ISAAC (YING) HALPERN ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney, and today is February 20th, 2014. And I'm here outside of Seattle, Lake Forest Park, Washington, with Isaac Halpern. We're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do you I have your permission to record?

ISAAC HALPERN: Certainly. (phone ringing)

CW: So why don't we jump right in? Today, we'll be talking mostly about your father -- and can you just start by telling me his name, and where and when he was born?

IH: His name is Moyshe-Leyb, Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, and he was born, I think, in 1:00Zlotshev, at least, Zlotshev was his ho-- that's where he grew up, until he was, oh, a teenager, when he was shipped off to Vienna.

CW: And where is Zlotshev?

IH: Zlotshev is in the eastern part of Poland, southeastern.

CW: And do you recall what year he was born?

IH: Well, I could figure it out. It was in the, I think, 1880s, it was, I would say, '86, 1886.

CW: Do you -- can you tell me what you know about his family background, his parents and grandparents?

IH: I don't know really all that much about the earlier people in the family. 2:00They were arrivals to Zlotshev, in a way, that -- I think Odessa rings in my head as being one of the places they came from. But I really don't know much about them, and I know that since he wrote some rather negative things about Zlotshev, some of the literature that you read about that relationship says a good deal of it's made up, that is, he had a reasonable relationship with the rest of his family, but some of the shrill complaining that appears in poems was poetry.

CW: Do you have an image of what Zlotshev was like?

IH: Not really, not really.

CW: And as you mentioned, he was sent to off to Vienna. Can you explain why, and what he was sent off to do?

IH: Well, the why may be a little bit complicated, a lot of factors, but the -- I think he was sent off -- I think under pressure that has to do with joining the real world. And the reasonable place to send him was Vienna. He was sent, needing to earn a living, and he must have shown skills with his art work, and so he -- was -- got himself a job as an apprentice, a sign painter and he stayed 4:00there for at least ten years, I think, something of that order. And that's a very critical time of his life, and he matured, and developed his tastes, among other things, reading a lot of poetry -- German poetry, learned to like it, in fact, some of his first poems were in German. And playing soccer, good athlete. But clearly, a secular force in his education in the big city versus the, you know, religion-centered community.

CW: Do you know if he grew up in a religious environment in the shtetl [small 5:00town in Eastern Europe with a Jewish community]?

IH: My impression is no, that his whole family was pretty modern. And the sending of him to Vienna is -- you know, shows you that that family felt, "Look, to make this kid whole, we gotta put him in that kind of an environment."

CW: Do you have a sense, from his poetry or any stories, of what Vienna was like at that time?

IH: Well, I have a picture of Vienna as perhaps one of the outstanding cultural cities, bubbly cities. Things were changing, they were responding to stuff, so it was a great place for a teenager to be, that's the picture I have of Vienna.

CW: And so he came to this country after ten years in Vienna, so that would put 6:00him at about what age? About --

IH: Uh -- I would think very close to twenty.

CW: Um-hm. Did you -- do you have a sense of what his opinion of America was?

IH: Well, very clearly, a very complicated opinion -- and changing -- in, uh -- well -- one of the things that is important here, is that he had a strong and changing opinion, so there's an awful lot of reaction to America in his poetry and it's -- I mention that 'cause, you know, a good deal of poetry looks a 7:00little closer at your friends, people you like, and so on. But he returns very often to larger problems of larger groups of people, and having to do with the changing world, and how it's affecting them, and that people are misreading what's going on, and so on. Yeah -- so maybe -- you know, that's a feature of the poetry that may be an aspect of the modernism that we were talking about, that is, what the subjects are that he sees fit to address in his poetry.

CW: If you had to describe to someone who had never read his poetry what the style was, how would you describe it?

IH: Well, it's got a lot of features, and some of it had to do with subject matter, which we were just alluding to, and -- but some issues and style had to do with the sound of the stuff. And I'm particularly sensitive and aware to his rich use of language, not at the end of sentences, just rhyming, but right, smack in the middle of each line, that is alliterations, all kinds of things, but a real command of sound, ups and downs, and stuff like that. And something I wasn't familiar with in poetry, English or otherwise, that you can get away with 9:00that. That you can end up talking about something quite real, rhymes at the end, and so on, but beautiful sounds in the middle, and that was sort of my reaction to some of the language skill that went into the poetry.

CW: Um-hm. And what would you point out as the main subjects of his writing?

IH: Well, the main subjects that seemed to attract critics, and so on, is sort of love-hate relationship to the changing, secularized world. He was certainly for it. It has all kinds of problems. He was aware of the problems, and that 10:00shows in his poetry, in -- it's an understandable preoccupation, things were changing, especially for the group of people that he was part of, mainly people who came here to live a better life, and realizing that it was not all that easy to do, and not all that comfortable, but had some nice features, and it's -- to respond to a complicated situation like that is tough on anybody.

CW: (background noises) I'd like to just turn now to describing him. What do you 11:00-- when you think of him, your father, what is -- what -- can you describe what he looks like in your mind's eye?

IH: You know, I've been subjected to all these portraits, 'cause he loved to do portraits, and if he ran out of customers, I mean paying customers, any customers, he'd paint pictures of himself. So I do have quite good image of him, because of that element in his work --

CW: Can you describe it -- him? We'll look at the pictures later but can you describe him?

IH: Well I'd say one of the things -- a little stern, some of these. But sternness may be an illusion. When you paint a self-portrait, you're looking 12:00carefully and copying, it's hard not to come up with a stern face. So I don't want to over-interpret his -- yeah --

CW: Were there any of his features that were prominent, or that, sort of, characterize him?

IH: Well -- not particularly, I'd say. You know, sometimes glasses, but -- No, I wouldn't say -- I don't see any broad smiles, and things like that. You know, like, painting a picture is a serious business, writing a poem is a serious business -- you write jingles, he wrote poetry.

CW: Have you seen pic -- photographs of him when he was younger?

IH: I don't really remember how far back.

CW: Uh-huh. Was there any particularly -- particular way that he dressed that was special?

IH: Well, he did care about what he wore, and there was a conflict there with our poverty. But given the poverty, he was dressed -- tried to -- you'd say he was dressed elegantly, I don't know how he managed it.

CW: So what does that mean? What was elegant for him?

IH: Oh -- I don't know, nothing fancy, just, say, a nice, clean shirt and -- yeah, it didn't mean anything got-up, particularly, but -- sort of an awareness 14:00of how one looks. I guess he cared about that. You know, certainly more than I know I do.

CW: Perhaps the Viennese influence! (laughs)

IH: Uh-huh.

CW: What -- when he was in the room, how would you -- I know these are specific questions, but how would you describe his physical presence in the room?

IH: Well, the circumstances under which I saw him -- well, were -- I think there was somehow more presence than with most individuals in the room. Now if you ask 15:00me how come, was it his doing, or my doing? I don't really know. But yeah, that is, you know, it couldn't be that he wasn't noticed if he were in the room, but that may be responsive, rather than the way he acted.

CW: Hmm -- I know you moved around some in your childhood from New York, and then some years in LA, and back, but thinking about your home, what do you remember from your childhood homes?

IH: Well, I have, I guess, a clearest picture -- I don't remember, you know, where I was when I was a baby, the homes. I remember a little bit about California. We lived in a place called City Terrace on a hill near Los Angeles, and I played outside, and in the summer, they burned the fields, so they 16:00wouldn't burn themselves and start fires, so I'd come in all ashy and dirty, and our mother would stick me in the washtub, and clean me up. I remember that -- those are the first -- first place that I remember. My father wasn't around then much at home, and this was true elsewhere, too. He had to be out somewhere trying to make a living, or do something, so -- but -- yeah, the life in Los Angeles, and images I have, involve things that we did on Sundays with friends, 17:00or my playing with the local, Spanish-Mexican kids outside, and getting dirty in the burnt fields. And --

CW: And what about the place in the Bronx?

IH: Well, the place in the Bronx is interesting. When we came back, we were stone poor, and that meant, among other things, that we got an apartment that was small. It didn't have a kitchen, it had a kitchenette.

CW: How many rooms?

IH: I think two rooms. A sort of living room with a kitchenette, and a bedroom. 18:00And the special feature that then I soon got to be aware of is his artwork. For the kitchenette, he got the cheapest materials, just you know, cheap wood you could buy anywhere, but not very expensive, and not very strong. And un-bleached muslin. And he painted a screen to shade the kitchenette from the rest of the room. And with lovely, consistent patterns, paintings, he does the kind of thing 19:00-- it had nothing to do, particularly, with the kitchenette or the apartment, but at the time, he was sort of thinking of English gardens, or something, so there were a bunch of pictures having to do with that. However, I do remember him put a little menu, because it was a kitchenette, you see. And on the menu, he had some, you know, it would tell you what to expect, and things were -- things like farbrent fleysh [burned meat], tsimes and kholem [tzimes and a dream], varenikes nit [non-dumplings] and lists of things like that. And it's a shame that that didn't survive. Part of it was, it wasn't made well enough, and 20:00so we lost it, the screen, that was it.

CW: What other pieces do you remember from the house?

IH: Well, I'll have to show you some of them. One of the pieces was, well -- whatever furniture we had was essentially scrounged stuff from second-hand places that, you know -- And if something was broken, he was handy, he could maybe fix it, and so on. And so, we had some resurrected stuff of that kind. And what -- one day, he went to a second-hand store, and saw a gate-legged table -- 21:00and as far as he could tell, there was nothing broken on it, nothing wrong with it. He bought it, very cheap, nothing. But you'll see it, we have it here. And what you'll see -- I should have not told you about it, 'cause you'd see that there's a real crack in it, and a piece of wood screwed on to -- right over the crack, and so on. But if you look carefully, it's not real, it's painted. The idea was, "We can't afford a real gate-legged table. So if it's not broken, I 22:00can satisfy the need." Uh -- you'll see that.

CW: What was Jewish about your home?

IH: Oh, that's -- well, we were very secular, so there was a lot of anti-Jewish in the home, in a sense, but -- CW: What do you mean?

IH: Certainly -- well, there were a lot of aspects of Jewishness that, among people who identified as Jews, was a religion. And from the word go, we had no truck with any of that. And -- but it wasn't a preoccupation on his part. There 23:00was enough of a secular Yiddish-Jewish community, so, you know -- I'd say our home was as Yiddish as could be. We spoke Yiddish, and read Yiddish. He worked for Yiddish newspapers, you know, that's --

CW: Did you celebrate any of the holidays in a secular way?

IH: In a secular way? Yeah, in a way that -- I don't know how much we would have done on our own, but pretty soon, I was plugged in to -- as -- when we came, I entered first grade. And at that time, in New York City, there were Yiddish 24:00schools. After regular school, you'd go for an hour to -- and I went to the Sholem Aleichem School, which was a few blocks away.

CW: Do you remember which number it was?

IH: I don't know, maybe 45? I don't remember. But, so in there, you'd get wind of the holidays, 'cause that's one of that things that, you know, matters. And a lot more, you get really a richer picture of Yiddish songs, poetry, and doing little plays together, and stuff like that. It was a very good experience. And the thing about that that makes me sort of sad is that whole movement started 25:00maybe a little bit before I got in touch with it. There were a whole bunch of systems -- I went to the Sholem Aleichem School, but there were other Yiddish schools doing the same thing. And if you look at how long they lasted, they started and then, what, 20 years later, they were gone, something like that. Some measure of that period, namely, the Jews adjusting to the new, richer life than they had at home, but secularizing. And there's an inherent conflict in that. And the next thing you know, it's out. And that makes me wonder about the 26:00Yiddish Book Center, that is, that must be the critical problem there. How do you focus on the non-religious aspects of the culture, and survive? And have it not disappear? And so I'd be curious to know what devices the Book Center uses to try to solve that kind of a problem.

CW: Do you remember a Jewish food in your home? Is that --?

IH: Yeah -- we had, I'd say, Jewish food -- yeah -- in -- But also goyishe food. I think sometimes we'd have what'd be called, a "goyishe steak,” which means 27:00that you didn't go to your Jewish butcher, but you got a t-bone, or something like that. And the idea was, it's -- "Just 'cause it's goyishe, doesn't mean it's not healthy, it's good!" So, you know, this is part of the business of secularizing, and being, you know, very Jewish at the same time, being aware that it's a goyishe steak, but it's good! (chuckles) Uh -- yeah.

CW: Back to the school -- the shule. Do you remember any teachers in particular from the Sholem Aleichem School? Was there anyone important to you?

IH: Well, I remember her name. Esther Carter was the name of the teacher, and 28:00well, we moved after he died, and I went to another Sholem Aleichem School, and that guy's name was Tolpin. Yeah, I think -- they seemed to like their job, and that care -- that matters, that influences the kids.

CW: What was it like for to be -- I mean, at that point, your father was a known writer. What was it like for you to be in the Yiddish schools as Moyshe-Leyb's son?

IH: Well, different. Before he died, that was Bronx, and that was with Esther Carter's school, and then after he died, that was in '32, well, everybody was aware that he was a poet, and that he had died -- but they were very careful not 29:00to make problems for me with that.

CW: Um --

IH: But I should mention that some of my connection with the Sholem Aleichem outfit, not just through those schools, but I went through their mitlshul -- their high school -- in New York, and also, I went to Boiberik for many, many years, the camp, the summer camp. And really enjoyed very much -- uh --

CW: Can you describe Boiberik? And -- what was a typical day, let's say, at Boiberik?

IH: Well in some ways, very much like any other camp, in some ways not. And I think it was done fairly well. There were conflicts there, that is, you could sense that, "Being Jewish meant what?" is one of the things that they were trying to get straight. 'Cause it was not -- it was secular, it was not religious. On the other hand, so many of the traditions come out of the religion, and are tied to it, and we would, say, on Fridays, dress up, white shirts, or something like that. "No religion, but it's Friday, so let's" -- you know. And there was that conflict all the time, and the -- and yet a nice mix of 31:00really good, sound exploration of literature, and Jewish history, and so on, and plenty of baseball and basketball, for example. My own interests from early on had to do with the art show, and I can show you something I made there. And you'd see, you know -- "Here's something a ten-year-old kid made that's pretty interesting." And they had two things they called holidays, major holidays. One 32:00of them called the mit-sezon yontev [mid-season holiday], and the other one, the felker yontev [festival of nations]. The mit-sezon yontev honored some historical figure in the past, and meant, among other things, that a play goes on in the middle, that parents come up and see it, where the kids -- you know, if it's a hero of some sort, they give some portions of his life, and act out, you know, in a very elementary way, what was going on. You know, were locally written, and if there needed to be some music in it, there was. Lazar Weiner, a famous music teacher of the time, was there all the time.

CW: Can you describe him?

IH: Uh --

CW: What was he like?

IH: Hhh -- a serious music guy, easy-going. Each group had a song for the felker yontev, a French song for the French group, and so on. And he, you know, would, cook up these songs with -- put Yiddish words to them, and so on. So that was, you know, part of it, was -- and -- I will show you some -- a painting I'm trying to put back together into shape downstairs, but having to do with one of the mit-sezon yontevs, honoring, in this case, Mendele Moykher-Sforim.

CW: Do you remember anyone -- I know there's this traditional -- untern boym [under the tree] at Boiberik? The boym, untern boym, where there would be a speaker, do you remember that?

IH: Yeah. Well, yeah, I think you're referring to -- what it was -- before we'd go to meals, the director would, you know, announce what was going on, or what was interesting, and it happened to be near a tree. So -- but nothing particularly interesting, you know, it's -- but it did mean that the camp gets together for a moment, and sits and listens to anything that's happening that should be of interest to some or all. But the camp had these features that, 35:00which I think were successfully blended in to the normal camp life, which included baseball, basketball. For example, Boiberik would play the Workmen's Circle camp basketball, I was on the basketball team. But I was also in the art shop, they went -- you know, stuff like -- with -- in one of those holidays, I think I had -- well, I had the role of Kuni Lemel, and -- you know that story, that there's a pretty, not too aware guy, and this other guy who then exploits 36:00the situation, and makes Kuni Lemel look like an idiot, and so on. I was the real Kuni Lemel in that one, and I remember that in that little piece of the holiday celebration, I had the help in shaping my role by a guy called Yehuda Bleich, an actor on Second Avenue, who visited -- they would -- writers would, actors would. And he showed me a few motions, and you know, I could see they were just right, and I can remember that when I had to do it in front of the 37:00kids I did it, and you could see the response was horrendous! And it gave me, you know, a sense of the power of this acting business. And I can remember, still, saying my few stupid lines, and having, you know, the audience just break up, and I'd have to admit, some of that had to do with the seriousness with which they treated this thing. You know, a guy like Bleich, who was around, he came in and very gently showed me how you stumble, and do this and the other. And so, I managed to learn a lot of different things, and I got to be pretty good at basketball, it's -- Yeah, there was a good camp, and the serious thing 38:00about it is, from the time it was started, in, I think, in the in the '20s, it lasted into the '40s, but that's it. You know, it's the Yiddish Book Center problem again.

CW: And how much of camp was in Yiddish when you were there?

IH: It was changing. When it started, it was plenty of Yiddish. By the time it folded, a lot of the kids couldn't speak any Yiddish.

CW: Hmm. And how much of your life growing up was in Yiddish, versus English, when you --

IH: At home, it was all Yiddish. Yeah.

CW: Going back to the homes, do you have memories of what your father's writing habits were? Were there particular times or places he would write?

IH: (sighs) No, I think he snuck time whenever he could. It's -- yeah. It was important to him. I think solitude was part of it, though, and when -- he was a little fussy with his manuscripts. He would redo them, and make maybe a little bird at the bottom of them, or something, as a signature. But -- no, I wouldn't remember too much of that, I wouldn't -- I wasn't hanging around while he was doing his poetry.

CW: And the -- what about the painting, do you remember seeing him paint?

IH: Well, my relationship there was very different with painting. The -- I -- 40:00well, I can give examples of relations, both with respect to -- maybe some of his work having to do with writing, and some with painting. He -- among other things, he made a painting, I think it's in Hellerstein's article -- of the people in a small town, the -- I think, a fat-lookin' woman with a little kid, and a rich man who's, you know, you're supposed to look down on him, and a guy in the bath, and so on. Just a picture of the town, or the outstanding 41:00individuals. And I saw that, and I made a copy of that. Not copy, but maybe from my own mind -- put it together, and I got very positive responses to that.

CW: Those were from his home town, the characters, or --

IH: No -- well, the characters, I don't think, were his hometown. I think they were his image of a poorer town in the -- sort of, rock-bottom Jews -- 'cause I think they were a little better off, so --

CW: So you made a copy, and he responded?

IH: Yeah, it wasn't exactly a copy, that is, I learned enough by that time that 42:00you play with what you're painting, and you don't, you know, copy. Uh --

CW: So he -- so you -- so he was involved with your propensity to art as well, you're saying?

IH: Oh, yes. Well, and also with my use of language and sort of being cogent, 43:00being on top of things. I think it mattered to him that he was in -- and I had a sense that, yeah, he wanted me on the ball and I can remember a disappointment he had. He was, at that time, and other times, too, involved with some periodical that was touch-and-go, and whether it could exist, you know. These periodicals would come and go, and they had at most a living for one guy, the editor, and you know, that's it. At any rate, maybe two guys were involved, but I don't know that either of them really could be sustained by that. But I 44:00remember when he and the other editor -- or the other guy, were sitting around, he did see me in the corner, and he said, "Wait. Look." And he said, "I'm gonna read you a story, and tell me whether you like it or not." And so, he read me this little piece, and it's about a guy who shows up at this house, and he's sweating and is bare-headed, and -- I don't remember everything, you're supposed to get the image of this guy. And then, as -- when he goes in the house -- some people come out and meet him, and what happens, you know, it's a lot of things 45:00happening, but he takes off his hat, and says hi. And what my father was obviously looking for, was here's a guy who submitted a story with a bare-headed man suddenly having a hat. And he was gonna say, you know, "How could somebody send in a story like that? My kid's gonna pick up on that, and he didn't!" (laughing) So I can remember that -- but you know -- not that he scolded, or anything, but I could see the disappointment. I missed that one. But that shows you that he was willing to try to show off that his kid is on top of things to some stranger, and it didn't work, but that his feeling was his kid'll handle this, and he didn't. It was too bad. CW: Do you have other specific memories 46:00about his writing? Or, did he share his writing with you? Did he ever read it, his writings to you, for example?

IH: You know, or to my mother, yeah. But not all that much. It was -- yeah. I'd say they were a little more private than that, you know. And he certainly wasn't looking for suggestions, "Hey, why don't you use this word instead of that word? It's his doing, not yours." Yeah.

CW: What was his parenting style? What was he like as a father?

IH: Well, that's a little complicated. Every now and again, we'd go for a walk 47:00in a nearby park, and I realize now that what he enjoyed was talking with me, and not -- and what he did not do, is play or something like that. And that surprises me, 'cause he was -- had been a soccer player, and I think the weekend he died, he swam his usual one or two miles in the ocean. So, he was an athlete, and I don't remember his emphasizing any athletics with me. Um -- strange.

CW: What kind of things would you talk about with him, do you remember?

IH: What?

CW: What kind of things would you talk about with him, or would he talk about with you?

IH: Well, I would say anything that came up, if I brought it up, and listen, and not talk baby talk to me, but you know. And I didn't feel pressured, I didn't feel I had to say something clever, or anything like that. Uh -- but it was a treat to talk to him. He wasn't home all that much. Part of it is that, you know, this business of making a living, so he'd maybe be gone for giving talks in different cities. But when he had a falling out with the “Freiheit,” that was 49:00no source of income anymore, he wasn't invited for talks -- so. He did, though, visit with supportive friends in various places, and I know, for example, some names. Nate Cohen in Detroit. The Drost Brothers - Yosl, Willie, Meyer in Cleveland. Chaim Shapiro in Boston. And in that way, these people, well -- Kazhdan in New York, these were richer Jews who I'm sure supported my father, 50:00the way, you know, to some low-level degree -- they -- but the way, you know, he wouldn't have that, just money. So he spent time at their houses, painting curtains for them, or pillows, or whatever, he'd paint on clothes, and stuff like that. So -- and I think, you know, not that they pressed him, but that he felt he had to do something. And you'll see, when we look at a piece in that room -- that people would come in and say, "Oh, isn't that nice?" and the next thing you'd know, he'd make a copy of the thing they liked, and give it to them. 51:00So that involved gift-giving back and forth, money and stuff, but it also involved his being away from home in other places. And -- so then, I was alone with my mother for a while, and, you know, and so on. So that was a little unusual.

CW: Do you remember, or can you explain a little bit about your father's political views? Do you know much about that?

IH: I don't know too much about that. He was pretty leftist, communist, and when he had a falling out with the -- for the “Freiheit,” it was over some attitudes about some Arab -- bad behavior in Palestine. And the “Freiheit” took the 52:00standard Russian view, you know, Soviet view, and that was an area where he couldn't go along with that. And that led to the falling out, and that was a very bad situation for us.

CW: Mmm. What was the standard Russian view?

IH: I think it was sort of anti-Jewish, basically. Not very subtle. And what was involved were, I think, some physical interactions between Jews and Arabs, and having to do with, you know, Jews wanting to come to Palestine.

CW: Mmm. Do you remember when your father was around -- people visiting the home? Did he have friends, writer friends, artists over?

IH: Yep, yeah. They would come around. But mostly, I made myself scarce, or my mother made me scarce.

CW: Can you tell me, before we go on about your father, a little bit about your mother? What do you know about her family background?

IH: Well, she's Lithuanian and he's Galitsianer [Galician], really. They met in New York. And it was sort of a long-ish courtship, with some resistance from the 54:00rest of her family. "What? Marry a poet? Are you crazy?" And -- so -- I don't really know too much about her family, but there was plenty of it, that is, she has a couple of brothers in New York. One in Texas. And let's see, where else? It was a large enough family that -- and so -- and the ones in New York lived either close by, or we had a slightly better off uncle of mine who worked for the “Forverts” as a business manager, and they lived in Rockaway in New York. So 55:00-- that's where we’d go sometimes in the summer, and that's where my father died, 'cause it was a weekend, when we went to Rockaway.

CW: What was your mother's relationship to your father's writing? Was she involved in it at all?

IH: I don't think so.

CW: Um --

IH: No, I think -- I don't know why, I think it was a very private matter, his writing.

CW: So I'm just curious if there are any other -- are there any stories or memories of him that sort of -- that are typical, or sort of tell something about his personality that we haven't touched on yet?

IH: Oh, I'm sure there are, but I don't know, you know, what I can recall at this point. Yeah, I know, I don't know. Yeah, if somebody came up with something, it might jar me to remember, but I --

CW: Right. Well, I wanted to ask about -- you've mentioned that you grew up in poverty. What memories, I mean -- how did that -- what memories do you have of that?

IH: Very little. I was shielded from that. You know, even the, you know, the business with this painting a crack on the table, and so on. I saw that as a 57:00joke, but I didn't see the full joke, with the poverty, and -- you know, I saw, "It's not cracked, and you make a crack, and then you put a piece of wood over it, and screw it -- you don't put the wood on, you paint the wood on, as though it's been nailed on, you see?" So that's a joke. But, you know, it was only later that I realized that the joke is that we have no business having a table that isn't broken.

CW: Mmm. Do you remember him as having a good sense of humor?

IH: Yeah, as in enjoying a joke, or a funny situation. Especially a funny situation. Or he'd see funny situations where maybe other people wouldn't.

CW: Yeah. I know he wrote for some humor magazines, so I was wondering --

IH: Yeah, he did.

CW: Yeah, okay.

IH: Yeah, he did, and Moishe Nadir did. Yosel Cutler, I think, did. Yeah -- but I don't think that was his big activity, that was a way to make, maybe, a few dollars.

CW: Mmm. So when did you get interested in art? Was that --

IH: Well, I -- from the word go, that is, art was something in the house. And it's easy to happen, it happened to our kids, too, and I wasn't pushing it, or anything like that. Yeah, it -- you might think it came down the same way, 59:00mainly -- you know, there, I gave you the table as an example of poverty stimulating art, you know, so -- and I think I had -- didn't have anything like that table in mind when -- with our first kids, I somehow realized that, you know, we're giving them all these, you know, fruits that come in cans, and stuff, and we'd throw the cans out. That doesn't make sense, you know, not so much a sense of poverty, but a sense of wastefulness. So if you can go over there, and pick that up, and --

CW: (UNCLEAR) giraffe?

IH: The giraffe is what I'm talking about.

(sound of someone walking)

IH: See, there's -- stuff -- can't, you know -- and so, it took me about three hours to make this guy, and, you know, his neck is flexible. And I wasn't thinking of the poverty, I was thinking of wastefulness, and it turns out, that the same thing happened between my generation and our kids. Our son, David, 61:00finds old doors. We can show you one when we go in the other room, that he makes into something artful. Or with wires, he makes birds out of them. Or in this case, we have this place on Lopez Island, where there are old deer bones after a while in the ground, you know, you walk around, and you can pick 'em up. So he picks up these few little deer bones, and makes a bird out of it. I don't know if you can see the bird. But, you know, the idea of making a bird out of deer bones, it's -- you know -- But it hasn't to do -- again, I wasn't inspired -- I'm thinking it occurs -- it might occur to anybody. And it does in this family, 'cause everybody's given to using their hands -- a respect for making things, 62:00for making something nice that gets propagated.

CW: How did your father react to your making things, and --

IH: Well, he didn't over-react, he didn't, you know, I never -- I think he did it right, 'cause that's dangerous, 'cause a kid can know when he was making something nonsense and useless. And if the parent says, "Ohhh!" You know, then that's a bad situation. But you can tell when you do something well, and he responds to some aspect of it that you particularly thought of. Yeah, I think my interest in doing things with my hands certainly was supported by him.

CW: Were there aspects of Jewish culture or Yiddish culture that were particularly interesting to you as a kid, when you were a kid?

IH: That's hard to say, because I had the feeling that, you know, what we were doing is what people do. The fact that it was Jewish, everybody that we knew was doing Jewish things, so -- you know. It wasn't emphasized, and it was just happening. I think -- yeah, nothing was pushed.

CW: Um-hm. [BREAK IN RECORDING] You mention that you went to the theater sometimes with your -- and that -- the Second Avenue Theater. Do you have any particular memories of that? Of going?

IH: Well, I have one -- well, I have -- one memory that surprised me, that I think at intermission time, somebody came out, and announced, "We're honored today to have Moyshe-Leyb Halpern here today!" I wondered what that was about.

CW: Do you remember seeing Maurice Schwartz, or any of the other -- ?

IH: Yeah, yeah.

CW: -- actors?

IH: Yeah.

CW: Were there a lot of moments like that, when you sort of realized that your father was -- being -- was known and recognized?

IH: Not too many.

CW: Yeah. Um --

IH: Um-hm. Yeah, I think I was slow in realizing his general status in literature -- for example, you know, I now am aware, for example, that if you sort of want to make an assessment of this stature position, and so on, one reasonable thing to do, since there are courses in colleges and universities on Yiddish literature, and so on, is to see what they do. And, you know, when you 66:00find that the -- you go to the best colleges, there are -- like Harvard, and Yale, and Berkeley, and you find that they -- the people that teach the top comparative literature in Yiddish courses at these top schools -- all take the trouble to rate Moyshe-Leyb as the unique, greatest poet, Yiddish poet there is -- it takes you aback. I know he was good and recognized by everybody, but you 67:00know, Ruth Wisse writes a book about him, and Bloom is always saying, you know, "He's the best," and he's, that's Yale. So you get wind of it. But that took me by surprise, that he should be so uniformly recognized by the ones you trust most to make evaluations.

CW: Did he -- do you re -- have a sense that he had any -- did he have an ego? Did he know that he was, you know, one of the greats?

IH: I don't think so. I think he was a very hard judge of his own work, and he was a complainer with his poetry, so the nature of the complaining means that he 68:00was part of a movement in poetry. And I understand from -- well, it was communicated to me by [Lazar Greenberg?], I don't know if you know who that is, that there was a movement right after the first World War, and poetry generally -- big -- modernism was coming in. And Moyshe-Leyb is sort of the example of modernism in Yiddish poetry. And I remember when I was a graduate student at MIT, Lazar Greenberg came by, and took the trouble to tell me -- my father had 69:00died -- that there was this seething in the poetry business, world-wide, and that there's no question that the modernist in the Yiddish poetry, was Moyshe-Leyb. And that, had he lived, there'd be soon a poetry Nobel Prize in some language or other, and that from his insights, 'cause he moved around in the literature business, generally, not just Jewish stuff, Moyshe-Leyb would -- stood a good chance to get Nobel Prize for modernist trends in world poetry. So -- he just thought he’d tell me that.

CW: When did you start reading your father's poetry?

IH: Oh -- I don't know. A little bit here and there -- but never made a -- you know. You know, I early on sensed the difference between his poetry and others'. See, I took -- and where I went to high school, they had options. If you did good in English, you could skip the English course, and take either drama or poetry. So I took all those other fancy courses, and so I got to be a little sensitive to what it is to make a poem. And then when I would read his stuff, I 71:00would realize that not only is the subject matter interesting, but that the command of words and -- was -- you know, very. Well, very difficult to do, but it comes out, it flows, and it uses all the tricks of poetry effortlessly. And it wasn't effortless, 'cause I remember re-writing poems was something he would do, and he'd do it, and he'd do it again, and so on. Uh --

CW: Are there particular poems that are -- that are your favorites, or are 72:00meaningful to you?

IH: Gee, I don't know, I think, you know, some of them are very standard, like “Memento Mori [Latin: Remember Death],” and so on. And so those are easy to, sort of remember -- and -- but you know, I had enough in my poetry course to realize first that I wasn't a poet, 'cause what I was able to do in the poetry course in high school was to write jingles, stuff like that. But we had some kids in the class who could write poetry, and I could tell the difference. So I realized that. But I also then knew enough about the thing, so I could see what 73:00I liked in my father's poetry. Like, one of the things I'd particularly respond to is this business of the sounds inside the lines, not just at the end, or so on, but attention to the sound devices throughout the -- you know, it just flows, just comes right out, and there's no effort to it, it's -- impressive.

CW: And when you have read your father's poetry, do you read it in Yiddish?

IH: Of co urse. Now, the English is sometimes a disappointment. And it's very hard. You know, I ask myself, "How would I do it?" Boy, you know, because of all of his deft handling of the sounds, and stuff like that, I don't know how to 74:00begin to know how to translate that stuff.

CW: Are there particular times when you've -- in your life -- when you've turned to -- returned to his writing or read more of it than other times?

IH: No. I think every now and again -- you know, it's -- stuff's very available these days, I think, you know, with the -- so -- yeah, I -- I go back and look again. But -- uh --

CW: Um --

IH: Yeah, sometimes, I get hung on things when I look at some of the poems. Like in “Memento Mori,” let's see, what is it? Sometimes it hangs me up -- yeah -- “Vet men dos gleybn, moyshe-leybn [Will they believe it, that of Moyshe-Leyb],” that line. Uh -- “gleybn [to believe]” is litish [Lithuanian], “gloybn” is the way he would naturally say it. So that really hits me. He should be saying “gloybn” but he was willing to do “gleybn," 'cause it rhymes with 76:00"Moyshe-Leybn.” So you know, there -- I react to things like that. One shouldn't.

CW: Has there been any change for you in your reaction or connection to his poetry over your lifetime?

IH: Oh, sure. You know, when I first read some of that stuff, I didn't have the context of what -- some of the things he was reacting to -- yeah -- uh -- yeah. So, there has been.

CW: There -- is there any poem that you -- or poems that you feel he might have 77:00written to you, or for you?

IH: Oh, there were well-known poems that he wrote to me, yeah.

CW: Can you talk about those?

IH: They don't particularly talk to me more than some of the other things -- you know, you'd think they might, but they don't. 'Cause he's really venting on other things, and I'm not sure those are the things, you know, that are the -- he's connecting me with that may not be right. It's his complaint, not mine. Yeah.

CW: Yeah. Was there -- did he ever talk about the importance of Yiddish, or 78:00Yiddish literature? Was that something that you got from him?

IH: No, I’d say -- no. I don't remember any --

CW: Did you have books in your home? Did you have lots of --

IH: Lots of books, yeah. Sholem Aleichem, full -- a set of Shole-- standard books, Yiddish books. And -- yeah, we haven't added to that, but, you know. What have come through the years are, if anybody writes a book about Moyshe-Leyb, of course, they send us a copy. Or you know, if they write a book -- you know, that 79:00has some connection, we get a copy. We've also gotten copies of French translations, or you know, anthologies of stuff, and -- or, you know, or Hebrew translations, and so, 'cause when the guy writes a book of translating somebody else, he finds out who's in the family, and they send a copy, so we have a collection of those.

CW: Were there any other languages in the home, other than Yiddish?

IH: No. Yiddish.

CW: What has -- how, if at all, has having this poet-artist as a father affected 80:00your own identity?

IH: It's hard to say, because, you know, as I pointed out, there are certain overlaps in -- but I'd say, for example, with my tinkering, I wasn't aware that it was poverty that was driving me to do this. It was a certain wastefulness that -- it's a different idea -- so. Yeah, I -- you know, as a kid, I was well aware that imitating what my father did is a good thing to do, it gets positive responses, and I enjoy it. But -- yeah, it didn't have any sort of pushy effect 81:00on me, I don't think. No, but you can't tell, because once that happens, that you get these positive responses, and then you -- by that time, you like what you're doing, and the next thing you know, you're doing it for its own sake, never mind the positive responses, and you're not aware that what gave you a start is somebody set up a situation where copying what your old man does is, you know, something that's starting something. But I'm sure, you know, it's --that's the way these things happen.

CW: Now did your -- do -- know, if you remember if your father had connections with his parents, or people in Europe? Do you remember that connection?

IH: Well, he had connections with his family, his sister -- she came to America during the war. I don't remember much about the -- if he had any particular relation with his sister in -- so no, I don't know about the family bonds in his family to his siblings.

CW: Now you sometimes would go -- as you mentioned to the Rockaways. Do you have memories of, sort of, outdoor vacation activities as a family?

IH: Well, I -- like that, some. Yeah, and I have -- that reminds me, I have some portraits that you might want to look at, you know, a portrait of Moishe Nadir, my mother, and my father at -- in the Catskills somewhere. Moishe Nadir had a summer place that I guess he used to make a living with, actually. You might want to look at some of that stuff. And also, we have some unfinished painting that he was going to finish, that he worked on with Yosl Cutler. And Yosl Cutler 84:00and Zuni Maud, I don't know if those names ring a bell with you or not, they had a place in Pennsylvania, where people would go in the summer, like Moishe Nadir's place in the Catskills. We were at both places, or at least, maybe I wasn't at the Catskill place, but the picture testifies that my mother and father were. But -- yeah -- but those are some of the things, like, those pictures might be useful to somebody, that is, I could 'em show you, if you wanted to look at some of 'em.

CW: Yeah. What do you remember of when you father had -- died?

IH: Well, I remember it took us by surprise, 'cause he didn't seem that sick. And if you had asked me at that time, or just before, "Is he a sick man?" I would have said, "No, he's not a sick man." But if you read the literature, people will tell you he was sick beforehand, people knew he was sick. So it was -- I was shielded from that somehow by my mother and father.

CW: And you were at -- in the Rockaways that weekend, right?

IH: Yeah, yeah.

CW: Or that summer, I guess?

IH: Just the weekend, yeah. And, he came out for the weekend. Or maybe we were there a little longer, we were staying. And he'd come out for the weekend.

CW: Do you remember anything else about it?

IH: About that? Yeah, well, it was a total surprise. And it affected my mother considerably. And yeah, I was nine years old, but didn't have any experiences to rely on that would help with that. Um-hm.

CW: How have you used Yiddish since your childhood, if at all?

IH: Well, I haven't really used it very much, 'cause -- you know, my own science 87:00work is just disconnected with Yiddish. And I think the -- you know, Yiddish as an intellectual activity seems to be waning, aside from things like the Yiddish Book Center. So -- yeah, I don't know.

CW: To what extent has Jewishness played a role in your own life? Your adult life?

IH: Well, I don't know what Jewishness really means. It -- you know, I think 88:00that's real trouble, that is, it means different things to different people. And I can tell you which things I think are valuable, I'd say a good example are my father's poetry and things like that. But -- you know, and it's important to have different things like Jewishness or -- you know, other ways -- a variety of 89:00ways of looking at similar things. A variety of serious ways of looking at different things. And the wonderful thing about that is that you get a -- more bonus than you might expect, from just turning, you know, from one culture to a different culture, to address the same problem, or a similar problem. And you wouldn't off-hand think that would be the case, you know, poverty's poverty. But I think your asking sort of implies that there may be a particularly Jewish attitude toward the poverty of coming to America. And that's -- you can learn a 90:00lot from that, but you've got to go to the Jewish literature. Um-hm.

CW: Are there other aspects of other writers, Jewish writers, Yiddish writers, that you connect with, that are meaningful?

IH: Well, not particularly. You know, that is, I remember, you know, the standard Sholem Aleichem stories, that what we were subjected to in school -- Yeah, I don't know. And of course, you know, Jewish-American writers have a niche. I'm impressed that a guy like Bloom, who at Yale --

CW: Harold Bloom?

IH: Harold Bloom says that the -- that for him, the Jews who were writing in English don't compare to the Jews who were writing the best writings in Yiddish. I don't know if you've seen that comment from him. Then you sort of wonder why. But it's a thing I’ve seen him say a few times?

CW: What is your take? Do you have any -- thought on that?

IH: I don't have a take on that.

CW: Who do you think is your father's readership audience now?

IH: Well, I don't -- I'd ask you. Well. It's a hard one, 'cause a good deal of his writing addresses a particular situation, the arrival of the poor Jew to America. And that's not happening. So it's not a big thing. Well, some of the things it evokes are still general, but that doesn't help, because to really get 93:00the essence out of that stuff, you need to have it as it is -- so. Yeah, I don't know, it makes one think that, as time goes on, these things that falter don't get preserved, and then you just lose them. And there's nothing very easy you can do about that.

CW: How has, or does having this yikhes [heritage], this, you know -- of your father --

IH: Um-hm --

CW: -- has it -- how does it play out in your life?

IH: Not much, actually, because people I move among, they might have never heard his name mentioned, so -- you know, even -- you know, if I were to look at the 94:00kids I went to Boiberik with me, what I would see is a bunch of guys that got -- whatever they were doing, it was less and less Yiddish, and more and more embedded in the general fabric of being in America. And so the Yiddishness is out of it. You know, I imagine if we had a reunion, like they do at universities, we might not be able to find things to talk to each other about. As they -- as happens when you come back at alumni meetings at universities. Mmmm --

CW: Do you think there's -- that your father's poetry is still relevant?

IH: Well, I'm sure it is in a sense, 'cause it's not as though the things that he reacted to no longer have either, you know, they may not exist exactly that way, but in general terms -- you know, there are real problems and the reaction to real problems is of interest, always is of interest.

CW: I'm just not a very -- this is sort of a very random time to ask this -- but sometimes you've used the name “Ying.”

IH: Um-hm.

CW: Where does that come from?

IH: Oh, that comes from -- my parents called me “Yingele [Little boy].” And then, when I got to be a little bit bigger, my mother would lean out of the window when I was playing -- you know, in the street, and maybe she'd say "Yingl!" Or eventually, "Ying." And it caught on, and that stuck to my -- everybody calls me Ying. [BREAK IN RECORDING] Isaac is a strange name. I think, it turns out, there is a relative -- my grandfather -- whose name was Isaac. But I think my parents never want-- I think Asher is something they wa wnted to call me. But you know, somewhere along the line, my father remembered that his father's name was Isaac, and that would do, 'cause Ascher was having trouble 97:00being sold at school. It didn't sound like a familiar name, so they -- so it was really, I was named when I first went to school, the parents came up with a few names from the, you know, the background in history. And some school teacher said, "Well, let's call him Isaac." So --

IH: Have you -- I mean, we talked about this a little bit, but have you had relationships with -- or connections with the people, the scholars wh o've studied your father. What has that been like for you?

IH: Not too many connections. Hellerstein was a very good connection -- yeah.

CW: Who’s translated a lot of --

IH: She translated stuff, and wrote about the art work, and -- yeah, but I 98:00didn't, I don't have too many such interactions.

CW: Well, I have just one or two more questions, but I'm wondering if there's any aspect of your father that we haven't touched on, that you wanted to be sure -- or even just -- Yiddish in your life that we haven't talked about.

IH: Yeah, I don't know. Yeah.

(long silence)

IH: Well, we pretty much covered different things. You know, there's always little things that, attach to everything we've talked about. That is, when I mentioned some of the richer Jews, they played a role in funding the publication of his first works. They in turn, had their pictures drawn -- portraits drawn by my father, so you know, they're -- all of these things have things attached to them, but -- I don't, you know, think of anything sharp and outstanding to bring up.

CW: Can -- do you have -- or can you explain a little bit about this connection between your father's poetry and his art work? What the interplay was between them?

IH: Mmmm -- that's a hard one. (long silence) No, I don't really have any 101:00insights. You know, I can see from his point of view, the poetry was never finished. He could always improve it. He would sweat over poems he'd written before, and try to change a word here and there. He cared about that. And he'd go back and sense that it wasn't quite right, and it would bother him, and he would very often manage to pull off an improvement. I don't remember the same kind of attitude toward the art work. The art work is an attempt, and if the portrait didn't quite catch everything that he wanted to, they'll be another 102:00portrait some time, maybe, or something, but that'll be different. It's not the same with respect -- his feelings were clearly not the same with respect to the art and the poetry.

CW: One thing that we didn't -- that I didn't touch on was sometimes his -- you know -- trying to make a living was working for Yiddish newspapers. What do you -- what were other things that he did? You know, did -- like, at points, working as a painter, or -- do you remember -- do you know about any of that?

IH: Oh, well, the standard story is that he's very different than all the other contemporaries who managed to find some scroungy job, a waiter, or heaven knows what, to sustain himself, so he could write his Yiddish poetry. And there's the 103:00standard story with Moyshe-Leyb that he didn't do that -- and that at one point, he asked one of the poets who had a tailor shop to -- could he -- you know -- just do some menial stuff like press pants, and that experiment turned out to be a disastrous failure when the pants began to smolder under his iron, as he was day-dreaming. That's a standard story but -- Yeah, I don't know. Apparently, he was less aggressive, or less successful in some other way, at getting some way 104:00to maintain some livelihood, and still manage to do his poetry. He had troubles doing that. And the interesting thing is he could fall back on his art in some ways, to pull that off. To get, you know, a little bit of financial response to the art.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW: So just curious about your view of the place of Yiddish today.

IH: Well, it's a hard one because -- you know, the place -- it's a thing that’s hard for me to think about in the abstract. It's a kind of subject that is 105:00necessarily -- you know, too basic. It's not something you learn from a book. It has to do with the most elementary and basic features of your own growing up. So I can, you know -- I don't have an objective way of looking at this thing. But I'm, you know, sadly aware of whether it's Yiddish, or even other cultures of the sort of transitory nature of these very basic ways that people’s lives are 106:00tied -- you know, tied in a consistent package in the Yiddish -- you know -- is an example of a whole culture that was what it was -- because they were dealing with it in a very special way, with a fairly common problem, and they bring to that certain special features that come from where they come from. And then that enriches the way of looking at that problem or any other problem, because, well, because you're talking about deeply felt things, and that your particular -- what you can bring to it can be different from your neighbors for trivial 107:00reasons, but that doesn't make 'em not important. So, you know, I -- So I understand in general the idea -- the business of packaging, that’s maybe the wrong word to use, for the importance of that for the meaning of things you're engaged in. And in a way, that's what we're concerned with, the packaging. And it has more, you know, it's a more important feature of your connection to things, than one might often think.

CW: Hmm. Can you say more about the packaging? The package concept?

IH: Well, the packaging -- what I have in mind, maybe it's the wrong -- bad word. But you know, Italians also came to this country, and they -- they could have this very same conversation, and there'd be -- you know, instead of tzimes, they'd be thinking of spaghetti, you know, and there'd be parallel things. And they'd get a different approach to the very basic problems, but it's these -- it's not the basic problems that enrich our lives, but it is to some degree, the packaging to a great degree, that packaging. And, you know, without recognizing 109:00that you can fool yourself in thinking if you just treat this abstractly, and you'll get the full understanding. ‘Tain't so.

CW: Well, I'd just like to close by asking you to reflect and -- if there's anything about what you learned from your father.

IH: That's hard for me to say. I bet I learned a whole bunch of things that I didn't know I'd learned. You know that I -- yeah. 'Cause certainly, you know, I don't remember him having teach me. He was very -- instead of telling, he dealt 110:00with me more in the asking mode. But you know, that's the other mode of teaching, and a lot can be said for understanding that that's the way to go. Um-hm.

CW: Well, a hartsikn dank [thank you very much]. Thank you for all this time, and sharing your memories with us, with me, and with the Yiddish Book Center.

IH: Okay.

[END OF INTERVIEW]