MONTY HALL ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY:This is Christa Whitney, and today is March 11th, 2014.  I'm here in Beverly Hills with Monty Hall.  We're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project.  Do I have your permission to record?

MONTY HALL:You have my permission.

CW:  Great.  So, first of all, where did your family come from?

MH:  Both sides of my family, both my mother and father, they came from the Ukraine.  My mother's family came from a little shtetl [small town in Eastern Europe with a Jewish community] about sixty miles from Kiev called Pavoloch.  My father's family came from Mogilev, which is in the northern part of the Ukraine.  I'm thinking the town was Gomel in the province of Mogilev if I'm correct.  They both came over from the Ukraine.  My grandfather came -- my 1:00maternal grandfather came over in 1901, brought his family over about three or four years later.  And my father's family came over in 1905.  They've -- and they came to Winnipeg, Canada, both sides of the family.

CW:  What do you know about the -- do you know anything about the life in the Old Country, before they came over? 

MH:  In the province Mogilev, my grandfather -- my father's father was in the cattle business, and he -- and his father had been in the cattle business.  They'd go out into the suburbs of the -- as far as they could to buy a cow and then bring it into the main center of where it was.  That was -- they bought -- they'd buy one cow at a time and bring him -- but they -- that was the business they were in, and when they came to Canada, they continued to be in the cattle 2:00business.  My mother's family had a little store in Pavoloch, and the interesting thing about that one is that -- it was a little store, and my great-grandmother ran the store.  My great-grandfather was in the synagogue all day long.  He had nothing to do with the store.  He was in the synagogue with his cronies.  They met there, they talked there, they prayed there, and they -- it was a social club and a religious club, and that's all they did.  And the great-grandmother, she's the one who ran the whole store.

CW:  Yeah, and do you know -- I mean, were there particular family stories that were passed down that -- famous, infamous stories in the family?

MH:  Well, I try to get stories -- interesting thing is that today we talk about history and I'm so involved in every aspect of my family.  I'm -- I'm like the family historian, as my mother was.  But it -- when I spoke to my grandmother, my -- on my mother's side -- many years ago, I was in Winnipeg, 3:00when she was still alive, and I took her aside one day and I said, "Bobe [Grandmother], tell me about the beginning."  So, she started.  She says, "Well, I don't remember very much."  She says, "I remember when my husband and I got married, and his sister and her husband got married and we lived in the same house, and in the same room."  They had one bedroom with a bed on either side of a curtain.  She says, "I remember that."  She was laughing hysterically at the fact that these two newlyweds were -- could hear what was going on on either side of the curtain.  And I said, "Well, tell me about the family."  So, she didn't remember very much.  They had a store, and then she would pause, and said something like, "I don't remember very much.  We just existed.  Just existed."  And my father's family had more lore -- to him, because in his experiences of traveling -- my grandfather traveled with my 4:00great-grandfather in the wilds of the Ukraine, and -- when they were buying the cattle.  And they had stories to tell.  Great stories.  And how many of them were apocryphal and how many were true -- but they were exciting stories.  There was one story about my great-grandfather and grandfather stopping off at an inn when they were bringing -- they had horse and wagon, and they tied up the cow in the corral.  And they went into an inn, and they asked for dinner and a place to sleep for overnight.  And my great-grandfather was -- because it was Friday night, put on his talis and started to pray in the corner of the restaurant, and a couple of hooligans in the restaurant came and started tugging at him and took his talis and tore his talis.  But my great-grandfather was a brute of a man, and he grabbed one of these guys and he attacked him and hit him, and hit him so badly the man fell down, hit his head, and died.  And my 5:00great-grandfather was taken to court in the Ukraine.  Now, what chance do you think a Jew had in a small area of Ukraine, having killed a non-Jew?  Amazingly, the judge, at that time, said, "The worst thing that you can do is insult a man about his religion at a time when he's praying."  And so, he would not convict him.  But he warned my great-grandfather that, "if you ever raise your hand again, it will be the end for you."  And that was a story that was passed down through the ages.  My grandfather's also a very strong man.  Then, the next generation, my father, although he was strong, was more of a -- he would pride himself on his looks and his appearance and his book-- where his older brother was a fighter, a street fighter.  And I guess this all stemmed from where they came from -- working in the stockyards and working in that 6:00area.  They developed a mindset that you -- the only way to get through is to fight your way through, whereas my father was more of a dandy.  He wasn't -- he was a lover, not a fighter.

CW:  And can -- do you know much about the immigration story of where -- why they decided to come to Canada and how that worked out?

MH:  Well, you can imagine -- let's take my grandfather's story, because it's his story that's so important.  His name was David Rosenwasser, later changed to David Rusin, living in this small town of Pavoloch, in this store.  As you know, his father was in the synagogue all day long.  His mother was running the store, and he worked in the store.  And there was no future.  There was no future for him.  So, as the -- as most of the people did at that time, they tried to get visas to come to the United States or Canada.  And he got a visa to come to Canada.  And he left his wife and three children behind, and he was 7:00about twenty-seven, twenty-eight years old, and he already had a wife and three children.  And he made his way across Europe.  And how do they make their way across Europe to Bremen, Germany, to catch a ship?  They went from shtetl to shtetl.  They stayed at a rabbi's house, and they were taken in.  As you know, along the way, it was like the underground railroad.  They went from one -- a little carriage ride here and a little train here as a -- and he made his way to Bremen, Germany, got on a ship and came to Canada on that ship.  You can imagine, he wasn't exactly first class.  Down there, the third class -- now, wouldn't eat the food.  Had his own food that -- he had a little pack with him.  And finally, about a week later, the ship arrives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  When -- there was a train siding right next to where the ships came in.  And as the passengers got off the ships to get into the trains to go the 8:00various places, the announcement was made at the station, in many languages, that if you have papers, that people will vouch for you in Montreal and Toronto, the two big cities, you can get off the train.  But if you don't have papers, you have to stay on the train until the train arrived in Winnipeg, in the Midwest.  They're populating the West, and that's where you could get off the train.  My grandfather had no papers.  He was on the train.  The train ride comes through, and he arrives in Winnipeg, Canada.  He arrives in Winnipeg, Canada, he gets off the train on a wooden platform in Winnipeg, Canada, in a strange country, in a strange city.  He doesn't speak the language, he doesn't know anybody.  And he's standing on the platform, and as he does, a voice rings out:  "S'i' du yidn, s'i' du yidn?" "Are there any Jews on this train?"  Well, you can imagine my grandfather hearing this Yiddish expression in this strange 9:00country after all that long trip that he made.  He fell upon this man, and he embraced him.  This man's name was Motye Weitman.  In the 1870s and 1880s, the first Jews arrived in Winnipeg, and five families decided that one member of each family -- at least one member would meet every train that came in in case there was a Jew aboard.  And this Mr. Weitman took my grandfather back to his home, where he gave him a hot meal, which he hadn't had in weeks, a hot bath, which he hadn't had, and put him to bed to sleep.  The next morning, when he got up, Mr. Weitman took my grandfather to the Jewish Free Loan Society, where he got a loan of five dollars.  Then, he took him to the synagogue, and -- where he will pray, 'cause he was a religious man.  Then, he took him to a rooming house, where he put down a dollar -- down on a room.  And then, he took 10:00him down to the market, where the fruits and vegetables came in from the outlying areas, and he bought him a pushcart.  Inside of twenty-four hours of arriving at Winnipeg, my grandfather had already a place to live, a place to pray, and a job.  And that was the beginning of the family -- or my family history in Winnipeg, (coughs) 1901.  And about three or four years later, when my grandfather had done well enough, he brought over his wife and his three children, of whom my mother was one.

CW:  And then his -- did he bring his parents over, as well, later?  Or --

MH:  My --

CW:  Your great-grandparents also came over to Winnipeg, or --

MH:  Well, then, he brought over the three children, and two -- a nephew and a niece, as well.  And a number of years went by before he could bring over the 11:00rest.  His parents -- that is, my great-grandparents -- and then his parents and his wife's parents.  So, I had four great-grandparents who were brought over by my grandfather.  But in later years -- it took him some years before he brought them over, and the great-grandparents, the -- my grandfather's parents lived in the same home with him, and his wife's parents lived in -- a couple of doors away.  And it was into that society that I grew, because in nineteen-- oh, I guess it was 1925 or '26, my father, having a difficulty in making a living in the Depression, moved in -- my mother, my father, and I moved into my grandfather's home.  At that time, my grandfather and grandmother, the great-grandparents, and six of my mother's brothers and sisters -- all three of 12:00these younger ones living in that same house.  There were fifteen of us living in that one house.  Four generations, living in one house, with one bathroom.  You learn tolerance and patience.  But that was my background, now --

CW:  Can you -- sorry, can you describe that house before you move on?  What did it --

MH:  I can remember the house very well.  And the house -- I went to visit it many years afterwards, on 107 Hallet Street in Winnipeg.  At one time, it wasn't the bad neighborhood.  My grandfather had done well in the fruit and vegetable business, and it was a nice middle-class neighborhood.  And the house was a two-story house.  And where did everybody sleep?  Well, the -- in one bedroom, there were two beds and two girls slept in each bed, and that was the girls.  And the boys were -- and there was a balcony that was made -- added on outside.  In the wintertime, it was unheated.  In Winnipeg, in below-zero 13:00weather.  We had -- it was -- had storm windows and so on.  But we had about five comforters and -- that you slept in.  And there were two beds, and I slept in one bed with my Uncle Sam, who was three years older than me, and Clifford and Charlie in another bed, and they were five and six years older than me.  They grew up as my brothers more than my uncles.  And so, there was people all over the house.  And, as I say, with one bathroom, there was a lot of screaming about who was next.  (laughs) And --

CW:  And what were the languages you heard in the home?

MH:  The -- in that house, it was four generations.  My great-grandparents, when they spoke, and not very often, they spoke in Yiddish.  They were -- they lived a very quiet life.  They would come down for meals, they would go back to 14:00their room.  And, of course, on Saturday, I would take the old great-grandfather to the synagogue, where -- I'll tell you about that later.  But there was not very much conversation.  They would come down; my grandmother would ask them what they wanted for -- to have for breakfast or for lunch.  My great-grandfather would feed my great-grandmother, who was blind at that time.  It was a nice, tender moment.  But they did not converse much with the other generations.  They lived their quiet life.  And when they were asked a question, it was -- the question was asked in Yiddish and answered in Yiddish, and that's how they lived.  My grandparents, on the other hand, had a connection with the older and the younger, and coming to a new country, they tried to learn English.  And so, most of the language that they spoke was Yiddish, but since my grandfather was in business, he had to learn a lot more English than my grandmother, who didn't care that much, she was so busy looking after all the kids.  Occasionally, they would speak Ukrainian to keep -- so 15:00that the children wouldn't understand what they were saying.  And then to my uncles and aunts -- all closer to my age, and we only spoke English with each other.  When I did speak to my great-grandparents, it was in Yiddish in the few words that they did exchange with me.

CW:  Can you explain about the -- walking to shul with your --

MH:  Living in that house, as the youngest of all these generations, I recall that when my grandmother wanted something, she would call to Clifford, "Sonele [Sonny], go to the store and get me something."  And he would turn around and say, "Charlie," who was a year younger, "Charlie, your mother wants you to go" -- and Charlie would turn to Sam, "Sam, go to the store."  And they'd end up with Monty, who was the youngest, and I would end up going to the store.  But I grew up with these three uncles of mine as brothers.  We had a close relationship all our lives, all our lives.  Now, it was my job, since I was the 16:00youngest, having moved into the house when I was seven and eight years old, to take my great-grandfather to the synagogue on Saturday mornings.  He was -- at that time, I don't think he was more than maybe seventy-five.  But a seventy-five-year-old man in those days was a hundred years old in modern li-- if you want to extrapolate it to what it would be today.  And he was -- he barely shuffled along, and I would take him and we'd walk him to the synagogue, which was, I would say, about -- roughly about a mile and a half away from their home.  At least -- about a mile and a half away.  And then, I'd deposit him at the synagogue, where he prayed, and then I'd run to the other synagogue, where my grandfather was, and pray with him, because the -- he was in more of the modern shul.  Then I'd go back afterwards and pick up the old man and we'd 17:00slowly walk -- this is a Saturday morning, we're slowly walking by, slowly walking by.  He -- we never talked, the whole morning.  But as we crossed the streetcar tracks -- and he had less than a half a mile to go, on his own, he didn't need me, at that point, and he would turn to me and he'd say, "Gey shen, gey shen -- Go, already.  Go, already."  He didn't need me.  He could make it the rest of the way himself.  I'd run home to my grandfather's house and have lunch with my uncles, and then we'd run to the movies, Saturday afternoon movies.  And as we were running to the Saturday afternoon movies, the old man was still walking slowly home.  When you think about it, it was quite a sight, and quite a -- as you think about it, you get emotional thinking about this old man and how they lived.  But that was my relationship with my -- and then, ten years later, when I was seventeen, my grandfather -- and now is not living -- 18:00living at a different home, our own home, by that time -- he went blind.  And I had to take him to the synagogue on Saturdays.  And we would walk with his hand in mine, together in his coat pocket, holding on -- and that was the steering that we could -- he could walk erect, because I was steering him with a hand point.  He was a -- he was not that old at that time.  He was probably sixty years old, or rather -- and he was much more modern, and he did -- and he still went to business and so on.  And we would have -- I'd come from my home, pick him up, and we'd start to walk.  And he'd ask me questions like how do -- what'd I think about this hockey player?  He learned a few names that he knew that I would associate with, but every Saturday, it was the same conversation.  19:00He'd say, "So, what did you have for breakfast this morning?"  And I would say, "Bacon and eggs."  He'd say, "Oh!  You ate bacon and eggs!"  Can't eat bacon.  We'd -- this is our running gag that we had, week after week and month after month.  We had a wonderful relationship, my grandfather and I.  I was the oldest -- first grandson, so I was kind of special in his eyes.  And we had a wonderful, wonderful relationship.

CW:  Can you describe what the synagogues looked like?

MH:  The synagogue, it was built by my grandfather and a few of his contemporaries shortly after he arrived in Winnipeg and started to make a living for himself in the fruit and vegetable business.  He prospered, in that he became -- well, you would never say rich, but he -- at least he was prosperous.  And they built this synagogue, was called the Beis Yaakov, the Beth Jacob Synagogue.  And it was a very nice, well-constructed -- real nice 20:00synagogue.  And, course, my grandfather had the imposing seats up at the western wall, and he and his sons were up on the elevated portion.  It -- a typical old-fashioned synagogue with the big place in the middle where they read the Torah.  And then, of course, there was the Ark and so on in a different spot.  It was not a place of great decorum, as I recall, because the women were upstairs, and if they were making any kind of a noise, the men downstairs would yell at them to be quiet.  They didn't have a mekhitse [partition] behind a curtain.  They were upstairs.  And my grandmother sat there in the front row with her daughters, proudly sitting with her daughters.  And it wasn't -- from my memory, it wasn't the -- a pristine organization.  I think that there was an 21:00odor that pervaded it from beginning to end.  But it was a prominent synagogue that's -- where people went.  That's where I had my bar mitzvah, as a matter of fact, in 1934.

CW:  What about your great-grandfather's synagogue?  How was that different?

MH:  The -- my great-grandfather's synagogue was called the Povolocher shul, because Povoloch was the town they came from, and they organi-- they had their own synagogue.  They just transported it from the Ukraine to -- and they didn't want to be part of the Beth Jacob.  They wanted their own little synagogue.  It was smaller, but all these people -- a lot of whom my grandfather brought over from the Old Country, they had their own little synagogue.  And I went there -- I didn't go there -- I went there to pick up my grandfather, and once in a while I'd go inside.  But it was -- how can I describe it?  It was not 22:00very large and not very orderly, but these people were very sincere about their praying.  I mean, they prayed their hearts out, and I guess the idea is to pray louder than the guy next to you, to show you that you're more religious than he was.  (laughs) I always got a kick out of those people who'd sit there, and no matter what shul you're in, they daven a little louder than anybody else to let them know that he knew the prayers and he could recite them louder than anybody else in the shul.

CW:  So, in the home itself, what was Jewish about this -- and, first talking about when you had these four generations.

MH:  The home in Hallet Street had, as I say, these few bedrooms upstairs and the balcony where everybody slept.  Downstairs, there was a dining room, a 23:00living room and a dining room, and a small -- what we would call today a breakfast room, but it was also like a smaller dining room, where we had most of our meals.  And the seders and so on were in the major dining room.  And a kitchen, where my grandmother lived.  I mean, she was in the kitchen from morning 'til night, making stuff, making -- always showed that she had a -- and her job was to make sure that all had their breakfast before they went to school and so on.  And she was baking and baking, and I remember that there were people from the Old Country that -- one was a guy who had a -- he went into the dairy business.  He was a milkman.  He was a milkman.  And I remember he used to -- I'd come downstairs, he was always in the kitchen.  Why?  Well, he knew the family and he'd come in and have a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, and -- it was not unusual to find strange people sitting in the kitchen, my grandmother giving them a cup of tea, all these tradesmen and so on.  Next door to us, on 24:00one side, was a Jewish family.  We had very little contact with them.  And the other side was a Ukrainian family.  Ukrainian, not Jewish.  Ukrainian family.  And they got along well as neighbors, except for the time when I would play baseball and I'd hit a baseball over the fence into Mrs. Romanov's garden, and go out and try to retrieve the ball, I'd step on a few radishes and so on.  And she'd come out, and she's yelling to me, "Montene, [Ukrainian - 00:24:23 to 00:24:25]!"  In Ukrainian, it means, "Wait, wait, I'm gonna give it to you!"  (laughs) I learned Ukrainian more than I learned Yiddish from her yelling at me.  But that was -- the whole street was a United Nations.  The premier of the province at one time lived on that street in a lovely home, comparatively 25:00speaking.  But there was the Ukrainian family and a Polish family and Jewish families and a Chinese family and a German family -- all lived on that street.  And what was interesting, when I took my grandfather -- not the great-grandfather, but I took my grandfather to synagogue on Saturday mornings as he walked proudly with our hands in the pocket together -- you would hear the voices ring out, "Gut-morgn [Yiddish: Good morning], Mr. Rusin, gut-morgn."  "[Ukrainian? - 00:25:08], Mister" -- "Dzień dobry [Polish: Good morning]" -- all the various languages of saying good morning, and my grandfather would -- in his little derby hat would acknowledge all these people.  They got along well.  They did not mix socially.  They did not really -- but they respected each other, and I think that was very important in that little melting pot of one street.  Not a very large street.  Maybe two, three hundred yards long, in Winnipeg.

CW:  Was your grandmother a good cook?

MH:  Was my mother -- grandmother a good cook?  She cooked.  I don't think we had cordon bleu meals, but it was sufficient.  And whatever it was, we ate it and we enjoyed it.  She cooked for her husband, and it satisfied him, my zeyde [grandfather], and if he liked it, we all liked it.  I didn't like it particularly, (laughs) but we all ate it.

CW:  What kind of stuff would she cook?

MH:  The normal stuff.  The same food that you had generation to generation.  I mean, they -- so, they made their own -- she made her own gefilte fish, and they would make the chicken, a lot of chickens, roasted chickens and briskets and stuff like that, and stews.  But that's what they -- heavy meals, because you -- in Canada, in cold weather, you -- they went for the heavy food.  27:00Breakfast, though, for -- it was very interesting.  When I lived there, breakfast for me was -- I don't remember -- you'd come down, you -- I don't remember having orange juice or grapefruit, any -- to begin.  You started off with a cereal, probably oatmeal.  And then, you had soda crackers and tea or milk, and that was your breakfast.  It wasn't the kind of hearty breakfast that would -- we grew up in later generations.  But it was sufficient.

CW:  Do you remember any -- as a kid, any favorite of the holidays?

MH:  Well, my favorite holiday -- and still today -- is Passover.  It's a time when the families all get together and tell the story, and everybody participates.  But what I like about Passover is not only that we get the 28:00family together, but it's a time when we have large seders and we invite strangers to our seders.  I have friends of mine who have no family in town.  I bring them to my seder.  We'll have about forty at our seder this year -- my own kids and family, but we'll have this family of five people and this family with four people that -- these people that I know, my -- friends of mine who have no other family in town.  And you'd be surprised at how they enjoyed -- because they all think -- and remind themselves how it was when they were young.  I'm going to have a couple of people at this year's seder coming up who -- very interesting.  Two men, and -- not related to each other, but each one comes from a mixed family background -- who lost -- who -- his mother was -- in each case, the mother was Jewish and the father was not.  No, in one case, it 29:00was the other way around, one was the father -- but they lost their Jewishness.  In the intermarriage, they became nothing.  They didn't become Christians, they didn't become Jews, they just existed.  And when I invite them to my seder, they willingly, anxiously, accepted -- because they were searching for something from their past.  And when I started that several years ago, I noticed how they, more than anybody else, appreciated it.  And two of them are going to be at this year's seder, two very prominent gentlemen.  I had a young guy -- a Polish guy that worked for me for years on "Let's Make a Deal."  He called me once and he said -- he's very strong in the Catholic Church, in the Valley.  And he's sort of a lector.  He sometimes teaches and so on.  But he said to me -- and he took a group to Israel, from his church.  And he said to 30:00me one day, he says, "I've never been to a seder."  And I said, "Well, you're going to come to the next one."  And he and his wife came to my seder, and he appreciated it more than anybody, because he was such -- of a part of the history that he was trying to absorb, that -- those are interesting moments.  That's why I love -- course, Hanukkah is a time of great fun to bring us together, and we have families come over and hand out the Hanukkah gelt and stuff like that.  Purim, we'd all celebrate, but the kids go to their -- to the temple, and they have their Purim festivals.  But nothing approaches Passover for --

CW:  Do you have any -- do you remember any specific family traditions for Passover growing up?  How'd you do --

MH:  Not a tradition, but I can tell you a Passover story that resonates with me and always will.  It's a three-parter.  I had a cousin that I discovered a 31:00couple of years ago -- there's a lady lives in England who was a -- she's -- my great -- my grandmother's family, there were four sons, and she belongs to one of the sons and I belong to one of the other ones, but we never met.  We're distant cousins, but we never met.  But she wrote a book about the Jews in the Ukraine.  And my son found it on the Internet, brought it home, and I read the book, and it's my family.  She wrote the story about my family.  I couldn't get over it, and I had never met this girl!  But she had got the stories from her grandmothers and so on, and I knew all the characters in the book.  And there's one part in the book where she describes the horrible things that went on.  They went through the pogroms and so on in the 1880s, 1890s, 1900.  And one family -- she writes that Moishe and Bobshe Margolis left Pavoloch to go to 32:00Winnipeg, Canada.  Okay, that's -- full stop, that's part one.  What she didn't know in that book was, on the other -- receiving end, in 1927, there's a seder at my grandfather's house.  And in the middle of the seder, the phone rings.  It's the stationmaster at the Canadian Pacific railroad saying, "I want to speak to Mr. Rusin.  I have a family here with a phone number" -- they have his phone number.  My grandfather leaves the seder, goes to the phone, and the man says, "I have the Margolis family from Russia here.  What'll I do with them?"  And my grandfather says, "Put 'em in a taxicab and send 'em to 107 Hallet Street, right away."  Came back, said to my grandmother, "It's your family, it's -- your cousins are coming," and -- excitement, and everybody's running up and down screaming, and makes the -- make room for the people.  They're gonna have food and so on.  And in they walk, within the half hour.  33:00They're -- and there's a mother and a father and four children, with their Russian lamb hats and so on.  And, course, my grandmother, these -- these are her relatives.  They fell on each other kissing and hadn't seen each other in twenty years, and they're hugging, they're kissing, the excitement -- and I, to this day, remember their names.  There was Moishe and Babshe, the mother and father.  And then there was Kive, whose name was anglicized to Clifford.  Aharon became Harold.  Meriem became Miriam.  And Numen became Norman.  And there they were, all four of them, and they arrived in Canada in the middle of a seder.  What could be more emotional than that, having left the Ukraine several weeks of ahead of time, making their way across the world, and there they are in the middle of a seder.  That's part two of the story.

CW:  And you were there at --

MH:  And I was six years old, and I'm the youngest one there.  Now, part three of the story is the most emotional part of the story.  Fifty years later, I'm 34:00the guest speaker at a Hadassah convention in Vancouver, Canada, at the time when the Russians were being brought in, when Russian immigrants were coming in to Israel.  And I struck the parallel between the Russians coming to our seder, and I tell this whole story about the family.  And the story goes over very well with the audience.  When the dinner was over, people are coming up to me, congratulating me and thanking me, so on.  One woman stands in front of me and she says, "Monty, I think I'm related to you."  "Really?  What was your name?"  She says, "My name was Miriam Margolis."  I looked at her and I said, "Miriam, did you hear the story that I just told about the family?"  She said, "Oh!"  She says, "What a beautiful story, I loved it."  I said, "Miriam!"  I said, "That was your family."  She recoiled and started to cry at not knowing that it was her family, 'cause she was just a little baby at the time.  When 35:00she found out it was her family, the emotion just welled up inside of her.  She started -- and I started to cry.  I mean, it was such a moment.  It starts with the book, the story, leaving for Canada and coming to our seder, and fifty years later, this speech, I -- it brings it right into focus.  And it was -- you can't write a script like that.

CW:  True.  Can you tell me a little bit about your parents?  What did they do for a living?

MH:  Well, start with mother -- my mother first, because my grandfather who came over brought his three children over, and eventually one became a lawyer and one went into the business with him, and the third one was my mother, who became a schoolteacher.  My father, coming over a couple years later, went to school.  He met my mother.  They were -- I think at a same little club 36:00together when they were teenagers.  And when he finished high school, he didn't go to his father's business.  He became a -- went and took a bookkeeping course and got a job with a lumber company as a bookkeeper, and he and my mother dated.  And when they were twenty-one and twenty, they got married.  And I came along the very first year.  My father was working as a bookkeeper, and he was having terrible headaches.  And the ophthalmologist told him that his eyes were going.  He couldn't work with figures anymore.  He was sitting in dark rooms with cold towel compresses and so on, so he had to give up the job.  And he went to work for his father and his brother in the stockyards, and in the meat business, and that lasted a few months, when the older brother didn't want him in the business and they fired him.  Very interesting story, how my grandfather fired my father.  And that caused a family schism that was never -- 37:00it was ruptured and never repaired until maybe many, many years later when I made some kind of a shidekh [arranged meet-up] between this -- my father and his sisters.  But my father then -- not being able to work as a bookkeeper, not working in -- this was during the Depression.  He started to sell -- and bought a little truck, and he used to buy meat -- to the stockyards and sell 'em to little butcher shops, and he was struggling to make a living.  And nothing worked.  We kept moving farther and farther out in the suburbs.  We couldn't pay the rent anywhere.  It was a very tough time for my father and mother.  My mother went to work.  My father got ill and my mother went to work to support the family.  She was selling advertising for a newspaper, and, I mean, it was just a very hard, hard life for them.  When I think back upon it, I just don't know how they existed with no income coming in, very limited income, and no help 38:00from the grandparents, because my parents never let them know how desperate their situation was.  And in those days, the grandparents -- my grandparents really didn't know what's happening with their children.  They had a lot of kids.  They didn't know what they're -- happening.  The young ones went to school, this -- went to medical school, this one -- and then, they went to business, they went to shul, they went to pray.  Didn't realize how bad things were and how my mother and father existed in that time.  Anyhow, in the middle of all this, my father gets a call from his estranged brother and said, "I can get you a job.  There's a delicatessen.  They want to have a butcher shop in the back part of the delicatessen."  My father says, "I don't know how to cut meat."  And he says, "I'll teach you."  And he taught my grandfather how to -- he taught my father how to cut meat, and my father became a kosher butcher.  And he opened up a little store, and it was -- and worked at the store for years and years and years and years.  Hated every minute of it, but he ran his 39:00butcher shop like a floral shop.  You walked inside that butcher shop, there was not sawdust and stuff on the floor.  The floors are im-- everything was immaculate.  And ferns and flowers and so on, because he -- this was his way of combatting the feeling that he didn't want to -- he wanted -- he had three kinds of wax papers and so on.  I mean, everything was pristine, even in a butcher shop, because that's the way it was with him.  And it wasn't until many years later, when I became successful in New York, and I bought him a drive-in restaurant in Toronto.  And he and my mother left Winnipeg after all these years and joined my -- Toronto, 'cause my brother was already living there, and life changed for him.  And for her.  That's -- he -- my father could have been -- he was an immaculate man.  He dressed beautifully, and he was always 40:00impeccable.  And he was a bright man, but never got the opportunity.  And he was always struggling, trying to make a living.  It wasn't easy, the -- when he had the butcher shop in Winnipeg, there were fifteen kosher butcher shops in Winnipeg.  I mean, immigrant came over, started a butcher shop in Winnipeg.  The competition was fierce.  He was -- but he was very successful.  We had -- he made a living.  Didn't like one moment --

CW:  Did you help him out in the shop?

MH:I was a delivery boy.  Well, I -- listen, I was sickly as a youth and almost lost my life when I was seven years old.  I spent a year at home in bed, and when I revived, I went back to school.  I was so far ahead of all the other kids, because my mother was a schoolteacher who home schooled me, that they had to accelerate me.  I finished high school, I was fourteen years old.  I'm this big, the smallest kid in the school.  I'm fourteen years old, I finish high 41:00school.  We didn't have any money to send me to college.  I went to the butcher shop and I became a delivery boy.  I did that for two years.  At that time, my mother came up with an idea.  She went to three customers and said, "If you'll advance me fifty dollars against purchases that you're gonna make in the future, we'd have enough for his tuition."  Tuition was 150 dollars.  And she did that.  We got the money.  I got some hand-me-down clothes from my -- one of my uncles.  I had one tweed jacket.  I wore that thing for four years in a row at college, and I went to college.  And I went for a year, and they -- and halfway through the second year, I ran out of money, and I dropped out of school.  I went to work at a clothing wholesale -- and a young man who had a business across the road from our wholesale, his father left him a manufacturing 42:00business -- came in and saw me washing the floors one day at the wholesaler's, and he said to the boss, "Who is that kid washing floors?"  Said who it was, and said, "I know his parents."  So, he called my father, said, "I saw your son -- what's he doing washing floors?  Why isn't he at school?"  My father said, "Well, we don't have the money."  And he said, "If he wants to go to school, tell him to come and see me."  The man was twenty-nine years old.  Twenty-nine years old.  A stranger.  I went to meet him the next day and he laid down -- he said, "If you want to go back to college, I'll put you through and pay for your tuition, everything.  But you're going to obey my rules.  You're not going to see -- you're not a dilettante.  You've got to keep a B-plus average or better.  You must never tell anybody where the money came from.  You're going to pay back every penny that I give you, and do the same for somebody else someday."  Look at those rules -- a twenty-nine-year-old guy who wasn't -- he 43:00wasn't married.  He was a bachelor, a man about town, and he, of all people, picks a strange kid and put me through college, which I think was a stimulus for all the things I did in later life.

CW:  Yeah.  So, can you -- so, your mother was also a performer, right?

MH:  My mother was a -- well, she was the most remarkable person I ever met.  "Reader's Digest" used to say "The Most Forgettable Character -- Unforgettable Character"?  She was that.  She was a schoolteacher, and she was a singer, and she was an actress.  And during World War I, she sang, she -- in a sort of a USO troupe, and with her little sister as a piano player, and dancing -- she was a dancer, her sister was a dancer.  And she entertained, then later on she became a playwright, and she joined the Yiddish Theatre -- and, oh, we'll have some pictures to show you with that.  She joined the Yiddish Theatre, was a very prominent actress in the Yiddish Theatre of Winnipeg, and wrote original 44:00plays in Winnipeg.  And at the same time, was a member of Hadassah.  To give you an idea, when she was young, they formed a Young Judaean chapter.  And they came to her and they said, Rose, how would you like to join?  She said, "I will if I can be president."  (laughs) And she was president.  And from that, she joined Hadassah, and she became president of Hadassah.  And then, she became president of Manitoba, and she became national vice president in Canada.  And she traveled and spoke from coast to coast, from Vancouver to Halifax to Newfoundland.  She spoke, raising money for what at that time was -- hoping to get money in Palestine to get a national homeland.  A brilliant speaker, and a great sense of humor and an entertainer.  She was a combination of Golda Meir and Molly Picon, was a -- she had -- and loved by everybody.  A most loved 45:00person.  When she died, at the age of seventy, the letters that I got from across the country, from people whose lives she touched, were remarkable.  Remarkable letters.  She was a -- and don't forget, she not only was she doing all those things, but she worked in the butcher shop, on the telephone, all day, helping my father out by taking the orders on the telephone, so on, and then running home to make meals for her kids and so on.  Tremendous, tremendous person.  Died much too soon, much too young.  As a matter of fact, the last speech she made -- she was living in Palm Springs.  I had retired them to Palm Springs, and a year -- year later, she was very ill.  And she had -- she was going to fly back from -- to Toronto to go to the hospital in Toronto, where my brother was.  And she says to my father, "I have an engagement -- I promised 46:00the Desert Hot Springs Jewish community that I would speak for them."  And my father took her and she made her last speech.  My father describes -- she came out to the car afterwards, she was white as a ghost.  She was so sick.  She had cancer.  She was so sick.  He got her to the airplane and she went to Toronto, where she died shortly thereafter.  But even to the last bit, she kept her obligation to speak.  A memorable person, and a great inspiration for me.  I will tell you one story about her that I think explains everything.  When she was lying in the hospital, I flew up to see her.  And she was lying in the hospital.  I said -- she said, "Well, so, what are you doing these days?"  I said, "Well, I'm going to speak at this big Hadassah convention, and I've also got my first special on ABC Television."  And she lay there and she said, "Make 47:00it the best you ever did."  And I said, "The special on ABC?"  She says, "No, no, the speech at Hadassah."  Even then, she wanted -- a speech for Hadassah, that took precedence over anything else. 

CW:  So, can you tell me about the Yiddish Theatre in Winnipeg?

MH:  Well, there was a wonderful -- as I mentioned earlier, the culture in Winnipeg -- let me explain the culture in Winnipeg.

CW:  Yeah, please.

MH:  There were two types of people.  First of all, it was a very highly cultural Yiddish community.  Tremendous population.  When I was growing up, there were 250,000 people in Winnipeg, and 25,000 of them were Jews, the -- ten percent of the whole population.  A very big Jewish population in one area of the city, mostly.  But culturally, there were synagogues all over the place.  48:00And there was the folkshul [secular Yiddish school] and the Talmud Torah and all these other things.  Everybody went to a shul, everybody belonged.  But culturally, there were two types of Jews: the folkshul and the Peretz shul.  And the people at the folkshul were the normal -- people came and they had their plays and so on, but the Peretz shul people, they were a little highly -- they considered themselves a cut above, because they discussed much deeper authors -- and discussions of -- politics and literature and so on.  But I knew the difference between them, because the people at the folkshul used to smoke cigarettes like this.  The people at the Peretz shul smoked like this.  They were a cut above everybody else.  But culture was very -- bookstores, Jewish bookstores, and a Jewish theater -- a wonderful, thriving, Jewish theater, 49:00Yiddish theater, of which my mother was an integral part.  I think a -- I -- show you a picture later on.  But what bothered me about that Yiddish Theatre is that they had plays where they needed youngsters, and I wanted so desperately to be one of them.  But I was a sickly child, and I couldn't make it.  And my close friend got the job.  And he's in that picture that I'll show you.  I hated him.  His name was Bernie Nathanson, and he got the job.  Later on, I became the actor and he didn't.  He went into the mattress business.  (laughs)

CW:  Do you remember what -- did your mother sing at home?  Do you remember having -- being exposed to Yiddish folk song or to --

MH:  My mother played the piano and sang.  Not only did she sing -- my mother 50:00-- there was a radio program in Winnipeg called "The Yiddish Hour," and my mother sang on that, sang Yiddish songs on that show.  She was -- and I remember going with her.  She used to visit the Jewish old folks home there once or twice a year.  And I went with her once.  When she walked into that place, those old Jewish people just screamed her name.  They loved her.  "Rushka!"  They used to call her Rushka, her Russian -- of Rose -- "Rushka's here, Rushka's here!"  And she would sit and she would play and sing all their songs for them and tell stories.  They ate her up.  And I looked at her with such admiration.  And she could do -- she could speak for Hadassah in a city and she could entertain these people over there singing the songs.  She'd work with my father.  She was a labor negotiator who helped people out there.  And she was a woman for all seasons.  And I was -- when you ask me the most 51:00influential people in my life, there are two women, and -- my wife and my mother, who -- great, great influences on me.  My mother, as an example, and my wife, who -- sat at my side in some tough times in my career, too -- both of them showing tremendous strength.  And, well, I -- oh, I think that charity-wise, a lot of my charity work came from her and her example, what -- the money that she kept rais-- she spoke from -- every city in Canada, from coast-to-coast.  And one cute story:  she was speaking in Saint John's, New Brunswick, I think it was, at the time when I had a radio show in Canada.  And 52:00when she arrived at Saint John, she's met at the station -- the railroad station -- by the press, 'cause she was a visiting speaker.  And one of the reporters said to her, "Mrs. Halparin" -- 'cause that's my maiden name, Halparin, before it was Hall.  Said, "Mrs. Halparin, we understand you're Monty Hall's mother."  And she said, "Young man, where I come from, he's still known as Rose Halparin's son." 

CW:  Can you just explain when you changed your name to Hall and how that happened?

MH:  When I got to Toronto, I got a job at a radio station, and the boss called me in.  He said, "You know, Monty," he said, "I -- offer you a job and you can work here," he said, "but I'm going to suggest -- more than suggest -- that you change your name, because here in Toronto, which is a very, very anglicized city, I think foreign names are not as accepted.  You should have a short, 53:00anglicized name."  "Well," I said, "I -- not too happy about this, but what would you like?"  "You just change your name to anything."  So, we tried out a whole bunch of names that didn't work, and I finally said, "Why don't you just take Halparin, cut it in half?"  And Monty Halparin became Monty Hall.  My brother joined me a couple years later, and he changed his name.  And I called my father, I said, "Do you mind?"  He said, "Oh, I don't mind."  He said -- he became known as Mr. Hall in Palm Springs.

CW:  Yeah.  Well, I wanted -- I want to talk -- go a little bit forward in time, but before we do, can you -- looking back at that -- at your childhood, what would you say you learned from your family?  What did you -- would you say you learned from your family?

MH:  What did I learn from my family?  Well, the one thing -- I guess the main thing that you learn is how you have to work together.  Now, when my father was down-and-out, my mother pulled him up by his bootstraps.  And when he was ill, she went to work.  But she made him -- here's the important thing that she did.  She was so powerful that she was offered jobs in businesses.  People wanted her to come in the business and work in labor negot-- anything she wanted, and she wouldn't take it.  She said, "No, my husband has to be the breadwinner.  If I took the job, it would diminish him, and he's gone through such terrible times himself.  His ego has been so destroyed by his father and his brother and the business and so on that I could not do this to him."  And she, rather than taking a job and bringing more income to the family, made sure that he was the important one.  Whatever little we made -- that's one thing I 55:00did learn from her.  And I -- and one thing I learned is family is the most important thing.  And to this day, I say to my kids, family comes first, before anything else.  In my life, it's family first, charity second, and television third.  But it was television that made the other possible.  But, yeah, the struggle that my parents went through left an indelible mark on me, 'cause I worked in the butcher shop.  I was a delivery boy.  I saw how hard my father worked, and it -- despite the fact that Saturday night I had to work right through the night -- because we opened up after sundown -- worked right through delivering parcels through forty degrees below zero and -- on a bicycle, all 56:00over the city and so on.  And as hard as it was for me -- and Sunday, going out there -- all day Sunday with invoices, trying to get a couple of dollars on account -- when I observed what my father went through, I forgave him for his temper outbursts and so on, because I understood what his frustrations were, and how strong my mother was to keep him focused and balanced.  Because he was so destroyed by his father and brother who had fired him, as I told you -- they diminished him.  But she kept him going, and what an example that was.  But as I grew older, and I observed him more and more, I had a -- more of an empathetic feeling for him, 'cause he never stopped working hard as -- he worked as hard as he could to keep that family afloat.  No matter how hard it was, he took -- he suffered the blows, but kept going.  And my admiration for him was more than 57:00the society gave him, because, in society, he was Rose's husband, a secondary character.  He was a butcher, which is secondary citizen.  But I knew what he was.  And I remember the line from one of the plays -- "Death of a Salesman," when the wife says, "Attention must be paid to this man.  Attention must be paid to this man."  And I -- as I saw that play, my heart jumped, because that was exactly what I was thinking about my father.  You cannot pigeonhole him a secondary person or inferior person.  He's given everything he could for his family.  Attention must be paid.  And I think that was one of my bylines that 58:00I lived by.

CW:  And do you have a sense of your parents or any of the other generations -- what they were trying to pass on to you about what it meant to be Jewish, what was important?

MH:  Well, it -- when I was growing up in that large Jewish community, it was a given that you went to normal English school, and then afterwards, you ran to your Jewish school.  At four o'clock, you went to the kheyder [traditional religious school].  And you -- all the holidays, and Saturday morning at the shul, so it was a given that this is what you did.  It was also a given that in a community where there was tremendous anti-Semitism, you knew who you were, because they let you know who you were.  It was very tough in those days, even 59:00to the fact that, when I went to the University of Manitoba, I couldn't get into medical school because of the quota system.  Later years, as success followed me or I followed success, I got all the accolades that I didn't get when I was trying to get it, although I was the first Jewish student president at the University of Manitoba in its history.  I still didn't get into medical school.  Later on, I got the gold medal from the school.  I got an honorary doctorate from the school.  And I'm always being constantly honored, because it's a different university right now, and discrimination's gone out the window.  Everybody has an equal chance now, I'm happy to say.  But there were tough times in the 1930s and '40s.

CW:  Do you have any specific memories of that that you --

MH:  I'm sorry, dear?

CW:  Do you have any specific examples of that, of the --

MH:  Of anti-Semitism?

CW:  Yeah.

MH:  Well, you -- when you grew up in a community, you're a minority.  And it -- at the school that I went to, I -- there may have been two Jewish students out of forty in my class.  The prevailing attitude among some of these people in the city was -- well, I mean it was endemic.  I mean, you saw it everywhere.  And we were reminded of who we were at all times.  When I went to high school, there were much more -- many more Jewish students, so that was my release.  Now, were -- now as I -- becoming a member of a -- I was a part of the school, of which I was no longer a minority.  But I went into college and found the numerus system, the quota system -- was a shock.  But happy to say 61:00that while I was there as student body president, we took the situation to the chancellor of the university, who never knew it happened, and he overthrew it.  And the next year -- although now I decided, after getting my bachelor of science degree -- no longer interested in medicine.  I was working at the radio station at nights.  I wanted to make broadcasting my career.  But my closest friend became -- got into medical school.  And so, it was a triumph.  But Winnipeg was a very tough Midwestern city, and many, many fights and attacks.  There was a Nazi bund in Winnipeg at one time, in the '38, '39 area.  But that was demolished by -- very interesting story, but that -- it doesn't belong here, 62:00the story, but the YBJ, the young Jewish football team, decided, when they found out where the Bund headquarters were, they went in there and they cleaned it up.

CW:  Yeah.

MH:  They cleaned it up.

CW:  So, we're obviously gonna skip over some time here, but -- not to diminish it, but I'm curious when you got into the entertainment business, did -- what Jewish connections, if any, did you make in the -- in your early career?

MH:  I can't think of any Jewish connections.  I do know that running for 63:00president of the student body was interesting, because I captured the non-Jewish vote, I guess, my component.  And yet, among the Jewish students, there was a split vote, because so many of them belonged to -- the labor people, they wondered why I didn't demonstrate, the reason why I wasn't a demonstrator against the university.  I said, "No, I'll do things quietly and I'll get things done.  I don't have to run up and down with a -- holding a placard.  I'll do it -- I'll get things done quietly."  But I did not join a Jewish fraternity at college, because when I went to college and had very little, I couldn't afford to join a fraternity.  I wasn't rushed by any of them, because they realized I was a poor kid -- the butcher's son, I -- they didn't rush me at 64:00all.  Three Jewish fraternities, they didn't -- not one of them rushed me.  When I became president of the student body, they all rushed me.  I didn't accept any of them. 

CW:  Yeah.  So, what -- when -- what came of your Yiddish once you left home?

MH:  When I left and I went away to Toronto, there was no call for it -- so, I didn't belong to any group that necessitated me to learn Yiddish, nor was there a Yiddish theater that I was interested in, nor in New York.  But when I came to California, strangely enough, I -- when I'd get to certain events, I found 65:00that there were certain people who spoke Yiddish, and I enjoyed speaking with then.  Danny Kaye, the great Danny Kaye, he and I would get together at a banquet and we would talk among -- between ourselves, making fun of all the other people and having our own little private conversation in Yiddish.  He loved it, he laughed.  But then, the non-Jews like Jimmy Cagney, the great Jimmy Cagney, spoke in perfect Yiddish.  He grew up in New York and he spoke perfect Yiddish.  Burt Lancaster was another one who threw Yiddish expressions around right and left.  But a lot -- among my confreres, I was sort of amazed to find out that they didn't speak much Yiddish at all.  I remember sitting with one of my dear friends -- was Sid Caesar, who just passed away recently.  And we belonged to a luncheon club, but he -- we sat next to each other at 66:00luncheon club, and he was ill.  And he didn't speak very much in his last couple of years, but he loved when I would talk to him, and I would throw Yiddish expressions to him all the time.  And he would enjoy them.  He didn't respond too much, but he knew what I was saying and he laughed and he loved those things, because it is such a juicy language that -- the expressions convey so much.  One line conveys as much as an ordinary language gives you in a paragraph.  A shrug of the shoulders and an expression.

CW:  Do you remember any expressions that your -- that were used in your family, or grandparents would use?

MH:  I'm sure that if I traced back, I could find a whole bunch of them, because I grew up with my grandmother and grandfather talking to each other in Yiddish and my -- and so on.  I -- off the top of my head, I can't, but if you 67:00mentioned them, I'd say, "Oh, yes, I remember that one and that one," because they're so part of the language and it's so much a part of the language.  Although, the one that I've been using recently and making -- I'm making plans to go to Canada to visit the family, and I -- the -- to go to Winnipeg, and then I go to Connecticut and see my daughter and so on.  And then, I say -- hold myself, say, Wait a minute, I don't want to get myself in a hora, because the old expression "Men trakht un got lakht [Man plans and God laughs]" comes to mind -- man is planning -- God is saying, "I'll make the plans.  Don't get carried away too much" -- but when possible, those Yiddish expressions really fit the bill, and -- as a matter of fact, my daughter, Sharon, desperately wants 68:00to learn Yiddish.  She's an executive -- she runs a television company, she -- but she and a few of her friends have been deciding -- they want to form a little Yiddish society of their own, and they're very busy right now.  But I said, "When you do it, don't do it alone.  Do it with all your friends, and form a little club, and get together.  And kind of -- when you bounce it off each other, it'll be much more fun when you get these expressions and so on."  So, I think they're gonna do that.

CW:  Great.  You mentioned earlier this great story about when your business partner used the word "moyel [ritual circumciser]."  (laughter) Can you tell that?

MH:  I -- my partner who passed away but was my partner for twenty-five years was Hungarian -- Protestant Hungarian.  And he loved when I would talk.  First of all, I would talk like his father, and his father was a Hungarian immigrant who used to work on the railroads, had a real accent.  And I, having grown up 69:00in Canada with a lot of these Ukrainians and so on, I could simulate the same kind of an accent.   He loved when I --

CW:  What was it?

MH:  He loved when I talked --

CW:  Could you do it for me?

MH:  Well, it -- yeah, he -- I'd say to him, "What's it all about, it?"  If you end with an it and a question mark, those -- I can't just -- the things that I would do -- he loved when I talked these things.  Now, one day, he comes into my office and he said, "The script's too long, we got to moyel it."  I was hysterical.  I said, "Steve, the word for circumcision is not applied to editing a script."  (laughs) But he knew the word "moyel" and he knew what it was, so he used it as a verb.  (laughter) I cannot think of anybody in my whole 70:00office staff -- and I had at least five or six Jewish kids who worked for me.  Not one of them that I recall ever talked Yiddish or used a Yiddish expression.  I'm trying to think -- no, maybe one did once in a while.  But when you get to know -- there was a very close friend of mine who was ill, and he was bedridden.  And he took up Yiddish, and he used to have a rabbi come over to his house once or twice a week, and they would talk Yiddish.  And I brought him over several editions of the "Pakn Treger," the magazine that we have.  And I brought over to him -- and I'd sit with him and I'd read some of the stuff with him, and he loved it.  He loved it because it's such an expressive language.  It's just -- I call it a juicy language.  It just -- you 71:00could say things that mean -- that convey so much, that influence accent, emotion.  I don't know what it is, but it's very descriptive.

CW:  Yeah.  What is most important to you about being Jewish?

MH:  The first thing is continuity.  The -- Judaism and Jewishness is -- it's a language, it's a nationality, it's a reli-- it's a -- but to me, it's the continuity of the people, of our people.  The history of our people is so important to me, and what we've been through down through the ages, that -- the continuity of our people, the continuity of being Jewish, from generation to generation -- and that's why I never want to lose Yiddish, because it goes along 72:00with it.  You -- certainly, you can be Jewish without speaking Yiddish at all.  But if you keep that alive, it keeps our history alive, although it didn't start until, I guess, the Middle Ages in Poland and Lithuania and so on.  But it's part of keeping Jewishness alive.  It's -- carry an extra piece of ammunition in your bag.  That's what it means to me.  And it also means to me that we have not only a great history, but we have great rules to live by.  We've given the world all kinds of standards to live by.  It also means that 73:00you shall overcome, no matter what happens to this people.  We shall overcome, because of who we are.  And be proud.  My -- the subject of my speeches, and I speak from Canada to the United States for Federation or for (UNCLEAR) is -- "Jewish Pride" is the name of my speech.  "Jewish Pride" -- of what we've done and what we accomplished.  And I'm very proud to be a Jew.

CW:  What do you think is the future of Yiddish?

MH:  Everybody predicts that Yiddish is a dying language.  But I see a resurgence.  And, of course, what Aaron Lansky has done with this Yiddish B-- is just absolutely amazing.  And the collection of the million books, and teaching it at universities now and so on, I think a rebirth is there.  People 74:00will discover that this is a beautiful language, and it's a conversation language.  It's a -- I don't think you have to worry about it being scientific or religious.  I think the idea is that it's a communication language.  It's a wonderful communication language.  I describe Yiddish as being like a shrug of the shoulders.  A word here, a word there.  It's so expressive.  And I love the fact that it's expressive.  Don't -- (laughs) for example, there's a man in Winnipeg and he had a big feud with another family.  And my father said to him, "If you had a feud with him, why are you going to that kid's -- his son's bar mitzvah if you're -- if you have a feud with him?"  And he answered, "Nu, go-don't go."  Now (UNCLEAR) , "Go-don't go," what does that mean?  It means, "How can I not go?"  But he says it in three words: "Nu, go-don't go?"  Or 75:00deny something.  A yo-neyn -- yes-no?  I mean, how can you express that -- it's emphasizing the no.  Yo-neyn.  There are certain little expressions, and I love them.  (pauses) "Aza yor af mir -- I should have such a year."  Or, as I say -- I talked -- my wife a little while -- I wasn't feeling well, and she says, "Mir far dir.  Mir far dir."  What does that mean?  "Me for you," it means I should have your -- I will take the sickness upon myself, not -- that you shouldn't have it.  "Mir far dir."  Three words, but how expressive that is, mir far -- "a lebn af dayn kepele [a blessing on your little head]."  All these little expressions are so wonderful.  And you don't have to say it (purses his lips) with the (UNCLEAR) either.  You can say it like the common people, of which I am one.

CW:  Great.  Well, I just want to end this portion by asking if you have any -- if you have a Yiddish eytse, any Yiddish piece of advice that you would pass on to those -- from your Yiddish background, anything about being Jewish that you'd -- a piece of advice?

MH:  Well, I said -- it's hard to give advice.  The advice, of course, is to keep it going, keep it flourishing, keep it alive.  But there's one great thing that happened in Israel, many years ago.  I'm on a bus, and on the bus, there's some Israeli children.  And there's an American woman, is part of our group, and she turns to this little boy and she says, "Vus iz dayn nomen -- What is your name?"  And before the kid could answer, the bus driver says, "Madam, you're in Israel now.  You don't speak -- you speak Hebrew to the child."  She looks at him, pays no attention to him and says, "Un vi alt bist du -- How old are you?"  And she asks him two or three questions, then -- bus driver says, "Madame, I told you, you're here in Israel, you don't speak Yiddish, you speak 77:00Hebrew.  Why do you insist on speaking Yiddish?"  She says, "Because I don't want him to ever forget he's Jewish!"  (laughs) And I thought that was so marvelous, because Hebrew's the language of Israel and it's the one of our people, but Jewish -- Yiddish was the one that kept them Jewish.  I love that.

CW:  That's great.  Well, a sheynem dank, thank you.

MH:  A sheynem dank.  You're welcome.

[END OF INTERVIEW]