RENA TREFMAN COBRINIK ORAL HISTORY

SAUL HANKIN:   This is Saul Hankin, and today is March 27th, 2014.  I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts with Rena Cobrinik, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project.  Ms. Cobrinik, do I have your permission to record this interview?

RENA TREFMAN COBRINIK:   Absolutely, and I'd like to include both names, since -- Rena Trefman Cobrinik.

SH:  I apologize.  Thank you.  To begin, can you tell me briefly what you know about your family background?

RTC: It goes back a long time.  My parents were born in Russia, my mother in 1:00the area of Moldova, Edineț, and my father in Mikolay.  And they -- my -- I understand that Mikolay had a wonderful cantorial -- opera-level people, and they would all come to Mikolay and hear them.  And I just learned this recently, but I remember as a child, be-- I was brought up in a very secular home.  I guess the pogroms and Holocaust did their job on faith.  And I was surprised that my father had gone to shul on the holidays.  And he said, "I went to hear the cantor."  So, I do understand where childhood songs are -- it's a very big part, to me, of Yiddishkayt, religion, everything.  And so, that, I think, was an interesting thing.  My father had a rare -- had a bookstore, and my mother met him in a bookstore.  And he was twenty years older 2:00than my mother, but she was -- felt he was -- whatever it was, they married, and he was supposedly quite a brilliant man in his area, but quite depressed.  By the time I was born -- I was born just in the Depression, and although he owned three bookstores, people stopped going.  They went to the library.  That was the first thing they could give up.  And so, that really made a very harsh impact on him.  My mother was a very strong woman, and she worked in the garment business.  You know, she was a -- operator in the garment factory.  And there was a lot of ribbing in the garm-- in her factory for her lack of faith.  She was very open about it.  But I had gone to Kinderwelt, which was a 3:00Yiddish camp.  And I wrote her letters in Yiddish.  And any time they would question her faith or her identity as a Jew -- and I found this out later -- she would pull out the letters from her pocketbook and say, "Not your children!  They don't send letters like this!"  So, there was a great deal of pride in the fact, in -- pride, joy, it was all -- Yiddish was very celebrated.  The sad part was, my parents were in a crowd of what you call intelligentsia, and they -- very literary people.  In fact, the story goes that Bialik helped choose my name.  I can go into that later if it's relevant.  And they spoke only Yiddish, and they didn't say, "Farmakht di vindo [Shut the window]."  They 4:00said, "Farmakht di fintster [Shut the window]," "Zi iz a makhsheyfe [She is a witch]," not a brat, "makhsheyfe" is -- and they use a lot of three-syllable words.  And when the children went to school -- and I was born just at about that time -- they only spoke Yiddish.  A social worker came to the home and said, "You are bad parents.  You're in America, your children are American, and you should speak English."  And they did try.  And I really think that I have a problem with syntax because I didn't get real English at home, whatever.  And eventually, my sister and brother did very well.  But they never spoke Yiddish.  They didn't speak Yiddish -- they didn't love it the way I did.  And I always felt that I missed out on not knowing it and not being brought up with that fluency.  And so, they really lost it and I really gained it.  That was 5:00that.  So, let's see, is there anything -- and, of course, songs were constant.  Constant.  Every activity had some Yiddish song.  And I remember sitting on the edge of the bathtub while my mother put makeup on to go shopping.  Want me to sing it?  And she'd sing, (singing) "A bisl pudder, a bisl ruzh, tsvey kishn bay dem tsayt, azoy krik min a khosn [A little powder, a little rouge, two kisses on each side, that's how you get a husband]."  She'd sing that occasionally.  She'd sing happy songs, (singing) "Un a khosene vet es -- s'iz emes az layter zugn, host a tsveyte lib gekrugn?  Neyn, mayn taybl.  In a vokh vest zay mayn vaybl.  Un a khosene vet es zayn, az kayn shpilke vet 6:00nit arayn.  Shpil zhe, klezmer! [And there will be a wedding -- is it true what people are saying, that you've found another lover?  No, my little dove.  In a week, you'll be my wife.  And there will be a wedding, as long as no funny business happens.  Play, musicians!]"  I heard a famous klezmer band play in my son's building in New York City, and he sang all the Romanian Yiddish songs that I love, but he never knew this one.  And so, I just want to make sure that it's -- I think it's a very happy song.  And we had the Ruth Rubin folk songs playing very often, along with the jazz and blues, American -- I don't want you to think that we were so separated.  And Burl Ives and those singers, the American folk singers of the '50s and '60s.  And so, that's about my background.  I mean, my parents' part.

SH:  Could you tell the Bialik story you mentioned, of --

RTC: Okay.

SH:  -- how you got your name?

RTC: Yes.  I was born -- they had a bunch of names for me.  Fortunately, I 7:00didn't get them.  Menukha, Minerva.  And I was born the day after Tisha b'ov, and the parshah [Hebrew: Torah portion] -- Tisha b'ov, you know, is the two or three weeks where there's no parties and no -- and I really had the grace to be born the morning after.  And that parshah was supposedly said, "Rina v'simcha [Hebrew: Song and celebration]."  And "Rena" means a happy sound, and that's how I got the name Rena. 

SH:  Zeyer sheyn [Wonderful].  And are there any other famous or infamous family stories you'd like to share?

RTC: There are so many, I don't know how to bring them out.  Maybe the one where I was -- finally went to yidishe shule [Yiddish secular school].  My father said, "It's time for Rena to get her Yiddish -- to go to Hebrew school."  And this was at night, and my bedroom was behind my parents' 8:00bedroom.  And I heard them discussing me, which really surprised me, because I -- my sister and brother were really (UNCLEAR).  They were older, they were achieving more things.  And my father said, "Now it's time for her to get an education."  And my mother said, "She is learning Yiddish, not going to Hebrew school.  What do they know from it?  They don't know a thing.  Yiddish is alive.  Mir redn yidish du in der heym [We speak Yiddish here at home]."  And that's what I did, and I really loved yidishe shule.  I had a wonderful teacher, Kharkov.  I don't know if the name -- in the Bronx, maybe someplace in your archives.  And I learned poetry and Sholem Aleichem. I read.  And I remember the -- one of the thing-- my mother always loved New York.  But she said when she came here, the buildings terrified her, the height of them.  And 9:00then, I read Sholem Aleichem and he said, "And we wandered through -- and I look up and see the blue ribbon that was the sky."  In Yiddish, I read that.  And when I'm in New York, I still think of that line by Sholem Aleichem.

SH:  Would you say you grew up in a Jewish home?

RTC: Yes, definitely.  Very Yiddish.  Very -- and we even -- we've -- we acknowledge the Jewish holidays.  Of course, the whole neighborhood was Jewish, so I'm -- once a friend came, my mother was speaking to me in Jew-- in Yiddish, and she said, "What is she saying?"  I said, "What does -- your parents speak?"  I mean, I couldn't believe that someone didn't understand Yiddish.  It was such a natural language to me.

SH:  And what were the most important holidays or events during the year for your family?

RTC: Well, Pesach was still always important, and it's still very important in 10:00my family.  And none of my -- neither of my sons married Jewish women.  And yet, they would never miss Pesach.  And, in fact, on one occasion, they couldn't come to our house for the first seder, and I went to the -- I used to go every week to take care of the grandchildren.  And my son conducted the most beautiful seder I can remember.  Very beautiful.  And his wife, who is Taiwanese, came in from -- she's a college professor at Columbia.  She came in and she said, "Am I in time for the afikoymen [piece of matzah which the head of the household distributes at the end of the Passover seder].  So, those children wait only for Hanukkah and for -- which I -- it was not a holiday when I was growing up.  We didn't really celebrate Hanukkah.  But it was an adjustment I made for their identity, for my children's identity.  And they -- it counts, I think.  At that time, I did not realize that there were the 11:00equivalent of my yidishe shule in other towns.  They were quite far away.  So, we did join a Reform temple.  And my sons asked to be bar mitzvahed, and were.  And they weren't giving bat mitzvahs to girls at that time.  It was Friday night and was very unusual.  So, she did not get a bat mitzvah.  But my daughter, to this day, she counts all the Jewish holidays, more than I do.  They're all meaningful to her, so -- and an interesting thing is that I don't live in a Jewish neighborhood.  I did have very good Jewish friends.  In fact, I'm going to buy a -- one of the DVDs here to send to one of them who's now ninety.  And we walk to their house on Rosh Hashanah, and -- but her husband was a Holocaust survivor, and was not -- was bitter, so -- but we celebrated it.  He knew the -- he knew everything.  It wasn't -- he did not reject who he 12:00was, but faith is different.  So, one of the women in our town when we first got there said, "You know, when I moved to Denville," that's a town nearby, right nearby, she says, "Everyone said, Where are your horns?  I understood Jews have horns. So, I decided to stay here."  And she was a religious woman.  She kept kosher.  She says, "They had to know, we didn't have horns."  And my husband and I thought that we would serve Yiddish Jews as well by living among everyone.  I'm not saying we moved to a non-Jewish neighborhood, because we couldn't.  In fact, there was a town that didn't welcome Jews.  Now it has a big Jewish population.  But at that time, they told us to go someplace else.  And my husband was a pediatrician -- was a -- he's eighty-seven, so he's not 13:00working, but -- and he had a very, very, very big practice.  People came from vey far to come to him, he's very attentive, very caring, very smart, and -- but nevertheless, we were still told to go live someplace else.  But now, it's a different world, I have to say, in all those towns.

SH:  And outside of the holidays, were there any other practices or --

RTC: Well, they knew the songs.  They knew the songs.  We'd go on holidays and they'd sing, "Berl traybt di oksn, sore traybt di ki [Barry leads the oxen, Sarah leads the cows]."  They knew those songs.  And, in fact, when the two older ones went to college, the younger one was home with me.  And it was a little annoying for him.  So, he would say to me, "I don't mind if you drey me a kop [annoy me] but don't hak me a tshaynik [don't bother me, lit. "don't bang me a teakettle"]."  So, you could see they knew more than "gey shlofn [go to sleep]."  They did know more, and they treasure it.  They treasure who they 14:00are.  And we did have one bar mitzvah in Israel, and it was interesting because one of my cousins, who grew up in Kfar Giladi, a secular kibbutz, became Orthodox.  His family treated it like a conversion.  And we have a bar mitzvah from a Reform rabbi in Israel, and -- where was -- I forgot where this story was going to go.  Well, I'm going to -- it'll -- I'll interrupt myself later and finish it.  But we did go to Israel, we did have the bar mitzvah there.  They were happy that they had that bar mitzvah.  And so, you can see that it has continued.  They identify as Jews, very strongly, in the same spirit that I do.

SH:  Was there a particular political atmosphere in your home?

RTC: Well, in -- growing up, my mother hated the communists, but she was very 15:00strong for the American Labor Party, as was my father.  And she considered May Day a workers' holiday.  And she worked at a garment factory, and she'd make -- they -- the people -- at the end of the season -- you know that story, the fifth season -- there's a slow season, and all the workers sewed for their families and the boss gave these very marvelous fabrics for wholesale price.  And so, she would make me a very nice jacket in purple, and one May Day in communist red.  (laughs) But, oh, she was very anti-communist.  Strong, strong, because she -- and she was a -- she recognized that the little fish would not go to salmon.  That was her joke.  So, she was not a capitalist, either.  (laughs) 16:00And even in my home, the kids knew the songs of the Lincoln Brigade and sang them.  There was a lot of singing, even -- and the funny thing is, my husband has a beautiful voice, but he didn't sing as much as I did.  (laughs) And he is more conservative than I am, politically.  And his mother -- his family spoke English.  His mother had no accent.  His father had a very strong accent, had a grocery store in Harlem.  And he -- my father's -- my husband, when -- after he was thirteen, he worked in this grocery store with his father, who was a wonderful, wonderful man, a loving man.  Just a good-hearted man.  [BREAK IN RECORDING] And -- but my father-in-law was in -- was -- loved his workers, and he was good.  He was happy where he was.  He was just a very happy person.  17:00He felt that he had the top of everything.  He was a little guy, and he said -- so, my son said to him, "How do you feel working here in Harlem with -- all your customers are Negro?"  He said, "Everybody here works."  And his whole family were butter and egg men.  And actually, the town that they -- his parents came from was [Wolcze?], [Volochev?], and that town supplied all the eggs for Europe.  Everybody worked in some aspect of candling, packing, this -- and that was it, and when that group of men, my husband's family, came to America, they all opened grocery stores.  Some were partners and some weren't partners after a while.  (laughs)

SH:  Can you describe your neighborhood growing up?

RTC: Yes.  It was a wonderful neighborhood.  I lived in the Bronx.  Now, before we came -- we lived in one neighborhood when we were very poor, and that had every group in it, Irish and this -- and my mother had a terrible accident when I was a child, and I was sent to relatives.  And we were all sent out.  My brother and sister, they were sent -- we were sent to an orphanage, as a matter of fact.  And then, later on, she had other work done.  Her arm was crushed and they took a bone from her leg and put it in her arm. She was one of the first.  It was a very painful thing.  She was in a cast for a year and a half, body cast.  And we were sent out.  And I was sent to my aunt, and I felt that to this one aunt, I was a burden.  To another, they loved having a baby in the house.  When I call back, at the end of my book, you notice I say we 19:00visited this relative many, many years later, and the -- they -- the person that answered the phone said, "Oh, I know Renele, you made our house alive, a little girl -- again, to have a baby in the house."  I was about four.  And I do remember being, from the old neighborhood -- being bathed by this woman, who -- I think she was Irish.  Her husband was a plumber, and she had two little boys, and she said, "Oh, Rena, it's such fun having a little girl in the bathtub," and so forth.  So, I really always was brought up with a very open feeling to -- I didn't feel ever that -- any separation in terms of who people were.  And then, later, we moved to the Bronx, and the Bronx as really terrific.  We lived in a fifth-floor walkup, and my mother worked.  Got a job sewing airmen's uniforms.  They were electric unif-- they had wires in them to keep the pilots 20:00warm or something.  And she was finally making a living.  My father -- everything failed.  He tried a little thing with mittens, he had a little thing with this -- it was sad, it was sad.  But she was always happy, she always told me stories from the union and from the shop and things like that.  And my husband's fam-- my husband's mother saved her sister from the Holocaust.  It was quite remarkable the way she did it.  It was during the Depression, 1939, and they were next-door neighbors.  And they -- I was the only one of my generation that spoke Yiddish with her.  Everyone else understood Yiddish, but they never spoke it, and they broke their teeth on it.  And I would always lose my key, and I would go through the fire escape.  She would always give me -- cookie, a little soup or something.  And she worked in a dress factory, but she 21:00was home more than my mother somehow.  And the women used to talk on the phone, and the children came in -- and when they came to our house -- my sister played the piano, they'd sing songs, and her son, the neighbor's son, would dance the Viennese waltz in a tiny little foyer with my mother, the Viennese waltz.  And he had a wonderful voice, and he sang a lot, too, and -- opera, everything.  He was very educated, from Austria, from Vienna, Austria.  And so, that was really a very special way to grow up.  And then I had other neighbors that I babysat for who were also in the cloak -- garment district.  And it was really very free -- nice feeling.  I have only good feelings of it, and I married my neighbor's nephew.  And when I -- and when they found out that we were going 22:00together, 'cause we certainly never told anybody -- in fact, once my husband came -- he was my boyfriend then -- and we went on the roof to look at the sunset, so forth.  And his parents always dropped in, 'cause our house was like the patio to this relative.  And my mother discreetly hung up the jacket and did not tell him.  She said, "It was not for me to tell."  And that was a sort of -- a nice flourish.  And this aunt who I still love the most of all my aunts was more aunt to me than any that I had on my mother's side.  My mother was sort of a black sheep of the family.  And she was the only brunette.  And this aunt said, "But I want to warn you, he's going to want his shoes just so untern 23:00bet [under the bed], and tomaftoes darf shnaydn punkt azoy [you must cut just so]."  And I said, "He'll figure it out.  I'll work that out."  But she was right.  Not about that.  Those were minor things.  But he was a little more demanding than he was when we were going together, so I should have -- I was forewarned by a loving person, so that was good.

SH:  And who were your friends growing up?

RTC: My friends were kids in my -- oh, that was another thing.  I -- my friends were kids in my class, and -- but I belonged to Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir.  How did I find it?  I was walking down one of the streets and they were dancing in a lot.  Hebrew dance, folk dances.  And I knew them from Kinderwelt.  So, I joined, and then I joined it.  And that was a very wonderful upbringing.  We studied things -- we had study groups, we danced, we sang, we -- I collected, on 24:00the subway, I was the second highest in my group -- and we'd say, Ladies and gentlemen, give me your attention.  Six million Jews -- and we'd collect for the JF-- we collected every year.  And we knew shluchim [Hebrew: emissaries] and we knew immigrants who also came from Europe.  And so, that was a very rich part of my upbringing.  And I stayed with -- I think if I would have joined Habonim, I might have made aliyah.  But Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir was really a little more radical.  And, in fact, when you went to camp -- we would put all the shorts in one suitcase and all the blouses in another.  And then, we had -- please ask permission, because they were precious, but everything was kupah [Hebrew: shared, lit. "cash register"], we had to share everything.  So, it was a little more demanding in that sense.  And then, I just felt that -- my 25:00parents struggled to come to America and that I was going to leave and go aliyah, so -- but I do have an article that was in Kfar Giladi.  And he worked for my father in the bookstore.  But when his brother died, he had a -- they had a young brother.  And when the brother died, he -- we think he had -- my husband says he think he had Marfan's disease.  He took his mother to the beach, and when he stepped in the cold water, he collapsed from the shock.  So, that was quite terrible.  But -- and then, his brother, who worked for my father, sort of had to get away.  It was just -- and he went to Israel.  And he was a leader in his kibbutz, and he was shot in one of the early wars.  And 26:00he couldn't speak, and so forth.  And although there were other sisters, he stayed with us in the fifth-floor walk-up.  The other lived -- and had cleaning help and so forth, because my mother was very dear to him.  And he was treated at Columbia for his -- what had happened to him.  And my mother, without asking me -- and, I mean, it was okay in the end, but I came back from camp one summer and I said, "Where is my bike?"  She says, "I sent it to Heschel," because they could only have used bikes -- used things, because otherwise you had to only buy Israeli things.  They were very -- so -- and then, when I went to Israel, I saw that bike.  (laughs) And I went there a few times with my family and alone, 27:00because I discovered other family there and so forth.

SH:  Now, you lived in the Bronx until you were twenty-three?

RTC: Absolutely.

SH:  Could you talk about any changes that you noticed in the neighborhood in that time?

RTC: Oh, wow.  Well, I went to City College, CCNY, and it was all very vibrant.  It was wonderful.  I have -- the only regrets I have -- is that I didn't work harder, study harder.  But it was all terrific.  And when my husband was seventy -- and this aunt, by the way, the one that lived next door, my mother-in-law developed Alzheimer's and was not in good shape.  And when my children were about -- when I was coming from a bar mitzvah at -- a matter of fact, she went to a nursing home.  And then, they -- she went to one in Brooklyn.  I forgot the name of it.  In Brooklyn.  And it was close to -- it was closer to New -- that wasn't why.  I forgot why they chose that one, but it 28:00was a -- supposedly a good one.  And they did treat them well.  They did -- they -- it was not -- it was a sympathetic -- they had music there, they had -- they did -- they were very kind.  And my father-in-law also went, because he wanted to be with his wife.  That was a very, very loyal marriage.  And this aunt went every day, seven days a week, to feed her sister lunch.  And once or twice, if she wasn't there, the nurses would call to make sure she was okay.  And I once said to her how wonderful it was that she did that.  And she says, "Vos?  Ikh for nit?  Ikh gey nit?  Ikh gey. [What?  I shouldn't go?  I shouldn't visit?  I go.]"  And she went every single day, for many years.  Maybe ten years.  So, when my husband was seventy, my daughter designed a 29:00wonderful program, "Your Life on Wheels."  And we rented a limo and we went to all the places in his life.  And he did have an epiphany, because his father was not as Americanized as his mother.  And we went to one neighborhood in the Bronx -- when they lived near PS 82, at Featherbed Lane, part of the Bronx -- and he said, "Oh, my father played catch with me here."  And he didn't appreciate his father as much as I did, because his mother was really a very take-charge person.  But he was, too, but he was -- very giving person.  So, it didn't show, because when his mother wouldn't eat something or something, I'd say, "She never eats.  I always have to ask her twice."  He says, "She's very particular."  And he was very proud, because she was particular enough to accept him, and he feel -- felt he won a prize.  So, then, we went in this 30:00limousine back to all the places.  And, of course, one of our songs is "On the Street Where You Live."  And that was the show, the -- when we got married, the hot show on Broadway.  And we were in the limo, and a bunch of children must have thought it was a drug -- a pimp thing, and they came and they kept rocking the limo.  And the limo driver, who was used to driving all over Bergen County, places that were not as white as where we lived, or as -- which has now changed, said, "Let's get out of here."  (laughs) And he really was afraid of -- and one of our grandchildren was about two, and the two-year-old baby -- really scared him.  And he says, "I'll do okay."  She was okay.  (laughs) And -- but it was 31:00-- he was a little uneasy there, so it did change a lot.  But this aunt still lived there, and she said, "Everyone is good."  But they changed the building, 'cause when I grew there -- when I moved there, it was a move up from the area that we had moved in when I -- the east Bronx, where my family moved.  Their food was cheaper and so forth.  And we had a tree in the entrance and privet bushes around the house.  And it did have a different side of spring, but that was all cemented up when we went.

SH:  Did your family attend Jewish events, performances, things like that?

RTC: Oh, they knew all the Jewish theater, definitely.  And we had a movie house in our neighborhood that had Shakespeare in Yiddish, and "King Lear," the first sentence was, "Avek [Away]!"  (laughs) I would love to get a copy of that.  If they have it here, I would take it.  You have it?  Great.  And my 32:00father once took me -- they belonged to these funeral -- burial site things.  So, they had -- he once took me to a -- the seder.  I don't know, my mother wouldn't go.  Maybe they had a fight that time.  They had a rough time. 

SH:  I wondered if you could say more about the role of Yiddish songs -- or songs in any language -- in learning the language?

RTC: Oh, absolutely.  I think -- when I see people, if their children are in Japan and they say, "I wish I could" -- their sons or their daughters are working in Japan and their kids go to the American school -- but they say, "I can't go to a restaurant, I don't know any Japanese and they are fluent in Japanese by now," I always advise, strongly, to get Yiddish -- to get those songs in -- children's songs.  You get the rhythm of the language, and when I 33:00went to Israel to visit family, I was surprised at all the -- they were surprised and I was surprised at all the Hebrew I understood and spoke.  They couldn't believe it.  They couldn't believe it, because, "Kum v'tze bachur atzel, v'tze la'avoda [Hebrew: Get up and go out, lazy boy, go out and get to work]" -- so, I knew the grammar from all these different songs when I was in the Shomer.  And I was able to keep conversations with them, and they spoke English.  But when they spoke among themselves in Hebrew, I understood them.  And I think -- I advise that -- I feel very, very strongly about that.  When I was a schoolteacher, my first -- one year, I had a class that was half slow and half immigrant.  And I had them memorize a poem every week.  "Up in the sky so high, the swings" -- and I really think children's songs are more important than the adult, because you get the use of prepositions and all that.  So, I feel 34:00very, very strongly -- so, I had these kids memorize a poem every week.  And then, as the kids progressed in their reading, they were moved on to the next class.  So, the immigrant kids moved faster than the ones that were really in the class bec-- but they gained a lot of authority, helping -- I had -- it was my own system.  I had teams of the immigrant and the American, so that they would learn the English.  And they -- these kids got a sense of authority in directing the other kids, and teach-- and knowing the words and so forth.  So, it worked.  And they learned a lot of English that way. 

SH:  And, as a child, did you have a favorite Yiddish song that you sang?

RTC: I sang so many songs, but I told you the one with the -- this is at -- the one about the wedding I liked very much.  The -- my children ended up singing, 35:00whenever we were driving, (singing) "Berl traybt di oksn, sore traybt di ki."  I forgot that already, and they will come home and sing it -- they're married, they have children, and they will still sing these songs.  Oh, yes, I know the one that I sang a lot was, (singing) "Meydele, meydele, zing mir a lidele,/vos dos meydele vilt?/A meydele vilt a por shukhelekh hobn,/darf men geyn dem -- [Young woman, young woman, sing me a song,/What does the young woman want?/A young woman wants a pair of shoes,/Let's go to the --]" and then, the khosn [bridegroom], oh, (singing) "Red a bisl hekher [Speak a little louder]," that was my favorite one, I think.

SH:  Can you tell me more about your education growing up, Jewish and not?

RTC: Well, as I said, I went to yidishe shule, and I had a wonderful -- I know that kids didn't like going to Hebrew school, but I did like this.  And I remember the poem that I learned there: "In a gortn bay di blumen, shteyt a yingele fartrakht, shteyt a yingele a shvartser, oygn shvartse vi der nakht.  36:00Un di umedike oygn un mit vayse perl tseyn, ligt baholt dort azoy fil kinderisher aheym.  Oysgepitste kinder, narish un shlekht bist gor!  Lakhn af di yingl mit di krizldike hor?  Veynt dos yingele di shvartse af zayn mazl shvarts vi erd, veynt di yingele di shvartse mit krizldike hor. [Near the flowers in a garden, a boy stands deep in thought, a dark boy, with eyes as dark as night.  And his cheerless eyes, along with his white teeth, belie so much orphanage-ness.  Dressed up boy, you are so foolish and mean!  You laugh at the boy with the curly hair?  The dark boy cries about his dark-as-the-earth luck, the boy with the curly hair cries.]"  (laughs) And, of course, we sang songs.  (singing) "Lakht dos vind in korn, lakht un lakht un lakht.  Lakht op a tog a gantse un a halbe nakht. [The wind laughs through the rye, laughs and laughs and laughs.  It laughs all day and half the night.]," and da-da-da-da-da-da, and so forth.  So, we did -- it was alive.  It was not something I did only at auditorium or something.  And then, of course, in the Shomer, we sang many Hebrew and Yiddish songs, as well.  So, it was rich.

SH:  Could you tell me more about the organizations like Shomer or Kinderwelt that you were part of --

RTC: Oh, yes.

SH:  -- growing up?

RTC: Well, I'll start with Kinderwelt, 'cause I was younger.  Kinderwelt, another wonderful place.  I felt at home there, because they were -- had -- there was so much Yiddishkayt, and I was used to it.  So, I felt very good.  And we had -- there were famous people there, but I didn't -- I don't remember the names.  And the teacher that taught dance must have been five hundred pounds.  Four, five hundred pounds.  But she moved so beautifully.  It was a treat.  I don't know if Menasha Skulnik was still there or not, but there were plays in Yiddish.  And we did -- now, my group did not study reading or writing, because the younger kids had already gotten that.  But I asked to be put in the class, 'cause I always wanted to be part of that world -- to know it.  So, that's where I started, and that's -- and I -- and after that, I went to yidishe shule.  So, I think I've told enough about that.  And then, in the 38:00Shomer that was also, as I mentioned already -- were -- very terrific organization.  And let's see, it was set up like a camp, and -- so that it was citywide, and they were like little warrens, you'd call it.  And mine was ken [Hashomer group, lit. "nest"] -- I don't know, my -- the equivalent of the bunk would be called "kvutzah derekh or -- the path of light."  We picked the name.  We chose the name.  And when we went there on Friday nights, we would have a beautiful Oneg Shabbat.  Beautiful.  Everyone wore white shirts.  We'd sit on the floor in some store that was open -- that was not for sale, and some -- and we'd sit there, we'd hold one or other around, and we'd sing -- you know, 39:00"Hine mah tov u'mah nayim [Hebrew: See how good and how pleasing].  And we'd sing the other songs, too, Hebrew songs.  And we felt a very -- it was very beautiful.  And then, we would be in our individual groups and we'd all have -- we'd separate -- oh, we'd dance, always danced.  We knew all the -- danced folk dances.  And then, we would -- then we'd go in our individual groups and we all had study things that we chose: poetry, and sometimes it was Hebrew poets in English, and sometimes it was Yiddish, and sometimes it was -- once, we studied the Middle Ages, and I went straight to some Christian thing, and they said, No, no, you were supposed to discover that.  But it was so obvious to me at that time.  And so, it was a really -- it was a wonderful education.  And we went 40:00to winter camp, which was very beautiful.  My mother was very against my going.  So, I took liver oil (laughs) and I saved my own money, and I said, "I know that the Rockefellers go away to the country in the summer, and they were born just as naked as me."  And I went, and -- with her blessing, in the end.  So, it was a very valuable part of my life.

SH:  Looking back on your childhood, what are the values or the practices that you think your parents wanted to pass on to you?

RTC: They were very moral.  They were very moral, and it wasn't -- like my husband's family was more "you have to work hard."  Ours was not -- ours was 41:00more a feeling of "you must have joy out of every day, and you must trust yourself, and never follow the crowd."  That was a big thing.  And it was not said as a hippie kind of meshugas.  It was said that you should believe in yourself, and you should have -- know your values.  As a matter of fact, one of my friends became -- was a -- became very promiscuous.  And it was at the end of the Shomer -- my Shomer involvement, but we were still very good friends.  And she became very promiscuous, and was very open about it and flaunting.  And most of the other mothers told their daughters not to have anything to do with her.  She was very brilliant girl.  She went to High School of Science and so forth.  But my mother said, "You know, don't do what she does, because you don't want to be consumed that way.  You have other things to accomplish in 42:00life.  And when she brings it up, just say, 'I want to wait for my own experiences.'  So, don't let her control the conversation in that area.  It's not good.  You will lose that special feeling, to just run around like that."  She said, "You know, sex is like breathing, but you wouldn't want to breathe in a sewer.  You want to be selective."  And I really valued that.  It gave me a lot of strength, and she would sometimes introduce me, "This is my friend, the virgin."  (laughs) And it was a weird -- but I never ga-- she -- I'm still friends with her.  It's -- we still -- she lives in California, but -- so, that was a very, very strong thing, is not to follow the crowd.  And my daughter always felt, hey, she couldn't put me in a box.  And some other people have said that, because I've -- I enjoy all different qualities in different people, 43:00in different groups.  And I feel that I'm quite comfortable in the world for that.  I appreciate it for that.

SH:  So far, we've been talking about the early part of your life.  And I wondered, can you give me a snapshot of your life since then and today?

RTC: Well, it's good.  It's good.  One of the things I wanted to say was this sense of values -- I was at my son's house, I told you this.  I was at my son's house and we had to pick up the three little girls.  He has a son and three girls, but for some reason, we had to pick up the three little girls.  And my brother -- and my son said, "Well, where's" so-and-so, "She's a mensch already."  So, the children said, "What's a mensch?"  And I said, "Well, a mensch is a kind person, a thoughtful person.  Person of character."  And my 44:00son said, "So someone who's all grown up already."  I said, "No, it's how you understand and how you look at people."  So, then one sister looked and said, "It's you.  You're a mensch, Lila."  The younger one says, "What's going on?"  It was like a Pesach table.  "What's going on here?"  And so, the one that was dubbed a mensch said, "Yasmina says I'm a very compassionate person."  And I really felt, well, this was it.  They got that sense of what values -- and later, when we were driving in the car, one said, "So, tell me, grandma and grandpa, is my father a mensch?"  And I felt that this was -- this really gave me -- great deal of satisfaction, that my son got it, my children really under-- my grandchildren really understood it.  We have a very balanced life.  Very cooperative home.  My daughter is not married.  She lives with us, and she 45:00makes it possible, really, for us to stay where we are.  But we all do everything, and it -- my husband is very proud that he does everything.  I had a funny story.  I ended up buying a waffle maker, and -- he makes -- for our -- one of our anniversaries.  How I bought it was -- I discovered that he made waffles at a hotel when we had a -- we had to go to a motel when we had a blizzard, we had Hurricane Sandy, and we lost fourteen big trees and so forth.  So, he ended up -- he was standing there, making these waffles.  And I never knew he could do that or would do that.  So, after I bought him the waffle maker, that was his toy, and he makes them at least twice a week, and cuts up the fruit and does everything.  And one day, I saw him -- I came in with the bundles, he's reading the newspaper, and I said, "Dinner is ready."  And then, 46:00I said, "Something's wrong with this."  And now, he does all the shopping, (laughs) and cook -- and we all three -- we all separate our tasks and we're happy.  And we live in our house that the children grew up in.  And it's not that big a house, but it's a little bigger than we might have -- at this point, but it's not that big.  And we won't sell it, because the grandchildren always love to come to us.  And they sleep over, many times, and the New Yorkers used to sleep over maybe once a month, and we take them to different things and celebrate different things with them.  And the other ones, now, are sleeping over, 'cause they have younger children.

SH:  You attended, you mentioned, the City College.  And what did you study there?

RTC: Well, that was another one of my -- I studied -- I was an elementary school teacher, 'cause at that time, City College was not open all -- to all -- to 47:00women.  And that was the only school that was actually opened until my junior year.  So, then I did take other courses, and I liked it.  There were twenty boys to a girl.  And my sister was a very, very beautiful girl.  I never really -- that was never an issue for me, because that was a -- my father-in-law used to say, "I saw her today."  She was very, very glamorous and beautiful.  And so, here I was with twenty guys to -- I was okay.  I mean, I wasn't -- (laughs) I was good en -- I was okay.  But, I mean, it was a nice feeling, it was good.  And my husband was in the army, and he didn't graduate high school.  They called him up in January and they said, "Will all the seniors report to the drafting board?"  And he was sent to the army.  And -- then they sent him to Hunter College, which was all girls.  But it was okay.  We really 48:00danced our first dance at his cousin's wedding.  I was at the children's table.  He's six years older.  I was at the children's table, he -- and I was just about fifteen, and that was our first date.  And he said, "You've grown up into quite a young lady."  And we danced, and that was our first date.  And then, he said -- I told him I had to go to Israel, and -- (laughs) we went to the movies, and we were on line, of course, in New York.  And he said, "This is a child."  (laughs) But he came back eight years later.  We had another date and got married a few months later.

SH:  How would describe the Jewish life on campus?

RTC: Well, it was all Jewish.  It was primarily Jewish.  So, I set up the folksong group and we sang all kinds of folksongs.  And I did not belong to anything, actually, 'cause I worked.  I worked part time.  I worked in the 49:00library, I worked waitressing.  That was later, it's another funny thing that happened.  Oh, that was an experience.  I had worked at the library for seventy-five cents an hour, and a friend came in and said, "Well, I worked at a hotel, I made a thousand dollars" or something.  And I figured how may seventy-five cents an hours I would have to work after -- so, I was determined to do this and my mother was very, very upset.  She says, "A dinst, mayn tokhter [A maid, my daughter]."  It's terrible.  She was mortified.  But eventually, I ended up at a -- Orthodox place in the Adirondacks.  And they were Orthodox in the best sense of the word, because -- and they taught me this: the help was always treated first.  And whenever I had any workmen in my home, I always brought them food or drink before I did, before I fed my family, if they didn't join us.  Usually, they would join us, but if they demurred, they wouldn't want to.  I would make sure that I took care of them first.  And at 50:00that -- and we swam in the lake, and it was really -- and most of the people did not go to City College.  They went to Harvard or places like that.  And one girl -- there were -- she was in law school -- and we were always fed with the -- what the guests were, but the -- just the less expensive menus.  And she stole some lambchops and she was fired.  So, she called up her father, crying.  She said, "They fired me 'cause I stole the lambchops."  My mother would have said, "Darling, come home, I'll give you all the lambchops you want."  He says, "Fired you for -- and you're accepting that?  You're going to be a lawyer?  You better straighten that out."  And she did.  Two weeks later, he called her, he says, "I'm very proud of you, darling.  You can quit your job now, we're gonna go cross-country."  (laughs) But I was carrying the tray, and the guy in front of me was the busboy.  When he carried the tray, he 51:00shuttled -- he moved to the side, and I thought I would do the same.  And my whole tray, gefilte fish and chicken soup, ended up in the décolleté of the owner.  She said, "Darling, it's all right.  You -- next time, you'll know."  And she didn't fire me.  (laughs)

SH:  I also wanted to ask about -- City College at the time was the -- that was the time and the setting of your New York intellectuals, your --

RTC: Oh, it was --

SH:  -- Irving Howes and that cohort.

RTC: Wonderful.  And they called it Christian College Now Yiddish, CCNY.  (laughter) So, it was all Yiddish, but absolutely -- in fact, my group of friends, some from the Shomer -- well, because by then, I had left.  But my 52:00group of friends, we used to go to -- you know, it's the college downtown, the engineering school -- Cooper Union.  And we did go to all those marvelous free lectures.  It breaks my heart that they've -- now charging admission.  It was a purely meritous (sic) college.  And we would go down there very often, ev-- Friday nights to hear those lectures.  And we did have some wonderful teachers at City College, as well.  I really don't remember their names at all.  But I do remember a teacher from Taft High School, who -- I remember him sitting on the desk.  To this day, it's very vivid.  We were in government class, and he said, "Why don't the high school students -- people who graduate eighth grade have one vote and high school two votes and college three votes?  Because the 53:00smarter you are, the better you'll vote."  And then, he stood there and he said, "Some people say there's something wrong with that."  And he was smiling.  And that's when he said, "You have to vote your interests, and that's what people do.  So, don't" -- and there was another message to it that -- "Don't trust someone because they're smart that they know more than you.  They may not be on your side."  So, I was exposed to a lot.  And I don't think the children get it now.  It's -- everything seems to be much more -- even though the questions -- there are no wrong answers in literature -- I went back to college.  When I was fifty, I went back, and I took courses that I felt I missed.  I went to Montclair, I went to Rutgers, I went to Sarah Lawrence, and I took courses there.  And they all -- the question was -- "there are no wrong 54:00answers," and "why did you think that?"  You just -- it was more critical thinking in that sense.  But I -- in elementary school, they don't have civic classes, and those classes that really make you have an obligation to your community.  I really think that's missing.

SH:  On that note, how was it that you decided to go into teaching?

RTC: Oh, I always wanted to teach -- as a very young child -- I loved children, and I loved school.  I was not a careful student, but I loved school.  And I couldn't wait to see what I was gonna learn or -- and I didn't -- it -- I was socially comfortable in school, but I liked learning things.  And a funny thing is, my husband's brother was getting a PhD in psychology.  And he needed a kid to give an IQ test to, and I was the kid.  So, when I got married, he gave me 55:00the IQ test.  And in it, he said that when I went to the door -- I said, "Well, what do you do with children that have problems?"  I was fourteen.  He said, "Her family is very caring like that.  They would not neglect others."  So, I think that -- that gave me hindsight into the influence of my family's value of the teacher.  And I taught in different schools, and I taught in a very rough school at one time, where they threw desks out the window, where teachers and children wrestled in the hallways.  And I went there at night, to the rec department, 'cause I didn't want them to think I only was having a job at school.  And I volunteered two or three nights a week, and I make popcorn and I'm -- the recreation center.  So, I was always taught -- as poor as we were, I 56:00was always taught, "Not everyone has your opportunities." And there's something about kindness -- and I remember, even when I was five years old, my father no longer had a bookstore -- that I opened up a library, on the stoop of my building.  So, I just really love children, and I loved the idea of teaching.  I thought it was a mission, and I was going onboard.

SH:  I'd like to move things now to how your sense of Jewish identity has changed during your lifetime, and I'd like to start by asking:  have there been any particular experiences or historical events that were formative in your Jewish identity?

RTC: Well, as I said, the language, I think, was crucial.  But more than that, because the stories, the struggles -- the struggles were very -- in fact, I -- 57:00one of the songs we learned at -- and I think it was Shomer: "Zog nit keyn mol az du geyst dem letstn veg [Never say that you have reached the final path]."  And I sang it, and my father got hysterical.  My father was not that emotional.  And he said, "Those were the songs that they sang as they went to the concentration camps."  They were -- he thought it was terrible.  And I know that when my children, my boys especially -- some women said, "You can only go out with a Jewish girl."  And a close friend of mine married a Mexican boy and her father sat shivah [seven-day mourning period], he gave away money.  But, of course, he was a wonderful husband.  That's the best marriage of all my friends.  And he -- all his children were bat mitzvahed, and he said, "I'll even -- I'll convert," he says -- "Don't do me any favors."  But he says, "I promise you one thing.  We will always have a Jewish home," and -- that there is -- that you can have a Jewish home that way.  And I said to my sons that, 58:00"You have to marry someone you really love, and that person may not be Jewish.  But you are Jewish, and six million Jews died.  And your number must never fade."  I said, "I hope you really get it."  And they did.  They got it.  And I told you how the other -- how both of their -- my grandchildren are very tuned into the Yiddish ethos.  I would say ethos.  Kindness, morality, and stories.  They know the stories.  They know that I was named after Tisha b'ov.  They know why I was na-- why there was a Tisha b'ov.  So, they know these things. 

SH:  Could you say more about your awareness of the Holocaust and --

RTC: Oh!

SH:  -- the effect that had on your family?

RTC: Well, my mother spoke of her family often.  And I said -- my father was the youngest in his family, and he went to Israel as a teenager, but he got -- oh, I forgot what it was.  It'll come.  He got some disease that they don't have anymore.  But the swamps or something, he got -- so, I said, "So, what what were you br--"  He says, "Derharget [murdered]."  That was it.  I mean, what more?  And not only that -- I just want to go back to another thing.  I said, "You know, Mom" -- when I was very little, I said, "Christmas, it's an American holiday.  It's Santa Claus.  He's not Jesus or anything."  She says, "Listen, darling.  All I know is Christmas night, they'd send out the dogs on the Jews."  That made an impression.  (laughs) And I told my kids that.  So, 60:00they didn't have any longing for Christmas trees.  But the Holocaust, well, of course, roused -- my neighbors, their father was burned in -- because he didn't have the right passport.  That's why he was -- he couldn't get out.  He was trying to get his papers -- he couldn't get out because he didn't have the right passport.  No, the Holocaust was very big with our -- very present in our lives.  And this family that -- they're -- we're very close to them.  They live -- are my neighbors, they were his closest cousins, his -- my mother-in-law saved their lives.  My brother-in-law was a mentor to the young boy that lived there.  So, we were always aware, and they were always aware, and they always celebrated the day they came to America.  August 8th, 1939.  And we did, 61:00too.  We -- it was -- so, it was very big, and I, of course, read many books.  And I don't know if you're familiar with a book, "The Hare with the Amber Eyes"?  It's a magnificent book.  Magnificent.  And it's about a family that was as wealthy as the -- who's the wealthiest Jews?  The -- I forget names.

SH:  The Rothschilds?

RTC: The Rothchilds.  You got the right one, and -- however, they didn't have the same luck.  And the hare with the golden eyes is a little (UNCLEAR) that they had -- with amber eyes -- a little -- and they -- in this book, I was so excited that they described the neighborhood in Austria and how they did everything.  And I told the woman to -- the cousin of mine, Ralph's cousin -- 62:00we're very close.  We call each other, we speak.  We're very good friends.  He was just ninety, the guy -- the one that danced with my mother.  And I called her to read this book, because it's a wonderful book, wonderfully written.  And then, they had a description of the Anschluss.  And I said, "Don't read it.  It has a description of the Anschluss."  I couldn't swallow it.  And she said, "I remember, I was coming home, shopping with my mother."  She described what was in this book.  So, you can see that, emotionally, I -- it has never left me.  And that's why I'm an atheist.

SH:  And as someone who was active in your youth in Shomer could you talk about your experiences at the founding of the State of Israel?

RTC: Oh, yes, of course.  We danced in the streets in the Shomer.  We were very, very excited about it.  My mother -- our family was excited.  And, of 63:00course, Harry Truman was -- I -- was held up as -- even though he just said some American remarks, but he came through in the end.  And, yes, that was a very, very joyous time.  And relatives of ours in Israel had child-- had a child that year they named "Noga" to celebrate the grand -- the greatness of -- it's a great burst of light.  And it was very big in our family.  And my son was bar mitzvahed in Israel.  So, of course, we visited all the meaningful places, Yad Vashem and -- it was painful, that part.  Very painful, to this day.

SH:  How do you feel that your connection to the Yiddish language and East European Jewry fits into a broader sense of your Jewish identity?

RTC: What is broader?  I mean, it's almost total, so I don't know -- you could 64:00say broader.

SH:  Well, in how you have lived your life as a Jew, how you're passing on Jewish values.  What role has Yiddish continued to hold?

RTC: Well, as I said, the word mensch, they were given that word and that expectation, clearly, that this is a very important value in life.  And, of course, learning.  That was -- but I didn't want to say it was only mine.  I didn't do that.  I didn't say, "We're the people of the Book."  I didn't do that.  Well, my husband did that.  (laughs) But he didn't know as much about Yiddish and hist-- and religion as I did.  But I didn't do it that way.  I just read to them, I just made sure they read different books.  I just sang them the songs.  I just told them the history.  But I didn't -- I told them -- 65:00I told you what I told the boys when they got married.  And my daughter is definitely very committed to Yiddishkayt and to -- and I would say I think "The Dybbuk" is -- I think that it -- I wouldn't say rivaled, I'd say there's no comparison between "Romeo and Juliet" -- I think it's one of the greatest of that genre of forced marriages and passion and -- there's no question.  And my children know the story of "The Dybbuk," too.  And, as I said -- think that's one of the greatest deep things.  And, oh, yes, there was an active group in my town, the JCC -- are you familiar with Sister Thering?  Oh, well, that's really very important.  Sister Thering is a nun, was a nun who was brought up in 66:00Wisconsin, who wore a star and a cross on one side.  She was brought up in an anti-Semitic home, and she questioned her father.  She said, "If our lord was Jewish, how could you speak like that of his people?"  She went to Pope Paul.  She said, "You cannot have the Jews called the killers of Christ.  You cannot do it."  And because of Sister Thering -- he listened to her, and you know that he did that.  Then, Sister Thering was honored by -- oh, then she started a program at Seton Hall, which is a Catholic university in New Jersey.  And she said, "We must teach the Holocaust to teachers, because you teach one teacher, they will touch six hundred."  So, she opened a program at Seton Hall.  Free 67:00tuition for a master's in Holocaust teaching.  Then, the JCC at -- in New Jersey, Morris County, gave her free room and board.  And instead of staying at the sisters' house, she spent all her reti-- those years at the JCC.  And I -- my daughter was a volunteer at that time, and I went to the program for her.  And in it, many people spoke.  And one was a priest, and he says, "I want to make it clear that Sister Thering was not a saint."  He said, "She was a prophet, that is to say a nudnik [advocate]."  This was the priest!  (laughs) "She was a nudnik, and she would fight for anybody whose plumbing wasn't good 68:00here and who didn't do this and who didn't do that."  And that -- I have a -- I should have brought it.  Maybe I'll send it to you -- of Sister Thering's story.  Is that something?

SH:  Yes.

RTC: That is a great story.  So, that's what I'm saying, that that con-- oh, and this program at Seton Hall sends docents and -- to Auschwitz, and trains them.  That's what they do.  They don't just tell the stories.  They support docents at all these places, to keep the story going.  And we contribute to Sister Thering Fund, as well as the -- well, we had a problem with the JCC, because when my mother needed a nursing home, they said she couldn't go in that 69:00one because she wasn't a resident of the community.  So, I said, "Oh, I understand.  I'll accept that.  However, I'd like to visit it so I get a sense of your standard so I'll know what to look for."  They said, I'm sorry, you can't come in.  That, I did not appreciate, so I don't give them any money.  I mean, I give it to other things.  We give it to the -- other Jewish organiz-- as this -- as this one and others.  So, yeah, I got a little riled up at that, 'cause I'm still angry.  And I went to an ecumenical -- actually, it was started by the Episcopalians -- that my mother stayed at.  But they were most -- many of them were people from the garment center, and they were very -- they had a rabbi there, they had -- fact, when my mother was dying, a woman came up, sang the beautiful songs of my mother's childhood, and she was -- the doctor 70:00said in a death coma.  But when my mother heard these songs, she woke up.  And the doctor, who I think was Jewish, said, "I must apologize, but I do not sing."  So, there's, again, how music -- the power of it.

SH:  Besides "The Dybbuk," are there other works of art or literature that have had that kind of special impact on you?

RTC: Well, I read a lot of Cynthia Ozick, "The Golem" and the golem story.  I read that -- I have that video of "The Golem" as a movie.  And it's a story -- and, of course, a lot of her work -- I think "The Rabbi" -- there's another book of hers that's really my favorite.  And what other books, what other stories?  There are -- I just -- I'm not really prepared for this, and I don't remember these things offhand.  But as I said, the Sholem Aleichem with the ribbon, and 71:00-- I listen to the -- this was a thing.  I got a lot -- for this program, I was told not to prepare.  But I just felt I was forgetting things, and names I was never very good at.  So, I took some books from library of Yiddish things, and I -- oh, I always am in favor of children's stories, to simplify things.  And I had the -- "If Not Higher" by Peretz.  So, I read two of those stories by -- the children's version.  But then, when I read the stories by Peretz, the real story, I felt the nuance was much cleverer.  And he would always say -- in this story -- most people are familiar with someone follows this rabbi around, and he sees he's a very good person.  But Peretz says, "To prove it to a Litvak" -- 72:00and he had that tension in it.  "Well, a Litvak, you have to really -- have to see it to know it."  So, I really think reading the stories by the authors themselves, even the translations, is crucial.  And I won't read them anymore, based on -- and I will say that this experience did reawaken my whole -- reading.

SH:  What has been most important for you to transmit to your children, your grandchildren, future generations about Jewish identity?

RTC: Well, I think I did it.  The Holocaust, only in terms of a great loss.  But we always get these emails showing that this count-- that this group is only maybe less than two percent of the world population, and double digits, triple 73:00digits in terms of what they've produced and offered mankind.  And there's this -- there's a book called "The Gift of the Jews," written by an Irishman.  Credits them with giving the -- giving society a weekend and so forth.  So, I do have that ethnic pride, but I had a good Italian friend who's -- has a list of Renaissance people that I'm also very proud of, and some of them are Jewish.  (laughs) So, I just think that the thing -- that that -- what that says is to do, is to do good.  And everybody does it differently.  You don't really have to win -- that the kindness is crucial.  I think the kindness is the crucial character quality that I value.  Brilliance is luck.  And if you waste brilliance -- oh, waste, that's another thing:  that if you waste what 74:00you have, that is not so good.  So, those are some of the things that -- that's the way I think I've worked it. 

SH:  And what does the Yiddish language mean to you today?

RTC: Passion.  Passion, and it -- so, I even wrote a list of English words, when I began seeing them in the "New York Times," that -- so exact that they took the -- when I see the "New York Times" and the "Wall Street Journal" using words like "tchotchke" and "mensch," and I have about a dozen of those words -- I brought them, 'cause I knew I wouldn't remember them all.  And "schlemiel" and "klutz," and there's a -- "nudnik" and -- all of these are now in the -- and "chutzpah," Maureen Dowd was -- wrote an article.  She's a staunch Irish 75:00Catholic -- but she said, "The chutzpah of those" -- people in public office to make these claims.  So, I say -- so, that's right on the nose kind of language.  And I think that it's so alive.  That's -- the thing that amazes me, that everyone said Yiddish is a dying language, and here, every time I read the newspaper, another one is in, and I'm sure to identify it to my children.  "It's not really English, it's Yiddish."  (laughs)

SH:  We're getting near to the end of our time, but I wanted to be sure to ask about your writing projects, like the memoir and other articles.

RTC: Yes.  Well, I did have a few of the chapters from my memoir published in the "Jewish Women's Annual Journal."  I also had a few in the "New York Times," 76:00and in the "New York Times" article, I do sort of weave in that my father ate herring and my mother didn't.  And so, it's never out of me, I'll put it that way.  I don't aim it, but I have a New York accent.  I'm a Jewish woman.  And once, someone said to me, "Are you going to give up your Bronx accent?"  I said, "Never," and I haven't.  (laughs)

SH:  Could you talk more about the -- so, the process of writing the memoir?

RTC: Oh, yes.  Well, thank you for asking.  What happened was, I wrote a portrait of my mother, and I went to a writing group.  And I don't remember the teacher, 'cause it was a one-day class.  And he gave us some clues.  When he saw it, he said, "This should be a book."  So, I tried to remember it.  I 77:00tried to work it out, as a book, how it all came out.  And at that time -- I started the memoir when my mother was failing.  She was such a strong person.  I wanted to capture her vitality.  And, of course, the Yiddishkayt was intrinsic.  I could never not include -- I could never describe her without it.  And it was valuable.  And so, I wrote it many times, and then I went to Sarah Lawrence, and I was accepted in their writing program.  And Joan Peters was my writing teacher.  And she helped me with it.  And somehow, it wasn't finished, it wasn't worked, and I left.  And I was not accepted into their writing program, and I was very disappointed.  And I went to -- and I met the 78:00poet Enid Dame.  She was a magnificent woman, and she -- a very wonderful writer.  She midrashed [offered commentary on] a lot of her poems.  My favorite of her poems is "On the Ark" -- the Ark with her mother.  And she says -- she does it like a (UNCLEAR).  Was it dark, was it this?  And she says there were all these mystical animals, and she describes it very beautifully.  I recommend it to everyone.  And she -- so, she said, "Let's play with it differently.  Let it begin a little different.  Let's give her a little more -- let's not have it just in terms of her debilitating process."  So, we moved it around, and she just -- and she picked up on the Yiddishkayt.  She loved it, and she once said that one of her favorite sentences in the book was where I 79:00said, "Yiddish was used for jokes, songs, and rages."  I don't know if I had it phrased in that sequence in the book.  And so, that was it.  And I would love to publish it, but it's just a -- and, oh, I did send it to a few agents, and one of them said, "Don't put it in a drawer."  But I did, because I just didn't have the drive or know-how to self-publish it and to get it going.  And I keep thinking maybe one day I will.  I don't know.

SH:  Before we conclude, I want to ask is there anything that we didn't touch on in this interview that you would like to bring up now?

RTC: I can't imagine.  (laughs) Sometimes I think -- I always think I talk too much.  But a question usually stimulates me, so I end up remembering things I thought I forgot.

SH:  Then, as one of our concluding questions, what advice do you have for 80:00future generations of Jews, of Yiddish speakers?

RTC: I'm going to tie this -- and I -- coming here on the bus, I met someone from Taiwan.  He kept telling me a hundred times -- a daughter was bringing her grandparents to the bus, and he said, "Oh, I'll help them."  And he says, "I speak fluent" -- and then, we had a conversation about languages.  And I had just read the "Pakn Treger" on -- the recent issue.  And he said about his Taiwanese upbringing -- he says, "Yes, it's like I lived two lives."  He was American, born in America, but he was brought up with the same cultural link.  And I would say -- and I went to Italy, I learned Italian.  And I said, "Well, it won't be like learning Yiddish, because it's not like" -- but, no, I love the people, I love that you had a smile when you talked, and I think you can learn 81:00it and learn it with that understanding and love for it.  But you need the whole part of it.  You need the whole part.  And I think that the Center is a fantastic thing.  Fantastic.  I think you're doing a beautiful job.  My daughter came here, and I don't know if I said this in the interview -- did I say that she came here to camp?  And she always wanted to know what box to put me in.  She ways, "You know, you're not JAP-y, you're not frum [religiously observant], you're not" -- she says, "And I know you're Jewish!  But I can't find your place."  Then she went to the Yiddish Book Center's camp and she says, "I found it!"  (laughs)

SH:  And a difficult question, perhaps, but could you tell us your favorite Yiddish word?

RTC: "Mensch."  (laughs)

SH:  Then, on behalf of the Wexler Oral History Project, I'd like to thank you 82:00for coming here today --

RTC: Well, thank you very much.  (laughs)

SH:  -- sharing your stories with us.  And I want to personally thank you for giving me the pleasure of hearing these stories.

RTC: Well, thank you, thank you.

SH:  A sheynem dank [Thank you very much].

[END OF INTERVIEW]