JACK WOLOFSKY ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY:This is Christa Whitney, and today is August 22nd, 2013.  I'm here at KlezKanada.  And with Frank Wolofsky.

JACK WOLOFSKY: Jack Wolo--

CW:  Jack, Jack Wolof--

JW:  Jacob, Jacob Peter.

CW:  (laughter) Jacob Peter.  Sorry, wow.

JW:  In Yiddish, Pinkhes-yakov.

CW:  Pinkhes-yakob Wolofsky.  And we're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project.  Jack, do I have your permission to record?

JW:  Absolutely.

CW:  A sheynem dank [Thank you very much].  So, first of all, can you tell me what you know about your family background, let's say, before they came to North America?

JW:  Yes.  My grandfather came -- my paternal grandfather came from Warsaw, but he wasn't born -- he was born in -- let's skip it.  But a small village.  And he talks about it in his book, "Mayn lebns-rayze [My life's journey]," which is in the -- it's at the Book Center.  They do have a copy, I'm sure, last time I checked.  And then he opened a liquor store in Warsaw, and when his brother had come to America, to Montreal, eventually he arrived here, as well, in 1900.  And he went and opened the food store.  On my maternal side, my family 2:00came -- my mother and her parents came from a small village in what she calls the Crimea, not the -- they felt they were Russian, not Ukrainians, although there are people that spoke Ukrainian, and -- but they spoke Russian.  And it was called Bolshoi Tokmak, which is about sixty, seventy kilometers north of the Sea of Azov, and the city of Berdyansk.  We had visited there.  When my uncles -- my mother's two older brothers -- became of age that they would have to go into the tsar's army, my grandmother made the decision that her sons were not going to go into the army.  And so she sent my grandfather with the two oldest 3:00boys to Montreal to get settled here.  And she -- my grandfather had a business in making farm machinery.  And he had eight, ten people working for him, from what I got from my mother.  And my grandmother stayed, and sold the business, and sold the house, and then she packed up and came and joined my maternal grandfather.  And they -- my uncle, one uncle, and my grandfather -- found work with Canadian Pacific Railways, where they built their train, they built their engines.  It was called the Angus Shops.  And both my uncle and my grandfather 4:00were toolmakers.  They made the tools which were then used to manufacture -- that's from their training in Russia, where they were -- they actually did this, and built machinery for farming purposes, harrows and rakes and plows, to be pulled by horses.  So -- but they were very much -- my mother went to Aberdeen School for her English, but she learned her Yiddish at what was called the "Yidishe natsyonaler radikaler shuln [Jewish national radical schools]," which was the forerunner of the -- of the Yidishe folkshuln [Yiddish secular schools] 5:00and the Yidishe perets shuln [Yiddish Peretz schools].  And that's -- she had not studied Yiddish in Russia, but here she learned in Yiddish, because my grandmother and grandfather, once they were here, were speaking in Yiddish.  And I grew up, we lived with my maternal grandparents, and we grew up -- I was born in '31, and I was bilingual.  My grandparents was Yiddish, and my mother and father were English, and communications with my siblings was in English.

CW:  Did you get a sense of what the life was like in the Old Country before coming here?

JW:  Not really.  They didn't talk much about it, other than to say "in der 6:00heym [back home]."  It was as though they were living in America, but the home was still in Russia, in der heym, in the home.  I mean, well, didn't mean in the home -- it meant the whole ethos of living in Bolshoi Tokmak.  Also, my grandmother, who didn't make the attempt to learn either English or French, would always say, "Ven ikh volt gekent zeyer shprakh, volt ikh zey shoyn gezogt [If I knew their language, I would have told them]," which meant in her communication if she could speak either English or French she would tell them, whatever that telling was, because she never bothered to learn, but used my 7:00mother as the interpreter.  But I grew up in a home where my father -- we were a very committed family to our Jewish heritage, in all phases, in all of our ethos.  It was there.  We lived in a -- I lived on Esplanade Avenue, which is a street facing the mountains, facing Mount Royal.  And when we looked out our front windows, we saw only parks and trees.  And we were sent to folkshule.  Now, that was -- my grandfather, my paternal grandfather, in 1907 started the 8:00Yiddish paper in Montreal, the "Keneder adler."  And we always claimed that my father was the one who started the paper, because my grandfather had a grocery store, and my father was seven years old at the time.  And he was in the back of the store, and he was playing with matches, and he started a fire.  And it burnt the store down, and my grandfather collected $5,000, which was a fortune in those days.  And with that $5,000, he started the newspaper.  He got some people to come with him.  But basically, he was a driving force.  And so I 9:00also grew up in the newspaper.

CW:  Did he have a background in printing, or --

JW:  My grandfather?  He had a natural -- not for printing, but a natural talent for writing and for organizing.  He was an organizer.  In 1907, he would've been -- he died in '49 at the age of seventy-seven, which would mean that he was born in -- seventy-seven from '49 is two, so he'd have been born in '82, which means that he -- so it means he was about twenty-five, twenty-six 10:00when he started the paper.  I hope I've done my math right in my head.  I'm not sure.  But in any case, he started the paper, and he went through a lot of hard work, I mean, of -- in fact, my maternal grandmother would refer to him in almost pejorative terms, that he could turn the world upside down because of the way he made the paper survive, and found ways.  And, I mean, the stories of how he got people to invest with him -- in fact, there's a story in his biography of 11:00how he once came up here to Ste. Agathe, and Sir Mortimer B. Davis, who was the tobacco king of Canada at the time, had an estate up here in Ste. Agathe, and they drove back to Montreal in his special car -- on the train, because you didn't come up by car, you went by train.  And he was trying to convince Sir Mortimer B. Davis to invest in the building of the Talmud Torah, invest in the "Keneder Adler," and they passed what at that time was the Boys' Farm, and my grandfather got into -- he said, "Okay, how many Jewish boys are there in the 12:00Boys' Farm?"  And my grandfather did the research and found there was only one who had been through the Talmud Torah.  And so he got Sir Mortimer B. Davis to invest in that.  But it also got him to put ads into the -- and pay him in advance for putting ads in for Imperial Tobacco into his paper.  And that's how he went after people, and was able to get the paper to survive.  Eventually it became more acceptable, but in the beginning it was a hard, hard grind.  But he did it, carried through.

CW:  Before we go on, can you just explain what the paper's -- what it covered, and if there was an ideological bent?

JW:  Well, I'll quote what one person in an interview about my grandfather said: "Before Wolofsky there was a settlement; after Wolofsky there became a community."  So he established it as a community paper.  He encouraged Yiddish writers to come and publish in this paper.  Now, as I said, Melech Ravitch, Rokhl Korn, Gottlieb and Medresh, Rabinovitch, anyone who came to Montreal -- Ida Maze, Ida Bercovitch -- anyone who was a writer -- Dr. Stillman -- to write for the paper.  But he used it more as an organ for building the community.  14:00Through the paper he started the vaad ha'ir [Hebrew: Jewish community council].  Through the paper he started the vaad ha'rabonim [Hebrew: council of rabbis].  He worked -- every little synagogue had a Talmud Torah.  He created the United Talmud Torahs through advocacy in the paper.  And he was till his death the honorary president of the Talmud Torahs.  And there's a little aside here.  When my mother sent us to folkshule, which was teaching Yiddish, he was upset, because he felt we should be going to the Talmud Torah, but the Talmud Torah did not teach Yiddish, and my mother felt that it was, for cultural purposes, it was important for us to speak Yiddish.  And as a kid I remember I 15:00can't understand why is zeyde [grandfather] publishing the "Keneder Adler" in its Yiddish, why does he want us to go to the Talmud Torah and not the folkshule?  Because he was recognized in Talmud Torah, and -- but at the same time he was very proud because my sister would write poetry in Yiddish, and he basically felt, you know, that maybe someday she would become involved in the "Keneder Adler" as a writer.  So he was also the publisher of this English weekly called the "Canadian Jewish Chronicle."  And he had A. M. Klein, who I don't know if you know who he was, but he was the first of the Canadian English 16:00language Jewish poets, an inspiration for Irving Layton, and an inspiration for Leonard Cohen.  They tried to -- well, Leonard Cohen certainly made it, and Irving Layton did -- into a -- Leonard Cohen more -- into a creative poet.  But Irving Layton wrote -- and I can't take that away from Leonard Cohen.  He does use some Jewish themes in his poetry.  But Irving Layton does much more of that.  But he used to have -- my grandfather would have Klein translate my mother's, my sister's Yiddish poetry into English, and publish them in the "Chronicle."  And Rabinovitch would sometimes take her English poetry and translate them into Yiddish, in the "Keneder Adler."  So we grew up, myself and 17:00my two siblings, we grew up in a sense of Jewish community, Yiddish community, involvement in the community, and a commitment to the community.  And, I mean, we knew my father, who at the age of seventeen was too young -- that was in 1916, '17, when the First World War was taking place.  There was the attempt to build, under Jabotinsky, a Jewish legion, which they did, and fought in Palestine under Allenby.  And "Keneder Adler" published an ad which read 18:00something, "Young men, if your Jewish blood runs warm in your veins, now is the time to come to the assistance of building a state in Palestine."  And my father took that very seriously, but neither his mother nor his father felt that he was old enough to enlist.  And so when they were -- when those that had enlisted went to the downtown train station to go to the training camp, which was in Nova Scotia, my father didn't go down with the boys but took a streetcar way out to the next stop on the train.  And my grandfather was at the station, seeing these boys off, wishing them well.  And my father got on the train at 19:00the next stop in Montreal West.  So he made it, and he went overseas.  As a historian of the Legion who came to Canada to study the Legion and the training in Nova Scotia, said to me, "Do you realize your father was in the first army in two thousand years which fought for a state in Palestine?"  And I said, "When you put it in those terms, I never thought of it as the first army in two thousand years."  But he came back, had been bitten.  He was sent in the Intelligence Service from Palestine to Alexandria in Egypt, and was probably bitten by something, and came back with encephalitis, which my mother nursed him 20:00back to health.  So that was something which we lived with, as well.

CW:  So can you describe your home?  What was the -- you've said some about it, but what was the culture of the home?  What was important for the family?

JW:  Family was -- the important thing was education.  A secular education, a Jewish education, both together.  The secular part, we went to -- because I had trouble in my parochial school with my Hebrew teacher, whom I hated, (laughter) and I didn't want to go back because of him, I went into what was then called 21:00the Protestant School Board.  And I got my secular education, but I still had to go to ovntshule, which was afternoon school, for my Yiddish and Hebrew.  And it was under a different teacher, whom I liked.

CW:  Who was the teacher you liked?

JW:  His name was Kazhdan.  He then became head of the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society.  But while he was studying, he was teaching afternoon schools, and that was not far from where -- what we called "Shule eyns [School #1]."  There was Shule eyns, Shule tsvey [School #2].  And in this book, which I showed you, there's a picture of what was Shule tsvey, where I went from kindergarten to grade three, and then I went to ovntshule and so, last, Shule eyns.  So our 22:00education, we were left open to -- and we had to study music -- was important to my -- and my mother used to sit at the piano.  My father, in 1921, bought her a book with Yiddish songs, which I still have, almost a hundred years old.  And my mother used to sit at the piano and play these Yiddish songs, and sing them, and we would -- my sister and I, we would sing them with her.

CW:  Folkslider [Folksongs]?

JW:  Folkslider.  And my maternal grandfather, Saturday afternoon, all my grandparents' friends, my grandmother's friends, would come to our house.  And my grandfather would sing lider mit zey [songs with them], you know.  He'd 23:00sing.  And so it was always there.  It was part of my upbringing.  It was part -- not that it was imposed, but it was practiced.  It was there.  And I tried to give it to my children, but it's a different era.  My daughter picked it up.  My middle son has a bit of it.  My older son rebelled against it.  He didn't -- first of all, he didn't want to go to parochial school, for some reason, and he missed it.

CW:  And when you say "it," can you describe a little more about what you want --

JW:  It was the indigenous of the total Yiddish culture, of the immersion into 24:00the Yiddish culture.  He's getting part of it now.  He's looking for it.  I mean, he's now in his fifties, and he's getting part of it.  But my daughter-in-law did not get it.  She got the Hebrew culture.  She went to Talmud Torah.  So the Yiddish part was missing.  It's hard to get it in that same way, where it runs in your total psyche.  But for us, it was there, my 25:00sister and my brother and myself.  We worked at the "Keneder Adler."  When we went to high school, we took turns -- I mean, my sister first.  We would work at the "Keneder Adler" from five o'clock till eight o'clock in the evening.  People would come in with ads, and some of them spoke very poor Yiddish, so we would have to translate it and bring it downstairs to the composing room to make sure it got into the paper for the next morning.  So we would have to, if they came in in English and said, "I have a room to rent," we had to translate it, "Hob a tsimer tsu farbadingen."  And we had to translate it into Yiddish.  And sometimes people would come in with a death notice, and the death notices in the 26:00paper -- again, because it was a community, to make sure people knew that they had to attend the funeral, it went on the front page of the paper.  It didn't go in the back pages, it was a front page.  And as my grandmother, my maternal grandmother used to say when she'd look at the paper and she wouldn't see any death notices, "Oh, a reyne papir [a clean paper]."  That means it's clean, there's no death notices.  So this is sort of -- these were things my, you know --

CW:  Can you describe what the composing room looked like?  What do you remember?

JW:  I remember -- I'll tell you -- because it was both English and Yiddish, these linotype machines, and linotype machines had to be changed, because the 27:00way you -- Yiddish is from right to left, and English left to right.  You have to design them so that the type came off on the right-hand side instead of the left-hand side.  These were done specifically.  And actually, the funny thing was my grandfather used to talk about the first time they printed the paper, and it wasn't printed out, it was given out to be printed.  And they just didn't know how to set up the plates to come out the right way.  So my grandfather finally said, "Well, you know what?  Put the front page where your back page has to be, and then the second page where your second back page."  And they 28:00worked backwards, and, of course -- but they couldn't do it from front, the way they usually do.  And I have a picture of the composing room.  I'll try and get it for you, if you want it.  But to me, I was probably about -- I'd say it was in the '30s, so I was probably about eight years old when I learned -- eight, seven -- when I learned the alphabet.  And my father brought me to the -- and I loved machinery, so I was -- it was on a Sunday morning.  He used to go in on Sunday mornings, or Saturday afternoons he would go in.  So I went 29:00downstairs and walked around.  I loved walking around among the machinery.  And I saw these fonts of letters, because there was still, at the time -- you didn't have magazines for every size of letters.  And I looked at them and I said, "This is crazy.  It's all mixed up.  The A's are here, but then the M's are next, and the N's are next to that."  And I said, "I'll put this whole thing right."  And I went A, B, C, D, E.  And I remember my father coming home Monday for lunch and saying, "You better not come to the office during the week with me, because [Trossem?]" -- who is the foreman -- "is ready to kill you."  I said, "What?"  He says, "You mixed up all his fonts."  (laughter) Because 30:00they were -- the letters that they use most are right in the front; the rest are in the back.  And they know exactly where it is.  So that's one of the stories.  Of course, when I did come he didn't say a word to me about it, but he said, "Just stay away from it."  (laughter) And this is one of the stories.  And also, another thing, I once found the sound on the web where they print the paper, and the paper's stretched, but if you poke your finger into it, it makes a nice sort of beep.  And I once put four holes like that, and then when they went to start the press it just tore across.  So (laughter) that was another time I got, "Were you around the press?" (laughing) So these were the 31:00things that -- but I loved sort of being --

CW:  Who were the people that were working down there?  I mean, were --

JW:  It was a mixture.  Many of them were people also committed, very highly intelligent.  You know, I remember a Mr. Friedman, who read all books, Yiddish books, and Mr. [Trosman?], who was a committed Zionist, and these were all people, highly committed, except one of the men who worked was not Jewish, on the English linotype machine, setting up the "Chronicle."  But all of the Jewish people there, they were all learned people.  They were all people who read, and who spoke Yiddish, and spoke Yiddish to me.  And it was there.  And 32:00I'll tell you another story.  My mother went to a school called Aberdeen School.  And there were many strikes, workers in the clothing industry, and one of the teachers -- at that time the Jewish students went to the Protestant schools.  It was a dual system, set up by British North America Act, so you had the Protestant school board and the Catholic school board.  The Catholic school board had two extremes: French Catholic, English Catholic.  And by sufferance, 33:00because the Catholics didn't want the Jews in their schools, the Jewish students went to the Protestant school board.  But there were no Jewish teachers in the Protestant school board.  There were no Jewish -- no one on -- no Jews on the Protestant school board.  It was very highly -- a lot of anti-Semitism.  And I guess this was about 1913, 1914.  My mother was a student there.  And one of the teachers -- and most of the Jewish students' parents lived in poverty, were working for, I don't know, six dollars a week in the clothing, and eking out a living.  And they didn't have running baths, running showers.  There was 34:00public bath houses.  And one of the teachers -- I guess if I had the time I'd look it up and get all the names, but -- made some remark about "dirty Jews," something to that effect.  And these kids, who were probably around bar mitzvah age, thirteen, organized all of the kids in the school to go out on strike.  Most of the kids in that school at the time were Jewish, and they went on strike, and they wanted that teacher to be thrown out of the school.  Well, when they went out on strike, the people they went to was my grandfather, and I 35:00think it was the Baron de Hirsch Institute, which was sort of the Allied Jewish Community Services of that time, whichever they were, which had been funded by Baron de Hirsch, from England, had given the funds.  But that Baron de Hirsch was mostly dominated at that time by what were called the uptown Jews, those Jews who had come here in the 1800s, and were the wealthy Jews.  But when they came to my grandfather, he got together with what was the chairman or the -- I 36:00think his name was Leon Jacobs, or was it -- I'd have to check the exact names, whether it was the rabbi of the Shaar Hashomayim -- or Jacobs.  And he and this particular fellow, either the rabbi or Jacobs the lawyer, negotiated with the principal to reprimand this teacher, but they didn't want -- the principal said he was in no position to let her go, or to -- I think they eventually transferred her out of the school.  But they did get an apology for the kids, and they went back to school, and the promise that the kids would not be 37:00punished for walking out of school.  And so that's how it was.  But they went to my grandfather, as the -- and it was a watershed experience, to have these kids stand up, because after that the school board itself decided that maybe it would be a good idea to have Jewish teachers in the elementary schools so that the Jewish kids would have someone that they could relate to.  And so by the time in 1934 when I -- no, wait, I was -- after grade three in six, so that was nine, 1939.  Yeah, 1939, 1940.  When I went to the Protestant schools, it 38:00already had -- more than fifty percent of the teachers in the school were Jewish women.  And so there was a gradual relationship that was developed with the Jewish community.  And so, where were we?

CW:  (laughs) Yeah.  Can you tell me about -- I mean, I'm curious with your grandfather, the connection to the paper, did you meet some of these Yiddish intellectuals who were coming through?

JW:  Sure.  I'm Hirsch Wolofsky's eynikl [grandson], you know?  Hirsch Wolofsky's -- because when they'd come in through the paper I knew them all.  They knew me.  Well, I lived just up street from the library.  I greeted -- my 39:00problem was that it was natural for me, but I was too young to really take advantage of it.  I went off to university at age seventeen.  It was natural.  [Benjamin Saks?], I used to call the taxi for him when I was in the paper, working at night, and his wife -- Benjamin Saks had rickets, and he'd write up in the -- there was a mezzanine, and he would be upstairs writing, and his wife would come to help him.  But she'd always ask me, "Please call a taxi," and I would help him down and into the taxi with his wife.  I knew them.  I knew Medresh, I knew Ginsberg.  I knew Rabinovitch.  I mean, I knew Rabinovitch.  I knew his son, David, Ellen, Mrs. Rabinovitch.  I mean, they 40:00were natural.  It was not -- Melech Ravitch, when I was outside and would walk by, and he'd greet me, and David Rom, and Rokhl Eisenberg, and Rokhl Korn.  I mean, these people -- and I'd go to the library sometimes, and my sister used to go Saturday afternoons when she was young.  There was a Lerer [Teacher] [Sheynblum?].  We used to take classes with the children and teach them artwork and painting on Shabbos, on the afternoon.  I took them for granted.  I was too young.  I recall once saying to A. M. Klein, because I tried reading his 41:00editorials, and it was a very highly literate writing -- I mean, he would -- his language, his words -- and I once said to him, "Mr. Klein, I have problems reading.  I have to use a dictionary."  "Uh-huh, that's what you have to do."  So when I spoke to his son, Sandor, once about it, he says, "Yeah, he used to make me look in the dictionary, too."  But to really -- I mean, as I said, I went off to university at age seventeen, out of Montreal, and I didn't -- it's only after, in coming back, that I realized maybe it's because I was too 42:00young to really be able to integrate that opportunity I had to sit with these people and share their ideas with me, and share my ideas, a different generation.  I think of the last book that Amos Oz and his daughter just published, "Jews and Words."  I don't know if you've read it.  A very important book.  And he talks about how Jews built their history on words, on writing.  And I guess, in a way, getting all of Klein's poetry, and Cohen's, 43:00who's really my generation, and Layton's a bit older than I am, or was older than I am -- he's passed away -- and searching out their experience.  Shulamis Yelin, whom I don't think you'll know, but has written a lot of poetry.  Reading her poetry of her experience growing up, albeit fifteen years before I did, but referring back.  So in a way I missed out, but in a way I didn't.  It's there.  For me, when my father died there was a cleavage, in other words, 44:00the paper no longer -- because my grandfather made a settlement with my mother for taking care of us, and for bringing in an uncle from New York to be in the paper, in a way replacing my father.  And so there was a disconnect.  That didn't change my psyche, but my idea of being in the "Keneder Adler," being part of it, was no longer there.  It was realization that it's not mine anymore.  And so I went off on a --

CW:  No, that's great.  I'm wondering -- I mean, you mentioned how your grandfather would have the visiting Yiddish intellectuals.  Was there anyone that came into town that you remember being --

JW:  Well, not really, no, because they were in a different -- they were in a folksy -- no.  It was really my grandmother's friends.  My mother's friends, she joined B'nai B'rith Women, she joined -- she was not Pioneer Women, but we had -- lots of Pioneer Women would come spend an afternoon with my mother.  The Saturday afternoons was my grandmother, my maternal grandmother and grandfather's friends.

CW:  And what did they talk about?

JW:  You know, I -- they would tell jokes, in Yiddish.  And much of their 46:00jokes were scatological.  And I would say, "Bobe, vos redste?  Bobe, fun dir azelkhe verter zoln aroyskimen? [Bubbie, what are you saying?  Bubbie, that kind of words coming from you?]"  "Vos i' der mer?  Host keyn mol nisht gehert? [What's the matter?  You've never heard it before?]"  You know.  (laughter) But it was innocent scatological.  And the women -- but when my grandfather started to sing, it was -- they would sing with him.  This was something we had not only there, the idea -- where we had -- I have to say this -- we had this house in the country, not far from here.  And that home of ours was open.  And when my uncles would come up -- my mother's older brothers were 47:00both musicians -- we would have little bonfires, and they'd sit with guitars, and we'd sing.  All of us would sing.  But they would sing more in Russian than in Yiddish.  They had done this in Russia.  They had learned.  And my uncle who was from Chicago was a classical cellist, although he didn't play in an orchestra, but he could.  My uncle Barrow, who was the oldest, played in the Monument-National in Montreal, but, again, in Russian, not in Yiddish, and entertained in Russia.  So there was a sense of music, even if it was Russian, 48:00not Yiddish.  But my grandmother sang in Yiddish.  My maternal grandfather sang in Yiddish.  I still remember one song.  In fact, he used the words, and he'd just sing Havdalah.  He'd sing -- he'd make up -- not that he was that religious.  I never got -- although they often would say to me, if I did something, or what I was questioning, which might have been -- not been ethical in some way, they'd always say, "Oyb s'iz faran a got -- if there was such a thing as a God, he would -- er volt gevolt -- he would want.  It was never "There is."  "If there is such a thing."  And I grew up with that.  And yet, 49:00I had a bar mitzvah.  And my mother said, "If you want to put on tfillin, you can put on.  If you don't want, you don't have to.  Your father never did."  And again, when my father died, "If you want to say Kaddish, it's for you, not for your father.  It didn't mean that much to him.  If you want to go and say Kaddish, say it, but remember, it's for you, not" -- and I did.  For a certain period, I said Kaddish.  Then I said, why?  My father doesn't need -- is it -- do I have to?  Should I?  And I realized I'm doing it for me, not for my father.  And I stopped saying Kaddish.  So it was a secular, but a commitment.

CW:  And did you celebrate the holidays and --

JW:  Well, yes.  I mean, when you went to the Protestant schools that I went to was ninety-five percent Jewish, so the school just closed down.  Did I go to the synagogue?  No.  Did I -- yes, I did go to visit my grandmother and grandfather, in shul, because the synagogue was right around the corner, and my grandmother -- it was, like, back to back with our home.  And my grandmother used to take the window right looking at ours.  So if they opened the window, I 51:00could see her, and I could wave to her.  So I'd go in once or twice during the day to see her, and I'd go and walk her home after she was finished, because I heard when it was finished, when they blew the shofar, so I'd go and get her and bring her home.  But I felt no need.  It was not me.

CW:  Do you -- I mean, do you remember any song in particular from your grandfather that --

JW:  Yeah, I remember -- I'm not sure if it's Rumshinsky, or -- I think it's Rumshinsky that -- you want me to sing it?

CW:  Yeah.

JW:  (Singing) "Hamavdil ben kodesh, ben kodesh l'chol [Hebrew: The One who distinguishes between sacred and profane]."  No, I can't.  My voice won't take it.  But the music is there, and it's just -- I'm sorry that not many people -- even here, we should be singing, because it's all in Yiddish, which is the women's.  But he sang it, and (singing) "Gut-vokh [Good week]."  It's the women's Havdalah, you know, the end of the Shabbos, "[A gut-vokh, a gezintn vokh.  Got fun avrom, fun yitshok un yakov, bahit dayn folk yisroel, bashitst dayn folk yis-- itst az shabes koydesh geyt avek, der nayer vokh zol kumen mit mazl un mit brokhe, mit glikh un hatslokhe.  Mir betn nor bay dir, (UNLEAR) gotenyu, ven-- omeyn.  Der vos makht a tsvishnsheyd ben shabes lekhoyl [A good 53:00week, a healthy week.  God of Abraham, of Isaac and Jabob, guard over your people of Israel, protect your people of Isr-- Now, as the holy Shabbos is ending, may the new week come with luck and blessings, joy and success.  We ask you, specifically, (UNCLEAR), dear God, when-- amen.  You who make the distinction between Shabbos and the rest]" (singing under his breath) -- "ben kodesh, ben kodesh l'chol, tsvishn shabes un der vokhn, hamavdil ben kodesh -- guter dvoyre, tayere dvoyre [Ashkenazi Hebrew and Yiddish: between the sacred and the profane, between Shabbos and the week, the distinction between the sacred -- dear Deborah, dear Deborah]"  I don't remember.  (laughs)

CW:  That's fine.  So I'd like to talk a little bit about your life, your adult life.  But first, just looking back, what did you learn from your family?

JW:  Main thing: commitment to your Jewish people.  You don't like things, you work to change it, but you do it from within that community.  You stand up for things that are right.  And I learned this, I think, from my grandfather -- my paternal grandfather.  As I say, I never really knew him, because I had to go 54:00and visit with him.  It was essential.  I knew Saturday afternoon I had to go visit my grandfather.  And he was already not well, and he'd sit in his bed, and he had rabbis and presidents of congregation, at least five, six of them, every time I came, sort of sitting around his bed.  And he recognized me as being there.  But to say there was a conversation going on, no.  Even at 55:00Seders, I mean, we were too young.  We would go off with my cousins into another room, and they carried on their Seder.  It was typical Seder, not like we do now with our kids and bring them into it.  So I never really knew him.  I know him more now by reading.  I mean, when I read -- when he passed away, the one book I wanted of -- I said to my uncle -- was a book on Canadian history, published by Seagram's, which was a Bronfman, and in it he dedicated it to my grandfather and said, "To H. Wolofsky, both a maker and recorder of Canadian history."  And I was always intrigued by that, because essentially, by 56:00forming the Canadian Jewish Congress, and by taking positions on Canadian policy, which was espoused, what he wrote was important.  By having A. M. Klein as an editor of the "Chronicle," not just in Yiddish but in English, by having people write articles, A. B. Bennett, who was from Toronto, would write for the "Chronicle."  All of these people.  And my aunt, whose picture I showed you in that book, her husband was Leon Crestohl, who became a Member of Parliament.  So essentially, he had tentacles into the lines of power, and he used it.  And 57:00so when I read Bronfman's words, "both a maker and a recorder of Canadian history," in a book about Canada by Stephen Leacock, I always had that in my head, even when I was at college, and I said, "I have to find out, how did my grandfather have his effect on the Canada that we have today, or the Jewish community within Canada today."  So it was an inspiration for me to search out 58:00more of my roots and learn more.  And commit myself to it, not from the past, but in building it into the future.  We say it in synagogue every week.  If we pick up the Torah we say "Hadesh yamenu kekedem [Hebrew: Renew our days as in the past]."  Not the past.  What was the past?  The past was not that good.  Return our days as of old, or as the past?  No, they never were good, and we sing "Dovid melekh yisroel [David King of Israel]."  He may have been king of part what is now Pal-- Israel, but he wasn't that man that we have to emulate.  We have to realize that the mythology is more than what the reality was.  We have to say "Hadesh yamenu kadimah" to the future.  And realizing that, because 59:00that's what my grandfather did.  He said, "How do we go on?  How do we change?"  And that's the important thing, so --

CW:  So can you tell me about how you did that in your own way?

JW:  Well, I guess I -- you know what?  I do things in my own way.  My wife uses a phrase, I'm an S-H-I disturber.  I question.  I'm active in -- I'm very 60:00committed to the ideas of Mordecai Kaplan, who sees Judaism as a civilization, and that while religion plays a part, it's not the totality of the Jewish experience.  I encouraged my daughter to be involved, when she was in college, to be involved with Aaron Lansky.  In fact, I'll tell you a little story about that.  When my daughter was working for Aaron, she wrote an article in the "Pakn Treger."  And she then received -- this is a long story now -- she then 61:00received a letter from someone who said that when he was married to a girl whose second name was Hirsch -- her maiden name was Hirsch -- and when she was a young girl, she was friends with a girl by the name of Dinah Wolofsky, who was the daughter of the publisher of the "Keneder Adler."  And his father-in-law was an editor of the "Keneder Adler" back in the -- I presume it was before Reuben Brainin.  But he was very religious, and therefore did not believe in 62:00Zionism.  And so when he was interviewed by my grandfather -- this is all in the letter -- when he was interviewed, he told him that, "Mr. Wolofsky, I know you're a Zionist, but I am an anti-Zionist.  I don't believe that the meshiekh [Messiah] has to come before we go back to Palestine and settle it."  And my grandfather was so open that he said, "You will publish articles which are anti-Zionism, and I hope you won't refuse to publish me when I put in my pro-Zionist editorials."  And he says, "This is to show you how open this Mr. Wolofsky was."  And he says this Dinah was drowned at the age of seven or 63:00eight.  Now I'm gonna skip.  My wife used to do antiquing.  She'd go out to different -- and one day she came back with this beautiful picture of a girl with a bow on her head.  And she showed me this, but the idea was she had bought it because of the frame, because it was an old-fashioned frame, round, oval shape, with an oval-shaped glass on it.  And she brought it home.  And I said, "That's very funny," I said, "because when I was a kid we used to have a picture like that in our house, and I don't remember if the girl's the same, but it was a very similar type of frame and picture of a girl."  And my wife hung 64:00it up sort of on the stairway.  And my mother comes to visit, and she said, "Where did you get a picture of Dinah?"  And my wife says, "Dinah?"  "Well, Dinah was my husband's sister who drowned."  And, "Mommy, I just got this in an antique store."  "No, no, it's a picture of Dinah."  And I would say, "Ma, Kay got it in an antique barn in Hudson."  And, "No, that's a picture of Dinah."  We never thought about it.  You know, my mother was -- I said, "She's mistaken."  Now, move forward about ten, fifteen years, and we had the 65:00remaining uncles -- my uncle Dan had passed away, so we had my uncle Max, who had taken over the "Keneder Adler" when my father died, my uncle Max, and two of the people who are in this picture, and the three people who were at the house, and having supper, and my cousins, and we're all sitting around the table, and talking about my daughter Sandy, working at the -- (UNCLEAR) many of them remember this Mr. Hirsch.  And my uncle Max remembered him, and he says, "I was very young, but I do remember him."  And we read the letter.  And my -- 66:00they're all talking about Dinah, and this experience, because my uncle Max, who at that time was in his nineties, and his daughter was with us at the time, says, "You know," he says, "I always felt guilty about her, because," he says, "my mother said to us -- we were with this Mr. Gold, and he had this boat, and the water was rushing, and his mother had said, 'Don't any of you go in the boat because it's dangerous.'  And Dinah got in the boat, and I said to her, 'Mummy 67:00said you shouldn't, and I hope you drown.'  And then she did drown."  And he said, "I always felt guilty."  And my cousin said, "I never heard this story."  And my wife walked downstairs, picked up the picture, and showed this picture.  "Is this her?"  And they all looked at her and say, "Where did you get the picture of Dinah?"  And I said, "What?"  "Yes, that's Dinah."  So now you had three siblings who identified that picture.  So here you are, my wife antiquing fifty kilometers -- fifty miles away from Montreal in a barn, picking up a picture of Dinah.  And, of course, we made copies of it and gave it to all 68:00the siblings and their children, and told the story.  But the important thing is that this letter came to us because my daughter worked at the National Yiddish Book Center, and got this letter through the "Pakn Treger."  So the whole thing opened up because of Sandy working in Amherst at -- zamlen [collecting] books.  So how it comes around -- and this makes you see how the Jewish world has some way of affecting -- and so these are things which bind you 69:00closer, in every way.  I mean, to have met someone like Pierre Manseau, who talks about his experience -- I mean, here's a guy with a French Canadian background.  His father was from Canada -- Manseau, Pierre -- works at the National Yiddish Book Center as a, I don't know --

CW:  Intern or something, yeah.

JW:  As an intern.  Learns to speak Yiddish.  Goes on zamling, and writes "The Butcher's Daughter" about his experience, or --

CW:  "Songs for the Butcher's Daughter," yeah.

JW:  Yeah.  And so you realize that the tentacles go out.  I mean, even some of the stories which Aaron writes about, about going into Uris -- Leon Uris's 70:00family, "Maybe you heard of my son -- he writes under the name Leon Uris.  Maybe you heard of him."  I mean, these are stories which are -- but it's there.  It's that totality of -- and I'll give you another example, just -- these are experiences which I have.  I knew Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist movement, fairly well.  My wife and I visited with him in the States, and in Israel.  And in his later years, when he was in his nineties, he used to sit down.  If you met him, he was teaching right away.  And this one 71:00time we walked in to him, with another member, very close friend, and he sat us down, and he sort of barked at us.  He says, "What's the definition of a civilization?"  And with him, you never knew where his mind was moving.  It was moving like a bullet.  And so I had the temerity to say, "Doctor, rabbi, I'm not sure what you mean."  And he barked at me.  He says, "You call yourself a Reconstructionist, and you don't know what a civilization is?  A civilization is a family of families."  I never -- I agonized, because I knew 72:00he was driving at something, but I wasn't fully aware of it.  So Sandy was in Tel Aviv at the time of the bombing of the café on HaYarkon Street.  I don't know if you're familiar with that.  And she had to go to the hospital for some other reason.  She was having some problem, and I don't remember what.  But there were people coming in, people from the States, calling their relatives in Russia, people coming in from Russia, calling their people in the United States.  But they were all united in this tragedy, here in the hospital.  And she called us, and she said, "There are people from all over, from Russia.  I'm 73:00speaking to the people from Russia in Russian.  I'm speaking in Yiddish from New Jersey, and I'm speaking in Hebrew, and I'm speaking" -- and suddenly I realized that we are a family of families in our total experience.  And when you think back, you're thinking of the twelve tribes, different families.  I mean, that's part of the mythology, but it still is there.  We look at it.  We have made that mythology part of our ethos.  And these are the things which become the totality of where you think and how you try to move and how you try to put things into wherever you see extremism, say, "Hey, that's not what we're 74:00about."  And you don't need a kippah on your head to be able to say you're Jew.  Jew is in the word, and that's this book which Amos Oz and his daughter just wrote.  We're able to experience, to put it down into writing, to communicate, and that's the important thing is that communication.

CW:  Well, I'd like to -- you know, here we are at KlezKanada, and it's Hy of KlezKanada.  And can you just tell me how you came to be involved, and how this idea was thought up?

JW:  Well, we knew we had to do -- the whole revival of Yiddish music was 75:00taking place.  Hankus Netsky had started the Klezmer Conservatory Band.  We had invited -- we had in Montreal a jazz festival, and French Canadians were looking for their roots.  And we thought, Well, we'd bring the combined -- and Hy was a -- knew how to get to people.  And he got to the people at the jazz festival, and we brought the Klezmer Conserv-- I think they were the first ones we brought.  And they performed at the jazz festival with one of the French 76:00Canadian bands.  And there was a girl, a woman by the name of Judy Lechter, who was trying to organize us to start a foundation for Jewish music, which we incorporated with her.  And then there was a woman by the name of Sarah Rosenfeld, whose son was producing Yiddish music in New York.  And so she said, well -- and by that time the Klezkamp had already started in the States.  So we said, "Well, why don't we do the same thing up here?"  And Hy and myself -- Hy 77:00and I had worked on something previous to that, which we called -- with two French Canadians, the husband of Chantal Ringuet, Pierre Anctil, who -- that was another story.  Pierre Anctil -- in any case, we -- Hy and I had worked on something called the De Luc-Saint Urbain, where we tried to get French Canadians to meet with Jewish Montrealers to discuss the whole idea of Québec's indépendance.  So these were independentistes that we would meet with, so Hy and I organized this.  And Sarah had organized concerts in the park, Yiddish concerts in the park, which Hy and I had worked with her to help her do this.  78:00We called ourselves "Mame-loshn," and Sarah and I at times, and Hy at other times, worked to do concerts in the park.  And we did evenings in Côte Saint-Luc for the community.  And then we said, Well, maybe we should have something like Klezkamp.  We'll call it KlezKanada.  We won't call it the same thing.  We'll call it -- and eighteen years ago, not knowing how well it was going to turn out, we did it.  We had to find a place, and we really searched around to all these camps, or hotels up north.  But all the Jewish hotels were 79:00no longer in existence.  There was nowhere, and we felt we needed space.  And Hy, as Penny said, just said, "You know what?"  He walked in here and said, "We want it."  And he got it.  And he's done, you know -- and that's how it started.

CW:  And had you been to Klezkamp before, or --

JW:  No, I had not been, but through Moishe Rosenfeld, we found out what they were doing, and Moishe helped us the first year.  We used much more Montreal people at the time.  I still have some tapes of the very first KlezKanada.  80:00I've tried to get -- because they were all done on beta, and so it's hard to convert from beta.  You have to get professionals to convert them, and then tie them all together, and so I have the betas, and I've converted them.  I have Adrienne Cooper I'm interviewing, and these should actually be -- I had someone professional to put it, but the fellow doing it was an amateur, and, as I said, he did it on beta, and someday I'll get someone to put it together, because it's historic.  And there's some interviews with some of the people that attended, and Yaëla Hertz, who -- I said, "What are you doing here, Yaëla?"  She said, "Well, if what's his name can play klezmer music with different groups" -- 81:00that's where Hankus was yesterday, giving a concert in --

CW:  Perlman?

JW:  Perlman.  "If Itzhak Perlman can play it, I gotta find out why I shouldn't be playing it."  So that was the first time she came.  (laughs) And she played with Alan Bernern, and then she started with Jeff and his wife.

CW:  Deborah?

JW:  Deborah.  I have a picture, which I could get, but I've distributed mostly, but I think I have copies -- if you want, I'll try and find it and bring it -- of after that first concert.  And I wanted -- which I did -- I got a 82:00French Canadian group to come up for the week, and they performed with us, and we did a concert in Ste. Agathe, which I organized.  And they -- we did it out in the park, in Ste. Agathe, on Sunday afternoon, after we finished here, and then everybody came to my home.  And we made a barbecue, and, yeah, it was -- doesn't happen now -- I don't know why, but just doesn't happen.  That was a very warm, creative, wonderful experience, and it was there, and we just kept going.  I have not been as active.  I have my other problems, so I haven't been as active as I used to be, but yeah, it was a very heady experience at that time.

CW:  What do you see as the role of performing art in transmitting Jewish 83:00culture, Yiddish culture?

JW:  It is the way that art is transferred, and all -- that's the meaning of a culture is what do you do to make life beautiful, what do you do to give an experience to life.  And some people may go out and buy Ferraris for twenty-seven million dollars, but that's not the essence.  That's not what gives beauty.  That's not what makes life meaningful.  And you have to be able to do it out of your own experience, what belongs to you, what comes from the 84:00depth of your experience.  I can remember a convention -- and I'm going back and forth between my experiences as a Reconstructionist and my Yiddish experience.  At a convention in 1969, where we had young people and college students and adult members -- I mean, the movement, don't forget, was only started as a separate movement in the late -- in the early '60s, when Kaplan gave up teaching at the seminary -- and some of the young people got up and 85:00said, "Well, if I'm for human rights, why do I have to be Jewish?  If I'm for ethical behavior, why do I have to be Jewish?"  And Kaplan finally got up and said, "Being for human rights in general, being for ethical behavior in general, being for freedom in general, is like speaking in general without any language in particular.  You have to speak from your Jewish roots, and from the development as a culture which is yours to be able to espouse the values of what you feel."  And that's an important thing, so that when you do art, when you sing music, you have to be able to take it out of your experience, and your 86:00experience is a totality of that experience.  Look at some of the greatest comedians.  I mean, look at the art that's come out of the Holocaust, the art out of Europe, the art out of America.  I mean, take some of the greatest music.  Look at "Porgy & Bess," some of the songs in "Porgy & Bess."  They come out of some of the synagogue music.  These are -- I mean, "West Side Story," even "West Side Story," Bernstein uses some of his Jewish -- he converts 87:00it, but it comes out of some of that same experience.  "The Jazz Singer," you know?  These are people who came out of that ethos.  And we hope that these young people that are here can also create -- I mean, Josh Dolgin, you know, has some of it.  I mean, when he sits down, "Ikh shtey uf vider, ikh gey on vayter 88:00[I stand up again and go on]," what is he saying?  "You can put me down a thousand ways."  And I presume he feels it in his gut, because he's been through it personally, on his own experience, till he's able to stand up and say, "This is what I am."  And I'm sure he went through a lot of pain we didn't know about.  I mean, I never assumed that he had -- that this was a problem, a personal problem of his.  And so he can relate it in two ways:  as a Jew, and as a gay person.  So when he sings it, there's a lot of depth to that, you know?  "Ikh shtey uf vider, ikh gey on vayter."  So it comes out of his gut, 89:00but it's there in his culture.  So, yeah, and it's there.  It's there in every way.  You know, I read the poet -- in Amos Oz's book, he talks about Itzhok Manger's song about a tree, you know, the "eyn tsum mizrekh, eyns tsum mayrev, un di boym iz geblibn hefker [one leaves to the east, one to the west, and the tree is left alone]."  And he wants to become a bird, and stand on the tree, to fill the tree.  Manger is not talking about -- and I've had this argument, in fact, with Sarah Rosenfeld, who is a Yiddishist.  And I said, "Manger's not 90:00talking about a tree.  He's talking about the yidishe mame [Jewish mother], who suddenly feels she's going to be -- one of her sons has gone to South America.  Another one's gone to France.  Another one -- and she's got one left.  'Are you going to leave me alone?  It's too hard.  How are you gonna' -- I mean, so she puts this guilt complex.  But he doesn't talk about a guilt complex.  He talks about putting on a coat, putting on a -- Manger is deeper than that.  Manger is very deep."  And there's another one of Manger's, which I find -- and I haven't studied all of Manger. I don't have that time.  I'm not a student, in that sense.  I work.  Manger talks about the "goldene pave," the golden dove, 91:00who's flying around to find a nekhtikn tog [yesterday's day].  You understand Yiddish.  The words "nekhtikn tog" is not just "yesterday's day" in Yiddish.  A nekhtikn tog has something -- it's like, "Forget it!  Like, what are you talking about?  It's gone."  It's stronger.  And so he goes and he sees a man, a fisherman, and the dove says, "Do you know where I can find a nekhtikn tog?"  The fisherman says, "You're a beautiful bird, but" -- do you know the poem?  Okay, so you know the poem, and you know the ending.

CW:  You should tell it, though.

JW:  Well, he says, "nekhtikn tog."  "You're such a beautiful bird, but you're such a fool."  And he sees a black man driving a horse.  I mean, I don't 92:00remember all the steps, but the black man says, again, "You're such a beautiful bird, but so stupid."  But then he sees the widow dressed in black, and she's standing at a stone, and she's crying.  And he says now he's found the almone fun nekhtikn tog [widow of the past], the widow who has nothing, thinking only about past.  He's talking about the Jewish people.  He's talking about -- do we stand at a stone and look at the past, or do we go beyond, or do we move forward.  Are we gonna wear the black hats and the gowns of the old peasants, of the old landed gentry of Poland, and stayed in the Pale of Settlement when 93:00they knew catastrophe was happening?  They were looking for yesterday's day, for -- and he says, "We have to go forward."  So it's symbolic.  I haven't read the rest of Manger. I'm sure that the song which they think is just poetry -- I had this argument.  You know, "zeks mayzl un ikh ver der zibetn [six mice and I become the seventh].  I come in and I lie down on the floor."  Yeah, it's the rumblings of a man who is an alcoholic, but what's the deeper meaning?  I haven't really gone into it, but I'm sure there's a deeper meaning of lying down with mice, and -- because I'm sure he didn't come into a tavern and lie down with mice on the floor.  There's something more behind it.  And 94:00the same with this purim-shpil.  There's something deep in Yiddish poetry, even the love poems.  I mean, there's a lot of them, the love songs, and there is something to the fact that there is a depth to suffering that brings out in all of us a sense of where, why, what does it mean, to all of us.

CW:  Well, before we finish here, I just want to ask if you have an eytse, if you have any advice for the kumedike doyres [next generations].

JW:  Advice is to just open up, and listen to the people around you, and communicate, and talk, and appreciate, not go back.  Understand the back.  Use 95:00it as a stepping stone to build the future.  And as I said, you know, you go to shul, and you say things -- read what you read.  Understand it.  Don't just repeat, if you go to shul.  If you -- no.  Say what you mean.  Don't repeat it by rote.  And it's very important to stand up to power.  If you think it's wrong, stand up to power and say, "No, this is not the way."  We accept -- and this is very important for all Jews to become aware of -- we accept in our 96:00leaders what we don't -- who talk -- and this is a very important thing that I'm gonna say now.  We accept in our leaders their acceptance of a behavior of a government in Israel -- of a government in Israel, a behavior which they would never accept for themselves as Jews -- and I'm talking basically about Jews -- of Jews in America.  We have, through our commitment to ethics and morality, achieved a sense of freedom in America, which we are not prepared to allow for those who are stranger in our midst, and by the government in Israel.  And 97:00that's a very, very important thing, because we sense, as anyone who opposes, not of the Jewish faith -- and even those of the Jewish faith, as self-hating Jews -- and those who oppose us as anti-Semitic.  They use "anti-Semitic," but we have to be able to question whether we would accept here in America the derogation by politicians of the other is Israel, and are protected by those here in America who allow it to happen.  And we, as Jews here -- and it's there in our culture, in our Yiddish culture -- the battle for acceptance.  And by 98:00doing what we do here, we become familiar with that battle.  So it's important to know -- "Ikh shtey uf vider, un ikh gey on vayter" is a very important statement.  And there's another poem in Yiddish by -- what's his name -- which says "vifl mentshn nemt es oyfhaltn [How many people does it take to maintain] --" what's the word, a people?  "Eyns.  Ver i' dos eyns?  Ikh.  Ikh halt oyf der-- yeder yid muz filn az er halt oys dos -- [One.  And who is that one?  Me.  I hold up the-- every Jew must feel that he maintains the --"

CW:  Folk?

JW:  The folk, but what's the word in Yiddish?  The mentshkayt [humanity].  I forget the word.  Then he says, "Vifl mentshn nemt es oyshaltn a shprakh?  Eyns.  Ver i' dos eyns?  Ikh.  Ikh halt oys dos yidishn shprakh.  Yeder yid muz filn az er iz dos eyns vos halt oys dos yidishn shprakh. [How many people does it take to maintain a language?  One.  Who is that one?  Me.  I maintain the Yiddish language.  Every Jew must feel that he is maintaining the Yiddish language.]"  There's another verse, "Vifl mentshn nemt es oyshaltn toyre? -- ikh -- eyns.  Ikh bin der eyns.  Yeder yid -- [How many people does it take to maintain the Torah? -- me -- one.  I am the one.  Every Jew --]"  But when he talks about Torah, he doesn't mean Torah as Torah -- he means commitment to learning, to understanding, to ethics, morality, and everything that is part of that Jewish.  That's the important thing.

CW:  Well, a hartsikn, groysn dank [a big, heartfelt thanks] for speaking with me, and also with the Yiddish Book Center.

JW:  Okay.

CW:  Great.

JW:  I hope I got you what you wanted.

CW:  Oh, it was wonderful. 

[END OF INTERVIEW]