh, for a year and a half it was the middle of the night. And then, gradually, I graduated to daytime. And I just had to write a poem a week. It was a drive. It was an obsession, till I reached the point where I felt nobody was reading it.

CW:And how does -- how does a poem formulate itself, for you?

TKH:Well, reading does inspire ideas, and I used to read mythology. I used to read Jewish legends. I read books about dreams, and I would somehow be able to translate it from its former form into something Jewish.

CW:And I'd like to ask a little about -- about Itche Goldberg. First off, can 60:00you just -- I mean, he's such a name, you know -- describe him.

TKH:He was short. Because he had been deprived of food, in Warsaw. He was from Warsaw. Now, Jews from Warsaw were not shtetl Jews, you know. It was a metropolitan life. He was highly educated in science, and math, and other things that you would not expect. He saw the Halley comet when it came through, when he was a kid (laughs), and told me about it. I was amazed at how women flocked to him. He was another one. A lot of the poets gave off an aura that women were attracted to, and Itche was no exception. He was an intellectual, of course. He 61:00dictated all his lectures to me, and his articles. And I just loved working with him.

CW:And you say -- you said before it was like a university for one.

TKH:Yeah, because he'd -- he would yell at me, "Dos iz dayn broyt mit puter [This is your bread and butter]." You know, and, "You don't know grammar." And he would give me a lesson in grammar, and it stuck. And (laughs), you know, otherwise, do the whole page over again (laughs).

CW:And, sort of, from his office, he was running this whole Yiddish world, in a way.

TKH:Well, it changed after McCarthy. First, it was the Jewish People's Fraternal Order of the IWO, at eighty-fifth avenue, which was fourteenth street -- corner of fifth avenue. Now, I've never lived in New York, so I was always a commuter. We lived on Long Island for thirty-eight years. And, at first, it was -- you 62:00know, there would be the Polish society, and the Greek society -- because it was international in the sense that they brought in different ethnic groups who had shared their philosophy. But when New York State shut down the IWO -- and I wasn't there anymore, but my friends told me that they stationed guards in the corridors, for months, to watch them. You know, government guards. And finally, it was kaput. Then Itche, and David Davidovitch, and I, moved to -- I think it's 2500 Broadway, something like that -- twenty-seventh street. And it was only shules, after that. And then, when I came back, I told you I wanted that job back -- by the way, the first day that I came back, after I had retired from being an English teacher, he came over to me with his checkbook, and he said, 63:00"Vifl zol ikh dir batsoln [How much should I pay you]?" And I knew he wasn't getting paid anything. He was ninety, or something. So, I said to him, "Batsol mir vo' du batsol zikh aleyn [Pay me what you pay yourself]." I knew he was getting nothing, so I worked for him five years for nothing, after I was retired. But it was only one day a week.

CW:Um --

TKH:And that -- at that time, he became editor of "Yidishe kultur." So "Yidishe kultur" had poetry, and stories, and new works, and old works, and -- it was a whole different type of production. But he used Hasidim for the printers. He got along with them very well. He was very close to the people who published the "Algemeyner zhurnal." You know, he had a fax machine, and he would fax the 64:00articles to them, and talk to them in Yiddish. And they -- if there were any corrections to be made, it was back and forth. And they were the printers, so --

CW:And how did you -- can you explain a little, I mean, for people of a younger generation -- the concept of shorthand -- and Yiddish shorthand, even, is a little confusing, so --

TKH:Well, okay. When I was in high school, and since I had no parents, I thought I would never go to college. And so I took, in English, shorthand -- it was Gregg's system -- and typing. I knew how to type in English, and I knew how to take shorthand. But, when I got to Itche's office, and I had to take this course with Jeanette Bailin, she had written a book, "Short Forms for Yiddish," because you can't write out certain common words over and over again. And in English 65:00there are short forms that you memorize, and, in Yiddish, she had devi-- I still have one copy of that book left. It was mimeographed at that time. So, I just learned how to use the short forms that I learned from her, and I already knew Gregg. Luckily, Jeanette Bailin used the Gregg system. There was also the Pitman system. If she had used Pitman, I would be lost. But since I had the basics, I was able to pick up the Yiddish. And then, at lunch, I would practice. And then there was one printer who sometimes needed to have some Yiddish work done -- and he would come, and he would pay me on my lunch time to do that for him. But Yitch-- Itche had one thing that I disliked about him, and that was: he didn't like to give orders to older women. So, there was a woman. Her name was Meisl. 66:00She had been married to a Yiddish poet, and he died. And she was desperate for work. So, she came to me for about a year at lunchtime, and I taught her Yiddish shorthand and typing. And when it came time to hire her, he said, "Ikh ken zikh nit shafn mit an eltere froy." In other words, "I cannot give orders to an older woman." And she needed that job. And he would never hire an older woman. So that bothered me (laughs).

CW:And, so -- what -- so what was the scene when he would dictate to you?

TKH:He was usually walking around (laughs). Walking around, and walking around, and walking around. And he spoke very, very slowly, which was, I guess, a chance 67:00for him to gather his thoughts. But, for me, as a stenographer, it was wonderful -- I could keep up.

CW:And you also did some dictations for other Yiddish writers --

TKH:Yes.

CW:-- at that time, so --

TKH:Yeah, because, when it was still part of the Jewish People's Fraternal Order, we had Gedaliah Sandler, who interviewed me originally. And he was head of the Yiddish clubs. And there was one woman on the staff, her name -- June Gordon. And they would -- they didn't like having a woman on the staff, but she was in charge of the Emma Lazarus clubs. And, yeah, there was a lot of antagonism toward her. But she didn't know Yiddish. And then there was Reuven Yukelson, who sometimes worked for the "Freiheit," and sometimes for the Jewish 68:00People's Fraternal Order. And he wrote articles, so he would dictate to me. And, who else? Davidovitch and Itche.

CW:And are there any other writers or people that you met -- either through that job or through your father -- that stand out in your memory?

TKH:Yeah. When I was sixteen, I told you, I met my father on a bus. And he invited me -- I didn't dare tell my grandparents. They would've cont-- considered it a betrayal. So, I secretly met my father at the apartment of a man named Abrams, William Abrams. And Menke didn't want to follow the party line, of writing poetry with what he called "royte ekn" -- red tails. No matter what they 69:00wrote about, even if it was the village of Michaleshik, you'd have to have a couple of lines at the end about the proletariat movement. And he objected to that. And William Abrams was a writer for the "Freiheit," who came to Menke's defense, and he was fired -- never worked again. So, we used to meet at William Abrams's apartment for a few months, until my mother got so sick, and she was dying. I felt guilty, and I stopped going.

CW:And what was it like -- do you mind telling me that -- when you ran into him on the bus, and how that came about?

TKH:Oh, that was very interesting. I was coming home from a date in New York, sixteen, and used to dress in a sorta glamorous fashion, you know -- sequins, and satin, and heels. And I was with my girlfriend, and I hadn't seen Menke since I was eleven. And I said to my girlfriend, "That man is my father." I 70:00recognized him from the picture in the attic. And I said, "Do you mind if I go over to sit next to him?" So I sat next to him, and, you know, from a little girl with pigtails, here I was, in this outfit. And he said, "Pardon me, miss, what is your name again?" (laughs) And I said, "Ikh bin troyim [I am Troim]." And he said, "Oy, vi interesant vos ikh hob dikh nit derkent [Oh, how interesting that I didn't recognize you]." (laughs) That's one of the highlights of my life (laughs). But, as I said, I really have two lives with my father. The first half is till I became a mother, when he was missing. The second half is when Dovid was born, and, by that time, my grandparents had died, my brother was 71:00in a mental institution -- nobody was there to accuse me of disloyalty. But Menke drew me into his family. And he loved parties. He would get on the phone and call up, you know, everybody in the family, to come for a party, to make l'chaim. And they drank, and they sang folksongs, and he played the mandolin. And for thirty-five, forty years, I had a wonderful life, thanks to the fact that he had opened up his arms to draw me in. So, it's really two lives with one man.

CW:So, and then -- a little bit about your writing. So, it's really -- I -- at one point, you wrote a piece, where you talk about -- your father wrote -- got 72:00kicked out of Prolitpen for being a little too racy. And then you feel like he's dictating this to you --

TKH:Yes, then, all I could write for a long time was erotic poetry.

CW:And is it right that, also, your daughter maybe writes, as well?

TKH:Oh, Claudia. Yes, she does. Her n-- Claudia, she uses the name Handler, although she is married to a movie actor. And he's Brad Dourif. You might have seen him in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." He was the actor -- the boy who stuttered. So, she still uses the name Handler. And she -- first of all, she became a Kabbalist. Didn't know anything about Menke's interest in Kabbalah. She started taking courses in Kabbalah. She is very -- psychic is the word. The 73:00night that Menke died, we didn't expect it, 'cause he had been climbing mountains, and dancing -- God knows what he did. That night, she woke up, three o'clock in the morning -- she called her sister, and she said, "Somebody in the family just died." And it was Menke that had died. And she had never called her sister in the middle of the night before. So, she's really psychic. And she -- the other thing is the vegetarianism. She has a daughter -- my granddaughter's 23 -- and when she was five years old, she asked her mother, "Where did my leather jacket come from?" And when her mother told her how you get leather -- my granddaughter hasn't tasted meat, fish, or worn leather or anything since she was five years old. And nobody ever told her (laughs).

CW:Wow.

TKH:So, I -- and my daughter once got angry with me -- she says, "You only believe what you can see, and hear, and touch, and feel." She says, "There's more to life than that." So I said to myself, Oh my God, it's Menke (laughs).

CW:Right, because he was a Kabbalist.

TKH:Yes.

CW:And, did he talk about that with you?

TKH:Well, all he would say is that there's sex on every page (laughs). But she -- my daughter went to New York every week to take a course in Kabbalah. She would bring home worksheets, and she really got into it.

CW:So, you mentioned that you, sort of, went back to study Yiddish.

TKH:Oh, yes.

CW:And what inspired you to go back and study?

TKH:Well, I always -- first of all, the fact that my father died gave me a certain release. I think I was always afraid I wasn't good enough, or that he 75:00might find something to criticize. So, when I saw Mordkhe's -- Mordechai Schaechter's notice that he was running this thing in his office on Sunday mornings, I not only joined that, but then I went to Oxford for the summer. And one day, in addition to giving him my homework -- he was my teacher that summer -- I gave him some of my poetry, and he asked me to join the shraybkrayz [writers' circle], which I did. And I was in that about five years, and so was Bella, his sister. And I learned so many expressions that I would never have gotten from a class or a book, especially from her. She has an ama-- you oughta really interview her and get it down. There is a -- she always says that Menke was the one who got her to start writing, because he used to urge her to write 76:00poetry. And then that led to writing songs. She even says that in the video that her son made, you know Gottesman.

CW:Yes, I actually interviewed her last summer.

TKH:Oh, you did?

CW:Yeah.

TKH:Oh, how wonderful.

CW:Yeah, s'iz geven vunderbar [it was wonderful]. So, then there's this -- there're these couple of projects that you've been doing with -- or that you've finished now with -- I don't know how to pronounce his name, Kazuo --

TKH:Oh, how did that happen (laughs)? Uh-huh. I knew someone on Long Island who was a physicist and he traveled a great deal. And he met this man, Professor Kazuo Ueda, who taught Yiddish at Fukuoka University, in Japan. And the Japanese 77:00professor asked him to work with him on a book. And, see, Kazuo Ueda had started with German, as so many of them did, and then, as a lark, took a Yiddish course, and got hooked. I'm sure you've heard that before. So, when this man, who was Dr. Simon Prussin, wouldn't do it, he remembered me from the time when I taught his kids in shule, on Long Island. He called me up, and he said, "Would you be interested in working on a book with Kazuo Ueda? He's working on a book on -- on Kafka. And he wrote it in German, or something." So I said, "Well, you studied German. I don't know German." He said, "Well, if you know Yiddish, you know German." You know, that type of thing, which is pure ignorance. And so I said, "No, I'm sorry. I wouldn't take a chance. I couldn't possibly do it." So then, he told Kazuo Ueda, whom I've never met, about me. And he said, "I'm working on 78:00a book for tourists to Japan, for gift shops. And the Japanese government is going to pay for it." So, he sent me one that he had published, of Japanese, English, and Polish. And he said, "I would like to have this format followed." And so that was easy, you know, the numbers, and the items that they shop for, and so on. And then he asked me to put it on tape.

CW:Hmm.

TKH:Hope I didn't disturb anything.

CW:That's okay.

TKH:So, I don't have the book here, because I didn't -- most of my things are in New Jersey -- so this is one that's never been opened. You can have it if you like, 'cause I have more.

CW:Wonderful. So you did the aud-- the --

TKH:I just read it aloud.

CW:And --

TKH:Yeah, I went to a studio in West Palm Beach, and did it.

CW:And did he explain, or did you figure out, sort of, why he wanted it in Yiddish?

TKH:Well, he was very interested in Yiddish. He's the one who just came out with this Japanese-Yiddish dictionary, that he worked on for ten years. He is an academic, he's a scholar, and a year ago -- I think it was in the English "Forward" -- they had a picture of him, and he has this mammoth work that he has put out -- it's the size of Weinreich's dictionary, but it's Japanese and Yiddish. And we never met. We did it all by mail.

CW:Wow.

TKH:And then I did a second book. And he paid me, by the way. A lot of people in the Yiddish field think that if you're doing Yiddish, you shouldn't be paid. And I have very strong feelings about that. When I was on the board of the International Association of Yiddish Clubs, for twelve years, I sent out all the 80:00educational materials to about 100 clubs, which is what we had at the beginning. And we had conferences every year and a half. And they would talk about not paying for materials. And also, when they hired lecturers for the conference, they didn't want to pay them. And I would really get angry, you know. Why is it that in Yiddish you're expected to work for nothing? And I still have a very strong belief that there's -- it's -- they're still working -- these people still have to earn a living. So, I finally -- after twelve years, I left the International Association of Yiddish Clubs. For one thing, they'd rather put it out in English. Their -- most of the clubs can't read Yiddish. If they have a club with one person who can read to them, they consider that a Yiddish club.

CW:At one point, in something you wrote, you talked about your poetry, in a way, being a feminist statement.

TKH:Well, the fact that it was erotic, I think. Although we had plenty of books by women -- I forgot the name of that book (laughs). I used to keep it in my headboard, because it was such a shocker -- maybe that was an inspiration. "Fanny Hill" was one of them, and there was another one, Nin? Something like Nin. Where they talked about sex openly. And I thought that was a feminist statement, because women -- although in the holy book it says that a man is supposed to be -- see to it that the woman is satisfied before he is satisfied 82:00-- that's in Scripture. But it's not often practiced (laughter).

CW:But were you involved in the feminist movement, or?

TKH:Never. No. I've been very cowardly. I admire the ones who are, um-hm.

CW:I mean, you've been so engaged in -- in Yiddish, through these various time periods. What have you seen change through these -- through the years?

TKH:Well, for one thing, I've seen Yiddish -- the future of Yiddish -- lying in the hands of the Satmars. And, without the Satmars, it's bleak. And all of us who were secularists really did nothing for Yiddish. Now, in Century Village, we have hundreds of Satmars living there. And, although I would hate to be 83:00separated in the shule, men from women -- I would never go -- I hear them speaking Yiddish to each other, and they speak Yiddish to their children, or -- when they come to visit, the grandchildren. And I admire them for that. Now, the Lubavitchers are an outreach group, and they are bringing in -- in Israel they're bringing in Hebrew more and more. And, in this country, it's English. In New Jersey, we had a rabbi near us who ran a gift shop. And I told him I knew Yiddish, and he was thrilled. And every time I came in, he would speak Yiddish with me. But he said his wife, who went to the girls' schools, never learned any Yiddish. Therefore, she could not speak Yiddish to the children. And he needed Yiddish because, when they translated from the Scripture, they translated into 84:00Yiddish when the boys were studying. So, it's no wonder that their children don't know Yiddish. But he certainly was delighted to speak with me. But, you know, it's tokenism. And, much as -- you know, I hate the fact that the Satmars were on the board with the P.L.O., and I have a photograph of one of the Satmar rabbis hugging Arafat, and this weekend -- this past weekend -- friends of mine went to the AIPAC convention in Washington, for three or four days. And he said that there were two groups of demonstrators outside. There were thirteen people in attendance at AIPAC. He said one group was Satmar, because they're against the state of Israel -- moshiekh hasn't come yet -- and the other group was those who were pro-Palestinian. So, to think that we would ever look to the Satmars as 85:00holding the salvation of Yiddish is really strange (laughs) -- new bedfellows. But I have to hope that, at least, they will keep it going and they won't give in.

CW:And, do you still read Yiddish literature yourself?

TKH:Yes, I do. Well, in the Yiddish book clubs. Our last one was Yud Yud Zinger, and, as I said, the greatest book was Elie Wiesel "Un di velt hot geshvign." And, in Yiddish, it's about 350 pages. In English, it's 110. And his wife did the latest translation, and when 110 pages sell better than 350, she really chopped the life out of it. But it is a magnificent book. And I've read, with my group, Zinger's "Der knekht," you know, "The Slave." And one thing that 86:00Mordechai Schaechter told me was that, when you're speaking Yiddish, and you use the name "Zinger," you mean Yud Yud. Because, they felt he was the greater of the two brothers. And if you say -- in English, if you say "Singer," you mean Bashevis. And the other one I discovered was the sister. You know, they had a sister, Esther Kreitman, and her mother was so afraid that the shidekh with the diamond merchant -- or the diamond worker -- in Belgium, would be ruined, that, when they were on the way to the wedding, she took all her stories, and tore them up, and threw them out the train window. But, she did -- she was the first to write in that family. And so, I got hold of her book in Yiddish, "Brilyantn [Diamonds]" --

CW:"Brilyantn."

TKH:-- which has now been translated beautifully, with -- by the woman from 87:00Scotland -- I forgot her name. I met her when I was at Oxford. She worked on it a long time. She did a magnificent translation, but I didn't have the translation when I read the book with the group. So, I -- I've done all three Singers, and I've done a lot of Sholem Asch, and I -- I'm very interested in Sholem Asch. And I've given lectures on him. And we were -- my husband and I were giving a lot of lectures for elder hostels. I don't know whether you know what that is -- yeah. And in about 2002, when my book came out, I counted up how many lectures we had given that year. It was about 100 in one year, besides doing everything else. But, you know, we don't have the koyekh [strength] anymore to do so many.

CW:What do you think of Asch? He's such a controversial figure, I'm curious.

TKH:Well, I think that he felt Jesus was a good person. And he was accused of having converted, which was baloney. And I did get hold of a tape from the Smithsonian of a lecture which Asch gave at Columbia, and -- there was a riot, they had to call the police -- in which he said that he had never converted, and that it was all, you know, bilbul [Hebrew: confusion]. It was all accusations that were false. And I felt he really got a bad rap, yeah.

CW:Yeah. Well, I have a couple other things I wanna ask you about, but do you have anything that you wanna --

TKH:I think I've been talking a lot (laughter).

CW:Well, I just want to hear about the Oxford program.

TKH:Oh yeah, that was interesting. First of all, my husband was in Level Two, 89:00and he shouldn't have been -- he should've been a Level One. He's gonna hear me say this, eventually. And so, every day, after class, I would spend about eight hours with him, helping him prepare for his classes the next day. And my classes in conversation were easy -- it was delightful. But then, at the end of the summer, he said, "This was a good summer. Let's do it again." Now, some of the students went on to get doctorates, and he said, "I don't wanna take Yiddish Two again -- I've already taken it. I'm gonna take Yiddish Three," which really put him out of his element. And this time, if I had spent twenty hours a night with him, he couldn't have kept up, and he's used to being successful. So, it was a disaster. You know, in between the first summer and the second summer, he never 90:00cracked a book or looked at a Yiddish newspaper. He was so used to being good academically, he thought he could just sail through. But there were four teachers that summer, and only one was Jewish. Dovid was Jewish, and then we had Chris Hutton, who was Christian. We had Eleanor Robinson -- Leah -- who was gentile, but she converted later in order to marry. And then, we had a teacher from Switzerland, who was not Jewish. So, it was really fascinating to have a faculty like that. Dov-Ber wasn't there, because his mother in Israel was sick, and he took the summer off, to go to Israel. But it -- it was exciting, in that I met interesting people. And the second summer, they really hijacked me into 91:00doing something I didn't wanna do. I wanted to be in class, the second summer as well as the first. But when Dov-Ber and Dovid picked me up at the airport, they said, Troim, sit in the back -- it was a taxi. And I said yes. We have a favor to ask of you. Instead of going to class, we'd like you to proofread -- something they were working on, "Yiddish Four," I think it was called. So they gave me a tiny room the size of a closet, and I spent the whole time -- instead of going to class and being with other people, enjoying myself -- proofreading. And I could hear in the corridor the classes laughing, and having a good time, and I was -- I was stuck in my little room. And I did read some good articles -- Bogdanski -- I don't know whether you know that name. He didn't have a good singing voice. He was just an ordinary tailor, I think. But he was a collector 92:00of folk songs that nobody had ever heard of. So, once they had a special meeting for him to do some of his folksongs. And people realized he couldn't sing, although he came up with about fifty folksongs, and he explained each one. You couldn't -- I mean, you would never find them anywhere else. And the next time, there're only three people. And then, when my book came out, I sent him a copy of the book. He set two of them to music, and he sent it to me. He died after that. And my daughter Claudia has set two of them to music, and they were performed by the chorus in Century Village, yeah.

CW:Mm, great. Well, we've been mostly talking about Yiddish, and I'm wondering how Yiddish fits into your broader Jewish identity.

TKH:It -- totally. As I said, I saw this marvelous program on Yiddish in Israel, 93:00on the Jewish channel, this past week. And usually, when there's something on TV, it's filled with misinformation. Or, if you read an article, it's filled with ignorance. I never expect to get anything that's accurate. But this time, everybody they interviewed, whether it was the young fellow from Belgium -- trying to think of his name -- he sings -- he's the head of Yung-yidish -- Mendy Cahan, Mendy Cahan. He was interviewed, and people who had been around when Ben-Gurion had a special -- they actually showed the footage of a huge meeting welcoming the Holocaust survivors as they arrived in Israel. And this young 94:00woman stood up to talk about her experiences in the Holocaust, and he said, "Must you speak in that grating language?" So, they had tha-- and they had people who had lived through that period, and what is happening. And Avrom Novershtern, who's the step-brother of Yitskhok Niborski, you know -- their parents married late in life, so they're not really brothers, but they're both from Argentina. And he spoke, and with such intelligence. So, we have these academic experts, and it's wonderful. But, at the same time, you can't help but worry about the future of the language. Dovid, when he started the program in Vilnius was funded by George Soros, you know, who's a billionaire. And it was called the Institute for Stateless Languages -- I don't know what they call it 95:00now. And they had one section for the Romani, the Gypsy language, and they had one for -- there's one group of Judaism that broke away, and they only read the Torah -- I can't -- the name escapes me. Well, they developed a different language. So, they had these five languages, and Yiddish was one of them. But the last -- I think we're in a real crisis period, now. The last ten years, at least.

CW:Well, do you have any advice for future generations?

TKH:(laughs) I wish I could figure out how to stop wars (laughs). I feel helpless, um-hm.

CW:Yeah. Well, a hartsikn dank [thank you very much].

TKH:A sheynem dank far [Thank you very much to] -- I'll say "dir [informal "you"]" because you're so young --

CW:Avade [Of course].

TKH:-- and so beautiful.

CW:Thank you so much for taking this time, and these wonderful stories. You know, I feel like we could go on for hours more.

TKH:Well, you've been delightful.

CW:And thanks for sharing with Yiddish Book Center also.

TKH:A fargenign [A pleasure].

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW:Um-hm, go ahead.

TKH:I brought a few things. This is the album that my daughter Shoshe made, "Lider fun mayn zeydn," songs that she had learned -- this is the last one, it's been sold out.

CW:Wow.

TKH:And this is a picture of my mother -- I don't have anything in Florida. I don't have anything in Florida. But she was highly cultured.

CW:Oh, and about that tape, how did your daughter go about putting it together? You said it was as part of a course, or program?

TKH:No, not this one, no. Menke was always singing and playing the mandolin. And 97:00one day, she went to him with a tape recorder, and she asked him to sing some songs. And he was really tone-deaf, you know, but she was able to extract the melodies. And so she sang, and one song -- my other song -- my other daughter sings a duet with her. And, at the time, one daughter was married to a man who had a recording studio, so they produced it by themselves. Now, this is Dovid's book, "Words on Fire." And he's now writing another one. He goes to Wales, when he writes. He has dual citizenship, so he goes to Vilna when he has to do politics. I don't know what this new book is. But there is a picture -- oh, it's 98:00not in this version. This is the paperback.

CW:Oh, on the jacket, yeah.

TKH:Yeah, this one doesn't have his picture with the long beard.

CW:Well, I have that book at home, so (laughs), the hardcover, so.

TKH:This is something that Dovid produced -- he's really devoting his life to keeping my father's memory alive. This is called "Menke: The Complete Yiddish Poems of Menke Katz." These are all in English. Very long introduction. And these were translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav, from Yale.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

TKH:And in here there is the picture of my mother, and, let me see -- I've shown you that already, but here's a picture of Menke in his younger days. And that's William Abrams, who lost his job, when he was fighting the red tails on the 99:00poetry. And then here's my book, "Love-letter Poems." And as I said, I have over six hundred (laughs), that have never been published.

CW:I'm wondering if there's anything that you'd like to read from that.

TKH:Okay, uh, how -- one. I think I've already -- oh, here. Here's one. "Pipernoterlekh." "Pipernoterlekh" means "little monsters." This is one that my daughter Claudia trans-- well, she put it to music, and it was sung by a chorus in Century Village. (reads) "Di vald iz ful mit derner, pipernoterlekh mit herner. Mir klaybn magishe shvoymen. Troymen himelshe, troymen." And then I have 100:00the English, which was done by a very religious man, who doesn't want his name known. And it's literal. It's not poetic. (reads) The words are: "The woods are filled with thorns, little monsters with horns. We gather magic mushrooms, dream chimeric dreams." "Mir tantsn shemelekh in tsreyfes, brenen zikh nit op. Sheydn vartn op mit mageyfes af eyn falsn trot -- We dance bashful dances in fires, without burning up. Demons with pestilence wait for one false step." Refrain: "Vos iz di pule, zukhn aza gule? Lakht, libinkes, lakht. S'iz tsvey sho biz der nakht -- What's the use of looking for a remedy? Laugh, darlings, laugh. We have two hours before the night." "Yede sho bistu do, yede sho bistu nito. Yeder tog iz a glakh nakht, yeder tog iz oysgetrakht -- Every hour you are here, every hour you are not. Each day is an equinox, each day is imagined." Refrain: "Vos iz di pule, zukhn aza gule? Lakht, libinkes, lakht. S'iz tsvey sho biz der nakht -- What's the use of looking for a remedy? Laugh, darlings, laugh. We have two hours before the night." And it's for older people. (laughs) A dank.

CW:A dank aykh [Thank you to you].

TKH:So. And Claudia writes such powerful poetry, but she doesn't have the courage to send it out. You know, I give her subscriptions to poetry magazines, 102:00with all kinds of advice. She put out one brochure. She was conducting poetry afternoons for the city of Los Angeles, for about five years, and then she gave it up. But her poetry's powerful, not like a woman. But, like a woman, she's afraid to send it.

CW:Well, there's time for her (laughter). Great.

[END OF INTERVIEW]