MIRIAM OLES ORAL HISTORY

AMANDA LUNDQUIST:   This is Amanda Lundquist, and today is December 15th, 2013.  I'm here at the Association for Jewish Studies Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, with Miriam Oles, and we are going to record an interview as a part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project.  Miriam, do I have your permission to record?

MIRIAM OLES:   Yes.

AL:  Thank you.  So I'd like to begin by getting a background of your family history.  Can you briefly tell me about that, moving from Europe to the United States?

MO:  Okay.  Well, I'm a first-generation, born in the United States.  Both of my parents were born in Germany, in Munich.  They married in the United States, but they were both born there.  And then their parents were both from Poland -- all four of my grandparents were from Poland, who moved to Germany.  I don't know exactly when.  Beyond that, I think there were some generations in Poland.  I don't know beyond that where they were from.

AL:  Your father and your grandparents escaped from Germany around 1930.  Do you want to tell me about that?

MO:  In the 1930s.  Well, both my mother and my father.  My mother -- I know her father, Eliezer Schindler, left Germany in the 1930s, kind of early.  My 2:00mother said that her father was a prophet, 'cause he saw what was happening and he left Germany because he wanted to pave the way for his family to get out.  My grandmother, Sally Schindler, stayed in Germany with her two children.  She had a business in Munich -- mail-order business -- apparently, the second-largest mail-order business in Munich, I was told.  It was called A & S Schindler.  She had it with her father-in-law, Avrom-itzhak -- and so that's the A -- and she was Sally Schindler -- that's the S -- so it was A & S Schindler.  And she stayed in Munich, eventually sold the business -- so I think for economic reasons, they stayed longer.  And my mother Eva and her brother Alex were children there, and they remember visiting their father, who 3:00had left Germany.  They would meet him in various -- you know, for vacations -- I think in Venice, and Austria, they went skiing, and she has good memories of that time.  And then, eventually, things got harder for the Jews there and they felt like they needed to get out.  My mother said that somebody warned her mother -- my grandmother -- that she was gonna be arrested.  And so she checked herself into a hospital, and she had someone take my mother and her brother out of the country -- like, a non-Jewish woman they must have paid to have her escort my mother and her brother to meet their father -- I'm not sure where -- maybe it was Switzerland, I'm not sure.  And so they got out.  And then my grandmother was leaving, and my mother remembers waiting with her father for a 4:00phone call.  My grandmother -- I don't know the route that she took to leave Germany, but she apparently got papers that she was going to a nuns' conference, and she traveled with her brother-in-law, and he got papers that he was going to the priests' conference, and they got out of Germany that way.  I don't remember all the details of the story.  I know part of it was they stopped in Belz, and they have some family connection to the Belzer Rebbe, who helped them go from Belz -- I don't know if he helped them financially or somehow -- helped them complete their escape.  And my mother said they were all waiting for a phone call from Budapest, which would have meant that my grandmother got out with her brother-in-law.  And they finally got a phone call, and somehow, they 5:00got out of Germany and managed to make their way to the United States.  I don't know all the details.  So I guess -- I think it was around 1938 that they got out.  My mother was, I think, thirteen, and her brother was twelve.  My father, his family was Olesinsky; they changed the name to Oles when they came to the United States.  I know that they -- also sensing that things were getting bad for the Jews -- they sent him to a yeshiva in Montreux, Switzerland, when they could still send him out.  And they stayed in Munich.  And I don't know exactly how things unfolded, but I found -- my mother recently passed away, and I was going through their belongings, and I found a letter from -- I wish I 6:00had brought that with me today -- from the US consulate in Berlin.  It was to a cousin in New York saying that their offer to sponsor my father's family was accepted, so my father's family could get a visa to the United States.  And they were advising, please tell the Olesinskys, who are in Munich, that they could apply to come to the United States.  So this cousin in New York kind of saved my father's family by offering to sponsor them.  So then, eventually, they got out.  I mean, I found passports and tickets and things like that, but -- I don't know all the details, but they eventually got to New York.  My father was about nineteen, I think, and his parents got out.  Many of our family were killed in the Holocaust.  My father's mother had several sisters 7:00who were killed.  My mother's father had six or seven siblings, but he had three sisters who were all killed together with their husbands and children.  So my family was lucky to make it out.  They went to New York, and et cetera, so --

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

AL:  So what do you remember about your grandparents?

MO:  Well, I knew all of them -- all four grandparents.  I was born in 1947.  They had been in the United States for a while.  So my father's parents, the Olesinsky family, they lived in New York, in the Bronx.  I remember visiting them on the Grand Concourse.  And I think they both worked -- like, tailors -- 8:00they worked in the garment industry, I think, in the factories or whatever.  They lived in a small apartment.  And I don't remember them speaking Yiddish.  They were -- our family was observant -- both -- well, my father's parents were (UNCLEAR), and sometimes we would travel to spend holidays with them.  We never lived in New York, but we would travel and visit them.  I don't know -- I don't know what to say.  I don't remember -- I mean, my grandfather died when I was about ten years old -- my father's father.  My father's mother lived for many years, and I remember her -- she died when I was in my thirties, so I remember her very well.  And she was very worldly -- she never had an educ-- you know, formal education, but she was very informed about things in the world and very 9:00interested.  She spoke English.  I know they spoke Yiddish -- they were able to speak Yiddish, but didn't speak Yiddish at home.  I mean, I picked up a few words here and there, but the language that they spoke was basically English.  And my mother's parents, after they came to the United States, they -- I think they lived in New York for a while -- then, they bought a farm in Lakewood, New Jersey, and became chicken farmers.  I was told that they did that because my mother's brother was going to be drafted, and if you were working on a farm, you could maybe escape the draft -- the US draft.  But he was drafted anyway.  But I remember visiting the farm in Lakewood, New Jersey.  And, you know, they were chicken farmers.  There were chicken coops, and my grandfather wore overalls.  10:00And I think that they ran -- they had a large house in Lakewood -- and I think my grandmother -- or they had a bed-and-breakfast -- like, a kosher bed-and-breakfast there.  That's what I was told.

AL:  Can you recall what it felt like to be there as a child?

MO:  To be visiting them? 

AL:  Mm-hmm.

MO:  Well, I think it was very nice.  Well, I can remember mostly from pictures -- I mean, I was young.  But it seemed like it was -- everybody was very happy.  There were pictures of relatives.  I remember pictures of an aunt from Israel who came to the farm to visit.  Both sets of grandparents were there.  When I look at the pictures, I'm kind of amazed, because now I realize that all those smiling faces in the pictures had just lost relatives -- I mean, 11:00a lot of their family.  And you wouldn't know it, to see them -- it was just -- what, I was born in 1947, so I see pictures in '47, '48, '49, '50, and the happy grandparents around me, and my sister four years later -- we came to the farm to visit.  I realized that my grandmother had lost several sisters in the Holocaust just a few years earlier, and my grandfather lost his sisters in the Holocaust, and, you know, I see their smiling faces.  It's just amazing to me that they could be so resilient and just go forward and build new lives, having suffered that.  You know, their whole world was destroyed -- and people in their families and who were close to them.  My grandfather also -- my mother's father -- also lost his parents in Theresienstadt.

AL:  Did you get a sense as a child about the loss?

MO:  No.  They really didn't talk about it.  It's kind of interesting.  I brought with me today this book that my grandfather had written that we all had copies of.  It was the only book that he -- he was a Yiddish writer -- poet and writer -- and he published a lot of books in Europe, and he published one in the United States, which is the one that I have and all the family members had.  It's got a blue cover, and we all have copies of it.  And so as a kid, I would just remember this -- we call him Opi, so this was Opi's book -- it was sitting there, I never really thought too much about it.  But then, as I got older, I took more of an interest and started looking at it.  And I saw, in the book, he has a page where he -- it's entitled "Kulam k'doshim" -- that's Hebrew -- that 13:00means, "They're all holy."  So in that chapter, he writes in Yiddish about all the family members who were lost in the Holocaust -- you know, this sister and her husband and their children, and the other sister and her husband and their children, and his parents, that were killed in Theresienstadt, and his sister, who died in Warsaw.  And I saw from his writing how he was grieving.  But you wouldn't -- they didn't talk about it.  I think that was pretty common -- that people didn't talk about -- many of the survivors didn't talk about it until later on.  So I didn't get a sense of sadness.  Really, I think they were amazingly resilient and they just went about starting new lives.  My parents, 14:00too.  They didn't really talk about it much.

AL:  In what ways do you think that history influences your interest in researching about your grandfather?

MO:  Well, it definitely does.  I mean, I think when I first remember being interested, in my twenties, and I did oral histories of my grandmothers -- which I'm really glad I did -- later, I did other relatives -- my grandfathers weren't alive at that time.  But I just had an interest.  Who are their parents and their families, and what do they remember of their lives earlier?  So I'm really glad I have those, and I had them made into CDs -- it was only audio tapes that I did at the time.  But I think -- I mean, the Holocaust and the 15:00fact that our family survived that, that was very much in my mind as I was -- older, maybe not until I was maybe in my twenties, but it really was.  I thought a lot about it.  And when I was also in my later twenties, I went to the YIVO summer program, because I wanted to learn Yiddish.  Because my grandfather was a Yiddish writer, and I think I wanted to understand some of what he wrote.  And so I've kind of taken an interest in that and in family history -- oral histories that I've done over the years.  And then recently, since my mother died, I think I've become more active.  Because now I'm it -- there's no other generation to go to for memories.  I'm kind of it.  So I think I feel a need to record or give to my -- I have four children and eight 16:00grandchildren so far, and I want to pass on to them the kind of knowledge of their background and those things that I think are important.  So I've kind of gotten more active, which is why I contacted the Yiddish Book Center about this interview.

AL:  I want to talk about your twenties, but before we move on, I want to hear a bit about moving and the neighborhoods that you grew up in and the congregations and --

MO:  Well, my father was a rabbi.  He got his smikhe -- his rabbinical degree -- at Yeshiva University.  And so he was a young rabbi.  My mother married him when she was nineteen.  Actually, it was kind of an interesting story.  They 17:00met in New York.  The rabbi from Munich, who was a Rabbi Wiesner -- I heard this story from my mother -- he used to have a melave-malke [end-of-Shabbos meal, lit. "ushering out the queen"], which is a kind of a -- after Shabbos -- like a get-together after Shabbos, and it was called a "melave-malke."  And every year he had a melave-malke for all the Jews from Munich who had come to New York -- who had emigrated to New York.  So my mother went to that gathering and met my father there, because both of their families were from Munich.  And so -- you asked about moving around.  So at any rate, so my father had a series of congregations.  His first congregation was in Danville, Pennsylvania, which is a small coal-mining town in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania.  And 18:00that's where I was born.  And actually, I visited there -- when my youngest son was born, I went with my parents -- we drove one day up to that town, which -- the Jewish congre-- the synagogue had become a Masonic lodge.  But my parents showed me where they had lived, et cetera.  So I lived there.  Then, from there -- I think my parents were very happy there, but they didn't think it was a good place to raise Jewish kids, because it was in the middle of nowhere.  So then my father had other congregations.  He went to Peabody, Massachusetts -- I think that's where I started first grade or something.  Also, I know he also had a congregation -- probably before I was born -- in New Hampshire -- Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  But at any rate, so we moved to Peabody, then we 19:00moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where I started elementary school.  I first went to a day school -- a Chofetz Chaim Hebrew Day School.  And then I went to public school there.  And then we moved to Seattle, where my father had a congregation there, and I went to the Seattle Hebrew Day School.  And then we moved to Berkeley, California, where there was no day school -- no Jewish school -- so I went to public school.  And my father used to tutor me and my sister.  And there was another rabbi who also tutored with my father, 'cause he had children also and he wanted to give them a Jewish education.  So -- lived in Berkeley, and then moved to Southern California -- La Mirada, California, where my father had another congregation.  And at that point, I was graduating high school, so 20:00I went to college back in Berkeley.  I went to college and graduate school in Berkeley, got married, had two children there, and then eventually moved to New Jersey, where I am now.

AL:  Can you talk a bit about your father's sort of unique perspective on Reform and Orthodox Judaism?  I know that he was sort of inclusive.

MO:  Yeah.  I think it was more common in those days.  So he had smikhe -- rabbinic ordination -- from an Orthodox seminary, from Yeshiva University.  He was a student in the shir -- or the class -- of Rav Soloveitchik, who was a well-known rabbi.  And he started out as an Orthodox rabbi.  And then I think he wanted to go into academics, and he went to the Hebrew Union College, which 21:00is a Reform seminary where his -- my mother's brother eventually became the head of the Reform movement, and I think at that point, my uncle was already active in the Reform movement.  So at any rate, my father went to the Hebrew Union College, got his PhD there, but in the end, didn't go into academics, and he continued in the rabbinate.  And he served in Reform congregations for a number of years after that, which was kind of unusual, as we were observant.  So I would go to the Orthodox Hebrew day school, but then on Sundays, I would go to Sunday school -- the Reform Sunday school -- because I was the rabbi's daughter, and I got to go to Sunday school, like all the other congregants.  So -- kind of had -- you know, I was Jewish -- it wasn't necessarily all Orthodox, all 22:00Reform.  And I think there are a number of rabbis who were more like that -- that maybe they had Orthodox training and used to serve in Conservative congregations -- it was less of a strict division, I think, the way things have turned out now, where you don't have that much happening.

AL:  Do you remember any family rituals, any holidays, that are particularly special to you?

MO:  Well, we celebrated -- we were observant, we celebrated all the holidays.  I remember there were nice holiday meals.  My mother always had all the silver.  We had the silver that had an "S" for "Schindler" -- that was, I guess, inherited from her family.  I remember Pesach seders -- just always very 23:00lovely meals with guests and nice white tablecloths and cloth napkins.  And I remember my father leading seders.  My father was very scholarly, and he always had new, kind of interesting insights that he would present at the seder.  And we always had a lot of discussion.  I mean, I know some people go through the Seders very fast.  We used to talk a lot -- discuss each part, and people would bring up questions, and so our Seders would go very late -- still do -- but with a lot of discussion.  I mean, that I remember.  My parents used to like to sing -- on Shabbos, they would sing zmires, which is, you know, songs -- 24:00traditional songs.  And they would enjoy that.  What else?

AL:  Do you remember any songs in particular?

MO:  I do.  (laughs) I don't know if I want to sing, but -- I do.  Do you want me to sing them?  I don't know --

AL:  If you feel comfortable.

MO:  -- I mean, I'm not -- it's nice to preserve some of the melodies.  There was, like: (singing) "Ya ribon olam v'olmaya, v'olmaya,/ant hu malka melech malchaya, melech malchaya [Hebrew: God, Sovereign of the world and all the worlds, and all the worlds/You are the Ruler, rule of all rulers, ruler of all rulers]."  So that was one.  I can't think of others right now, but that was -- I think now, people still sing zemirot, but the melodies have changed, so some of those older memories, people don't sing them as much anymore.  So I 25:00hope somebody preserved them.

AL:  Before I move -- down the line of your life, what sort of values -- be they Jewish or life, human values -- do you think your parents wanted to pass to you?

MO:  I think it was very much Jewish values.  I think Judaism was very important to them.  They went to a lot of effort to give me and my sister Jewish educations, even when it was difficult.  I think it was really important for them that we carry on Jewish traditions -- and we have.  We're both -- both my sister and I are observant, and have raised our children that way.  I don't know if this is exactly a value -- I know my father really loved the United 26:00States, and he thought this was a wonderful place.  I mean, this is the place that saved him, and I think he always just felt really wonderful about America.  I don't know.  They were kind of -- generous.  Education was really important to them both.  My mother got a PhD when she was already a grandmother, but she had two master's degrees.  I remember her telling me that she used to get -- she was pregnant with me and was going to college to get her master's degree, and she would go on a bus, and when the bus would go over the railroad tracks, she would get off of the bus before the railroad tracks so they wouldn't bounce when she was pregnant with me, and then the bus would pick her up on the other side of the railroad tracks.  So -- values of education and 27:00Jewishness.  My mother just died a little more than a year ago, and I think she had a lot of satisfaction from the fact that she had raised really good Jewish daughters who were passing on the values and traditions to their families.

AL:  So, can you tell me a little bit about -- it seems like you were in California for your twenties?

MO:  Yes, I was.

AL:  Can you tell me a bit about Berkeley and --

MO:  Yeah.  So I was in Berkeley both as a college student, from '65 to '69, and then graduate school, and then married, and had two of my four children there.  And there was a very nice Jewish community in Berkeley.  It was 28:00different from the East Coast, in the sense it was -- many people were very spiritual and interested, but didn't have much Jewish background -- maybe weren't observant of things, but really wanted to learn more.  There was a shul that we went to, Beth Israel, that was a very nice Orthodox shul -- it's still there -- and had really interesting, nice, creative people.  And it's kind of a small community there, but very nice and warm.  I also was in high school in Berkeley, also.  So it's a really wonderful community.  It doesn't have some of the institutions that the East Coast does.  I mean, now I've lived on the East Coast but also on the West.  The East Coast has more Jewish day schools 29:00and all those things.  California didn't have as much.  It has some things now.  Not many kosher restaurants -- although LA does, but Berkeley -- wasn't a whole lot of that.  But we all made do with vegetarian restaurants and other things that were available.

AL:  Can you tell me about the young Judaism California group that you were involved in?

MO:  Young Judaea?

AL:  Mm-hmm.

MO:  Well, when I was in high school, there was a really strong Young Judaea group.  And actually, I know somebody that you had -- I mean, that the Yiddish Book Center had interviewed -- Adrienne Cooper, who passed away -- she was part of that.  I knew Adrienne.  She was in the Oakland group, I was in the Berkeley group.  But there was a really strong Young Judaea group.  I don't know how that happened, but there was a lot of us teenagers that were really involved, and we used to have meetings and talk about Zionist ideas and Zionist 30:00thinkers.  And the Oakland group and the Berkeley group would get together and have kum-zitses [meetings] and sing and have Zionist discussions.  It was really great.  A lot of people from those groups went on Young Judaea Year Course.  I don't remember if Adrienne did, but a lot of people had spent a year in Israel with Young Judaea.  So I think that was an important part of the community at that time.  I don't know if it's still going on that way.

AL:  Do you have any memories of Adrienne from that time period?

MO:  I really don't.  I mean, I didn't know her very well -- she was just one of the crowd.  I mean, we would see her at functions.  I really didn't know her.  And I didn't really keep up with her as she got older -- I mean, I knew about her and her career, but I wasn't really connected personally later in our lives.

AL:  Can you tell me a bit about your undergraduate education and your graduate work?

MO:  Okay.  Well, so I went to University of California at Berkeley, and was involved -- there was a Hillel there, and also, we had a student Zionist organization, and so I would go there.  I think we had a kosher food co-op or something for a while.  So there was an active sort of Jewish group -- not necessarily religious, but kind of Jewish organizations and things going on there.  And it was a kind of crazy time.  It was the '60s and '70s.  It was the free speech movement.  We got tear gassed by the National Guard, went to demonstrations.  It was a crazy time.  Berkeley, at one point, was occupied by 32:00the National Guard -- they came in with trucks and troops and you had to go by checkpoints, because there had been some -- was the People's Park demonstration, and actually, somebody got killed.  So there was a lot going on -- sort of disruption.  It was interesting times.

AL:  Can you tell me more about that, actually, in terms of -- it seems like maybe your feminist self might have developed during that time period?

MO:  That was definitely happening.  There was a lot of sort of feminist ideas, and that's, I think, when a lot of those things started.  It was just in the air.  I don't know that I belonged to any feminist organizations then, but that was -- it was very common.  There were consciousness-raising groups and 33:00things like that.  Some of the early feminist writers were writing then.  But truly, my mother was an Orthodox Jewish feminist way before I was, so that was already kind of in my life.  I always heard about, "Why aren't women doing this?"  And, "hy is it that women are kept from doing that?"  And my mother had a career.  She was a clinical social worker.  She worked throughout my life.  I remember visiting her at work.  I always thought it was neat seeing her work, and she had two master's degrees and then got a PhD, so that was part of my life.  And she became very vocal as a Jewish feminist.  So it was just 34:00-- it wasn't anything I discovered.  I think I had been raised like that.  And certainly, that was happening in Berkeley and other places around that time.

AL:  How was she a feminist within the context of Judaism and religious practice?

MO:  Well, the first incident that I can remember -- no, that's not true.  She actually told me that she used to put on tfillin, which women didn't do then -- and she was also the wife of an Orthodox rabbi.  She would put on tfillin.  I don't think she did it in public, but she would pray -- daven with tfillin when I was a baby.  I know she -- my father used to have a newsletter that I found a few years ago at the congregation in Pennsylvania -- in the coal-mining 35:00region.  So it was called "Har HaKarmel" -- that was the name of the newsletter.  And my mother used to write in there too -- so they had from the rabbi and from the rebbetzin -- and I found some entries where she would write, encouraging women to go to the synagogue, that they should participate actively.  So that was even when she was twenty, twenty-one years old, she was doing that.  Later in her life, she moved to New Jersey -- my husband and I moved a while ago -- and then she moved when she was sixty-nine -- because my father was sick, so she moved with him to New Jersey.  And she became active in JOFA, the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance.  She studied at Drisha, which is 36:00Jewish women's learning.  After she retired, at age sixty-nine, she wanted to devote herself to Jewish learning, but she really wanted to do the real thing -- she didn't want the kind of things that were adapted for women, but she really wanted to do serious learning.  But she was very vocal.  She used to go -- there's a -- the Jewish day school where my children went, I think they still don't teach the girls the same material that they teach the boys -- there are separate boys' and girls' classes, and the sort of serious Jewish texts, the Gemara, Mishna and Gemara, only the boys learn that from the text.  And my mother used to go to the principal and talk to him about that, and say, "Why aren't the girls learning what the boys are learning?"  And she used to send 37:00him articles.  I know she would give me articles.  "Can you make copies of these, 'cause I'm going to send them Rabbi Gross?"  (laughs) I'll mention his name -- he's still there.  She used to go -- I mean, she was very vocal about it.  She went to the rabbi of our congregation -- they had a youth service for teenagers, and so the boys would -- you know, in the Orthodox setting, the boys lead services, the girls don't, so there really wouldn't be a role for the girls.  And my mother would encourage the rabbi -- say, "Well, you should give the girls something to do."  And he said, "Well, the girls don't show up."  And my mother said, "That's because they're not given a role."  So they would have that argument.  I don't know that things ever changed with that, but she had a very active dialogue with the Orthodox rabbi of our synagogue, also.  For 38:00her eightieth birthday, what she wanted to do was to give a talk in front of the congregation -- of our Orthodox congregation during the services.  And she was going to ask the rabbi.  And she told me, she says, "I'm afraid he's gonna say no."  And she did ask him, and he agreed.  And she gave a d'var Torah [Hebrew: talk on the weekly Torah portion] -- she had researched it and spoke about -- I think she spoke about teshuvah, which is "repentance."  She spent months on that.  And she went to the synagogue and practiced -- she had me videotape her and practiced so she could deliver it well.  And that was wonderful.  I mean, I remember that day, she went up to the bima when it was time, and the congregation stood up for her, which was really nice -- 'cause in the kind of 39:00traditional Orthodox congregations, that's unusual -- I mean, in a lot of congregations, it's not.  But she was really a fighter for those things.  And her grandchildren were aware of that -- her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  She used to study Gemara with her grandchildren in her -- anyway.  So I kind of grew up with that environment.

AL:  Do you remember any conversations that you had with her that might have stuck with you -- or observations that she had of her studies?

MO:  I don't remember anything specific.  I just remember that she was always kind of fighting for women's rights.  If there would be a bat mitzvah -- we 40:00were invited to a bat mitzvah or she would hear about a bat mitzvah, she would say, "Well, what are they doing?"  And you'd say, "Oh, well, they're having a party."  She's say, "No.  But what's she doing?"  In other words, what's she learning?  What's she speaking about?  You know, that the bar mitzvah girl had to do something that was learned or participatory -- that was important.  My father was very supportive of that.  He used to teach my mother -- he had the advantage of more education, Jewish education -- he would learn with her.  He was very supportive of that.  He taught her how to read the haftorah.  But she was always -- I mean, she would not relent about those things.  She was just -- it was really important to her, and it really bothered her when girls weren't 41:00given the opportunity.  It bothered her that she didn't have the opportunity for that when she was growing up.

AL:  And so in your -- raising your own children -- I know that you went to Camp Ramah and you also sent your children to Jewish camp, and I wonder what values you've passed on to them?

MO:  I've tried to pass on, certainly, Jewish tradition, and that -- I mean, we're observant, but yet not -- I mean, we're not extremely right-wing Orthodox.  I think my children have kind of turned out or adopted a lot of those values of being observant -- observing the tradition -- but being open-minded and open to all Jews and different ways of observing -- or different 42:00ways of being Jewish that might not be what they do but that they are open to that.  Or, I mean, whenever -- when we would go on family vacations when my kids were young, we would always find a synagogue wherever we were, and even if it wasn't the kind of synagogue we were used to, we would go to the services.  We would always take the kids, and so they would see a lot of different ways of Jewish observance in different towns we would go to for vacations.  And so I think that they're open-minded but observe tradition.  And those of them who have children already are raising their children like that.

AL:  Is there a synagogue that you remember visiting on a trip with your family?

MO:  Yeah.  Well, there's -- (laughs) -- there was a synagogue in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  We took them to New England, and there was a synagogue we went 43:00to.  It was interesting.  On Friday night, they had more of a very Reform service, and then on Saturday morning, they had a more traditional service.  And actually, when I was in that synagogue, it occurred to me that my father, I thought, had had a congregation in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, so I asked the rabbi or someone.  And they said, You know, let's look.  Because one of the congregants, an older man, had just written a history of the congregation.  So he took me down and opened the book, and there was -- Rabbi M. Arthur Oles had been the rabbi there for a while.  It was an Orthodox congregation at the time -- it wasn't when we visited.  So that was nice.  I got a copy of the book -- the history of the congregation.  But I think that was interesting, 'cause the kids were -- it was really different.  Like, the Friday night service -- I 44:00mean, it was just really very different kind of thing.  But the kids went, and we all participated.  Another time, we were in -- where was it that there was the -- in Squaw -- not Squaw Valley -- in the East, they had the Olympics -- where was -- I don't remember.  Well, anyway.  It was somewhere in the East.  And there was -- it was in a vacation area with -- oh, Lake Placid, that's where it was -- where there had been the Olympics once.  But at any rate, so we went to an old synagogue there, and the rabbi asked -- this was in the summer, when there were a lot of tourists, and I guess a lot of the regular congregants weren't there, so he asked at the beginning of the services, "So, what kind of service should we do?"  Like, do you want Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, 45:00depending on who was there.  So I think they chose Conservative.  But anyway, so there's different ways of doing things.

AL:  I wanted to ask you about your own spiritual practice, and what it means to you -- maybe how it's connected to your identity.  I mean, really, anything that you want to explain about it.

MO:  Well, I think for me, I'm sort of Orthodox -- observant -- modern Orthodox, I guess you would call it.  But for me, the connection to past generations is really important -- that feeling that people have been doing this 46:00for thousands of years, and I kind of see a wisdom in it that -- you know, something that's been around for that long, there must be a wisdom in it.  Sometimes I don't even agree with -- it doesn't seem like it makes sense, but I figure there's a wisdom in the generations.  And I like the connection.  When I'm in the synagogue or when they blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah or at the end of Yom Kippur and you kind of think, like, there have just been generations -- thousands of years of Jews who have been standing around and listening to the same sound -- the shofar.  I really like that feeling of connection to the generations -- that you're part of something that's been going for a long time and you want to continue it.  And that gives it a kind of richness that's important to me.

AL:  This might be too abstract of a question for -- but, what is the wisdom 47:00that sometimes you might stumble upon -- that, you know, that you -- I know it's elusive sometimes --

MO:  (laughs) Okay.  Well, one thing is -- I mean, getting back to the feminist thing, the kind of roles -- you know, women are supposed to do this and aren't supposed to do that or whatever -- I mean, that's not exactly how I live my life, and I think my husband and I have a pretty egalitarian household.  But sometimes I think that there's probably a wisdom that women and men sort of do take different roles, because -- like, my husband goes to the synagogue every morning -- well, actually, I'm glad I don't -- I did that for the year when I was saying kaddish, but not many women do that -- but I was thinking that probably you need somebody who's really focused on getting the kids to school or 48:00somebody who doesn't have to worry about being exactly at the synagogue at the right time.  Of course, you still have to worry about getting to work and it's not like you -- you know, everybody -- women work, and that's really important, and I think it's very important, but I think there's something about, maybe, men and women and having different roles that is helpful.  I mean, I hate to -- I don't mean it in a non-feminist way, but I think sometimes, it might actually be a good thing -- or necessary, when you have a family life and there are so many things to do.  And women are more -- you know, you have to nurse your baby, you're more connected, so you kind of naturally fall into that part of it for a period of time.  So I think that's some of the wisdom that I see -- when you 49:00ask about that.  I mean, there are maybe other things -- I'm sure there are.  But -- um -- I mean, even -- I -- this is probably controversial, so -- I think that as women's participation in leading services and in synagogue life increases, unfortunately, I think, men's participation decreases.  I think that's been an issue in the Reform movement.  I mean, I don't know -- I mean, people may argue with that, 'cause I think it was an issue for a while -- maybe it still is an issue -- I don't know if it is.  But I kind of wonder about that, because it may be that when men don't have leadership roles, they drop out.  I really don't know.  I mean, there's this kind of -- in the somewhat Orthodox interpretations or justifications for things, they say, Well, women 50:00have an innate sense of spirituality, so they don't need to do all these things in the synagogue -- because they have an innate sense of spirituality and they sort of are drawn to these things anyway.  So I think, Well, I don't know.  Does that have any truth to it?  I mean, I -- feminist-ly, that sounds like sort of a justification for keeping women out of leadership roles, and I think it is.  But when I've seen or heard that -- when there's more -- women more in leadership roles in synagogues or -- you know, women rabbis, et cetera, the men drop out.  I don't know if that -- is there a wisdom to that, or is it just that men need to get it together and stay with the synagogue even when they're not the only ones that are in leadership roles?  I don't know.  I mean, that's kind of controversial, but sometimes I wonder, Is there a wisdom to the way 51:00things were done?  But I don't know, because I don't necessarily do things that way, either.

AL:  So, are you still involved in JOFA?

MO:  I'm somewhat involved in JOFA.  And I'm involved in a women's tefillah [Hebrew: prayer] group that -- we have services on our own, have a Torah.  I read from the Torah, other people do, too.  So we have our own service.  We do that once a month.  And so that's been an important part of my life.  And it's a very nice group.  And that's kind of how we dealt with that conflict of, you want to be a traditional Jew, but it bothers you that -- you know, the kind of 52:00oppressive way women are treated in that world sometimes.  So a group of us have kind of dealt with that by having our own group.  It's not only us -- I mean, there are women's tefillah groups that have developed in a lot of places.  We've been around for at least twenty years.  So that's kind of how we do it.  Most of us belong to Orthodox congregations where we can't do those things publicly, but we do it in our tefillah group.  It's a very knowledgeable, educated group of women who run the services.  And it's very nice.

AL:  So can you give me a snapshot of your life now?  Where do you work?  Where do you live?

MO:  Okay.  I live in Highland Park, New Jersey.  I work full-time as a psychotherapist at the Medical School at Rutgers Health Sciences.  It used to 53:00be called the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, but it just switched to join with Rutgers.  And I have four children and eight grandchildren, and so I'm pretty involved with them.  And take a Yiddish class on Monday nights the past few months.  I've been also working on -- when I have time -- trying to write something about my grandfather.  Because I have discovered a lot of material about him and by him, and I want to put it together for our family -- and maybe for a broader audience, too, because he was a very interesting person, and his poetry is really incredible -- as much as I can understand it, because it's in Yiddish.  And I've also discovered a lot of 54:00archives of his papers and correspondence all over the world, and I kind of want to put it together, because I'm the only one who knows about a lot of these things, and it would be lost if I didn't find a way to record it.  So that's what -- in my spare time -- either being with the grandchildren or doing other things -- I mean, I'm involved in -- I do other things, so I work on that.

AL:  And where do you take the Yiddish classes?

MO:  I go to YIVO.  I just started this last semester, so I've been taking Yiddish -- intermediate Yiddish, with Paula Teitelbaum as the teacher.  So it's really nice.  It's been a really nice experience.  Because I want to be able to understand my grandfather's poetry and his letters, and I really felt like I needed to update my Yiddish.

AL:  So have you been able to translate any of his letters or poems?

MO:  Some.  Yeah, and I find it's really helping.  I understand it better.  I actually had -- through the internet, I had asked to find people who wanted to translate -- there were a few people who helped out and translated some of his poems, and that was very nice to have that help.  But I think I'd like -- I mean, I don't know that I can ever translate, really, his poems, because I'm not a poet, and I think you sort of have to have that inclination to really do a good job, but I'm able to translate some of the other things about him.  I found a lot of things that were written about him in Yiddish, and so it's really helped me.  But I'm not sure exactly where I'm going to go with it.  I actually was hoping to find a graduate student or someone who wanted to do a dissert-- I mean, there's a lot of material, it'd be a wonderful dissertation for somebody who wants to either go with the poetry issues or his life in the 56:00interwar period in Poland, where he was very active in journalism and he was involved in the Oylim movement with Nathan Birnbaum.  And there's just a lot of documentation that I've found -- hundreds of letters, both to him and from him to other figures of the era that were very active.  And so I would love to find somebody who wants to do a dissertation or write a book, but maybe then I'm the person to do it, because it's been hard to connect with somebody who is willing to take that on, so --

AL:  Can you tell me about his work with the Oylim movement and --

MO:  Well, I don't know a whole lot about it, but I know he was close with Nathan Birnbaum, who was the founder of the Oylim movement.

AL:  Can you explain the Oylim movement?

MO:  I can't explain it too much, actually.  I don't fully understand it.  That's one thing I would like to learn more about.  But it was, I think, the idea of some kind of spiritual -- people who would kind of embody -- live this pure Jewish life, and maybe live together and work together.  I don't really actually fully understand it.  I should understand more.  But I know that my grandfather was involved with that.  He has some poems that he wrote about it.  He has book plates that are in his books that have his name but also have the motto of the Oylim movement, which, I think, was, "Das, rakhamim [Religion, mercy]" -- and something else.  I don't remember.  But anyway, so that was important to him, obviously.  So I want to learn more about that.  That's one 58:00of the reasons I came to the AJS -- to hear some of the history -- or what I could hear -- presentations that would help me understand the environment that my grandfather was living in and that he wrote in.

AL:  I want to get more of a sense of your grandfather's career and studies, so I wonder if you could give just a short explanation of things and orient --

MO:  Okay.  So, he -- well, a lot of what I know of his history was from -- somebody wrote -- somebody named Binyamin Kader, who I don't know who he is, but he wrote an introduction to my grandfather's book that was published in 1950, which has a lot of biographical material.  And that's actually how I found out a lot about my grandfather's history and his own parents, my great-grandparents.  I mean, it's wonderful, because I have, like, ten pages 59:00about my family history that I wouldn't have known.  But he was born in Tyczyn, Poland, to a Hasidic family.  And his father was Avrom-Itzhak Schindler, who had a little shtibl -- like, a little synagogue -- in Munich.  So the family moved to Munich, and my great-grandfather had a shtibl.  But he also was a grocer.  And I think that my grandfather -- at some point, I think he became less observant.  He was raised in a Hasidic family, but I don't think he stayed as religiously observant, but always was very spiritual and very passionate about Judaism and about Jewish spirituality.  And I know he had to leave home as a young man and traveled.  He was in -- he was a prisoner of war in the 60:00Kirghiz steppe in Russia, and he worked with the -- they called them "subotnikim" -- they were Sabbath-observing non-Jews in Russia.  I've seen articles, and my grandfather wrote an article about them.  So he lived among them, and I think he taught them Jewish things for a time.  I don't know all about all of his travels, but then he came back to Munich.  He wrote for the Bais Yaakov schools -- that was religious Jewish education for girls, so I think that's interesting, because he also kind of had a tendency to support Jewish education for girls.  That was a whole new movement.  It was founded by this 61:00woman, Sarah Schenirer, and he wrote textbooks for the Bais Yaakov schools, and he wrote for their journals -- he wrote poems and things for the journals.  In his book, there's a poem about Sarah Schenirer, who founded the Bais Yaakov movement -- he wrote a poem about her.  And he also wrote anthems and songs for the -- I forgot what it was called -- like, the Orthodox -- was it "Pirkhei"?  I forgot what it was called, but anyway, for Orthodox youth organizations, he wrote anthems for them.  He published a lot with -- I don't know, fifteen, twenty books of poetry and stories.  And he wrote for a lot of publications.  62:00I see a lot of correspondence on letterheads of different newspapers and journals that he wrote for.  So he was very active.  And, again, in the Oylim movement, he was involved with Nathan Birnbaum.  So he had correspondence -- I mean, I found this correspondence of his -- over a hundred letters -- that he had left in Germany.  I mean, that was kind of interesting.  My mother happened to find out about that by chance.

AL:  How did she find out about it?

MO:  Yeah, that was really quite a story.  She and my father in the 1960s went on a trip to Germany.  It was their first time back since they had lived there and escaped.  And it was Yom Ha'atzmaut -- Israel Independence Day -- when they were in Munich.  I think they just spent a few days there.  And there was this 63:00community celebration for Israel Independence Day, and my parents went.  It must have been a small Jewish community at that time in Munich, and I think they must have introduced themselves to people or whatever -- you know, We used to live in Munich, and here we are, and the Schindler family, and the Olesinsky family.  So somebody came up to my mother -- she said it was a Professor Price, I believe, who was visiting from Israel -- and he -- this is what my mother told me -- he said to her, "I want you to meet me tomorrow at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, because I have something to show you."  So my mother met him there the next day, and he, I guess, asked the librarian or whatever -- there was a box of correspondence that my grandfather had left at that library.  I mean, my grandfather was no longer living, but when he left Munich in the 1930s -- I think, realizing he was never gonna return -- but he 64:00felt like it was important to preserve these letters.  And these were letters to him, not from him, from all over -- Jews all over Europe -- they were from Holland and -- oh, gosh, all over the place -- there even was a letter from Israel.  I mean, I have -- most of -- almost all of the letters are in Yiddish, and my Yiddish isn't great, so I only have a vague idea.  But it's interesting.  Some of the letters are very idealistic -- and these are people who didn't know my grandfather but knew of him and were telling him their life stories and talking about -- some words about the Oylim movement -- so it was people who were very idealistic.  There was also correspondence from the various publications that my grandfather was writing for.  So I don't know why, but he felt that it was important to preserve these.  And he couldn't take them with him when he was leaving Germany, so he left them at the library.  So my 65:00mother, I guess, told me about it in the 1960s when she went on this trip.  And then it was kind of left.  And a few years ago, I'm thinking about it, and, like, there's these letters in Germany -- who knows if they're still there, even, you know?  They might have been destroyed or lost.  And so I kind of nudged my mother to call them.  I tried to call, but I don't speak German, and I didn't know who to talk to.  My mother -- German was her first language, so she called them, and they said that they would send her copies of the letters and that it would take a few months.  So a few months later, my mother got this box of letters.  Each one was carefully copied with a stamp from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and a number -- I guess they catalogued them or something.  So we got this box of letters that's just amazing.  And some of -- I don't think 66:00we even looked -- I mean, there's just a lot of letters, and in a language that I don't know -- and my mother knew Yiddish a bit, but not a lot.  But some of the people -- she recognized a few of the names.  Like, "This was my Tanakh teacher, and he was killed in the Holocaust, and this was my music teacher, and he was killed in the Holocaust."  But most of the letters, none of us know who they were from.  So that's been really on my mind, 'cause I feel like these -- it shouldn't be lost.  My grandfather thought this was important to preserve, and I've got these voices of people -- I think many or most of them were killed in the Holocaust -- and I really want to do something with them, I mean, this is my thing.  I just feel like I don't want to leave them in this box, because -- without -- I don't know, either -- I'm really not sure what to do.  I've looked around for, again, someone who wants to do a dissertation or do research, 'cause 67:00I don't have -- I'm not in this field, and I don't have the background.  I mean, I'm now sort of trying to educate myself more because I may be the only one who is able -- I don't know if I can find someone who's really -- who wants to kind of take this on and research this.  Maybe I can digitize it, and so it's at least available to people.  At any rate, so that's the story of the letters, which is still an unfinished story, because they're still sitting there.  They were in my mother's house, and when she died a year ago, they're now in my house.  So that's the story.

AL:  Very interesting.  I want to ask you about language, and the ways that Yiddish and Hebrew and perhaps even German have influenced your sense of history or identity.

MO:  Okay, well, I don't know German at all.  And it's very interesting, 68:00'cause my mother said that when she and my father started a family, they decided they were gonna speak to their children in German, because then their children could learn another language.  But she said to me, "We just couldn't."  And I think probably 'cause German had such bad associations, she said, "We just couldn't do it."  So they didn't.  And I don't know German, except a few things.  For a long time, when my mother used to count money or something, she would count in German, but she really didn't -- I didn't really -- wasn't exposed to German much.  And both she and my father spoke English without an accent, even though they didn't learn English until they were in their teens and came to the United States.  And Yiddish -- I grew up knowing my grandfather was a Yiddish poet and I heard a little Yiddish around.  I was never really taught 69:00Yiddish.  But I knew -- it was in my consciousness, 'cause Opi was a Yiddish poet, and here we have his book.  And so I think I kind of got an interest in Yiddish 'cause I wanted to be able to understand it -- what he had written, and to know more about it.  And my mother said to me, "I don't know why my father never taught us Yiddish."  So even though he was a Yiddish poet and Yiddish was so important in his life, he didn't teach his children Yiddish, which is strange.  I don't understand -- and my mother actually knew more Yiddish -- I mean, every time I would ask her something, she would know what it meant.  She didn't feel like she knew Yiddish, and she would say, "I don't know why my father never taught it to us," but actually, I think she had absorbed a lot of Yiddish, because she always, if I asked her to translate something, she almost 70:00always knew what it meant.  So I think she knew more than she realized.

AL:  Do you think there might be a reason -- do you have a suspicion about why he might not have passed Yiddish on to your mother?

MO:  I really don't know.  And maybe that was his work, you know?  And I don't know.  Maybe he'd be off writing his poetry or his articles or doing that, and that wasn't -- and that he had a sense that was work, and at home, I guess he spoke German, I think.  At least from what -- you know, it's interesting, it's from what my mother said.  I found a letter -- this is also very interesting, I thought -- my uncle, who became -- my mother's brother became a Reform rabbi -- that's also interesting, because my mother went in the direction of Orthodoxy and her brother was a Reform rabbi who became the head of 71:00the Reform movement.  But when he was drafted into the US Army, sent back into Germany, and was in the Tenth Mountain Division -- the mountain troops -- he was wounded -- at any rate, I found a letter -- which I actually brought a copy of, so I don't know if you're able to scan that or whatever -- but he wrote to my parents from the Army.  I don't know where he was at the time, but he wrote to them in Yiddish.  This was -- he was an adult.  I mean, he spoke English and my parents spoke English and I'm sure they all spoke English and not Yiddish to each other, but he wrote a letter in Yiddish -- kind of Yinglish, you know, and Yiddish -- because I think he wanted -- he didn't want the censors -- things would be censored -- he didn't want the censors to see what he was writing, to 72:00read what he was writing.  Because I saw, he did write in the letters something about "tsentsers [censors]" he wrote in Yiddish letters.  I didn't understand enough to know what he was trying to hide from the censors.  I guess when the soldiers were writing letters, they would have people censoring if they were writing something they shouldn't be writing, but I thought it was interesting -- so he was using Yiddish to kind of get around that.  And --

AL:  Well, we're nearing the end of our time, so I wanted to ask you -- I mean, maybe you want to touch first -- I have a few more questions, but maybe you want to touch first on your uncle and the Reform movement.  I don't know if you have any stories that you want to tell from that?

MO:  No, not really.  But I think it's interesting.  'Cause my grandfather 73:00had a kind of -- I'm not sure -- in one sense he was extremely, deeply spiritual and religious.  Jewishly, his feeling was religious.  His poetry, a lot of it is extremely religious in a Jewish sense, in preserving memories -- his memories of Jewish observance and holidays and God, and from a very Jewish perspective.  On the other hand, when I knew him, he wasn't observant at all.  But he wrote about all this stuff that apparently -- very passionately, so it was really important to him.  I mean, I know that some of the -- he became close with the Lubavitchers, but he didn't even -- they didn't even keep kosher -- when I knew them.  So he kind of had this duality about his life, and I don't really understand -- I haven't sorted out all the pieces of that, I don't know.  But 74:00it's interesting, because he has had two children who went in different directions -- these two parts of his life.  My mother became intensely Orthodox, although also very feminist -- fighting the Orthodox at the same time that she was part of it -- and my uncle -- also very passionate about Judaism -- became the head of the Reform movement.  So both of his children were very passionate about Judaism and very strong and active in Jewish life and very influential.  But it was those two aspects of my grandfather -- it was interesting how they turned out, to express different parts of, I think, his life and feelings.  But other than that, I don't really have anything about my uncle.  He and my mother remained close and never had conflicts about that, but 75:00they just went in different directions, Jewishly.

AL:  Before I ask my closing questions, do you have anything else that you want to share that you weren't able to yet?

MO:  Well, I guess there's one -- I mean this is something about -- because I think I feel a responsibility of remembering family who was lost in the Holocaust.  So one of my excursions to YIVO, I went with my mother and my sister, because we found out that there was another archive of my grandfather's papers at YIVO, in New York.  He had donated papers from when he was in the United States -- so, later in his life -- that we hadn't seen.  So we went to 76:00YIVO, and they took out these boxes of papers.  And I saw a folder that said "[Frieder?]."  Now, Frieder was the family of one -- I said that my grandfather's sisters had been killed by the Nazis, and one of them had -- her last name was Frieder, because she was Schindler, but she had married a Frieder, and so she was Frieder.  And I knew that the Frieder -- the parents and three of their children had been killed in the Holocaust.  And my mother had a first cousin, John Frieder, who was sent away from Germany on the Kindertransport.  He had three sisters, and he -- I don't know why, but he was chosen for the 77:00Kindertransport to be sent to England.  So he got out of Germany to England.  His parents and three sisters stayed in Germany.  He never saw them again.  They were all killed.  So I see in this box, there's a folder, and it has scrawled on it, "Frieder."  So I think, What could be in there from Frieder?  So we take out the folder, and there's a postcard.  It's written to my grandfather and grandmother and my -- you know, it was like, "Uncle Leyzer -- Opi Eliezer -- Tante [Aunt] Sally, Eva" -- my mother -- "and Alex" -- my uncle, in Lakewood, New Jersey.  And it's from Warsaw.  It's a postcard.  And it's signed by the three girls who were killed -- the three sisters of John Frieder, who was sent on the Kindertransport -- his three sisters, who he never saw 78:00again.  They were -- I kind of looked at -- I was stunned.  It was like a voice from the grave -- like, they had sent a postcard to my grandfather, and he saved it and gave it to YIVO.  They were apparently -- I looked -- I kind of figured out from the postcard and Googled around -- they were in this orphanage.  I think you heard about Korczak -- I don't know if you've heard about him, he was a doctor who had an orphanage where the Jewish -- you know, the children whose parents had been taken -- he kind of took care of the children and tried to give them a good life.  I guess it was in the Warsaw ghetto.  I don't know all the details, but -- and apparently, they were all taken -- you know, they were all killed.  And he went with them, apparently.  79:00They took all the chil-- the Jewish children all from this orphanage were taken to the concentration camps and killed, and he went with them.  There was -- I don't know all the details of the story, but I had heard about it.  But from the return address on this postcard, I saw that they had written from the orphanage.  And I'm guessing that their parents gave the older sister, "These are the addresses of your family in America."  And so they wrote a postcard.  So it was like a -- to me, it was like a voice from the grave.  I couldn't believe it.  Like, they were never heard from again, but they wrote.  It was Hannah, Clara, and Susie, I think -- those were the girls.  And so I -- John Frieder, who was their brother, who was sent on the Kindertransport, he survived -- you know, he was in England and survived.  And he had children -- two children.  He died just before I found this postcard.  And I know his children 80:00-- my cousins.  So I immediately called them from YIVO as I left the building, and said, "I'm coming right over," because I got a copy of the postcard.  Because this was their aunts who they had heard about but, of course, never met, because they died as children.  So that was just another piece I just wanted to have remembered and recorded.

AL:  That's really stunning.  First, I wonder if you have a favorite poem of your grandfather's in Yiddish or -- a favorite Yiddish poem or something?

MO:  Not really.  He wrote a poem for me when I was a baby, but I don't really -- I know it's a long poem.  He wrote several poems about the Yiddish language, and I think one of the most well-known was, it's called, "Yidish loshn [Yiddish language]."

AL:  Yeah, I think I might have listened to that.

MO:  Because there's some recordings of it, yeah.  So -- I mean, I know a little of it.  I don't -- I mean, I have the book.  I could read it.  Do you want me to read it from the book, or --

AL:  Sure.

MO:  I have -- it's in his book, which I brought with me.

AL:  Do you want to actually hold up the book first and introduce it?

MO:  Sure.  Okay.  And so hold it like this?

AL:  Yeah, that's perfect.

MO:  So this is "Yidish un khsidish," by Eliezer Schindler, and it was the publication -- the only book he published in the United States, published in 1950.  A lot of his poems were set to music by a composer, Joshua Weisser.  My mother wrote the English introduction to this, and someone named Boris Kader, 82:00who I think was also a Yiddish writer, wrote the Yiddish introduction.  It's a very beautiful book -- very beautiful poems.  So one of the best-known of his poems is called "Yidish loshn," and I will try to find it here.  He actually included a page with his handwriting of "Yidish loshn" -- in his handwriting, and he included that in the book.  So it says -- so "Yidish loshn" means "Yiddish language."  "Yidish loshn, poshet loshn/fun di tate-mames --/bist dokh mole-kheyn azoy,/vi blimelekh in tamez./Yidish loshn, hartsik loshn/fun milyonen brider --/Reb leyvi-yitshak hot mit dir/geshafn frume lider./S'hot reb natan 83:00mayselekh/oyf yidish undz gegebn./Yidish loshn, mame loshn/freyd fun undzer lebn. [Yiddish language, a simple language/from our mothers and fathers --/you are so charming as you are,/like flowers in Tammuz./Yiddish language, heartfelt language/of a million brothers --/Levi-Isaac created/religious poetry from you./Nathan gave us/stories in Yiddish./Yiddish language, mother tongue/joy of our life.]."  By Eliezer Schindler.  There was something also that took my breath away that I saw in this book, which was in the introduction by Boris Kader, he wrote that after the war -- let me -- it's just a couple sentences: "Eynike lererkes fun di beys-yakov shuln velke zenen durkhgegangen ale shive medure gehinum fun di totanishe toytn-kamern un al-pi-neys nitsl gevorn un gefinen zikh itst in amerike hobn dir desteylt vi zey hobn mir mitgeteylt hot 84:00men gezungen shindlers lider fun velkhn hot geshept treyst un bitokhim [Some of the Bais Yaakov schools who went through the fires of hell that were the horrific death-chambers and miraculously survived and are now in America told me that they had sung Schindler's songs together and were comforted and encouraged by them]."  And what that means is that there were some teachers from the Bais Yaakov schools who had survived the camps and who told the story that in the camps, people had sung Schindler's songs -- his poems -- from which they got hope and faith.  So I thought that was really amazing and -- you know, that people got that strength from his poetry -- I thought that was really beautiful.  So, anyway --

AL:  And do you have any parting advice for future generations, your children?

MO:  I -- I think it's a wonderful tradition, and I hope that my children and everyone's children maintains that tradition and finds things that are meaningful and that they can take from it and pass on to future generations.  There's just so much richness in Judaism and in Yiddish literature and in the tradition and people's families, and that hopefully they will carry that on -- pass that on -- and hold it with them.  That's all I have to say.

AL:  Thank you so much.

MO:  You're welcome.

AL:  On behalf of the Yiddish Book Center, also, thank you.  It was really engaging for me.

MO:  Okay.  Thanks.

[END OF INTERVIEW]