TAL HEVER-CHYBOWSKI ORAL HISTORY

ALLIE BRUDNEY: Okay, so, let's, yeah -- sure.  This is Allie Brudney, and today is February 8th, 2014.  I'm here in Berlin, Germany, with Tal Hever-Chybowski, and we're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project.  Tal, do I have your permission to record this interview?

TAL HEVER-CHYBOWSKI: You do.

AB:  Thank you.  So, I just want to begin by asking you: can you tell me, briefly, what you know about your family background?

THC: Yes.  So, my father's parents both come from Żywiec in Poland, next to 1:00Warsaw.  And they escaped the war separately. They didn't know each other, and -- after '39, to Russia and to the Soviet Union, where they lived throughout the war.  And then, my grandfather was in a displacement camp in Munich, as much as I know it. And my grandmother had a period after the war in Danzig, in Gdansk, and then, later, in Paris, doing various Zionist activities.  And then, both of them emigrated to Palestine, too. It was the State of Israel by then, and -- early '50s, where they knew each other, got married. And my mother's side, the main part of the family, the part of the family that we used to meet in 2:00holidays, they come originally from Ovruch in Ukraine, and they escaped in the night, they -- actually, they emigrated after 1919, following the pogroms there of Symon Petliura, and -- during the revolution and the civil war.  And that is part of -- that is the major part, that -- the part that we knew about. I mean, there are -- there's another -- the grandfather of my mother was from [Hosan?], and was from the Ukraine, from the south. And my grandfather that is the father of my mother is from [Rojana?], which is today Belarus, but it was not part of the family lore. We didn't really speak about it.

AB:  Why not?

THC: I think that at the time, was just smaller -- the family from the side of 3:00my grandmother, the grandmother of my grandmother, the great savta [Hebrew: grandmother] Chaya, the grandmother, Chaya, that was her name.  And she was a -- just a mother of a whole clan in Israel, where -- in Palestine then in Israel. And I used to go to Passovers where there were four hundred people who I knew were part of my family, although I didn't know -- exactly know how.  So, that was the family. The other sides, most of them simply were murdered, in the home, yeah.

AB:  You wrote that your parents changed their name.

THC: Yeah.

AB:  Why -- how did that happen?

THC: Yeah, there were several name changing -- so, the name of this Chaya and the grandmother of my grandmother -- also my grandmother -- also, the mother of my grandmother was Birebis, which -- we thought that Birebis is actually 4:00"B'ribit," which means "with interest," a name that probably was imposed on them, which is weird, because it's a Hebrew name in Yiddish, pronounced in the Ashkenazi pronunciation -- I don't know, it could be, too.  But anyway, these -- according to this interpretation, of course this name had to be removed. Had to be, according to the ideology of the time, and this story repeats itself in all of the branches of my family. Moglianski, the grandfather -- the father of my mother changed to Magali, and Chybowski -- my two grandparents, the parents of my father, remained Chybowski. But it was my father, when he got to know my mother -- that they decided that there -- no way that they should keep this diaspora name, Chybowksi.  They would change it to a nice, good Hebrew name, Hever, and -- yeah. The stories of names are very interesting in my family. My 5:00grandmother or grandfather, Megele, was originally Moglianski, was named the -- his nickname throughout my childhood was Megele. Now, I was sure that Megele is like Magal. But actually, he was named Megele before he changed his name to Magal, and "megele [stuffed chicken neck]" is a word in Yiddish. It's something you eat, right? It's like -- I think -- I don't know if it's -- I'm not actually sure what "megele" is, and I understand its etymology, "small stomach."  Yeah, but I think it doesn't necessarily refer to the stomach. Doesn't really matter. I didn't -- never know that his name, this Zionist fighter who fought in the Palmach, right, who changes then -- his first name was Israel, and his second name, Magal, which means seeker, which was also -- has all these socialist connotations. And he was the -- although he was not a sabra [Jewish person born 6:00and raised in Palestine/Israel], he was the figure in my family of that, yes, of the fighter. But his name that everybody called him was a name in Yiddish, Megele.

AB:  Why did you decide to reclaim part of the name?

THC: I never thought about it before coming to Berlin.  It was in Berlin that I started to rethink a lot of things about my identity, about who -- what am I?  What is the connection to Europe? What -- am I returning, am I coming to a new place, and so on. And during that process, I came to understand more and more that the act of erasing of the name is something that is symbolic to the whole problematic situation here.  I mean, the name is just -- it's a great symbol, I 7:00guess, that -- something that all people understand. And it was when I translated the first -- my first book, of Edward Said, "Representations of the Intellectual," that I needed to decide -- was for an Israeli publishing house.  And I had to decide what is going to be the -- what is going to be the name with which I'm going to sign, as a translator. And it was then that I felt that it's time to return to Chybowski. It was actually before I started to learn Yiddish. I mean, it was at the beginning of my studies, before I even knew that I'm going to be obsessed with it.  And so, yes. And then, my father promised me that, "If you'll do it now, one day you will also come back to Chybowksi." He still did not do it. But maybe he will one day. But I'm the only one in my family that returned to it. My grandmother, who's still alive, still is called Chybowski. 8:00But she and me are the only ones. Oh, maybe some others that I don't know.  [BREAK IN RECORDING]

AB:  Great.  Can -- what were some -- were there holidays or events in your childhood that were especially important?

THC: I think Passover -- it was a constant fight, my family, 'cause the family family, the big family, it was up in the north, in the Valley of Israel, Kfar Yehoshua, where I was told that half of this village is related to me.  And it was my mother who always wanted us to go. And the family -- my family was shattered from the day that I can remember. My parents are divorced, and -- since I was three years old. So, the whole notion of family was always precarious.  And going there was some kind of a ritual of regaining the family, 9:00in a way. And then, there was me, my two older brothers -- the eldest never wanted to do anything with family, with a big family. The one in the middle was in between, and I was more like the one that could not really speak for himself, also, that was dragged.  So, I was much more often in those family events than the rest of them. And yet, it was -- yeah, I had -- in my family, also, we had a very ambivalent relationship to the whole family. It's -- I mean, nothing -- there was nothing religious about it. Of course, it was all very secular and, then again, very Jewish. So, I mean, we were told that it's secular, of course, and we were taught, yes, that you can eat bread with a matzo and so on.  That, of course, we know. But now, I understand that it meant much more than I thought as a child. I didn't really understand. I didn't really understand the meaning 10:00of it. So, I would say Passover was the most important -- and then, it became some kind of a conflict in my own family, where I wanted to have Passover at our house. And the only way to convince my elder brothers to join this Jewish holiday that we have presumably nothing to do with was to bring bread along with the matzo, to -- as a sort of, yeah, as a sort of game of reverses, right?  Like, to -- which, I suppose, also, a sort of a ritual. I always mock my oldest brother that he can't do Passover -- only if it's with a -- specifically contrary to what it should be, yeah. So, yeah. That's about it.

AB:  Can you describe this huge Passover seder?  Were there any foods that 11:00were usually eaten, I mean --

THC: Yeah.  I mean, all the Eastern European food that we know, gefilte fish and kneydlekh [dumplings] and so on, and hakt [chopped] liver, and -- the women cooked, as the man did nothing.  The women also cleaned. It was very gendered, I remember. There was a big collectivization of everything. I remember that the women called each other to come and help, and every time -- because it was so huge.  There was -- it was like a small kibbutz. It was not a kibbutz, the notion of, wait a second, why is she sitting there while we are working. It was a big -- a micro-society, in a way, and there was always one person who was the director of Passover, whereas everybody else just wanted to eat, and protested 12:00that we should stop reading the text and move onto the food.  And it was -- yeah, it was a ritualist -- a ritualized -- yeah, I always mocked it. Only today, I understand more and more the importance of it. I understand that these rituals are also part of the game, the idea that nobody understands what it's really about, in my family, at least. Nobody really understand-- also, the Aramaic, they don't understand all of the text, and nobody read it until the end, really, or they didn't.  But actually, now, I understand that this is what Passover is all about -- about people who -- like children, and how you are going to transmit to them -- and it's the problematization of transmission is in the text itself, that you have four sons with different approaches to the whole thing, right? One is evil, the other one doesn't know how to ask, right? This was actually the situation. This was actually the situation in my family.  My eldest brother, the evil, who thinks it -- "I have nothing to do with that," and 13:00the other ones who do not know how to ask, or -- and so on. And I see much more the parallel now between the text and the actual practice, yeah.

AB:  What languages were spoken in your home?

THC: Hebrew, only Hebrew, yeah.

AB:  How did -- were your European roots discussed?  Did your parents talk about --

THC: My what?

AB:  Were the --

THC: My European --

AB:  Right, yeah.  Did your parents talk about the family history?

THC: Well, I think that my family -- it always very radical politically, for the last -- and sophisticated in terms of dealing with negation of the Diaspora and so on.  There were no clear acts of aggression in discourse against Diasporism 14:00in general, or the Diaspora -- or Jewish roots or whatever. Yiddish, whatever you call it. It was not -- I see it in other families, where it's much more -- it's omnipresent -- in my family, it was all directed to one particular individual in my family, my grandmother, where she was called the -- Polish, first of all.  She was referred to as Polish, generally, and each kind of -- caring a bit too much or being overtly cautious about something has been dubbed as -- Polish way of living. So, she was some kind -- in our family, some kind of -- I -- now I criticize it, but as a kid, I participated. I did not understand the full meaning of it, the whole hatred to Diaspora, the whole negation of it 15:00was concentrated in this one individual, who was both funny, grotesque, weak -- all the qualities that are associated in that anti-Diasporaist, anti-Diaspora sensibility.  Yeah. So, no, we didn't speak about specific things. We didn't speak about Shedlets. I later learned that her father wrote a Yizkor book about it, and I read it in Yiddish. But I never knew that he even wrote it. I mean, I never knew that there was any -- and I heard about Shedlets only much later. I think that -- yeah, and the other side -- the one that comes from Ovruch. Yeah, I knew that there was a pogrom. I knew that there was -- but no life, right? There are only glimpses of information about Europe or European life where the 16:00-- those that are connected with why it's bad to be there, right, with anti-Semitism -- with -- no life, yeah.

AB:  Can you briefly describe your neighborhood growing up?

THC: Yeah.  It was mostly one neighborhood in Jerusalem: Katamon and the Emek Refaim, a bit of Baka, where -- places where the Palestinian population was expelled in the war, in '48.  And there was some kind of a merger between 17:00Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. I guess -- I don't know, demographically. But I -- in my memory, my -- in my experience, I felt it was somehow fifty-fifty, but I don't know if it's true.  And very polarized in -- there were places where very rich people lived and others, just one suite to the right or to the left, very poor. I remember it was very, very polarized. I don't know how to describe. There's so many things to describe about the neighborhood where one grew up.  I felt -- especially when I reached my teenager -- like, my teens, I felt that there's a -- either that it -- that environment gets more and more violent, that 18:00there's much more conflicts, much more tensions, people are, in general, more violent, or was it always like this and I just grew up -- I don't know.  But I felt more and more -- for example, afraid to walk in certain streets being Ashkenazi, and being mocked by Sephardi Jews. Or I felt -- I saw much more army and police and people chasing others and guns all the time are -- were present in my youth. Now, living here, in Europe, in Berlin, it's unthinkable to consider how many guns, how many uniforms, how war is constantly present.  So, this sensibility was something that was, of course, also -- it had to do with my developing political opinions. But it was something that grew when I -- since I was twelve or thirteen. And I managed to, yeah, to feel it. But as a young 19:00child, I don't think that I was able to put a finger --

AB:  Looking back on your childhood, what values, what practices do you think your parents were trying to pass on to you?

THC: I think good values.  I'm happy with what they tried -- values of solidarity, humanism, not enjoying one's privileges.  I was -- or, not necessarily not enjoying, but criticizing or being aware of one's privileges, and entertaining a political view that is not necessarily competent, where -- 20:00not necessarily -- how do you say -- entertaining a political view that is not necessarily aligned with your socioeconomic situation, yes.  And to criticize, maybe, everything. Both of my parents are very, very critical people, and they gave me that -- to criticize what you read in the newspaper, to criticize what the neighbor said, to criticize what your teacher said. Criticism. Maybe that's the most important value that they gave me, yeah.

AB:  So, so far, we've been talking about your early life and your childhood.  But let's fast forward, and can you briefly give me a snapshot of your life today, where you live, what you're doing?

THC: So, I live here, in Neukolln, in Berlin.  And I've been living here for 21:00the past five, six years.  It depends how you count. And it has been very international in the last couple of years.  I've lived in various places, never more than a couple of months, in the -- in apartment. I moved -- Berlin to Geneva, Paris, a short period in New York.  And it was also something wanted, something wished. I felt that I need to have this tension of no -- not having a place where I could call home. I'm still -- although this is now my home, I still feel always a bit weird with that notion of home.  I'm not sure if I want a strong notion of home. And I live here, where I have lots of friends in those 22:00very streets. This is why I look for this place here. Mostly not German. I have also German friends, but most of my friends are not Germans. I would say that most of my friends are European, American, and from the Middle East -- not only Israelis, but a lot of friends from Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan and so on.  And, yeah, I study in the Humboldt University, so it's also part of my life here. Recently, I'm almost completely absorbed with Yiddish initiatives here. So, I'm actually trying to make Neukolln a place where Yiddish is -- yeah, where Yiddish belongs. And there's one café nearby where I teach Yiddish and other -- 23:00bookstore café where I teach another course, and I try to make a -- sort of a topography here of Yiddish in Neukolln, and I feel it already.  I meet my friends, I meet my students, I meet people who read with me in the reading group, here, like -- yeah, I don't know if it's a ghetto, a shtetl [small town in Eastern Europe with a Jewish community], I -- it's not important. It's -- there is a certain community that's -- at least an intellectual community, not a community of people of all generations, but an intellectual community, people who are interested in certain things that meet each other, yeah.

AB:  So, you just mentioned Neukolln as the center, but can you sort of describe the neighborhood a little bit?

THC: Neukolln is mostly a proletarian part, originally.  Or let's say historically has been a proletarian neighborhood in Berlin where -- since the 24:00'70s, a very major emigration from Turkey has settled here.  And then, big immigrations also from the Middle East: mostly Lebanon, Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrian mostly -- where it's clear, also, which streets are more Turkish, which streets are more Lebanese or Syrian.  And now, there's a -- what is being termed as gentrification, a word that is used -- the English word that is used here in German-- with not a bit of xenophobia and hatred against tourists, against different groups of people who are associated with raising the rents and so on.  It's part of the politics of Neukolln right now, which is -- yeah, in 25:00terms of how the neighborhood looks, it's clearly much, much, much more diverse. It's a very, very diverse neighborhood in terms of -- you see -- you hear six, seven languages a day if you walk in the streets here.  You meet people of -- yeah, it's much more similar to places that I've been in New York, for example, or -- yeah.

AB:  Has there been any -- have you had any experiences that have been -- let me just ask -- right -- so, you talked about your trip to the Ukraine --

THC: Yeah.

AB:  -- can you -- what made you go and how -- what did you do?

THC: It was initiative of my father.  Was also, in the last years -- first of all, he doesn't live in Palestine anymore.  He lives in New Haven, in Massachusetts, and he's -- in the last year, he's much more interested in Yiddish, in Jewish identity.  He's learning Yiddish, he's a professor of Hebrew 26:00literature. So, now he's doing much less work on national literature that has been written in Israel, which was most of what he did.  Now he does much more research on Hasidism and on pre-national literatures in Hebrew. And one of -- yeah, it was clear that it -- part of his new direction was also -- yeah, it -- pff, in the context of this new direction, he also decided to go to this tour with me, my brother, and my brother's girlfriend, to go to Ukraine, and to -- yeah, it was a literary tour.  It was organized by two intellectuals from Israel. We were in a bus, about twenty people. I was clearly the youngest. No, I 27:00think there was one that was younger than me -- child of the organizer. And it was also very interesting for me. I haven't been to Israel since 2009, and to be in the bus only with Israelis -- it was 2013, I think, my tour -- to be in a bus only with Israelis was a way of -- an ex-territorial Israel there in the bus.  Was very interesting. And, yeah, we did the ten days tour from Odessa to Kiev and through Bukovina and Galicia, and -- yeah, we've seen major points where Yiddish and Hebrew writers have lived and worked. And we've been through Uman and the center of -- now the center of Hasidism in Ukraine. Yeah. That was -- I 28:00did actually -- I went to Ukraine, I went to -- I took the flight to Odessa directly from Vilnius. It was directly after the summer program in Vilnius, so it was, for me, an East European -- or Yiddish or Jewish, I don't know -- summer -- the continuity, yeah.

AB:  What made you -- have there been any experiences that you would say were particularly formative to your sense of Jewish identity?

THC: Yes.  So, first of all, the immigration.  Before that, before coming here, I never thought of myself as Jewish.  I was struggling with my Israeli identity. Am I Israeli or not? Is it the other who defines me or myself, and so 29:00on.  But the Jewish identity was just not in the game. I didn't think about it. It was clear to me that it's irrelevant, and after coming here, it's completely changed.  The Israeli identity became less and less relevant, less interesting for me to grapple with, whereas the Jewish one has become prominent. And I got more and more emotional evidence, let's say, that there is something here that has to be researched, has to be worked.  That is probably the key event for me, at least to think about Jewish identity. And then, I would say that the major events afterwards were -- yeah, anti-Semitic experiences, I would say. 30:00Anti-Semitic experiences with Europeans, where I had to -- yeah, first of all, to acknowledge that there is anti-Semitism, something that -- according to the very leftist -- which is at the same time leftist, but also Zionist in the way that rejecting the Diaspora, this kind of ideology where -- I grew up in, anti-Semitism was an invention of the right wing, right?  Anti-Semitism was not something that exists for the -- and for me to encounter it -- and I must qualify this. It's not anti-Semitism in the way that my grandparents experienced -- for example, in Poland, in high school -- I learned from them crazy stories. No, it was an anti-Semitism that is somehow washed within a philo-Semitism some 31:00kind of -- these experiences where I become a complete object of the other, where I stop being an individual and I'm the Jew for that particular individual, be it a symbol of the betrayal of Judas or a symbol of something great and fantastic that has to come back to Palestine because of messianic plan or has to, I don't know, become Christian, also.  I got this, as well. I think -- I get it, because I speak with certain people and I go to these points where, I don't know, I speak openly -- I don't hide my Jewish identity, I don't have this discourse of -- like many immigrants from Israel here, who think that it's unconnected to them, it's irrelevant for them. I feel it's very relevant, and I speak about it with people, so I guess -- this is why I get this, this very 32:00uneasy mixture of philo-Semitism and anti-Semitism, and --

AB:  Do you have a specific example?

THC: Yeah, maybe the great -- the harshest example was when I went to -- yeah, I met some people in France, in a summer house in France, where I went with my wife and her family.  And they were friends of my wife's parents, who live in Zurich. And she claimed, I guess -- it was right -- she was a teacher in a Jewish school in Zurich, and he was a pastor, a Protestant pastor up in Zurich.  And from the beginning, the encounter with me was -- they said, Oh, 33:00amazing! You're Jewish! Do you know Yiddish? I didn't at the time. And I said, "I don't." "Oh, what a shame. Can you make gefilte fish?" And it was a series of these small questions that reduced me to Jewish, and it was clear that the conversation, for hours, simply cannot go to anyplace else.  And then, it was also, yeah, "We love Jews and we love Israel, why don't you come back to Israel?" And I spoke about the importance of Jewish life in the diaspora, and it became something like, "No, but I think it's better for the Jews to be in Israel." And then, they hate Muslims. They want me to know that they hate Muslims, because I'm Jewish and I would probably like that, 'cause Jews hate Muslims, right?  So, they wanted me to know it. They wanted me also to know what they think about the Arabs that they met in Algeria, trying to say that the 34:00stereotypes are simply true, all the stereotypes, and giving examples and making me -- trying to make me feel more comfortable with them, because we could probably align on that topic. And then, I -- I understood that there was nothing to speak with them about in this region.  I tried to speak about other things, and the climax was when the pasta was served, and I was served first before the guy, and he said, as a sort of a joke -- in German, he said, "Der Jude hat mich verraten," which means "the Jew has betrayed me." And everybody was -- they're all very quiet. There was a silence, and the grandfather of my wife did not really hear it, and he asked again, and he repeated it. "Ich habe gesagt, 'Der 35:00Jude hat mich verraten!'"  And then, yeah, it simply exploded. It simply exploded, and it was the first moment where I really saw that I am nothing to them, that I am a Jew, and everything together just comes -- like the Yiddish and his will of me going to live in Israel, and their hate for other religions, and this very, very old, theologically-rooted fascination with this betrayal, right? Things that I never thought were existing. I thought this is a film, you know? And, yeah, these things got me to think a lot about what I'm doing and about what I should -- to do, and the connection between my own research and my own identity and the importance of explaining certain things to certain people 36:00in certain situations.  (outside laughter) Yeah.

AB:  It's fine.

THC: Yeah?  We'll edit it --

AB:  Yeah.

THC: -- out?  Okay. (outside laughter)

AB:  All right.

THC: Okay?  Yeah, so these kind of experiences were very formative, I think.  Yeah.

AB:  So, you -- how many languages do you -- you speak German, English, Yiddish, Hebrew, French --

THC: French, yeah.

AB:  How has language influenced your sense of identity?

THC: I think that from a very, very early point, when trying to think what is 37:00the contents of my identity, language came as an answer.  I think it's the Yiddishist answer today. Not the Yiddishist answer one hundred years ago, but the Yiddishist answer today, that language and its literature, of course -- language in the broadest sense of the word -- not the grammar, the language -- is a home, yeah?  Language as a homeland, as a place where you can feel at home. This element -- I realized with Hebrew -- much before I started learning Yiddish, much before I was exposed to these very formulations by Yiddishists today and in the past -- it's clear to me that no particular territory or no particular ritual or, of course, no particular blood affiliation or genetic affinity could provide any meaningful answer in comparison to the answers that 38:00language can give you, the way that you think -- the way that you articulate your thoughts.  So, in a way, everything that I do with my Yiddish or Jewish or whatever identity has to do with language. Anything that has to do with my identity, I guess, has to do with language. Immediately.

AB:  Are there any languages associated with different aspects of your life, would you say?  [BREAK IN RECORDING] So, we were just talking about languages, and --

THC: Yeah.

AB:  -- so, are there different parts or aspects or periods of your life that you associate with different languages?

THC: Yeah.  I mean, Hebrew's my native language.  English I learned, as every Israeli, from TV, much more than from school.  And then, the first -- my father always wanted me to learn French, but it never worked.  It never worked. I 39:00hated it, and it took me many, many, many years to find the beauty of this language and to enjoy it fully.  And Latin -- Latin was the first language that opened all the rest for me. It was during the university, where -- yeah, my girlfriend at the time suggested that we both go and learn Latin, and I agreed, and she helped me.  I think without her, it wouldn't work. I'm not good with languages. I know a couple, but it doesn't mean I'm good with them. I -- no, it's true -- they cannot see your face. (laughs) No, no, I think -- even it's a bigger compliment, because it means I really have to work on it.  It's my work, the languages. It's not a talent. My brother is a linguist. He knows fifteen languages. He's talented -- and, yeah, Latin opened all of them, because also 40:00the -- you learn grammar as grammar has to be learned, and you really learn the grammatical components of every Indo-European language.  So, after that, it was very easy to learn German, which I had to, for my studies, for my bachelor in history. And then, this was, of course connected to my immigration, because then the professor said once, "You can go to Berlin for two months for a language course, and it's a great way to learn it. And there are scholarships of the DAD, the D-A-D.  And I tried, and I got it. And then, I learned that Berlin is actually a sane place to live in. Not a great place, not the best place in the world, but a place where, today, one can live in. So, I decided to move here. So, of course German is the language of my immigration, and French is the 41:00language which I speak with my wife. And she's from Switzerland, from Geneva, so that's her first language.  And Yiddish, yeah, that's a language in which I work, constantly, all the time.

AB:  How did you decide to learn Yiddish?

THC: I noticed that I understand a lot of it.  I don't think that I am the first to have noticed that, especially after you have a Yiddish latent -- you have a latent Yiddish in the back of your head, especially through Hebrew.  Today, I understand much more how Hebrew -- I always thought that so many expressions in Hebrew are translations from German, which is, of course -- some of it is maybe true, but the overwhelming majority's -- of course, comes from Yiddish.  And so, the -- Hebrew's very -- the idiomatics of Hebrew are very 42:00Yiddish -- and German and Hebrew, so you can understand quite a lot. You can understand the alphabet. And it began, yeah, it began like this. It began with this project, I think.  One -- there were many beginning to every big project. There are many beginnings. One of the beginnings -- were to read and translate together the book that was -- the Yizkor book that was written by my grandfather, by my great-grandfather. And I tried to do it in Skype with my brother and my father.  Both of us -- all the three of us knew a bit of Yiddish, and we tried to somehow -- now I see the translation, I -- of course, we didn't know Yiddish. We thought that we know Yiddish. A lot of people think that they know Yiddish. That's -- that was the -- feel that I actually don't know Yiddish and I should learn much more before I speak.  That's very salient, going to stay with me. And, yeah, and then, what was it? I think, yeah, the 43:00decision -- no, no, not even Vilnius. I decided to subscribe to the "Forverts." I lived in Geneva for a year. That was before I took any kind of course. I decided I'm going to subscribe to the "Forverts," going to read it every week. Back then, it was every week.  And so, I did, and I read it every week. And my Yiddish was very -- I was really able to read it, the vocabulary and everything improved greatly, but to speak it was something else. And this only in Vilnius, environment where you just speak it, yeah. You speak it in class, you speak it with people, yeah.

AB:  Can you -- what -- but you also learned some Yiddish in Paris, then? 

THC: In Paris, of course.

AB:  Can you describe the Yiddish scene there?

THC: Oh, that was a revelation for me, Paris.  Paris is amazing. Well, I think 44:00-- it seems to me obvious but I could state the obvious.  I mean, there's the Medem Library, the Maison de la culture Yiddish, Medem Bibliothèque, and -- directed by Yitskhok Niborski and Gilles Rozier, yeah, who is the mecca of Yiddish, for me, at least.  I haven't been to the great centers of Yiddish in the United States, I don't know, but here in Europe, it's certainly the biggest Yiddish library. And each -- the center provides, I don't know, fifteen courses for different levels.  There's also another center from which this center has splitted (sic) -- as always, (laughs) which also provides, I don't know, ten, twelve courses. So, there's really a lot of places where you can learn Yiddish in Paris. I met Yiddishists for the first time, people who speak with one 45:00another in Yiddish for fun, for intellectual interests, I don't know.  And many of them, of the young ones actually, the overwhelming majority of the young ones were not Jewish or Jews, yeah. They were fascinated by Yiddish. They were completely absorbed in Yiddish, but they were -- it was -- they weren't Jews and they didn't think of converting to Judaism. I had -- we had a translation group in Yiddish, completely in Yiddish, where we read Latin and translated it to Yiddish and spoke Yiddish to one another.  Eight people -- also with the rebbe, with Yitskhok Niborski. And me and Yitskhok, we were the Jews. And the rest, like seven other people, were not Jews. And there in Paris, I had my first Passover where I found out that I'm the only Jew. We read Yiddish and Hebrew 46:00hagode [the book of readings for the Passover seder], and then I followed them -- I mean, I asked them for directions, because I know nothing about Passover, as if -- right? This is what I thought, that I know nothing about it, because my family's completely secular, of course.  But then, they all look at me and they say, We never had Passover. You should explain -- us, right? (laughs) And then I understood that I actually know one of them is Jewish, and -- but this is not the -- I mean, this is the minority. The majority of students there are Jews, but they are much older, which is also great, because you can speak with people who speak a bit of Yiddish from home. They forgot it, they learned half of it. It's fascinating for me. And it was fascinating for me, being there. It was a whole semester where my Yiddish really got improved, especially thanks to the tutoring of Yitskhok Niborski -- was great, great scholar of Yiddish and a very 47:00fine man.  And I have to say something else. I am looking, I am still trying to think of -- especially with Hebrew, I'm trying to find what is diasporic Hebrew, what is the potential of diasporic Hebrew? I mean, Hebrew has been a diasporic language for two thousand years -- it has been diasporic much longer than Yiddish. But today, it's so clearly a state language, that this -- connected to a certain piece of land. And I'm trying to see how -- I was -- I started to learn Yiddish, actually, thinking that I could learn from it, for my projects in Hebrew, that I could learn from Yiddish, that Yiddish has the answers to some of my questions about Hebrew. Now I see that it has answers in many ways, not only that it is a model for me, or for Hebrew.  It has, also, a Hebrew -- inside of Yiddish that can be described as a diasporic Hebrew. I mean, Yiddish has 48:00preserved much of the diasporic Hebrew that has been negated, forgotten, replaced with other words to reject -- I speak about the Hebrew that I grew up in. And there, in Paris, I finally saw this community of people who live around the language, who understand -- have a feeling of identity that is based on language. It is based on learning the language and its literature -- and speaking it. And I felt this is what I need, and it was very tempting to drop everything with Hebrew and say, "Here, Yiddish. It will give you answers to all of your questions." I'm still unsatisfied. I need to -- I mean, I think that I should work on both tracks at the same time.  But this -- I -- this sense of community that is not big -- I think it's great, I mean, that it's not a 49:00solution for me, it's a solution for a very small -- people that can, through the language, find a common ground, this is something amazing, mind-blowing for me.

AB:  You mentioned Niborski and you wrote that he was a mentor.  Can you describe him?

THC: The mentorship, okay.  Niborski -- only with superlatives, I can describe him -- he is one of the most generous and honest and erudite and good people I know.  He's a beacon. I am very, very afraid of what is going to happen in Paris without Niborski. He holds everything together. He's treated with respect, not because of any kind of pretentiousness or arrogance.  He's treated with respect because of his humbleness and his erudition. He's the most important 50:00lexicographer of Yiddish today. He has written the two most important dictionaries, and the one that we now use in English is mostly translation of his Yiddish-French dictionary.  He is a great person. What can I say about him? I find it -- he's so humble that his humility sometimes, even -- stops him from giving more, I think. And this is generally a problem. You think that you don't know enough, so you don't share it, what you do know, 'cause you think that you don't.  You think you're not a linguist, you think you're not an intellectual. He doesn't think he's a linguist, he doesn't think he's an intellectual. He doesn't consider himself as an academic. He considers himself so humbly it's -- 51:00you can't really -- yeah. I love him. He's a friend, also. He's a great friend, yes.

AB:  So, you also -- you did the Vilna summer program.

THC: Yeah.

AB:  Can you describe that and the Yiddish scene there?

THC: In Vilnius?  As much as I just told you, the Yiddish scene in Vilnius is once a summer, although they have an institute that goes on the whole year.  I didn't have the impression that they have anything there other than the summer program. Very interesting. I felt that the -- first of all, the program was great.  And I really improved my Yiddish there, and the activities outside of the program were also amazing. Still today, you can have there the tour with Fania that I know that everybody had in the old Vilnius and the Vilnius from a 52:00perspective of the partisan -- this is something that will not last for many gener-- many years now.  I mean, you have to seize the opportunity, if you can. And also, it's amazing. These people were -- that these people who converge in this city to learn about the city and the language from all around the world -- I mean, unlike Paris, where I was the outsider who was accepted by everybody, with very warm -- very warmly. In Vilnius, it was clear that it was people taking the flight and doing some Yiddish, and then each one goes to -- other than Dovid Katz, I don't know -- with whom you do not speak there, 'cause there's a conflict, and there's nobody there that really lives there.  I mean, of course, there's the people of the institute, I'm sorry, which are great and very nice. But I mean, we didn't have constant contact with them during the program. And I don't know, I mean I would recommend anybody taking this program, 53:00as long as it exists, and -- yeah. That's it.

AB:  Yeah.  How do you describe Yiddish in Berlin (UNCLEAR)?

THC: Yiddish in Berlin?  I think that there's much that I don't know.  We have this event here where some poems by Avrom Sutzkever were read in a theatrical way, and later there was a discussion where I participated together with Anna Rozenfeld and Janina Wurbs.  And people came to that, the event, that do Klezmer, that know Yiddish, that -- people who deal with Yiddish in different ways than I do, but for much longer than me, I'm sure. And I haven't heard of them.  I didn't -- it's my -- it's me to blame, of course. I am looking for 54:00something very specific. I am looking for people who want to learn the language, perfect it, who want to read the most challenging texts, people who are interested in the philosophy of the language and the history of the language and literature from a very intellectual point of view.  This is what interests me, this is what fascinates me. And this, I did not find here. I found here some -- I think that the volkshochschule [German: folk high school] of the Jewish community, they have Yiddish course. I don't know anything about it. I heard that -- I know that you can learn Yiddish in Potsdam, not far away. But a place where you can really read together texts and debate them -- maybe it exists.  I hope that it does and I hope that these initiatives could merge or have contacts 55:00with -- I'm very happy with what is happening right now in America. I feel that -- I see the emails that I'm sending and I see that the number is growing. I have now twenty people, twenty-five people who are either people who read with me in the Sunday reading group or students, and I feel that there's great potential here. There's great potential here.  But I don't know, I think it's very small what is going on in Berlin. I mean, part of it is what is lacking. What was lacking for me that I knew from Paris, right? In Paris, I was immersed in intellectual conversations about Yiddish and -- something that I simply did not find here, and I felt that something has to be done. I mean, it has to somehow be created. It cannot be created because there's no rebbe here, there's no Niborski. But you can read, you can do the -- do our best.  You can do the best that you can.

AB:  What's been your experience with different Yiddish-speaking populations, with students or native speakers?

THC: Many different experiences.  Ukraine, I met a couple of people who were native speakers, while the Israeli working group simply passed through a synagogue, I sat and spoke with the rabbi in Yiddish and communicated in a way that, of course, you could not in Hebrew or English.  And my grandmother, I tried to speak with her, Yiddish. It's difficult. She's not used to it. She doesn't hear so very well, and she has a very interesting way of understanding Yiddish. She told me that she would never speak Yiddish in the street in Shedlets.  She would only speak Polish outside of her home. At home, Yiddish 57:00with her parents. But her father, who was a Zionist, was also a Yiddishist. He was reading Yiddish literature and trying to teach her, his daughter, Yiddish. And also from a literary point of view. But I'm not exactly sure.  She -- when we speak -- she tells me that certain words that I'm using are primitive. When I say "tshikave [interesting]," she says, "Don't say 'tshikave,' say 'interesant [interesting],' okay?" Whenever she asks me about -- she tries to get the word, so she asks me, say, "How do you say it in German?"  And I say it in German, so, "Okay, yeah. You should say that in Yiddish, as well." So, it's the -- daytshmerish [German] ideology is very rooted in her -- in the way that she understands Yiddish. I think that it's almost like this ideology was frozen and she is -- she was not aware of everything that happened with Yiddish politics 58:00since the '20s, I guess.  She still thinks that a nicer Yiddish, it is not a zhargon [jargon] -- a complete zhargon should be with more German words. She somehow lives this still. So, yeah, that's very weird and interesting at the same time -- experience that I had with a native speaker. In Paris, I met a lot of people who were native speakers to the highest degrees, always with an accent, with a French accent.  Of course, with a Polish accent or with a Litvak accent, of course, but also with another -- a new accent, a French accent. Niborski has a clear Argentinian accent in his Polish Yiddish, so -- and speaking about it, it's also very interesting: I heard that there's a reading group here that does mostly songs and, I don't know. I heard it's not very -- not really reading a text, but doing various stuff.  And I heard that they always debate -- here in the Berlin -- I heard that they debate the older 59:00people, from the Soviet Union, from different places, different immigration backgrounds, they debate should you say "ay" oder [or] "a" or -- right? And I remember that, in Paris, whenever I asked Niborski how should you pronounce something, he always said that, "We allow everybody to pronounce his or her way."  They reached some kind of a status quo there that you can speak whatever accent you have, and you do not bring it up. You do not come -- nobody's allowed to say to another, "You don't speak the true Polish Yiddish. Your Polish Yiddish is contaminated by YIVO" or whatever, right? Now, (laughs) yeah -- and there's so much that I don't know, right? I'm still learning. I'm still trying to see what -- wait a second, is it Ukrainian or Polish what was -- what I just heard 60:00there?  It also takes me much more to learn and to figure out.

AB:  How did you come to your specific research topics for your dissertation?

THC: Again, please?

AB:  How did you come to find your research topics for your dissertation?

THC: Well, my research topics for my dissertation has nothing to do with Yiddish, so maybe we skip that --

AB:  Okay.

THC: -- I try to -- also to make a separation between the academia, which is important for certain things, and my passions to Yiddish, which also have academic expressions.  I spoke in one academic conference about the Semitic component in Yiddish, and I'm going to speak in another -- in conference about the zamlers [book collector] phenomenon in Yiddish or Jewish culture, in Eastern European Jewish culture.  So, I do try to connect it, but my PhD is really not going there, yeah.

AB:  What are some of the challenges that you face in learning Yiddish, 61:00teaching Yiddish?

THC: That's very different.  Well, the first challenge, as a learner, is to be skeptical with what you think that you know.  You think that you know, but you don't know that you don't know. Yeah, that's a problem, especially the Hebrew component, the loshn-koydesh, in Yiddish that I think that I know, because it's Hebrew, but I don't, because it has a completely different meaning.  That took me a lot of time to have also this humility. I am approaching the text, I think that I know, but I should check everything. And that has been a great difficulty for me, which -- of course, it's symbolic for everything. Everything about research, about Jewish identity, and the politics of identity, the politics of Yiddish, of Hebrew, everything.  So many things that we do not know that we 62:00don't know, yeah. Me especially, but those people whom -- with whom I speak. So many things that -- small black holes in our knowledge that are not just there. They are really -- ignorances that were produced, ignorances that have to be somehow found. Maybe I make no sense. Maybe it's difficult to understand. It does?

AB:  It makes sense.

THC: It made sense, okay.  Like, this -- it's not only things that we do not know, but things that we were taught not to know, at least in my case.  Things that I was taught not to know, for example that my grandfather -- "megele" is a word in Yiddish -- that his name, his nickname, was a word in Yiddish.  It was important, ideologically, not to know that, to suppress it. So, these things always take time, to come back to them, to understand them. And with teaching, it's different.  I'm very happy with my students. I don't think that -- I love 63:00-- my stereotypes -- so, let's say my prejudice -- the -- came out to be false. And I feel that the -- I was afraid of exoticization, of Orientalism, of treating Yiddish as a sweet or a childish or a comical language, or as a corrupted German and so on, especially here in Germany.  And I think that people come to my classes -- are already a bit -- yes, they know -- they did some research. Or maybe they are afraid of me, could also be, because I speak about all these stereotypes, and maybe I do it fast enough for them to suppress their own -- I don't know. Maybe I'm also doing something like an ideological indoctrination.  The alphabet is much more difficult than I have thought for 64:00people to learn, to master. Now I see that not only the dialect itself is difficult, but different fonts -- we're now reading a preface -- a preface? Preface?

AB:  Preface, yeah.

THC: Preface, written by Der Tunkeler -- to a book from -- doesn't matter, '36, where the whole preface is just written in Miriam, this sans serif, without the -- yeah, not in Font Cru, the font that we usually find just in the 20th century, but in this rectangular, thin-lined font, right?  And they just can't read it, because it's different, it's new for them. I don't know. It's very difficult. It's very difficult, again, to -- you -- yeah, I think that they already mastered it, and that -- going back to the beginning with the alphabet. 65:00Of course, it's also like a -- daytshmerisms [Germanic word choices] that are produced by the fact they know German, right?  That they speak Yiddish in a Germanized way. But that's -- I don't consider it a big problem. I think it's rather an advantage than it is a disadvantage, the fact that they have so much vocabulary that helps them understand Yiddish. Okay, so they think that "shmekn" means "to taste," but actually it means to smell. Okay. Sometimes -- it's not something -- it's much better than -- if they know German, it's great.  I don't think that you have to learn German in order to go to Yiddish. But here in Germany, the fact that everybody here knows German certainly helps. I'm going much faster with them. Much, much, much faster.

AB:  How, if at all, do you use Yiddish in your daily life?

THC: Hmm.  Well, it has become my daily life in the sense that I have three days in a week that are completely absorbed by Yiddish, as a teacher or 66:00organizer of the reading group.  And before the meeting, I also prepare, so -- yeah, but there's nobody to speak with here. But I have to say, I don't miss it as much. It's not so important for me. I'm a bit skeptical with this ideology of speech, the notion that the language is alive and full only when you speak it.  Yeah, you can speak it, it's important, especially with Yiddish because it's a very oral language. To understand Sholem Aleichem, you really have to say it out loud. If you don't say it out loud, sometimes you just don't get the meaning. But the notion of having people with whom I can speak Yiddish is great, it's fantastic, it's a great exercise, it's important.  But the same thing -- I have the same feeling about Yiddish and Hebrew. It's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a more intellectual approach to those languages. I don't want to -- 67:00I don't believe that either of these languages should one day become the language of all Jews or whatever, right? I think that these ideologies are incompatible with other notions that I have about Jewish identity or political identity. 

AB:  Can you describe how, if at all, your academic interests and personal life connect?

THC: My -- how the academic and the personal connect?  So, as I said, they do in the sense that I am trying to deliver papers in conferences -- now, also, there is a paper that is going to be published in a journal.  I have to say, maybe I should also try to publish in Jewish-oriented journals or in Jewish conferences, to speak in Jewish conferences. But I actually like the notion of bringing Yiddish in the back door in different -- that if there was a conference 68:00-- there's a conference now coming up in Leiden where -- yeah, it's about philological encounters in Europe in the 20th century, okay?  So, what does it mean? It's a very big topic. You can interpret it as much as you want, like many conferences. But you think -- philologists -- who thinks about Yiddish philologists? I do, okay? And I want to bring it in. I want to say it's a part of the philological tradition of Europe, especially in the 20th century. It's something that has to be -- it was a huge language. I don't need to explain that in here.  But I do need to explain it to people who think that European means German, English, French, and some other minor languages. So, yeah, I try to connect it. But again, not through the main door of Judaic studies, although one 69:00day I might. I don't know, I find it more interesting to do it like this. And other than that, yes, I mean, I have written academic works on various topics that has to do with Jews or Judaism or -- yeah, but as I said, I prefer separating.  I think it's -- it's a recipe for retaining one's sanity, where you're absorbed completely by an identity search, and then again, you have career considerations and you think about money, connections, who do you know, and the -- I try to separate.

AB:  So, what role do you think academic institutions should play in the transmission of culture?

THC: I don't know, it's a huge question.  I think -- I am fascinated, but -- by 70:00the academic initiatives of Yiddish in the beginning of the -- in 20th century, the -- pinkes [chronicles] in 1913, and later at YIVO that were -- and also, you can speak about all the, in general about all the projects of a Simon Dubnow, for example.  Shimon Dubnow, we should say in Yiddish. For me, what is amazing about these initiatives were -- was the fact that they were not anchored in state-funded -- institutions that were not a part of a state -- academia today -- academia -- not today -- for many hundreds of years, academia has relationships with the power -- with states that is intertwined.  And I think that -- what can you do? I mean, I find -- I think it's -- it has a great 71:00potential to have academic initiatives that are not through the main doors of the big institutions, where money and power is -- not that it's not important, also, to do that. But it's also important -- for me, very important to have parallel and -- parallel modes of research that are not in the system, in the system in the terms of power and money.  I don't know if it makes any sense. I try to describe my feeling, why I did not approach any university and ask them -- actually, I was approached to teach in the university here Yiddish, and I might one day do it. But I much -- I enjoy it much more to do it outside of academia. I think it's a much better environment. Maybe it's also prejudice, I don't know.

AB:  What does Yiddish mean to you today?

THC: All of the above.  (laughs) There's no answer for that.

AB:  Do you think that there is a Yiddish revival?

THC: Huh.  Yes, but I would like to criticize the notion of revival, right?  As if -- first of all, as if it has died, of course, we can speak about that, as well, and the notion -- whether yidish lebt tsi neyn [whether Yiddish lives or not] -- okay, okay, we've been there.  But the problem is that, from the beginning, the whole category of living and dead for languages, it has some ideological premises that I think should be somehow removed from the table. Again, Hebrew.  Was it a dead language? Why? Because it was not speaking -- in the grocery store, so it was dead? For hundreds of years, with great continuity 73:00-- scholars, merchants, people in -- certain people in sabbath -- speaking Hebrew constantly for practices that were not everyday practices in the utmost meaning of the word, okay?  Does it mean that it was dead? This -- there's an amazing treasure of Hebrew literature that has been written for hundreds of years that has completely been erased as dead, only because it did not answer to the criteria of a living language, an organic language. A true national language is a language that is spoken by the masses.  This is interesting historically to inspect, but today, to ask whether Yiddish is undergoing a revival or not is to re-chew the same premises of a dead or a living language that should actually 74:00be deconstructed -- and criticize it rather than, yeah, perpetuate it or -- that's my notion. But, at the same time, I can say yes, I do see that Yiddish -- and I hope that Hebrew will also become something like this, but I do see that Yiddish and Yiddishism, where the language itself is the center -- is becoming an answer.  I don't know statistically for how many people, but it is an answer to many, many people whom I know personally, who do not find other answers to Jewish identity, who look for it. They look for it in mitsves [commandments], in religious practices, which I respect, and each person does what he wants. But for many, it just -- it doesn't give them enough. Or for various reasons, it's not a compatible answer for them. I don't judge it. And they don't find an 75:00answer to their Jewish identity with a certain state or territory.  They don't think that their whole Jewish identity can be reduced to a piece of land, okay? And they, I think through learning, and learning through language -- which is, as I said before, this is what I'm looking for all the time. I think that, yes, I see a lot of people who came to Yiddish because of this -- how do you say "antoysht," being --

AB:  Is that disappointed?

THC: -- being disappointed with the different answers that were given to them, yeah?

AB:  What do you see as the future of Yiddish?

THC: I think I would agree with what most people say, that it will blossom mostly in the Hassidic -- it is blossoming right now and will grow and blossom 76:00in Hasidic environments.  And, again, I am much more interested in Yiddish as a language to study, to investigate, to -- I'm much more interested in the past, in that sense. Not that I don't think that Yiddish has a future, of course it has.  But I think that the best way to create a future for Yiddish is to learn its past, okay, in general. The same thing about Hebrew. The problem is the -- what you do not know, the past that has been forgotten, has been negated.  You need to come back to the past to create the future. And this should be the first -- for me, at least, this should be the first aim, not -- and I have this reading group here and these classes that I give, not in order to create a new shtetl, here in Berlin.  It's not that. I'm not interested in converting any of 77:00my non-Jewish students. I do also have Jewish students, by the way, but it's not about that. It's about finding people who want, with me, together, to learn and to study and to go back to things that have been forgotten, erased, or simply destroyed, especially here, in the context of Berlin, of Europe.  I think this is the most important thing to do, yeah.

AB:  So, we're nearing the end of the time, but is there -- are there any other topics that you would like to touch on?

THC: Hmm.  I'm not sure, maybe you have --

AB:  I have one more question.

THC: Please.

AB:  What advice do you have for students of Yiddish?

THC: Hmm.  It's already great, study Yiddish.  That's the best advice that I have for everybody, to study Yiddish.  And maybe to study -- I'm afraid of 78:00saying that -- to study Hebrew, as well.  But maybe not only Hebrew, to study Yiddish and to study the major languages that form parts of its etymological components: to study Hebrew, to study Aramaic, to study Polish, to study Russian, to study German.  I think that if you -- it's an advice for an advanced learner. If you want to really penetrate the logic of this language, if you want to really understand it fully and -- yeah, you -- also English, you have to learn all the languages with which it was in contact.  Not to stop 79:00there. Not to stop with Yiddish, 'cause all the rest of the path is clear, right? To read and to learn and to go to Paris or to, I don't know, to Amherst or to YIVO, to -- this is clear, but to learn other languages, maybe that's good advice.

AB:  Great, thank you very, very much.

THC: You're welcome.

[END OF INTERVIEW]