Keywords:"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"; Adela Opatoshu; Adela Wolfe Opatoshu; Aharon Weinberg; Aron Glantz-Leieles; Broadway theater; Broadway theatre; bungalow; Croton Falls, New York; dacha; datcha; David Opatoshu; Dovid Opatoshu; Dovid Torsky; English language; father; Fischl Bernstein; grandfather; grandmother; H. Leivick; H. Leyvik; Haim Leivick; high blood pressure; Joseph Opatoshu; Kol Nidre; Marc Chagall; parents; photo albums; photographs; Sabbath; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; school; Shabbat; Shabbos; shabes; walking sticks; writers; Yiddish language; YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; Yom Kippur; Yosef Opatoshu; Yosef Opatovsky; Yoysef Opatoshu
Keywords:"Di Kishefmakherin (The Sorceress)"; "Forverts"; "The Forward"; "The Jewish Daily Forward"; "The Yiddish Daily Forward"; 1960s; Abraham Leon Springer Fuchs; actor; Arbeter Teater Farband; ARTEF; Artef; Broadway theater; Broadway theatre; Croton Falls, New York; David Opatoshu; Dovid Opatoshu; father; Leo Fuchs; Manhattan, New York; Molly Picon; musical theater; musical theatre; musicals; New York City; Seymour Rechtzeit; Seymour Rexite; shund; The Bronx, New York; United States Army; US Army; Workers' Theater Union; World War 2; World War II; WW2; WWII; Yiddish accent; Yiddish language; Yiddish theater; Yiddish theatre
Keywords:"A romants fun a ferd-ganef (Romance of a horse thief)"; "Gezamlte verk (Collected works)"; "In poylishe velder (In Polish woods)"; "Inventing a Modern Identity"; "The Founders of Christianity"; Amherst, Massachusetts; author; Boris Arkadevich Kletskin; Boris Kletskin; Chasidic; Chasidism; Chassidic; Chassidism; conference; English language; French language; German language; grandfather; Hasidic; Hasidism; Hassidic; Hassidism; historian; I.B. Singer; I.J. Singer; I.L. Peretz; Isaac Bashevis Singer; Isaac Leib Peretz; Israel Joshua Singer; Itskhok Bashevis Zinger; Japanese language; Jewish culture; Joseph Opatoshu; Judaea; Judea; novels; Polish language; Russian language; Saul Bellow; Sholem Asch; Spanish language; translation; writer; Yiddish Book Center; Yiddish culture; Yiddish language; Yiddish literature; Yitzkhok Leybush Peretz; Yosef Opatoshu; Yosef Opatovsky; Yoysef Opatoshu
CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney, and today is March 12th, 2014, I am
here in Los Angeles, California with Dan Opatoshu, grandson of Yiddish writerYosef Opatoshu, and son of Yiddish- and English-language actor David Opatoshu.We are going to record an interview for the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler OralHistory Project.
Today, we're gonna be talking about your grandfather. Can you tell me his name,
and when and where he was born?
DAN OPATOSHU: He was born Yosef Opatovsky, in the Słupsk forest which was
around the town of Mława, in Poland. I was only seven-and-a-half when he died,but despite the short years I knew him, it belies how much contact we had, andhis influence on me. My father was an only child, and I was an only child, so Iwas the only grandchild. And, this is one of the little pen-and-ink drawings 1:00that Chagall gave as a gift for my birth. (reading) "Far dovid un zayn vayb" --for David and his wife. "Un zayn zin" -- and his son. "Mit hartsike grusn" --with hearty greetings, "fun mark shagal [from Marc Chagall]," New York, 1948.And, as you can see, it's a little infant lying in bed with the nude mother, andthe man with wings flying through the air with a bouquet of flowers to herbedside. Mitn blumen [With flowers]. My grandparents delighted in my company, asgrandparents are wont to do. And my parents took advantage of this by droppingme off at Opatoshu's house, apartment, every Friday, and leaving me there until 2:00Sunday evening, so that they could have a weekend alone. And every summer, Iwould spend in Opatoshu's cottage in upstate New York. I hardly ever heard himspeak English, because they only spoke Yiddish to me. Opatoshu would read me andAdela my favorite comic books, which were usually Walt Disney comics, or LittleLulu, or Nancy and Sluggo, except they would simultaneously translate them allinto Yiddish. And it never occurred to me to question how Huey, Dewey, andLouie suddenly spoke such a refined, poetic Yiddish. He was a huge presence inmy life, even if it was only for seven and a half years. Yosef was one of thefew Yiddish writers that actually didn't need a day job. So he had an 3:00economically comfortable existence, because of the j-- because of the weeklystories for the "Tog," their republication in other journals -- in Poland, inRussia, in France, in South America -- the sale of the novels, and his veryfrequent lecture tours. He made enough to have a, not wealthy, at all, butcertainly a comfortable existence. I would say probably something akin to atenured university professor at the time in the '30s, or the '20s and the '30s.He gave the impression -- and probably was -- of a big man, a strong man, a 4:00soccer player, sort of thing, very broad-shouldered. Made reference to, Chagallin letters to him, would always say "upon your broad shoulders lie -- " stufflike that. He had a very distinctive visage, face, with a chin that came outlike that and a big nose and an under bite. Sort of a Don Corleone thing.Piercing eyes. And was a very forceful presence amongst people in socialsituation and on lecture circuits. His most well-known novel, "In poylishevelder," "In Polish Woods," was actually a two-part novel, that took placeduring the revolutionary period in Poland, during the moral decline of the 5:00Hasidic dynasties in Europe. And actually, that novel got him excommunicated bya number of Hasidic rabbis. There were orgies -- nisht sheyn [not pretty], assome people felt. His novel, "A tog in reygensberg," "A Day in Regensburg,"went back to Regensburg in medieval Germany. It took place in a twenty-four-hourperiod, but a very eventful day in the city of Regensburg, where there is a bigwedding going on, where there are political things going on, but his challengein doing that was he wanted to write the book in what his scholarship and othersthat he drew upon told him Yiddish would have been like in that historical 6:00period. Therefore, that's about the only book of his that I find completelyimpossible to read. Because it's almost like reading Chaucer. Both the narrativeand the dialogue. He was adamant in terms of rejecting the over-romanticizedimagery of the trees, waving like prayer shawls and stuff like that. It was morea modernist thing, and certainly in the stuff about America, his writing wasmuch more erotic than most Yiddish works have been. He wrote about gangsters andcharlatans and roughnecks. He wrote about the situation of blacks in America, 7:00one of his more famous stories is called "Lintsheray [Lynching]," aboutlynchings in the South. So it was edgier.
CW: What was his feeling about America?
DO: His identity was complicated, because he was happy for the economic
opportunity, he was happy for the freedom, he was happy for the intellectuallife, but it was -- definitely, he lived within a Yiddishist milieu, even thoughit was New York.
CW: Can you tell me what you know about his family background?
DO: His father was a maskil [non-Hasidic Orthodox Jew], but at the same taught
his children himself Talmud Torah, but made sure that his kids went to secularschools. His mother, Nantsha, came from generations of forest-dwellers, and my 8:00grandfather always said that that's who turned him into a writer, because of thestories that she would tell about the history of Poland. They were in lumber,and -- but they were also smugglers across the Polish-German border, and theywere horse thieves. And actually, my grandfather's first novella was called "Aromants fun a ferd-ganef," "Romance of a Horsethief," and was based on thestories that his mother had told him about her family. He would always delightme, and petrify me, he loved to tell me stories. I mean, because he was a weaverof tales, that's what he did. And the stories that he would tell me as a littlekid always seemed to involve little boys, weirdly enough, always approximately 9:00my age, as I got older, being chased through the Polish woods by wild,salivating wolves. And, these stories, obviously, would totally petrify me, and,you know, I would be closing my ears and my eyes at the same time, waiting forthe next development in the story. So his imagination often went to that. Ididn't know anything, or nor did he tell me anything, about the town of -- smallcity of -- Mława, but his stories were more of a throwback to a wilder, muchmore primitive world.
CW: So his father was a maskil, was there --
DO: Well, he was a -- he was a -- I mean that's philosophically, and culturally,
CW: And do you -- did he come -- do you know, did he come from a frum
[observant] -- you know --
DO: Yeah, everybody was frum then. And my grandfather also, I believe, did --
didn't do Yeshiva, but certainly did kheyder [traditional religious school],and then the more advanced training was given by his father. First, he went to aRussian-language school in Mława, and then he went to a commercial schoolin Warsaw. And then he went off to France, to Nancy, to a engineering school.And, after a number of years, a few years there, he ran out of funds. And had to 11:00leave those studies and return to Mława. But he returned as somewhat of anapparition for this smallish town. From what he picked up in France. Verydandified frippery, with long capes, and fancy mustaches, and big hats, almostan Oscar Wildish look. That cuts quite a dramatic figure for quasi-rural Polandat the time. On his return to Poland, he also started writing short stories.And he was observed by my grandmother, Adela Wolfe, who was considerably youngerthan him, but was totally taken by this dashing, cosmopolitan figure that 12:00suddenly showed up in town. He immigrated to America, and got his certificate ofnaturalization in 1914. Worked a variety of jobs, while continuing to writeshort stories. Delivered newspapers, taught Hebrew to kids and then eventuallywent back to -- went to Cooper Union, to complete his engineering degree. Andgraduated, and got a job with the firm that later was responsible for thebuilding of the George Washington Bridge. But at the same time that he graduatedand began this profession, a new daily newspaper was established in New York, aYiddish-language paper. And he became one of the contributors then -- the paper 13:00was called "Der Tog." And it was sort of considered, and its aspiration was,and it became sort of the neutral, responsible paper, sort of the "New YorkTimes" of the Yiddish press, which at the time, there were many dailies and theywere very influenced by the yellow journalism that simultaneously was going onin the American press. And there were scandal sheets, and they all had hugepolitical differences, and were always feuding, and were always doinginvestigative exposés of each other, and stuff like that. And the "Tog" wasjust gonna be the news and nothing but the news. But his job was to write ashort story for the "Tog" that ran every week, a weekly short story, which he 14:00continued to do, consistently, for over forty years, until his death. New Yorkwas the center for Yiddish journalism, prose and poetry, and certainly forYiddish theater. It was the biggest mass audience with the most disposableincome of Yiddish-speaking Jews. Just like some of the posed photos that weredone in Poland, he was still rather flamboyant in some of these, but there wasan American touch. One photo of him, stretched out on a white fur rug, that Ialways referred to as his Mae West picture. But he's in an American suit, andnow he's got an American hat, not the big floppy one, he's got a tie, instead of 15:00the big cape with the cravat. There's one photograph of him and his literarycircle. They were called by other people, maybe by themselves -- by eachother, "Di yunge [The young ones]," sort of revolutionary group. And when Ilook at that photo, I mean, they look more like hitmen from Mo Eastman's LowerEast Side gang, than they do a bunch of Jewish cultural intellectuals. Butthat's, to them, was "this is Amer-- this is what an American looks like." Mygrandmother was also an extremely interesting woman. She was quite striking,blond, blue-eyed, an inveterate seductress. When she ran into Opatoshu again inNew York, she still had strong memories of the dashing young figure that was tooold and too celebrated for her back in Mława, but this time set her mind to 16:00capture him. They were married in New York. About a year after that, their firstson, my father, Dovid, was born. She came from a family of, eventually, sixsisters. This was taken before the family immigrated to America, at that pointthere were five daughters. And once they were in New York, a sixth daughter wasborn, just about a year before my father was born, which was a great shande[shame] and embarrassment to the parents, that at that age, when their childrenare getting married, suddenly another kid pops out, and what's going on behindthat door? Nisht sheyn far yidn [Not nice for Jews]. Their parents made surethat they were well-educated. Two of them married university professors, one of 17:00them became an excellent sculptress, one of them became a writer and on-airpersonality in American radio, not Yiddish radio. And Adela ended up marryingOpatoshu. Their income was also supplemented because she was the only woman tobe permitted to teach the upper courses in Yiddish language and literature inthe shule [secular Yiddish school] in New York. And that she did full-timeduring the years.
CW: Do you remember what the name of the shule was?
DO: I think it was the Sholem Aleichem shule.
CW: The shule, like the high sc--
DO: The mitlshul, yeah, yeah. Yeah, when she died -- no, it wasn't when she
died, it was when my father died, on the Mendele lists, there were a number of 18:00people who said, Oh, he was a wonderful actor, and they said, But, but hismother was just such a wonderful teacher. And she came in with this air ofelegance and seriousness. Everybody would just sit up straight, and there wereno gaffes. Because of his background in the woods, he had a tremendous lovefor nature. And had enough money so that he always -- every place that theylived had a view of nature, which is a tough thing to accomplish in New YorkCity. Luckily, I was able to discover -- came across photos of both of them thatwere actually in the first apartment. I think this was probably the apartment in 19:00the Bronx that looked out over Crotona Park, in Indian Lake. Then he moved toManhattan, and Upper Manhattan, 150th street. And the writing desk looked outover Riverside Park and the Hudson River. And, so he could sit there and muse,and suddenly see, instead of the Hudson it became the Vistula. The places seemedvery dark. Fascinating, I loved being there, but dark. It wasn't that they weredark because of a lack of light, or because of heavy furniture or something likethat, it was because they were so filled with objects. There werefloor-to-ceiling bookcases in the living room and in both bedrooms. The wallswere covered with artwork. There was a very close connection between Yiddish, or 20:00Jewish, graphic artists, painters and sculptors, and writers at that point, whooften did portraits of their writer friends. The number of these that I cameacross just going through the material amazed me, of how, often, and clearlydifferent artists, but it was like everyone needed to do this also. And Opatoshuhad a fascination with Judaica. Hanukkah menorahs, and Shabbos candlesticks, anda substantial ark, with a scroll done on parchment. Every corner of the housewas filled, and I would love playing with them, and amongst my favorite were, hehad a large collection of Havdalah spice boxes, and I remember one, I alwaysused to go around the house with, which was a little silver fish, with a tail 21:00that moved, and his head would open up, and that's where you could put in the spices.
It's a part of a torah, but I don't know which section. Obviously it's not big
enough to be the entire one, but, as you can see, it is parchment, and at onepoint I did have someone with more of a religious bent than I have take a lookat some of these paragraphs and identify it, but it was years ago and I nolonger remember what they told me it consisted of. Yeah, I'm not sure thepurpose of this. It's got a bottom that opens up (laughs), and I don't know 22:00what's kept there. Let me see if there's any -- there's a tiny little man inhere, that I've never seen before. I don't know what he is. He looks moreMexican Indian than Jewish. I don't think that he was collecting Inca art at thetime, so. Opatoshu and Adela's world revolved around -- was completely enmeshedin Yiddish culture. Opatoshu always had hosted a secular shabes tish [Shabbosgathering, lit. "table"], where his collaborators, fellow writers, poets,artists, would come around. And, would come by on Friday night, and they'd all 23:00sit there, and they would discuss and debate the cultural and politicaldevelopments of the week. And amongst the regulars that I recall being thereevery Friday was Leivick, the poet, and Glanz, Glanz Leyeles, a poet, and ShlomoBickel, actually was Theodore Bikel's uncle, who was a prominent critic then,of Chagall, during the years that he lived in America. And I would be there, butI would spend my -- all of my time under the table. I wasn't able to understandthat much of the highfalutin Yiddish that was going on above me. I would spendmy time under the table, usually untying the shoelaces of the assembled guests, 24:00untying Leivick's shoelaces. The voices above me were often very contentious,and impassioned, during these discussions, but there was lots of laughter. Theonly time I remember piping up and contributing to the conversation, was onetime, I'm busily at work under the dining room table, and I keep hearing thisword being thrown out, and thrown out, and thrown out. And the words around it Icould not understand, it wasn't -- the language was on a higher level than"Huey, Dewey and Louie." But my ears pricked up, and I got up from the table,and in a loud voice, admonished all of them, "that's a bad word, you're not 25:00supposed to use that word, that's a word you should never say." And they alllooked at me, and broke out in laughter. It turns out they were having a debateabout a recent critical column published in the newspapers by the famous Yiddishcritic Shmuel Niger. First names were not used in the Jewish world. So everybodywas -- Leivick or Niger, or Glanz, or Opatoshu. But the closest to him calledhim Oppen. How he got that nickname from Opatoshu I don't know, but it wasOppen. But I as a little kid, couldn't -- didn't say Oppen, I said Oppie. And,so that's what he always was to me, was Oppie, until his death. There was one 26:00group that were particularly close, personally and as collaborators -- creativecollaborators. And that was Leivick and his wife, Glantz-Leieles, and, in theearly years, in the 1920s, the three families, every summer, would rent a largehouse in Upstate New York together. The Leivicks had one child, Danny Leivick,who I might have been named after. The Glantzes had one child, Dina, andOpatoshu had one child, David. D-D-D. And they, and the parents, would spend thesummers in this house as this extended shabes tish, where they would write, and 27:00debate, and collaborate, on editing publications, and stuff like that, alltogether. The one wrinkle in the relationship, was that for the course of thesummers, the Glantzes and the Opatoshus would switch mates, and my grandfatherwould have a bedroom with Fanya Glantz, and Adela, my grandmother, would share abedroom with Glantz. That relationship only would exist for the course of thesummer. When they would go back to the city, at the end of the summer rental,they'd go back to their own homes. However, the wives still remained the major 28:00muse for the other. And when Glantz would write some poem that he wantedcriticism of, or was particularly proud of, the first person to read it would benot his wife, but Adela Opatoshu. And when my grandfather wrote an essay or ashort story that he wanted to share, the first person to read it would be FanyaGlantz. Now, when I first heard this story, from my mother, in my later teens, Iwas rather skeptical about this, I said, is mom making this up, what is she justtrying to get back at -- but then, a number of years later, a few years later,my father reluctantly confirmed it. And then, a number of years after that, 29:00while killing a bottle of vodka with Dina Glantz, who was then Dina Levitt, avery successful film editor, documentary film editor. She supplied me with moreof the salacious details of it, and said that she was shocked in later years tofind out that this wasn't the most normal of family living arrangements, becauseit's all she knew, and everyone just accepted it at that point. Nowhere did Ihear, when I began to hear these stories, or did I sense growing up, did thatrelationship lead to any friction between Adela Opatoshu and Fanya Glantz. They 30:00remained almost like sisters, and were each other's closest friends. Even thoughwhen you see them in formal photos they're -- they look rather straight, andformal in suits and ties, and things, the pictures in the country have adifferent look. And you see the pictures of the children there, the children arealways naked, running around and playing. And it always gave me the feel that,looking at these, that this was almost like a hippie commune in the '60s, andyou didn't know that the same sort of thing went on in Yiddishist intellectualcircles in the 1920s, but apparently it did. Again, another photo from thoseyears, in the summer, obviously the photo was taken by Glantz, because he's theonly one not in it, so it's Opatoshu, and Fanya in the center, Adela and myfather, and Dina Glantz, the Glantz's daughter. My grandmother, in addition to 31:00being a seductress, and an intellectual, was a very difficult woman. She wasalways getting baleydikt, insulted, by everyone around her. That would lead tofeuds. And my grandfather spent a lifetime working to patch up these feuds. And,at ti-- I mean, the feuds extended to, she -- my mother, she would be insultedby my mother. One time, coming to the house, or something, and she was bringingflowers, and my mother said, "Oh my God, I don't have another vase to put themin," because it was a big party, and all the vases were -- and my grandmotherbecame so insulted that she stormed out and would refuse to set foot in our homeagain. And this happened at least on three occasions, it would go on for a year,year and a half. The upside for her, of this self-banishment from our home, was 32:00it meant that my father and I would have to independently make visits to herhome, because she wouldn't ever come for family gatherings or anything. So thatshe'd be able to be the only female presence in the room. My mother was out ofthe picture. Now, Fanya Glantz and my grandfather died in pretty close proximityto each other. And so Adela, my grandmother, obviously assumed that, okay, now,me and Glantz -- I don't remember who died first, whether it was my grandfatheror Fanya, but, Adela said "Okay, well now, we'll become a couple. Officially,we'll marry, me and Glantz. This has been going -- this relationship and thisclose thing, and I'm his muse, and it's been thirty, forty years" -- but Glantz 33:00instead married another woman, and to add insult to injury, he was introduced tothis woman because she was a very close friend of my maternal grandmother, whonever -- she and Adela, were water and oil. Hated each other from the first daythey met. And here Glantz goes and marries this woman Sonya. Well, of course mygrandmother had a fit about this, and not only did it mean total estrangementfrom Glantz, but also it meant total estrangement from the Leivicks, becausethey refused to cut off all communication with this adulterer (laughs) Glantz. 34:00So she basically, in that fell swoop, lost the pillars around her. And it keptgoing on with friend after friend, and when she didn't have my grandfatheraround to work on patching it up over the course of the year, when therelationship would be over it would be over. And she was alone. But she alwaysstill -- there were a couple of women friends that were there up until the end,or until they died. And she always had gentleman callers, friends, lovers. Whenthe last one of those died, my grandmother told me that she had no more reasonto go on living. She was very particular about who -- which men will get herfavors. And there was no one left, of sufficient intellectual and cultural 35:00weight to deserve her. And she said that life without a gentleman coming, evenif it's just once a week, and arriving with flowers at the door for somelovemaking, and some dinner, and some intellectual discussion, and without that,life just isn't worth living anymore. And sure enough, within about threemonths, she committed suicide, with a bottle of sleeping pills and a bottle ofJohnnie Walker.
CW: How did you find out about this?
DO: About what?
CW: About your, about your grandmother's relationships, and --
DO: Because I would meet the -- I was there a lot. I mean, with her too, I would
-- actually -- well, that's a different subject, it's my other grandparents,but, both of my gra-- my two grandfathers, who were both incredibly, incrediblyinfluential to me, and important in my life, and they died within six months ofeach other. My grandmothers, I continued seeing. I would go to Adela's --especially during the periods where she wouldn't come to our house -- probablyevery week. On a Saturday or a Sunday. Under the guise of sort of a Yiddishlesson, but it was reading my grandfather's works, would be the textbook, which 37:00is no way for -- to learn a language that you don't know. You don't start, youknow, with the -- it's pretty highfalutin stuff. But basically it was just tokeep her company and stuff like that. On the other hand, my other grandmotherwas functionally illiterate. And I would go to see her once a week, once a weekand a half, after her longtime lover died, who was a teacher a universityteacher. And I would go there to give her English lessons. And the textbook forthat was the "New York Post." And we would work through like two articlesevery -- but. But Adela would be open with me, I mean she was seductive with 38:00everyone including -- and open about her sexuality, she was seductive with myfather when he was growing up, and she was certainly seductive with me as -- aslong as I can remember, up until her death. My grandfather's world was -- eventhough he was living in America, it really was a transnational world of Yiddishculture. He travelled back to Poland twice in the '20s, I believe in '22 or'23, and in '28, and then again in the early '30s. And a trip to the SovietUnion then, and then a trip to Palestine, and trips to Paris, and South America.When he started making the trips to Europe in the early 1920s, it was clearlythe successful return of the prodigal son, the man that made good in the new 39:00world. And actually, there's (coughs) a cartoon that, that I saw on manyoccasions, and I must have, somewhere in storage, but I've not been able to comeupon it, in the last couple of years. I believe there might be a copy of it inthe YIVO archives, that was published, I believe, in a Warsaw newspaper, andthe cartoon shows my grandfather, Opatoshu, lying in a hammock, in a large groveof trees. And it's a great caricature of his face, which was easy to caricature,with the big -- with the nose going down, the chin coming out, and the underbite, and the big forehead, and he's lying there, and his lacksadaisically 40:00picking leaves off the trees that surround him. And every leaf is a dollar bill.And across the canopy of leaves, it says "In poylishe velder," "In PolishWoods," which was his most renowned novel. So, as far as the Jewish community inEurope was concerned, here was just this millionaire with the dollars flowing infrom the success of this book. He also kept up, in person, in addition to makingmoney, out of doing it, publicizing the books, and giving lectures, and thingslike that. This was in Paris in 1925, obviously a conference. Sitting to his --to Opatoshu's -- right, is Chagall. And I believe that was when Chagall andOpatoshu first met. And this was at Chagall's house in the countryside outside 41:00of Paris. And that's also Chagall, and his family, Opatoshu, and Daniel Charney,who was the brother of Shmuel Niger, the critic in New York. This is Opatoshusitting for a portrait being done by Chagall, looking very much the clichéFrench artist with the palate and the striped shirt. That's a sketch thatChagall did of Opatoshu, pen and ink with some coloring, brown and blue.Opatoshu made it a point to visit, spend time, at schools, with young students,and, who I am sure he assumed would be his future audience of readers. Thisphoto with him in the center, was taken at the Peretz school, in Pruzhany, 42:00Belarus, which was then part of Poland. And these pictures are from the '30s,and you look at them, and you know it, as a matter of four years, or five years,and these kids are no more.
CW: I'm wondering if you could say a few words about his politics, meaning his
connection to the Soviet Union, and, you know, the leftist world that he was apart of in New York and Europe.
DO: It's certainly nothing that I know from immediate experience, I mean, as a
six-year-old, I didn't talk about Leninist theory with him. I have -- he didwrite essays that touched on the political, and I have read the work of scholars 43:00that have looked at that closely, particularly Gennady Estraikh, the conclusionthey come to from it, and there was a big push by the Soviet writers for him toleave America and come to the Soviet Union, which he did entertain, but neverdid. Their interpretation is that although he had socialist leanings, leftistleanings, he was never a committed communist. However, he found that he wasimpressed by the possibilities during a certain window of time for the 44:00development of Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union, when it was beingpromulgated, supported by the Soviet authorities. And that's what he kepthearing from his colleagues that were there, Markish, and the others, in theirletters and when they saw him, saying listen, we have our own publishing houses,we have our own union. We have schoolbooks for children, we have -- andBirobidzhan, and the government is completely supporting it, and it -- think ofan autonomous Jewish region within that, and it's a place where Yiddish couldlive, because my grandfather cared greatly about the language and the culturaltradition, and had no illusions that it would remain as an intrinsic part of 45:00American Jewry, knew that it was gonna disappear here, and, so, was thinking --was impressed by, well here's someone offering us fertile soil to continuegrowing Yiddish identity, Yiddish culture. He would get together with the circlethat he constantly corresponded with and collaborated with. This is a photo withthe Khalyastre, the Gang, that Opatoshu worked very intermittently for them,and in almost all of their publications, there was a contribution from him.Second from the left is Markish, ended up in Soviet Union and was always tryingto convince Opatoshu to make the move there. He was a poet, a playwright, he was 46:00one of the founding members appointed to the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, andactually, in -- as happened in the Soviet Union in 1946, he won the StalinPrize for his contributions to the state, and by 1952, he was executed, alongwith all of the other Yiddish intelligentsia, in what's called the Night of theMurdered Poets. This was in 1934, it was in the Soviet Union, and it was theconference of Soviet Yiddish writers. Opatoshu just came as a guest to that. Andyou can see, the close relationship he had with Peretz, with Markish, seems toalmost have his head on Opatoshu's shoulder. Did you notice that?
CW: Mh-hmm. Yeah, I did.
OD: It's so cute.
CW: So cute.
OD: Everybody else so formal-looking, Soviet-looking, straight ahead. Then
47:00clearly, when the -- all of -- Yiddish writers were slowly murdered, and thesepeople that he had been having correspondence with for thirty years, and hewould write his weekly letter to them, and the letter would come back, and itwould say, "no such person, no such address." At the same address for Markish,or for the other ones. Then, he knew it was, it was over, what was going on. Oneof the things that amazed me about him is that after the war, when the calamityof what had happened, and the disappearance of his natural audience, combinedwith what happened to Yiddish, and the Yiddishists in the Soviet Union not that 48:00much later and the disappearance of those dreams as a place of -- that, he neverseemed to lose his enthusiasm and belief in the importance of its continuation.And, so, the trips changed to other countries, but he still seemed to have thesame vigor about it. After the Holocaust occurred, he switched the locale of his 49:00works, and no longer was he writing about moments in the history of EasternEuropean, and Western, Jews, but he started writing novels that took place inold Israel, Jerusalem. Novels about Bar Kokhba, and Rabbi Akiva, about heroicJewish figures fighting against tremendous odds against non-Jewish enemies. Hisfavorite place was a small cottage, a dacha, in a place called Croton Falls, NewYork, in Westchester County, which is now like the fifth- or sixth-wealthiestsuburb, or wealthiest community in, in the United States, but at the time wasstill really rural. The way he happened to get this place, there was a very 50:00wealth Jewish builder in construction, who was a great devoté of Yiddishculture. And he envisioned a community made up of artists, and writers, that --and he would build them all these little places, and they could all spend thesummer there, and create together and commune. And, had this large chunk ofland, and divided it into half-acre, one-acre plots, and he built these littleun-weatherized wooden homes, it was well water, and, and the pipes weren'tweatherized, so it was only -- they would freeze in the winter, so it was onlygood from late May, early June, until late September, early October. And this 51:00guy just set out and constructed this stuff, and by the time all the wells weredug, and the, and the little dirt roads were paved, and electricity was put in,the only one of the Yiddish artists and writers that could actually afford thekey money to the bungalow was my grandfather. And the other ones were bought bypeople that did have the money, which were poshete arbeters, simple workers,union workers. There was Dovid Torsky was a house painter, and Fischl Bernsteinwas a furrier. But these were very highly intellectual and political 52:00individuals, and Opatoshu enjoyed their company thoroughly, as much as he didhis fellow writers. The town of Croton Falls was a one-street town thatconsisted of Jimmy's Grocery Store, and a post office, and a drug store with asoda fountain, and a one-room library, and I think a barber shop, and there wasa little stand, a taxi stand, that was two brothers with one car between them.It was two bedrooms, on the left side. One was theirs, the Opatoshus, the otherone would be my little bedroom. His writing desk was up against the far window,there was a big porch on the other side, this would be the front entrance of thehouse. And, when you'd walk in that front entrance, you went into a small 53:00kitchen first. One bath, and that's the rear of the house, the big porch, and inthe expansive, usually unkempt lawn that he would set up his chairs on, for himand his friends, and sit and read, and now --
CW: So who would he go up there with?
DO: Well, it would be him, and my grandmother, and me, during the summers.
Sometimes my mother would come along, sometimes my father, also. There was otherkids that -- the Bernstein kid, the Torsky kid, and we would just made ourlittle group that would play together. They were all Yiddish-speaking families,and so all of us were quasi-bilingual. It was -- the pathways between thesehouses and stuff were not paved, and it would be muddy, just like the shtetls 54:00[small towns in Eastern Europe with a Jewish community] used to be afterrainfalls. And he got just great joy out of the small vegetable gardens that hewould plant, and picking wild -- taking me to go pick wild berries in thebushes, all around the property. And building these infernal fires, of, therewas no garbage men coming to collect things, you would burn your own garbage.And he had this big pit, surrounded by rocks, that he had dug, and the garbagewould go in there, and he would just feed it and feed it, newspapers and this --and the flame would be up, and I would just sit there, just, terrified, butloving watching it. I did get to see him work there, because he still had towrite the weekly story. And that's when I would have to be quiet, or playoutside, or go away with my friends or something like that, and he would sitthere and do it. And, what he loved about that place was, aside from that 55:00worktime, he would finish the story and the rest of the time he could layoutside on the hammock, or in a chair, and read, or sit on his high porch, andread, or take langer shpatsirs, long walks. And I used to love accompanying himon these walks. It would be the walk into town a couple of times a week, wherehe would get his mail, get the three or four Yiddish newspapers, the mail thatwas forwarded from Russia, from Poland, and stuff from New York to Croton Falls.And he would drop off the story at the post office, it was about a mile walk, Ithink, each way, into town. And then there would be walks, just around on thesedirt roads. I remember one of his favorite was a weekly walk we would make to afarmer -- about a half mile or so up the road -- to get fresh eggs and whatever 56:00vegetables happened to come up that week. And, the walk was nice, but then wewould always spend an inordinate amount of time there, hours, because he lovedtalking to this farmer, and his family. And, as far as I can recall, it was theonly black family in this area of Westchester that managed to buy there. I don'tknow for how many generations this farm was in their hands.
CW: Can you mention the walking sticks?
DO: Yep. When we would go off on these walks my grandfather always, there was
nothing wrong with his legs, but he always would take a walking stick with him. 57:00And he had this very large collection of rather elaborate, artistic walkingsticks. And he did this rhythmic thing with every stride. One, two, up, down,one, two, up, down, whatever. As he'd be conversing with me. And, as we'd beginthe walk each time, he would grab a branch and break it into the right heightfor -- as I was getting older -- for me, so I would have one of these too. And Iwould try to imitate each one of those rhythmic things as we -- as we strolledalong. And, there are photos of when his closest colleagues from New York wouldcome up to Croton Falls to stay for a weekend, or -- you see, all of them havethese walking sticks, so it must have been something, of either the Eastern 58:00European background, or something, that, when you're in the country, and you'rea lord of the manor, you have a walking stick, that you sit with and -- This oneI really like, that's a very pretty and also nice piece of wood, with littlegnarly things on it. Someday when I'm old and infirm, I'll be all set to(laughs). When his friends would come up, Leivick, and -- there wasn't room inhis little bungalow, but all the other people, the furrier, and the housepainterwould put up Leivick and put up Glantz, so that the writers could hang togetherfor the extended weekend. It could just as easily be a dacha in Russia, Poland, 59:00the Pale, as in Westchester County. Once you even see the Chagall-like littlegoat being fed. I don't know how the little goat showed up. I have strongmemories of one summer -- incredibly hot, and there was drought, and it was dayafter day of humid, sweltering. And there was very little water from the wells.And it's an image that's just burned into my mind, of the two of us, sittingoutside, Adirondack chairs, sort of things, with a bucket of water between us.And, two shmates [rags]. And him with that muscular, football player build, and 60:00the little pisher [youngster] sitting next to him, and the ritual of takingthese white shmates and putting them into the water, and ringing them out, andwrapping them around our heads. Should be cool. And I would watch him do it andthen I'd take mine, and I'd put it in there, and then I'd put it on my head. Ishould be cool too. And I remember he always used to say this phrase, it hadnothing to do with the drought, but the only English I heard him say, wasquoting the poem "water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink." Ah, ah,ah. Which (laughs), I'd go, wow he sounds strange in that language, I wonderwhat language it is that he's talking. His health did begin to severely 61:00deteriorate. What he suffered from was very high blood pressure. Something thatnow would have just been eradicated, cured by a pill a day. At the time, therewas nothing you could do about it except extremely restrictive diet. And, Iremember the meals in Croton Falls, and at the Shabboses, suddenly becoming,this, no salt in anything, it was nothing but broiled, or boiled, unsaltedchicken, occasional fish, boiled potatoes, farmer's cheese, just bland -- well,for this lusty sensualist that he was, to have to eat this stuff that even a 62:00seven-year-old found completely unpalatable must have been incredibly painful. Istill remember him going eating this stuff and going, "Oh, zeyer geshmak,geshmak." You know, "Oh, delicious, just wonderful." But I'm sure he sufferedfrom it. And he remained amazingly vigorous about keeping that diet, but itstill didn't do the trick. And, he died of a sudden massive stroke, it was inNew York, said, "I think I have a headache," and went to lay down. At the time, 63:00he was getting dressed in an elegant suit to go to the premier of my father's --one of my father's first major roles in a Broadway comedy. My father was called,went zipping over to the house in a cab, kissed Yosef on the lips for the lasttime, left the apartment, got into the subway, and made it for the curtain of 64:00the show. And this was Yom Kippur eve, of 1954, which is almost melodramatic, toadd that to the story.
CW: Where were you?
DO: I'm not gonna be able to do this one straight. My other grandfather died not
six months before, a couple days before my seventh birthday. And (coughs) I wasdevastated by that. But so was Opatoshu. They became incredibly close, basically 65:00just about me. They would talk every day about "do you know the brilliant thinghe said today, I have to tell you the story I heard, oh, the kid's got brains,he's got -- oh." Every day they would just speak to kvel about me on thetelephone. And Opatoshu was just shattered when Weinberg died. And that's whenhe began looking like a corpse. So my parents send me to school the nextmorning, they don't tell me anything about it, that he had died. And they get acall from the school, saying, some of the other students read the obit, or theirparents did, and said something. And so they had separated me. So I knewsomething was weird, I'm alone in the playground, and then my parents show up. 66:00And I told myself, I don't want the other one to die. Wouldn't listen, just keptswinging, harder and harder. So, that was a blow, at seven-and-a-half. I mean,to lose both, that were just such pillars. It's what both of them gave me, wasjust such a sense of self, and self-importance, that's so hard to get, and it'sharder to get from parents, because they're still struggling, even with theirown self-definition at the time, and the responsibility of having you day in andday out, and work, and this and that. But here were these two giant figures thateverybody seemed to respect and treat with kid gloves and stuff, and listen to. 67:00They were always willing to listen to me, and always just kvelling about anystupid thing I said. When my grandfather died, my grandmother, with my father'sassistance, went through all the materials that filled the house, and all thebooks and stuff. And about half of it went to the YIVO, the Yiddish ScientificResearch Institute in New York, to their archives. Then, when my grandmotherdied, my father went through all the stuff. My grandmother just kept what wasmost personally meaningful to herself. When she died, my father went through thesame process, and culled them again, and half of that material went to the YIVO,and he kept what he considered the most personally meaningful. When he died, allof the material that had gone through those two previous cullings ended up in my 68:00possession. I was unable to read a word of Yiddish. There was no way I was gonnabe able to cull through it and decide what's meaningful, and what isn't, and Ididn't want to burden someone else with that task. I rented a big storage space,and, about 20 boxes went in there. I did keep a number of boxes -- when I openedthem up, I just saw that they contained either photo albums or there were a lotof them that just had loose photos, and loose pieces of paper and, somecorrespondence, and things like that. Which I just brought, and put into storagein big closets in my garage. The photos document my growing from an infant to atoddler in his arms, on his shoulders. The little head and the big head, I love.Big head.
CW: Were you always interested in Opatoshu? Have there been times in your life
69:00where you returned or became more interested?
DO: Well, I was always personally interested, like people are about -- if
they're close with their grandparents, and if their grandparents are aninfluence, and a presence in their lives. I certainly was not interested inYiddish language, culture, or history. For most of my life. I mean, I paid lipservice with my grandmother, to make her feel good and stuff. I did have a sortof sentimental attachment to, I love to hear it, and there were some favoriterecords, and stuff. Moishe Oysher, and things that I heard as a kid that alwaysretained a grip on me, some of Lebedeff, and things. My father was always -- 70:00Yiddish was always around, because my father was completely -- remained steepedin that culture, and kept trying to go back to it. I mean, he started in theYiddish theater, and by the time -- after he got back from the army, the SecondWorld War, he quickly went into the American stage, he didn't -- even thoughYiddish was his first language, he was born in the Bronx, and went to publicschool, and -- so he didn't have a Yiddish accent, he was able to make, to breakthrough where a lot of the other people that were with him in the Artef werenot, because they were born in Europe and they were -- they could only play oldJews, because of the Yiddish accent. But (coughs), but later on, my fatherachieved a certain level of success as an actor, and was above the title onBroadway, when he would do plays what he would choose to do, or always was 71:00willing to do, was go back and do Yiddish theater, if it was possible. And, so,it was always there. But at the time he was doing that, it was, you know, it wasthe '60s, and I was in a very different sort of world that interested me. But Iwould still go, if Leo Fuchs would come in and do, at that point, theywere drek [filth], I mean, the musicals they were doing, and they were -- theYiddish would be the punchline. And it would be shlimazl, shlemiel, drek. Youknow, I mean, that would be -- but I would still like to do it. With friendswhose parents also came out of Yiddish theater and something like that, and wewould do it with a sort of cynical attitude, but it would be like, you know,going to shund [theater of inferior quality]. I mean, going to see funny trashthat sort of like, reminds you of the old time. But the a -- there were stillgood people doing it, I mean, there was Fuchs, and there was Rexite, 72:00Seymour Rexite, and Molly Picon, and. And I grew up with them too, differentthan and, and certainly for a longer period of time, because of my father'sinvolvement with them, I knew those people my whole life. I mean, Molly Piconused to chase me around, she had a big estate up -- it wasn't far from CrotonFalls, and actually you would have to -- when my father would be starring inlive TV, nobody had, when we were in Croton Falls, nobody had a TV, we didn'teven have a TV in Manhattan, I mean -- during the years we'd have to go toneighbors to see his performances when I was a kid. In Croton Falls, there wasnothing, so we would drive up to Connecticut, to Molly Picon's to see him. Butwe would go visit her often. And, and [Mikhail Groyn?], and a number of thoseYiddish actors were always a part of my life. And, Picon, I remember, used to 73:00chase me around her living room, with me squealing in delight, singing thewitch's song from "Kishef-makherin [Witch]," (singing and gesturing with hishands like a witch) "Kim, kim, kim aher, kim aher tsu mir in shtibl [Come, come,come over here, come over here to me in my little house]," you know, like ahhh,and I'd run under the piano, and -- so there was this sentimental attachment,because I really loved these people, but it wasn't that I was gonna go crusadefor Yiddish, or subscribe to the "Forverts" or even speak it, or know it. And, Ididn't get back into any sort of interest in Yiddish. In a very roundabout way,I was, I had gone back to school late in life, after working as a screenwriterfor twenty-odd years. And when I started graduate work, it's a convoluted story,but in any case, what I was working on, I realized, required a great deal of 74:00original sources were in Yiddish. And that meant I had to delve into Yiddish.And I didn't know the alef-beys [Hebrew alphabet], because to listen to mygrandparents speak I didn't need to know the alef-beys really, you know. So Istarted taking introduction to Yiddish at UCLA, and then I did what everybodywho's interested in Yiddish does, which are the summer programs at YIVO and,Vilna -- Vilnius. And, ended up just falling in love with the language again.And then that sort of brought me back to continue learning the language, anddelving deeper into it meant joining leyen-krayses, reading groups in Yiddish, 75:00and then you start reading other writers, and then that led me to start readingmy grandfather, and then a different interest came up, it wasn't just in Oppie,but it was in Opatoshu for the first time. But before that, and it's literallyjust in the last twelve years or so -- I was pretty ignorant, except for the,you know, pop stuff. And I did a good Yiddish accent, and stuff, you know? ButI think that came from my father's milieus as much as my grandfather's. When Istarted on a project to -- invited to a conference in Regensburg aboutOpatoshu's work, an academic conference, with about twenty scholars, and I wasasked to present a more personal side, not just something -- everybody else waswriting about various aspects of his work, his critical reception and things 76:00like that. And so I said, well, you know, I'm not gonna write an academic paperand present it, but I'd be happy to just talk, and put together a slide show,which motivated me to say, you know, I'm gonna go through all these pictures andstart pulling things out. And so, this is the fruits of that search.
CW: Who do you think his audience is?
DO: My grandfather's? I have absolutely no idea. I mean, one of the reasons
that these academics felt the need to hold this conference is that he's sort ofgotten lost from the high, high, high prestige that he had during his lifetimeand a few years afterwards, even for those whose field of expertise is Yiddish 77:00literature. Opatoshu never cared about translations. He -- the audience he caredabout was the Yiddish-speaking audience. And he was translated into twenty,thirty languages, I mean, into Japanese and into Russian, into Polish, intoFrench, into Spanish, into German. But what he cared about was oh, a check iscoming. But not -- had no involvement with who the translator was gonna be, orwhat it was, or reading proofs of something even. And so, the English editions,the English translations of his books, of "In poylishe veldl [In Polishwoods]," and "Romance of a Horsethief" and stuff, are atrocious. They're justreally terrible. They're almost -- they're unreadable, and they have nothing todo with what even I can understand of his style and his book. They just miss thepoint, basically, of everything -- of characters, of dialogue, of descriptive 78:00settings, whereas Sholem Asch really rode his translators.
CW: They were sort of literary rivals, were they -- what was their relationship
in person?
DO: That this photo was taken shows that they were personally polite to each
other, and did hang out. They were, however, publicly critical of each other. Iknow that Opatoshu did not have great respect for Asch. He respected him as awriter, and he thought he was a very inferior and irresponsible historian. Idon't remember how he came down, but I mean, the entire Yiddish establishmentreally came down on Asch once he started writing the Christian books. But Ithink that Opatoshu and Asch's intellectual and cultural friction predated that.It was even based on Asch's earlier works. I've heard many debates about -- of 79:00that gen -- of the next generation after, you know, Peretz, Sholem Aleichem, andthe next generation. Who was great, Opatoshu, or Sholem Asch? And then you godown a generation to Bashevis Singer, who's well-known. His reputation was all,Singer in English, that made it. But he's there, and his brother, who all of theYiddish writers of the time considered the -- infinitely greater talent.
CW: Yud Yud.
DO: Yeah. Nobody knows about him, because he didn't care about the translation.
He didn't have, you know, Saul Bellow translating him. So, I don't know, his --the name is known, and when I would attend these -- the summer programs andthings, the higher-level students would "huh, Opatoshu?" So, somebody's reading 80:00him, and I do get queries from people, and I get asked for permission to dosomething with it or to translate it to that, about four times a year, fivetimes a year, "Can we do a collection of short stories in French? Can we dothese four stories in English? Can we do this novel in a new translation inEnglish?" And of course, I always say, "Absolutely, you don't owe me a dime."If someone wants to read him, that's great. But I don't know, who's the audiencefor all those Yiddish writers? How -- what percentage of the Yiddish books atthe Book Center have been translated into English? And how many people canread -- are fluent enough in Yiddish to read high literature in it? And notjust the lyrics to a klezmer song or something. So.
CW: Yeah. I guess, why should someone read his work?
DO: Well, for him in particular, I think the two -- there are two reasons. One
is that it's an insight into important literature from -- that's reflective ofthe time that it was written, which is interesting for that, just for thatreason alone. The other reason is that he was very much a historian, andvery punctilious about. And therefore his books deliver on something else too,on what life was like in medieval Germany, of Jews. What life was like in the 82:001830s in Poland, and in the Hasidic courts at the height of, or the fall beforethe new, recent height of Hasidim. Or the books that take place in Judea --it's, I find it really interesting of, what did people eat? And how did theyeat it? And how was it -- and did they use plates, or did they have knives andforks and spoons? Or what -- and what did they wear? And what -- and all ofthat, he throws in there. Carefully, carefully researched. So, there are twoperiods of history, both -- the periods that get illuminated by his work. Both 83:00the periods he's writing about, and the period in which he wrote it, because youlearn something about the sensibilities of that half-century of the flourishingof Yiddish culture. I also was amazed at how prolific Opatoshu was his wholelife, even starting in 1928, Kletskin, the leading publisher of Yiddish booksbased in Vilna between '28 and like 1935 or '36, published a fourth collection,the collected works of Opatoshu, which at that point was fourteen volumes. Andconsidering that was, you know, ended in late '30s, I mean early '30s, mid '30s, 84:00and his work continued apace into the mid '50s with most of the major novelswritten in the later period, that the collected works would now probably bethirty-five volumes.
CW: Are there any of his books that you personally like more than others?
DO: I always really enjoyed -- for my birthday every year, the week of my
birthday, his story was, for " Der tog" was a story about me. And my father, orhe, would then read me the story. And the protagonist of the story was Donele,and one of my favorites of those was called "Lima-gugu," and "Lima-gugu" wasactually the name I had given to my little hobby horse that lived in Croton 85:00Falls, but this is -- "Lima-gugu" is a real horse, who comes to the window ofCroton Falls, and says, "I'm here, let's go riding." And, a number of thesestories were then each published as slim volumes to be children's books. And in"Lima-gugu," I know it's a front piece of -- it's a photograph of me, on ahorse, when you used to be able to put a kid on a horse, and for ten centsthey'll take a picture and give it to you. And I've got to say that those stillhave a warm place in my heart, to come across that, more than trying to strugglethrough Rabbi Akiva. (laughs)
CW: Yeah. For you personally, what is it like to be Opatoshu's grandson? Does
it come into play in terms of when you think of your identity, your Jewish 86:00identity? The yikhes [ancestry]?
DO: Yeah, absolutely. Because my Jewish identity is definitely based on
something different than most self-defined Jews base it on. I mean, it's basedon a language that very few people identify with, and it's based on a culturethat very few people are familiar with. And it's not based on liturgical texts,and it's not based on the state of Israel. And it's not based on never forgetthe Holocaust. It's, it's based on a inner identification with a vibrant world 87:00that existed before the Holocaust. The Holocaust is the terrible last chapter ofit, but it's not what made it important. It had its own life and richness andvalidity, so.