IGOR SENDEROVICH ORAL HISTORY

ROLA YOUNES:This is Rola Younes, and today is June 18th, 2014. I am here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, with Igor Senderovich, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Igor Senderovich, do I have your permission to record this interview?

IGOR SENDEROVICH:Yes.

RY:Thank you. Can you tell me what you know about your family background?

IS:What I know is from occasional conversations, occasional comments and stories and anecdotes dropped here and there. On the one hand, I have a fairly complete account, in that on all sides of the family, people are willing to speak, to 1:00some extent. But nobody really has a passion to dig deep and tell about all the old stories. A lot of things are associated with death. A lot of things are associated with change, with very violent things that happened in their lifetimes. So we get little pieces -- little bits of stories, here and there. So I guess I have broad but kind of shallow knowledge from the last few generations.

RY:Can you expand on this knowledge?

IS:I can. I guess you'd have to ask me more specifically, but --

RY:You mentioned being born in Uzhgorod, in Ukraine?

IS:That's right. So, I guess, let me start with the overall framework of the family. So I was born in Uzhgorod, Ukraine -- what used to be called Ungvár, Hungary. It's kind of a chance that my family was based there until our 2:00emigration. We primarily -- from two of my grandparents -- come from Derazhnya, a shtetl [small town in Eastern Europe with a Jewish community] not far from Khmel'nyts'kyy, in Ukraine. Another grandmother is from Lithuania. And another grandfather is from Odessa. So most of what we know is from Derazhnya -- that's sort of the locus for most of the family. Just with displacements of the war, with the massacre of Jews in Derazhnya, after the war there was nothing to come back to. So my grandfather and his brother just happened to settle in Uzhgorod. My grandfather finished the war somewhere around modern Czechoslovakia -- modern Czech Republic, and then Czechoslovakia -- and he was demobilized in what then became annexed extra oblast of Ukraine, Transcarpathia. It was Hungarian before that, but it was annexed to the Soviet Union. He was stationed there on Uzhgorod, demobilized, started working as a civilian. So life resumed for him 3:00already in this new town. He was joined by his brother, as I mentioned. They married there. And they started lives with some of their remaining relatives scattered in other places in Ukraine -- Odessa, mostly. So I guess postwar, most of my family is -- at least one half, my father's side of the family, is from Uzhgorod; my mother's is from Odessa. But before that, we were mostly based in Derazhnya, and some in Odessa.

RY:Do you have a story of how your mother came from Odessa to Uzhgorod?

IS:Well, the thing is that -- as is common among Jews -- it was sort of set up. It was that -- so my father's father comes from Derazhnya; my mother's mother also comes from Derazhnya. In fact, they're long -- they're distant relatives of each other, because they've been for generations in shtetl. What ends up 4:00happening is that my father's father settles in Uzhgorod and is in touch with some of his -- you know, sort of like these landsmanshaftn [association of immigrants originally from the same region], they are in touch with other people that came from Derazhnya -- there's this network of people. They also coordinate with each other when they need to -- if anybody visits, they know to take care of other people's graves. There was this kind of mutual responsibility. So I think that my father's father and future mother's mother were in touch. But my grandfather also had a brother who ended up settling in Odessa after the war -- I believe he only settled after the war; I'm not sure when. So they used to visit a lot. So my father's family would visit Odessa very often, and they would see other people from Derazhnya, presumably. So I think that way, they met -- my parents met.

RY:Were there any sort of tensions or bickering between Jews from Derazhnya and 5:00Jews from Odessa? You know, like, we have jokes between Litvaks [Lithuanian Jews] and Galicianers [Galician Jews] and, you know, the --

IS:Um -- I'm sure there were, it's just -- we are not prone to talk about it much. I think there is this -- there's a general assumption that it happened, but my family is kind of very traditional, very discreet, and they don't want to get into that. It's nice -- they feel like, oh, this is just something on the vulgar level, and we don't get involved in that. But there are these overtones that -- not so much about where you come from, but what kind of education have you got? Are you more, you know, professional and educated, or are you somehow still stuck in some kind of an ignorant hole? But the sense I got from the way people talk is, it doesn't matter if you came from a shtetl or Odessa, it 6:00matters what your outlook is -- how open-minded you are, and so forth.

RY:Okay. Any famous or infamous family stories? Any anecdotes?

IS:One thing I heard -- I'm not sure about re-embellished with all the times that it's been retold -- is, my grandmother on my mother's side -- so, by the time she was growing up, Soviet Union already has imposed pretty strict rules in terms of cultural observance. And perhaps they were not so religious already by that generation, but there were some basic rules -- the house was kept kosher -- or at least in some basic terms. And the story goes that my grandmother's father did have a weak spot for pork occasionally. He just wanted to indulge, but he didn't want that to taint his family house. So out in the storage shack, apparently, he had some dishes that he would use to cook up whatever he wants, 7:00to eat it to his pleasure, and not to contaminate the dishes. And one time he goes there and he has a hard time lighting a fire or whatever it is to -- he reached for something in the dark, he cooked up whatever he needed, and he was about to try it, and it's the most disgusting thing he's ever tried. And later, he realized he reached for a pot that used to store fuel oil. (laughs) So when he cooked, that disgusting flavor of that chemical -- whatever it was -- went into the food. And this is seemingly like exactly what the rabbi said -- that the unkosher flavors will contaminate your food again, because pottery is porous like this. So I don't know what to conclude in this story -- that he stopped eating treyf [not kosher] or what -- but it seemed like God got him at some point. (laughs)

RY:Okay. Do you have other examp-- stories where God gets you?

IS:To be honest, this is a pretty unique story. We don't tend to talk about it much. I think with already two generations of life in the Soviet Union, certain things were sort of laid to rest. And what remains is just common family stories that are -- sort of -- things are cleansed off of their original cultural context.

RY:So you grew up in Uzhgorod, which was part of the Soviet Union until you were eleven?

IS:Right. The Soviet Union fell apart, I think, two or years before I emigrated --

RY:Oh, okay. Yeah.

IS:So I emigrated in 1993, three years after the Soviet Union fell apart. So by then, it was independent Ukraine.

RY:Yeah. So would you say you grew up in a Jewish home?

IS:It was palpably Jewish, and not religious in any way. One important thing I 9:00can say about how I even discovered that I was Jewish is that -- um -- this is a very multiethnic town. It is -- it had a high Hungarian population. Ruthenians -- it's a minority around that region. Jews lived there. Ukrainians. Russians. And there's a plurality of religious observance, because there is Eastern Orthodoxy and Greek Catholicism in addition to the Roman Catholicism of Hungarians. So people are speaking different languages, presumably have different religions -- but we don't talk about religion much in the Soviet Union. But in the kindergarten, what I noticed is that three languages are apparent. Some people are speaking Hungarian, and I don't understand anything -- it's an unrelated language entirely -- so I know I can cross off the list that I'm not Hungarian. Some people are speaking Ukrainian, which I understand somewhat, but not too well -- but it's possible that we're Ukrainian, just happen to speak Russian. And then other people are speaking Russian, which I understand pretty well. So there's still that ambiguity -- Ukrainian versus Russian. So I go over to my father and ask, "Am I Ukrainian or am I Russian?" 10:00And he responds, "Neither. You're a Jew." And even though this was, I feel, the first conversation I ever had -- I'm probably five years old at this point -- it felt like a stab in the back. It was like, Oh no! It's like I was told that I have a disease. Because on some level, I must have overheard -- maybe it was as subtle as talking about some Jewish subjects with a few words relating to Judaism or to Jewish ethnicity, and then sighs -- and then complaints -- or something. So I had it subconsciously that this is something that's a burden. So when I heard that I'm a Jew, then suddenly I thought, That doesn't sound good -- that's what I thought.

RY:Why would it be a burden? For a five-year-old, I mean, in --

IS:I had no idea at the time. If you asked me, "Why did you get upset by that?" I would say, "Well, I don't know. It sounds bad." Maybe that's what I would have said.

RY:Did you have a feeling of shame?

IS:I don't know if to call it shame. But if I was then told -- if I were to ask myself, Should I be open about it with my classmates in school, I would say -- I would not do it. Not because it's shameful, but somehow, it's just -- like, we don't -- it's almost axiomatic -- not because there's shame, but it's just that you don't talk about that. It's something that's discreet. It's something personal. And I'm not sure how many years afterwards, I did understand who in the class -- in the classroom were Jewish. There were two other boys. And among ourselves, sometimes, we sort of acknowledged this and mentioned it -- not to the extent of having our own little club where we tell Jewish jokes or anything like that, but you acknowledged among ourselves, we knew not to do so among other people.

RY:And how did you know that they were Jews -- Jewish?

IS:Most likely, they're the ones that were more forthright about it, and then 12:00sort of told me. I mean, I think I knew from -- it was a small enough city -- about a hundred thousand people around this time, but it's still small enough and tight enough community -- at least that the Jews knew each other. I think I heard from my parents that, Oh, yeah, you have that Milmeister in your -- and you have a Chrysler in your -- and so I knew, Oh, yes, Pavel and Alus. I know them. So I maybe was already checked off -- that I knew who they were. But I think -- I was, anyway, a very shy kid -- I wouldn't come over and say, like, "Hi! I heard you were Jewish." You know? (laughs) It was more that, I think, they probably got the same information from their parents, and we sort of implicitly already knew.

RY:And how did your parents know?

IS:Know that they were Jewish?

RY:Yeah. Is it family -- name-based?

IS:Um --

RY:Last name?

IS:I don't know what kind of -- what was their first coming-out experience -- how did they find out. But maybe they were told frankly. They were probably 13:00told. Probably the parents knew that, with that last name, you cannot hide. But they were probably told how to carry this discreetly. There's a funny story, actually -- I just remembered the story -- that -- so this is pertaining to my father's sister -- my aunt -- and her cousin. They were about the same age. There were lots of people born in 1946 -- you know, the baby boomers. My father and mother are much younger than that. So they were always in the same class, being the same age. And one day, the homeroom teacher -- or the equivalent -- the main teacher in elementary school -- says, "Kids, tomorrow, bring" -- something equivalent of recycling -- it wasn't the modern ecological recycling, but, "Bring your spare newspapers. Bring whatever you can. We're going to do some activity." And my aunt, I think, turns to her cousin and says, "Hey, Pete! We have all of those old newspapers finem boydem [from the attic]" -- or "afn 14:00boydem [in the attic]" or something like that. And everybody turned -- they heard this foreign word -- I'm not sure if I said it correctly -- but they heard this foreign word. And the teacher stopped the silence and said, "What is this 'boydem'?" And they said, as if it's obvious, You know, the top -- what's on the roof of a building -- boydem. They didn't another the word. The parents did not speak Yiddish to them -- my grandparents. Intentionally. It was a secret language. It was dangerous for the kids to know -- to blabber about Jewish things. But certain things come out -- the household words. So when the kids were told, you know, Help out your mother, go bring a pot from the attic, they would use the Yiddish word. So -- you can't help it. It sneaks through. But this was an omission. I think if the grandparents could have controlled it, they would have made sure that they would have cleansed their language from these things, as well.

RY:So when you asked your father at age five, "Am I Ukrainian or am I Russian," 15:00was there an answer you were hoping to get -- a specific answer?

IS:I don't remember -- how I felt at the time -- whether I would have felt better about Ukrainian or Russian, I'm not sure. Certainly, I did not feel -- I did not understand the historical significance -- or certainly, I didn't have the feelings that are prevalent now. Maybe I prefer Russian, because maybe it would have been more coherent -- because I speak it already, it's easier not to have the confusion that, you know, I'm Ukrainian but I don't speak the language so well. I don't know. I'm speculating right now how I would have felt. But --

RY:So you mentioned Jewish identity sneaking in, and you mentioned your home being not religious but palpably Jewish. So what things were palpably Jewish in your home?

IS:It was in the sense that -- that there were those conversations. There were the sighs. There were the jokes. You know, more and more -- the older I would 16:00get, the more privy I would be to hearing these sorts of things. I come from a strict enough background that you don't just hang around adult conversations. If you're allowed to be there, fine, you can play next to the adult table, but that doesn't give you permission to eavesdrop or to remember anything people said -- (laughs) -- or to repeat or to ask about it. So you sort of have to earn your place at the table. But I would hear -- overhear some of it, and I would actually be part of this table -- maybe I would be allowed to listen and not ask questions, but I would hear these sorts of things at dinner parties. I would hear what sounded very much like translations from Yiddish of certain sayings. They would say, "dobry chas [Russian: at a good hour]" -- like "b'sha'ah tova [Hebrew: good luck, lit. "at a good hour"]" -- and things like that. And some Yiddish words. I think once it was safe -- once, probably, it felt safe that we -- they say some Yiddish words and we knew not to repeat it -- you know, and it 17:00was -- they didn't exactly try to censor themselves. But it's -- it was in there. We knew we were different, and we knew what goes with it, and we knew which jokes correspond with that and what not to say outside the classroom. Though to be honest, sometimes I also had similar slips to what my aunt had.

RY:Like what?

IS:I think I once had to write an essay in class, and I had to -- I think it was something related to a hunt for ducks or something. And when it came time to eat what was there -- you know, the drumstick, I called a "polke [thigh]," because I thought that's what it was called. (laughs) I didn't know the word -- maybe I still don't know the word for drumstick in Russian. (laughs)

RY:So you mentioned that you knew you were different and you knew what goes with it. So how different are you, and what does go with being Jewish?

IS:I don't know what I found out when -- I don't know at what point I found out about huge segments of my family having been killed, and that being distinctly something that happens to Jews. I certainly knew from quite early that we're not liked -- this is why we don't broadcast who we are. That's different. But substantively, what made us different to begin with -- that we have these different relations with gentiles -- it wasn't clear at all. I certainly didn't understand almost anything about the religion. I didn't know much about any religion. So let's put it this way -- because it's not taught in school, we don't -- during the Soviet Union, we don't talk about religion. So to the extent that when there was some liberalization and when churches began to have masses -- and I noticed that there were these huge festivities on city streets and -- and there's Christianity in the city -- and I didn't understand it much. And 19:00around that time, my grandfather brought home a medallion with Mary and child on it. Now I know who was on this medallion, and I can tell it's a religious symbol. And he showed it to me, because it's just pretty -- he said, "Look what I found." And I said, "Oh. Is that also our symbol?" I said. I had no idea -- maybe by this point I knew that mogn-dovid [Star of David] is something that's specific to us, but -- but other than that, I -- it was really on that level. I had no idea what it really makes us different.

RY:Okay. So, you know, were the holidays -- Jewish holidays -- important for you? Or Shabbos? Did you celebrate in any way?

IS:I wouldn't have known that Saturday is anything special. The few things that I noticed -- and certainly once practice was more easy -- late '80s, early '90s, when Jewish organizations began to show up, JDC was in Ukraine, and so forth -- 20:00that I'm not sure when -- what year it was -- but I remember walking into the kitchen in the spring and noticing there is no bread and everybody is eating this matzah. But I think the sight of matzah was no longer so new to me. Maybe I've seen it before -- maybe just as a household item it became more common with this liberalization. But then I -- but, yeah, I liked my bread, so I asked, "Where is the bread?" They said, We don't eat it right now. And in my family -- you know, I was young enough not to ask and complain or argue about what that means. I kind of shrugged and said, "Okay." (laughs) And I didn't really know if it's religious or cultural or superstitious or whatever it is. Just -- we didn't.

RY:So was there an evolution in your family in terms of observance?

IS:I would not say that. It was more that certain things that were kind of -- a few basics kind of crept in, but then stopped -- they were capped.

RY:Like what?

IS:Just this -- just -- maybe at a certain point, on Yom Kippur, it was known not to eat. But essentially, there was not much of a change until we came to the 21:00US. And then in 1993, when we came, all of a sudden, a lot of things changed. My parents put my brother and myself into a yeshiva -- into an Orthodox yeshiva. All of a sudden. And they had no real intentions to make us religious people. So I go from a -- no longer Soviet, but a school in Ukraine that's fairly secular -- boys and girls together, all sorts of topics being taught -- to a place where we do have secular education -- it was actually fairly strong in that respect -- but we spent the morning, until lunch, studying ancient texts and praying and things like that. It was a lot of new things to learn. But at home, things weren't really changing much. It's just that, you know, Passover, it became a little bit more elaborate. We were taught how to celebrate the seder, and while my grandfather was alive, we would have a little bit of a family seder. It would 22:00be a big farce, because people didn't understand what it was about. Some people said, when are we eating now? It was a farce because we were -- it was kind of fake, we were trying to read these texts and it wasn't evolving into a natural conversation. So there were these starts. That was very different from what came before.

RY:Yes. The religious junior high school you went to is yeshiva Shearith Israel in Brooklyn?

IS:That's right. Um-hm.

RY:Yeah. What motivated your parents to put you and your sibling in that school?

IS:Education is very important in my family. Beyond stereotypes, it was something that -- I think they felt that we must know. How is it that we Jews and we don't know what this means and where we come from and what is Jewish history and what are the Jews-- it was important to know what were Jewish traditions -- not necessarily practice them, but it was important to know. I think both my parents were pretty adamant about that. And I think they thought 23:00that this was just a place to learn these facts -- just to know it. That is what, to them, meant that you were an educated, erudite Jewish modern person. That's all that it was for them. It was not an attempt to return to a religion that we lost. I don't think that was their intention. And in fact, it was -- any sight of an attempt to become religious I think was a concern for them. So it was kind of a tightrope, in terms of, here's a place where you get a fairly intense and deep understanding, but on the other hand, that it is all within the context of, we are modern, assimilated Jews.

RY:And so how did you experience the -- how was it for you spending -- studying at the yeshiva Shearith Israel school?

IS:It was a bit schizophrenic, because good behavior in school was characterized 24:00by frum [observant] behavior. Certainly, the way you dress in school is one way, the way you dress at home is a different way. What you eat in school is one thing, what you eat at home is different. In school, they teach you this is right and wrong, but you know that in -- your life doesn't correspond to that. On Saturday, you do drive and you do clean the house and you do all sorts of things. And it was painful. It wasn't easy to not have these worlds collide.

RY:Was life back in Uzhgorod schizophrenic -- because of the Soviet regime? Or --

IS:Well, I don't know how I would have felt -- I mean, this is all in the context of me becoming a teenager, and I'm beginning to assess things. Maybe if I lived that period in Ukraine, I would have felt this. But maybe as a kid, I didn't think much about this. But also, there was probably less grounds for this schizophrenia, because we really weren't so different. It's just, people label 25:00us as different, and somehow we have to hide, but otherwise, we fit in.

RY:You were an undercover Jew in Uzhgorod and an undercover non-observant Jew in this yeshiva.

IS:Right. I mean, maybe schizophrenia would have come in anyway because -- because you have to hide, that's already something that you're not exposing -- because of what you talk about with your family and what you speak about with your professional -- you know, with your colleagues -- maybe that would have been enough of a seed of schizophrenia. But you see that these are not -- you're not really living such drastically different worlds as a religious person in a modern world.

RY:Was there a particular political atmosphere in your family?

IS:Political in terms of --

RY:In Ukraine or --

IS:-- their affiliations?

RY:Yes. Or convictions or tendencies -- leanings.

IS:Politics was sort of looked at with some disdain in my family. People would roll their eyes whenever -- we were not political in that we would never be 26:00vocal about -- against -- even within the framework of glasnost and perestroika or whatever was already allowed, we weren't -- there was no mood that, Yes, finally we can speak and we will curse the regime as it deserves! There was a bit more openness. I saw new newspapers in the house. Adults looked like they were trying to catch up with what the truth really was. But to them -- yes, in Soviet Union, is the fact that everything was over-politicized -- everything unnecessarily got a certain political color to it. And they were sick of it. The whole atmosphere was about not having politics there. So no, there were no convictions. The few times that I foolishly came home and repeated something that at the time, still Soviet teachers said -- I think I remember saying something like, "Oh, that's just exactly what -- the story about Lenin. That's 27:00exactly how that story goes." I saw this look of, like, oh, give me a break. Don't bring this -- you know.

RY:So -- okay. Why do you think that when perestroika and -- happened, it did not free their -- they did not become more vocal? Because many people became more vocal at the end of the '80s, you know? Why do you think -- were they still afraid? Or -- yeah.

IS:Or at least why weren't they more publicly vocal?

RY:Yeah.

IS:I'm sure they spoke more among themselves. I'm sure they openly discussed -- so, what is this newspap-- what is it that they're saying now? How have we been lied to before? Perhaps I was just not privy to these conversations because, again, they were the adult conversations and I was still fairly young at the time. But my family -- maybe they didn't feel they were articulate enough to 28:00publish any letters to the editor to the newspaper or do anything like that. They're very humble people. I need to vote in my family. So this was not something that -- they didn't need to go and yell. I think they probably just expressed it very privately. And also, during the regime, they knew not to get involved too deep. Even if it meant that you couldn't get all the advantages of Soviet life -- that, you know, if you don't have a position with the party, you don't know anyone, you don't have connections, you live a fairly humble life. The people who really led in my family, their perspective was that, you know, Just live out your honest life, and don't be afraid. Because you can find a way to grab advantage for yourself -- you can find a way to survive -- to thrive in this system, but you'll be afraid. You'll always be -- you'll always worry about 29:00who will suspect what, or maybe just being a Jew and getting too far. I'm not sure what was foremost on their mind, but they wanted to hang low. And there were counter-examples. They had relatives who didn't do this, who knew how to get recognitions, and they saw a vast difference in their standard of living. But they also noticed that those people were kind of nervous.

RY:Where do you think your parents got this wisdom from?

IS:Or rather, my grandparents first --

RY:Oh, your grandparents. Yes.

IS:Maybe it was just their humble origins, and they wouldn't dare to attempt something like this. On my father's side, I'm not sure to what extent they knew -- they had first-hand experience with these kinds of dangers. This is where the history gets a little shady. So my grandfather -- my father's father -- I think 30:00his cousin -- his cousin on his mother's side -- I think he got involved with some communist organizations, perhaps even some intelligence services -- I'm not sure if it was the context of military intelligence in the war or before that. But perhaps he had some inkling about what the regime was really like and what you want to and not want to do. There were probably scary enough stories from -- I mean, there was a time in the '20s and '30s where, you know, people would be seized in the middle of the night. I think these stories -- these rumors -- get around. It's not hard to learn how to get by in this kind of regime. On my mother's side, her father was younger. He was fairly young when the war started. He for some reason knew a lot about what happened during the -- what we called a 31:00"raskulachivanie [dekulakization]" -- I'm not sure what it is in English -- it is when a kulak -- any farmer who was considered a wealthy farmer, an independent farmer, not a peasant -- Oh, well he must have done something wrong. Three horses is far too many to have not cheated, so therefore let's take that away and send him off to the east. So these stories come back from my mother's father. I'm not sure if he heard from -- if he read it, if he heard it, but he was just -- he really knew a lot about that. Also, once he was trained and started fighting later in the war, he was actually in the Stalingrad battle and he saw quite a brutal war -- both in terms of the savagery of that battle and also of the Soviet military regime. He saw people being shot for disobedience or -- you know, he really -- it sounds like he really saw the face of the 32:00brutality. And he may have known more first-hand how to hang low. It seems like he was more -- he found a balance where he knew somewhat better how to find the -- how to use benign connections to get some products that were not available immediately. And he would know where the surplus is and whom to ask for some transactions. So he knew how to support his family a little bit better, maybe. But he also knew not to do anything that he wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

RY:Yeah. Okay. And so we talked about the religious high school -- junior -- in Brooklyn. How was the whole American experience for you in 1993?

IS:So, I guess, what is American?

RY:I mean, this was -- was it pre-Giuliani New York?

IS:This was already Giuliani New York.

RY:Oh, it was already --

IS:I think -- or just about. In fact, we arrived in New York still after the economic downturn of the '70s and '80s, and I was actually kind of surprised. I thought, we got these -- or, at least, I had this impression that America is perfect and there was -- everything is perfectly clean, everybody lives in skyscrapers in New York. But -- so I saw graffiti, and I saw the subway in terrible shape, and I thought, Well, I just came -- well, I lived in a small city -- metros are new to me, but when we went to the American embassy in Moscow for the interview for the asylum and we saw the metro in Moscow -- especially in the center -- and it's just shiny with sculptures -- I thought, This is America? (laughs) So strange. And also, just this very utilitarian construction -- just brick box buildings -- whereas my town is Hungarian historically, was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, you see some pretty nice architecture -- not very 34:00well maintained -- a lot of things were in shambles, not very clean, but there was this old glory of well-ornamented buildings -- everything was kind of cute. And New York was a little bit of a shock in that way. But yeah, New York was beginning to get better in the '90s. But my experience with America at first was just that -- wow, very different food, much more diverse, a lot of new, tasty things. It was quite a change. Very glittery -- Manhattan, of course. To a child, it's all pretty amazing. Being able to live by the coast -- I mean, to be able to just go to the beach -- just everything that New York offered was just so much more broad than the town I come from. But in terms of personal relations, America was still -- my family -- we'd speak in Russian. I'd go to this yeshiva where most students are Russian Jewish boys. Very quickly, they're 35:00learning English and forgetting how to speak Russian, and I follow them pretty quickly. So it's not that we are speaking in Russian entirely, but I never had a purely kind of immersion American experience. I never had the situation where in American school and I don't dare to speak my immigrant language and it's sink-or-swim. It was, in that way, a pretty gradual adjustment, even if the religion aspect is so new and shocking. Language-wise -- and especially since I've had some -- I was taught English from the first grade -- it was a specialized language-learning school I went to in Ukraine. So coming there, where people can help me out and drop the Russian word if I'm not familiar, along with the education I already had in English, it was a very smooth transition.

RY:Any strange encounters with American -- anything surprised you or, you know --

IS:With Americans?

RY:Yeah. Or -- like --

IS:Or America?

RY:No, in terms of, like, social relationships -- you know, for instance, I 36:00don't know how is it in Ukraine, but Russians don't smile like Americans smile. They don't smile at work. They don't -- you know, this is -- I don't want to put words in your mouth, but -- you know?

IS:I see. Well, for one thing -- I was just thinking, Who was the first American -- American, well-rooted American -- whom I met? And I don't know. I guess it took a long time to meet people who were truly Americans. Perhaps not until I went to high school, when -- this was a public high school. Still many immigrants -- predominantly immigrant, but there I met Americans. Perhaps the first Americans were really relatives who've come much earlier. We have some relatives whose parents -- let's put it like this. So there's a cousin of my mother's mother -- my maternal grandmother -- whose parents came to the US. This is before Russian Revolution. And somehow, through very strange occurrences, 37:00they managed to get in touch again by the end of the -- by the last third of the twentieth century, I'm not sure exactly when -- maybe in the seventies -- these two cousins got in touch again. I think they found correspondences of their parents -- great-grandparents -- in Yiddish somewhere, and they re-established communication. And then they started writing letters to each other in the '70s, and by late '80s, when it was already better, they were able to come. So I remember a visit from our American relatives to Odessa. We all converged there. And it was very interesting. This is the first time where in our family albums you begin to see color photographs -- before that, everything else is in black and white. So -- and these were -- these seemed like staunchly American relatives. They were first-generation immigrants, if that's how you counted -- their parents came to the US, they were already born -- I think -- or certainly most of their lives they spent in the US. So they seemed so American in how they 38:00aged and how they spoke and the lives they lived. And it was something of an example to my parents. They always looked -- I should say, look upped [sic] -- up to them, and perhaps even sometimes said to -- my parents said to their parents that, Look how our American relatives live. These are the good habits they take on as they age. And they were very healthy into their nineties. They're still alive, thank God. So this was very much, like, a paragon of Americans. But people my age or my parents' age, I'm not sure when I got to know real Americans of those generations.

RY:Was it hard to be able to leave Ukraine -- Uzhgorod and come to --

IS:For me personally? Or --

RY:So in '93, it was -- Czech Republic? Or it was Ukraine?

IS:No, it was Ukraine. After '46, it was Ukraine. (speaking at the same time; unclear)

RY:Yeah. Was it hard to have a visa? Or, you know --

IS:The actual political process of leaving was involved. It was certainly easier than when Russian Jews left in the '70s or '80s. There was no longer such a stigma. People were already leaving in droves -- you were not alone. It was a difficult decision to leave -- to know, for adults, that maybe they'll have to change their professions, maybe learning the language will be hard and they'll feel isolated. There were -- some relatives needed convincing. But there were many other relatives who were very adamant about it -- that at least for the sake of my generation, it's really worth it. So I think emotionally, it may have been very difficult for my parents and grandparents. But politically, what was needed was -- well, the avenue that we took -- that most people in our situation 40:00were taking -- is that -- to come to the US is the fact that, you know, anti-Semitism was always there, and it was getting worse again because of the economic turmoil of the transition out of Soviet Union. And there was already inflation -- I remember in late '80s that -- you know, anti-Semitism was very palpable, and we knew it was getting worse. And my father was really dreading that myself and my brother would have to serve in the military. That was the most awful experience my father has had. He to some extent was sheltered from anti-Semitism until he went to the army, and that's when you get this kind of even cross-section of society, where people with all sorts of old religious ideas, all sorts of stereotypes come in. And this is where strength is the most -- biggest prestige. So here was a scrawny Jewish boy who was taught a lot, but didn't come from a farm, wasn't strong, couldn't do pull-ups. He was made fun 41:00of. He felt very much degraded. And he knew that his sons really should not have to go through this. And not because they felt it was -- it was honorable to serve, but not under these conditions. Not when -- when this will be this -- where they break you for no reason like this. So he was dreading it. And he felt that this was -- that alone would have been enough to bring us to the US. So we filed as refugees for reasons of anti-Semitism. And a few years later -- it's a long process -- so in 1990 or so, they filed, I believe, and in 1993, we left. And when we went, it was essentially the entire family. I forget how many of us were going, but grandparents -- aunts, uncles, everybody came together -- everything left behind -- we had nobody else left, actually -- at least in our 42:00city. And at this point, I believe, actually, we have no one -- really no close relatives left there. So it was a pretty big moving operation. We weren't sure what's awaiting us in the US. There was a lot of things to be shipped. My father was a violin teacher, and he needed to take some violins in case he can continue his profession. And then there were obstacles like, that's considered cultural property of -- I'm not sure at the time Soviet Union or Ukraine -- you have to get special papers -- you know, to get permission to take these out. I'm not sure any of them were actually made in Ukraine or Soviet Union, but there were all these loopholes to get through. So it was involved.

RY:Did you experience anti-Semitism in Uzhgorod -- in Ukraine?

IS:Personally, I'm not sure I had any direct -- yeah, I'm pretty lucky that I feel -- that I was protected from it. But as I would grow up and deal with more 43:00people, and if I were to have to serve, I have no doubt that I would have faced it.

RY:Do your parents miss Ukraine?

IS:I don't think so. I don't think so at all. The only reason I hesitate is because I wond-- again, because they're private people, I wonder if they ever have any nostalgia just because, Oh, at least we knew how -- you know, when you come to a new country, everything is so scary. Maybe. Maybe they felt that, well, at least there, we understood something. I wonder. I just wonder. Maybe there were --

RY:Or it can be youth, you know? Because it's their youth --

IS:Perhaps. But outwardly, they'll say, Good riddance. They feel, first of all, that they were rejected -- that we were never considered Ukrainians or Russians or -- our birth certificates say -- say that, you know, what's your identity -- your mother is Jewish, your father is Jewish, you're Jewish. It's -- not Ukrainian. So you may be a citizen, but your nationality -- and that's the word, nationality -- is Jewish. So that's a level of rejection -- in the interaction 44:00of anti-Semitism they've seen, there's always this notion of, even if they're friendly with you, but you're not really Ukrainian, you see? It's just -- you're just sojourning here. You may have been here for centuries, but -- so I think they feel rejected. They have -- they feel plenty justified to reject themselves and the place where they're from. The politics there -- it's not like they think that something might improve, that there is potential there. It's a sinking ship. And they didn't want to follow the ensuing politics of the independent Ukraine. They feel bad for their colleagues that are left there, though most of them also immigrated. They feel bad in general for the people who still have to suffer the corruption and the abuses -- and then the people who do go to the army there and all the tribulations that are continuing until now. They want to 45:00know for that reason, but for their own sake, they really want to distance themselves as much as possible.

RY:Did they hesitate between immigrating to the US or to Israel? Was it on the table ever?

IS:That's a good question. I -- again, this is probably -- this was in some secret adult conversations. Especially when it came to immigration, I think they were very discreet about how to talk about it, because they were afraid we would say something too early -- we kids would blabber. And perhaps they were afraid that there would be similar things that people who immigrated in the '70s experienced -- there would be some sort of ostracism, or some rumors will start, or -- I think they were trying to be very discreet to the extent that I think I was formally told only maybe two or three months before departure. I think some of their -- some of the family friends already knew, and they felt it's okay to tell their kids, so my friends -- people of my generation -- were saying, We 46:00just found out that you're leaving. And they're already saying it with this voice. And I would ask them, "Where? What are you talking about? We're not going anywhere." So we were the last to know as kids. Because it was kind of a delicate topic to -- that the rumor should spread. So maybe it was discussed at one point. But I kind of doubt it, because we don't have very close relatives. We have some distant relatives in Israel -- at the time, we had. But no, I don't think it was discussed. We already had many more relatives in the United States. It so happened that one branch of the family ended up having to change plans and go to Israel for separate medical reasons, but I think the goal was to come to the United States.

RY:Okay. And so then you went to Stuvesant [sic] High School?

IS:Stuyvesant High School.

RY:Stuyvesant -- which is of -- specialized in math and science --

IS:Um-hm.

RY:-- which, you know, made me think of the Jewish and Russian, also -- tradition of, you know, putting all the importance on education and -- can you 47:00tell me about this experience?

IS:Well, certainly I was encouraged to study. And I felt pressure that -- I remember the guilty times when I would be idling and I would be told, like, There are all these books on the shelves! A proper person reads! Or I'll be shamed if I hadn't read a certain thing at a certain point. Not by my parents -- my parents were wise enough not to be too overt with this kind of pressure, to be overbearing. They were strict about the responsibilities we did have. But it would be other relatives, not my parents, who would embarrass you if you hadn't read something. But -- so there was that atmosphere. And I was studying in this yeshiva among boys who were coming from the same families. The yeshiva also knew that it ought to have some strong, say, core subjects if it wanted to retain us. So we had a pretty strong math education. So I was in a good company, I think, to strive and to get to a high enough level to be competitive for this sort of 48:00thing. I'm not sure I saw it coming. I'm not sure if my -- how my parents found out about these opportunities. I think maybe they knew -- as soon as we immigrated, I think they knew that the public education system -- at least then, but I think to some extent now -- that it is -- it's not as quality education, at least in the district they would live, and that there are some disciplinary problems. They heard horror stories about metal detectors in schools. I think that's one of the reasons to put us in yeshiva -- I think they heard about how wholesome yeshiva education would be in terms of the environment there compared to going to this crazy school, unlike anything they've seen before. And, you know, they wouldn't have to worry about the safety of their kids in yeshiva. I think that was probably part of it. And then there was a question about how to continue our education, make sure we really get a solid education by the time 49:00you get to college. And there weren't really too many good yeshivot alternatives for high school. And at that time, I think they were getting a little bit fed up about how much religious education we're getting, and there were certain scandals in the school, as well -- frictions between parents and teachers. So it was about time to take us out, and we couldn't afford to go to a private school with some phenomenal education -- it would have to be all within the framework of the public school. So this was a chance to go to a specialized school. So I wouldn't -- when I hear of stereotypes about, you know, real pressure to become doctors and lawyers and to study hard, I feel like this is a little foreign to us, because I think my parents were a little wiser than to be pressuring. But there was still that fertile environment where a child can get fairly educated in my family, and I think I benefited from that a lot.

RY:Okay. Were you or your family involved in any organizations while either in 50:00Ukraine or in the US?

IS:None that I know of. I think part of the kind of discreet private lives that we led -- everything was sort of around the family. It was encouraged that you pursue things outside the school. So I think the musical scene -- my father was a violin teacher, his father was a clarinetist and played in the local orchestra. I had some skills at drawing. They spotted that I was drawing a lot when I was a child, so I was put into an art class at the local -- it was called the Palace of Pioneers at the time. It was just a place where lots of clubs were organized within the context of the Soviet system -- of how they would train youth. So that kind of created a locus a little bit -- certainly the music 51:00scene, where so many members of the family are involved in the music scene and there are all these concerts to go to, to perform in. So there was quite a social scene around that. But in terms of civic society organizations, that was never part of our family life.

RY:Okay. So you specialized in physics?

IS:Um-hm.

RY:What made you specialize in that?

IS:Well, it was just in high school -- after a few lessons in physics, it just felt almost magical how we can describe the universe in simple terms and equations. It just hit me. It was never -- we don't have scientists in the family. And I was just going -- I was just diligently doing my studies. I wasn't really prepared for a decision about my future. I was mediocre to somewhat good at certain subjects -- I was just in there somewhere in the middle. Biology, I 52:00was fairly terrible, and chemistry was tolerable. And then I felt like -- as the closer I was getting to the physical sciences, the more interesting it was for me. And physics really hit the spot. I think at one point during a demonstration in class, I gasped and said, "That's magic!" (laughs) I really did. After seeing a demonstration after equations were drawn up that characterized this behavior exactly. So I think that's when I made my mind to become a physicist.

RY:Okay. So let's talk about your involvement with Yiddish. So you grew up in a Russian-speaking home?

IS:Um-hm.

RY:What other languages were there? You mentioned knowing a few words of Yiddish. Did you hear Yiddish? Did anyone speak Yiddish in your home?

IS:Just a few sighs, a few expressions -- really, just the superficial stuff here and there. Nobody would speak it to us. So my parents no longer know the language. My mother understands a lot of it, because she -- her grandmothers -- 53:00both grandmothers -- were still alive when she was young. And they spoke in Yiddish a bit -- or she was spoken to. And my father -- my father's grandparents, I think, died early -- some in the Holocaust, some just from early death -- from sickness -- so he had even less exposure to Yiddish. So really, both my parents and I would just hear superficially and would absorb a few things.

RY:So you mentioned being in contact with people trying to preserve diaspora Yiddish culture -- language, dialect, pronunciation -- in everyday life and religious practices?

IS:Well, I guess I became aware of these issues -- where should I start? Well, first of all, in attempting to construct my identity in the US, for me, I would 54:00read -- I would start reading Sholem Aleichem in Russian translation -- already in America, reading in Russian translation Sholem Aleichem. And clearly, I felt that -- definitely not Russian or Ukrainian -- that answer at five years old was clear enough. And we left Ukraine, we were not looking back, we never visit -- that's clear. We're in America, I feel very comfortable, I'm acculturating myself. I would be -- I think I was fairly proud to call myself American fairly early on -- and still am. But what is that identity? Clearly, I'm very different from other Amer-- immigrants in America, or people who had immigration three hundred years ago in America. I needed a new identity, I feel. And I was reading the Yiddish literature with some bit of nostalgia. I wanted to see -- I wanted to know, really, what was the -- what did we live like before the twentieth century -- before the Soviet Union came about, before the Holocaust? And I think 55:00part of it was the religious tension -- that instead of having this dissonance that I felt in school compared to life in the family, I thought that, Wouldn't it be magical to go back to just instant -- sometimes I dreamt, like, Can I spend one Shabbos with my great-grandparents? Or, if that's not far enough, my great-great-grandparents -- to enter that world where there is coherence, with all its problems? So I think I was reading that with that kind of romanticism. So I think I already had this kind of connection -- this association with being an Eastern European Jew -- and Jew in particular, because I was rejected from being Ukrainian or Russian. So I had to make an organic connection to it and be proud of it in some way. So that was cool -- so to me, then, any insinuation that Zionism is a new thing or just plain assimilation in America -- and anyway, yeshiva was teaching that assimilation is the worst thing possible -- it's -- you know, with the religious dictum that, you know, when they start categorizing 56:00biblical villains, that that one is only this bad because they killed; this one is worse because they tried to steal their religion. That's even worse than -- for the culture to die out, that would be a real tragedy. Death is tragic; assmil-- genocide -- disappearance of a culture and religion -- that's even worse. So assimilation was a really bad word. And so I knew that somehow just melting into something wasn't right -- whether it's melting for cult-- culturally -- fading things away -- or religiously. So I think I already was feeling that connection, and I kind of felt that it would be cool to learn Yiddish at a certain point. And when I -- within the religious context, I began to see that there is this whole dialect war about who prays with what pronunciation and what's authentic and what should be rebuilt and whether it's -- you know, once I started meeting some Israelis my age and they had this sense 57:00of, you know, Why is your last name still Senderovich? And, why do you pray like this? You know, That's European influence -- that's not authentic. You know, the way they speak in the Middle East -- the way Sephardim speak when they pronounce Hebrew for prayer -- that is authentic. There was -- I recoiled from that, because I felt that our history has to be respected. The -- Jewish history -- it's not -- the definition of a Jew was not sealed two thousand years ago. It evolved, and it has to respect -- and that is the new standard. At least for us. But Jews from other parts of the world would be culturally different. So I recoiled against these kinds of assertions, and I felt kind of proud that this is who we are and whatever -- whatever, no matter how strange a pronunciation our Yiddish has compared to other forms of Yiddish, no matter how we do prayer compared to others, this is our way. And I think it also feeds back to a certain 58:00family pride that -- at least with the discretion that my parents kind of filtered what to talk about, I'm sure I didn't hear a lot of the dirty stories in the family. I would hear about the more noble -- the -- if there are anecdotes, it would always be kind of the nice stuff. There developed a certain pride -- that we're not glorious people, but we're humble, we're honest, we're peace-like. Certainly, my father's father was remembered as very -- kind of -- bring peace in the family, make sure nobody argues. No matter how bland things need to be, there has to be peace. And it's a postwar attitude, too. There was all this noise, all this destruction and blood. Kids were not allowed to fight, not allowed to argue. Academic argument -- until this day, there's no notion that, Oh, it's an academic argument, we're pursuing truth, that's okay. No -- as 59:00long as two people are opposed to each other, that's -- that's -- so we actually don't even have that stereotypical Jewish, Let's just argue no matter what -- two Jews, three opinions. In our family, peace is the watchword. Till now. Until now. I have to be careful if I counter someone -- certainly, my parents. If I -- it's not that -- they want to know, but they don't want to get into an academic debate.

RY:Can you give me an example?

IS:Um --

RY:Of when you have -- how -- an example when you have to be careful if you want to counter what one of your parents is saying?

IS:There's no specific example, because it's not that there are --

RY:You can make one up -- just for the example. Yeah.

IS:Well, just that there aren't taboo subjects, but if I were to -- you know, if they would say, Oh, this is not socially acceptable in America. And I would say, "No, it is! You know, there is this subculture over there. Or, it's been proven that really this is like that" -- and you point you to statistics or something like that. They -- if I bring it -- if I say it in a not kind of a 60:00confrontational way, they'll be like, Oh, that's interesting. We didn't know that there's this subculture or that there is that kind of behavior -- or what we see is only specific to New York. But if we start a debate -- if I start acting with them like I would with my friends from college and we started getting into a debate, they wouldn't be comfortable with that. Certainly, my father would not. So -- I'm digressing a little bit, but -- so there was this culture of wholeness, of peace, of, Let there be quiet right now, we've been through enough. And I was imbued with some pride. In the family, I felt like we're almost like a dynasty of good people. There was even this kind of -- I felt that whatever -- you know, if there are some distant relatives we're not proud of, that's because they married into our family. But my line, you know, I can really be proud of my parents and my grandparents and great-grandparents. So I had enough to feel a certain pride in my roots. And -- back to the original 61:00question -- I did want to understand more about it. And I did want all that to be preserved. It's bad enough how much was destroyed; I wanted that preserved and for it to be kept alive. Yiddish -- the way -- the different dialects of Yiddish, I would like all of them to be spoken.

RY:How did you learn Yiddish?

IS:I never did, really. I started learning German in college. And I saw in that as a avenue for getting closer to Yiddish, so that when I do start learning Yiddish, I have more of a foundation. So to this day, I still haven't accomplished the -- you know, formal study in Yiddish. But I've gotten more competent in getting through some simple texts -- especially with my wife, Esther, and her interest in Yiddish, I've been doing more of that. So between my study of German and my rudimentary Hebrew vocabulary, I often can take things apart a little bit and guess their meaning. So I'm happy that I am closer to my 62:00goal in understanding more through these -- but these are all very indirect stabs at Yiddish, and at some point, I would like to learn properly.

RY:So you know both Hebrew and Yiddish?

IS:In a rudimentary form. I studied Hebrew a little bit as a foreign language, and I didn't get very far, but from that and some religious literature, I have some vocabulary. And then I had two years of German in college -- and forgot most of it. But I guess I have the rudiments to put things together. That's about it.

RY:So do you see a difference between your relationship to Hebrew and your relationship to Yiddish?

IS:Yeah. Hebrew has a particular context. It is the language of religious work -- of Torah, of Talmud study, and so forth. I guess it also matters how I -- if I pronounced it in an Ashkenazic way, I associated that with religion. In the 63:00way it's spoken in Israel, I associate it with this new Zionist thing -- with a culture different from mine -- a Jewish culture, but a Sephardic culture, perhaps -- a modern Zionist culture. So it is something related to me -- to who I am -- but more distant. But Yiddish is something that is more direct -- a cultural asset of my family, even if kind of getting lost.

RY:Well, you associated Israeli culture and Zionist culture with Sepharadic culture, although historically --

IS:Well, no -- I don't mean to say that, quite -- but -- I'm just trying to, in answer to your question -- I'm trying to think like -- what -- when Hebrew rings in my ear, what do I associate it with?

RY:Oh, okay. The pronunciation.

IS:Yes.

RY:Yeah. Sure.

IS:So even then, Hebrew is already a little bit more distant in some ways. Even though it's a language of Jews in ancient times, to me, it's not immediately -- 64:00Yiddish -- a Jewish language. So it is a -- sort of a classical Jewish language. And so it reminds me of the religious things. And certainly, when pronounced in an Ashkenazic way, it reminds me of how I pray and how I would study Gemara with somebody. And then when I would hear it in the Sephardic pronunciation -- or roughly what I stereotype as the Sephardic pronunciation -- that tells me, Oh, this is something Israeli. This is something of -- that was said -- what -- how things are spoken in Middle East, in Northern Africa among the Jews, in Iraq among the Jews. It is something that is Jewish, but not something very close to me.

RY:Okay. So have you attended Yiddish events, lectures, movies, cultural events or --

IS:A little bit. In college, maybe I went to a few screenings of Yiddish films. But really, I wasn't seriously involved until -- until, I guess, I met my wife, 65:00who was much more involved and studied it -- and until I found the Yiddish Book Center. So yes, I guess I'm only beginning to learn.

RY:So what aspect of Jewish identity is -- or what aspects of Jewish identity are the most important for you?

IS:I think the religion is the cornerstone. Because no matter how I think about it -- and I've had different patches of my recent life more or less religious -- I'm still finding my way -- but no matter how I think about it, it cannot be -- Jewish culture cannot be separated from its religion. To me, it seems that the 66:00culture never had an independence. It was always rooted in religion. Everything came from it. Jews never had the sovereignty to have an art form independent of what we practiced in the home. So everything comes from religion. And I feel even my family -- what seems like secular values -- good values -- is just something that was stripped of their religious meaning, but it was passed down -- because it was so recently we were still a religious people -- maybe my great-grandfather's generation. My grandfather, before the war, seems to have had somewhat of a religious household. So I don't believe that the secular Jewish values -- if you can call them that -- can live independently. So first and foremost, I see religion as being the thing that makes Jews Jews -- even if it's not central in their lives. But then, the centrality we place on learning in Judaism -- and I look at it more broadly, that not that there's just Torah, 67:00but all knowledge is holy -- that all knowledge comes from the same holy source. And any kind of knowledge is to be pursued, and pursued wisely -- you know, with a goal of what it is about -- not through some tedium -- finding some nook of knowledge. But I see the new direction that Jewish culture took -- with an independent literature, with just Jews participating in the world and sharing in its knowledge and developing it further -- I see that as part -- as being part of being Jewish. So this orientation toward education, toward learning, is central.

RY:So what are the other ways in which you express your Jewishness today? Are 68:00you observant? Do you study Talmud? I don't want to put words in your mouth -- I'm --

IS:I'm beginning to be more observant. I'm still looking for the appropriate balance of things in my life. And that, recently, has been the primary mode of expression of my Jewishness. And increasingly, I'm becoming focused on what should and what can be a sustainable sort of Jewishness -- what can I pass on to my children when I have them? It is now more and more on my mind about how I want my life to have been lived and what I want to pass down. And also, more broadly, if I am representative of my community -- I am one Jew among a few million, and if everybody did like what I'm doing right now, would it work? So I'm trying to think for myself and from what I want to see Jewish -- and I 69:00accept plurality; I don't expect a single example. But I wouldn't want to do something that's just kind of futile. And, you know, I want to find what is the sustainable life that can perpetuate itself.

RY:So what do you think is --

IS:And -- well, there are many aspects to this. Can we wall ourselves off from the rest of society to preserve the purity of the religion, as many do? I don't think so. But on the other hand, if you don't assert yourself as, this is our way, and we don't necessarily have to do what is popular among the majority of society -- there's a balance to be found, and I'm still looking for it -- I guess is what I would say. So it's still a very difficult topic. And it's still a very dynamic part of my life. But yeah, I guess I'm still looking for that definition. But I would say yes, so that my primary expression right now is 70:00religious observance, reading, understanding Jewish history better. I feel like there's a lot I'm missing. I've been through a few Jewish histories, but there are a lot of details that I'm not understanding, both in ancient history and in the last few hundred years. So that -- understanding ourselves -- I think is very important. Yeah. I guess these are the primary expressions.

RY:Do you have an ex-- because you mentioned trying to find a balance -- you know, not walling yourself away from society but at the same time not completely assimilating and not melting. Do you have a concrete example of ways where you have achieved this balance? Or, like -- a balance that you didn't used to have but that you managed -- you said, Okay, I found a compromise. Or, I found a way 71:00to stand on the rope -- maybe.

IS:Well, maybe one example is that there were times when I would be afraid to do not do anything for one day of the week -- to keep Shabbos. I started in college thinking that, Well, at least if I do my oral assignments now and don't do anything written -- because writing is kind of prohibited and really kind of the mood of Shabbos is not the same if I start doing these kinds of things -- so I started taking things out and started having more of a relaxed time. And more recently, I observe it more -- kind of everything does stop. The electricity is no longer manipulated. All the cooking that's been done, let's just enjoy it. Let's take walks without burdening ourselves -- carrying, worrying, where is my wallet? Where is this? Where is that? Just liberating yourself. I'm glad that I'm closer to that. I don't know if I can say I've arrived, but now I don't worry that I'm not earning the money right now or I'm not worried that I'm missing a social opportunity. I've seen that it's a positive thing in my life, and I'm glad that there is this time out, even if it makes the rest of the week 72:00more compressed a little bit.

RY:Okay. So despite the recent resurgence of interest in Yiddish, some people still say Yiddish is dead or dying. What do you think? What makes a language living?

IS:Well -- a living language does need a core of speakers that carry it on. And ideally, it would be a core of speakers that would have the continuity -- it's not -- I don't know if I would call it a living language, 'cause all of a sudden a lot of people learnt it from books and started speaking it. I'm not sure if you can say that Hebrew was living and, you know, that it never was dead, or it got revived -- I'm not an authority to speak on this. But I'm oscillating on the topic of what the situation of Yiddish is. I don't want it to die. I refuse this 73:00kind of resignation that is -- that language, we just leave it to its fate. There are clearly still speakers. And now is the crucial time that there is this handoff of the torch, and I hope that we're now building a new core of speakers. And my hope is that it will be living and thriving. But whether in our generation that that transition was a natural one or a momentary death and revival -- whether the new speakers really understand and feel the culture -- and the culture, of course, can evolve -- the new Yiddish speakers don't need to have the mentality of people from a hundred and fifty years ago. But what this discontinuity will exactly mean for Yiddish and the way it's expressed -- I wonder. I wonder what -- how would you really characterize it? Is this a reincarnation of Yiddish, or is this a continuation of the living Yiddish? I 74:00don't know.

RY:Yeah. This is my question. So would you say there is a Yiddish revival? Some people call it a revival.

IS:I guess "revival" is a fair word. But I also hope that it will be just continuity of its life. I don't want to see a discontinuity. But also, let's not discount the fact that there are still people speaking it with continuity, like the Hasidim. So that is Yiddish -- a variant of Yiddish. Everybody has their own variant of Yiddish. So Yiddish lives on, and there may be this dichotomy. Maybe there'll be the secular Yiddish that might have had the discontinuity, and then there is this Yiddish of the Haredi world. So -- I'm glad, at least, there is that torch as well. And maybe there will be cross-pollination. We'll see.

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

IS:(sighs) That's very hard to say. I think that this revival will continue and 75:00expand. I think part of this momentary sickness of Yiddish may have been that people wanted to reject the old world. People are embarrassed by their parents who came to America, perhaps, and they wanted nothing to do with it -- or nobody spoke Yiddish to them because they wanted to Americanize. But now we're several generations past that, and nothing but, you know, just people's own interest can compel them to pick up the torch and continue speaking it. So I think that in that respect, the future is bright. But sometimes I also wonder, maybe this is just a reincarnation -- a revival. Maybe it will sort of be like an academic language -- a literature studied, not much produced -- a few attempts here and there. It might be -- like, what do you call it in the hospital when a patient is still on life support for a while -- maybe --

RY:Intensive care?

IS:Yeah. It may be in that stage for a while. I can't decide. Sometimes I'm more 76:00optimistic, sometimes less.

RY:So you are married?

IS:Yes.

RY:But you don't have children -- yet. Do you have an idea of, you know, how would you like to raise them, what kind of Jewish identity you would like them to have, in what language you would like to raise them?

IS:Language -- (laughs) -- is a complicated one, because my wife speaks a few languages, I speak Russian and English.

RY:What does your wife speak?

IS:She speaks Hungarian, French, and English. So -- she understands a few others. She's getting better at Yiddish, too. But between her and me, we have just English as a common language. Which of our other languages that we know should be passed down to them? I don't know. We believe that education -- as many languages as you can speak, the better. We want them to have those assets from the start, and it's certainly easier to learn the language from the beginning than later on in an academic setting. So it would be nice to give them 77:00French, it would be nice to give them Russian. But just as an intellectual asset, I don't feel like I need to -- or I want to pass down any Slavic culture or anything of Russia or Ukraine. And I can't even say I understand it much at this point, anyway. So I just want them to be able to access Russian literature in its original, for example -- as I have access to it now. So that's one of our considerations. We never have really settled on it. At one point, I was idealistic enough to say, "I'll learn Yiddish and then pass it on to my children, and then they'll speak Yiddish, and I'll be part of the revival." But, you know, these intervening years, I haven't had a chance -- (laughs) -- to actually learn the language. So that's the story -- the very undecided story about the language. And as for the Jewish identity we want to pass down, we want them -- we want to revive a balanced religious life in our family. Twentieth century is a big, rude interruption -- a real intrusion and a real crime 78:00perpetuated against us -- you know, by just number killed, by the forbidden religious practices, by the fact that people were forced to secularize. It's also the temptations of the twentieth century, where freedom was allowed and people abandoned their ways. And I think the wisdom is somewhere in the middle -- that -- and, of course, I'm speaking personally -- that I'd not judge anybody who's atheistic, who doesn't see religion in their eyes. But from at least my personality and my wife's -- what we think is a healthy part of one's identity -- a certain amount of religion is healthy. And to specifically take up ours -- our ancestral religion -- to -- and with all the wisdom that we do appreciate in a very academic religion -- in a very learning-oriented, very personal responsibility religion -- we appreciate all these aspects of it -- that there is this kind of, I am self-motivated, and I will perpetually look for 79:00self-improvement. All these -- what I'm describing, really, are not religious values. These are just general values that I have come to admire, and I -- and lo and behold, I found that my ancestral religion seems to have some of that -- in bits and pieces. Maybe I need to look at it through a more progressive lens or what, but I can encapsulate it in the package of my ancestor's religion, so I would love it if it could continue as if twentieth century didn't happen.

RY:Okay. Okay. Do you have a favorite Yiddish word, phrase, or song?

IS:Um -- (laughs) -- I'm not sure I can answer that in -- I'm not so good with favorites -- with finding the things that stick out the best. (pause) I forget the name of the song. The one about meshiekh [the Messiah] coming and sitting on 80:00his throne with the bekher [goblet]?

RY:"Shnirele, perele [String of pearls]"?

IS:Yes. Yes. It is -- so much hope in that song. It is -- that calm yearning is so characteristic of what Jews probably felt in some collective way. And I wouldn't say I'm a very messianic Jew at all. But in the hope in that song -- it's just beautiful, it's lyrical, it's wonderful.

RY:Okay. Based on your experience, do you have any advice for future generations?

IS:Based on my personal experience?

RY:Or, you know, any advice you might have?

IS:I mean -- what is pretty central to me is to strive to really make the most 81:00of your life. But the striving is -- it's not about revolutions. It's not about sudden changes. Because you will more quickly destroy whatever good there was than create something good and new. And this is why I'm cautious to not look back and say, Okay, what does America have to offer? Let me start from scratch. I have to build a new identity. Or to see an unjust world -- we're in a very unjust world -- and to say that we need radical change. I'm a very progressive -- I would consider myself politically fairly liberal, but sudden changes can be so destructive. And the past -- as faulty as it is, and as much as there is, if I may say, backwardness -- there is this -- there's a lot of baggage that we inherit. But we often overlook the good things that come along with it. So if 82:00we're wise, we would take small steps. We would try to brush off from the rust, from all the dirt that has accumulated, and find the good things in what we have inherited, what we already have -- either because this is our situation or this is something we can draw from the past -- and then improve things slowly from that. And I consider this central, because this applies to our personal lives -- how to slowly improve -- about our societies -- how we forge that -- about how a culture and religion can evolve in a healthy way, without either being obsessed about the purity of what was or with this embarrassment and obsession about building something new. The healthy way is through this kind of slow and considered and thoughtful -- very deliberate -- change, with having really filtered everything you have first.

RY:Okay. So we're nearing the end of the interview. Is there anything else that 83:00you'd like to add before we conclude?

IS:I'm not sure I've come prepared with any particular points I wanted to make --

RY:Anything on your mind. I don't know -- to add or to come back to something you already said.

IS:Well, I can only express hope that we preserve as much as people know and as much as we can find. What really saddens me -- aside from all of the -- there are many things to be sad about if you look back at history, and Jewish history in particular, and about still what's going on in the world. But when there are lost opportunities -- when there are stories that could be told, when there are things that could be still discovered -- let me be more specific. It's horrible what kind of carnage happens to people and blood is shed. But then when books 84:00are destroyed, when aspects of culture is left, then you are impoverishing the living future generations, as well. And it's very sad to me to read about book burnings -- about the fact that I can't trace back beyond my great-grandparents. I don't know -- some people can trace themselves a thousand years, and I don't know of anybody from the nineteenth century in my family. So I hope we will all be wise enough to now salvage what we have. Salvage what we have, learn as much as we can about our past -- about what we have inherited -- and then, as I said, move slowly to use the best of it to forge a better world. It is not about wiping the slate clean. It's never about that.

RY:Okay. I want to thank you personally for sharing your stories and reflections with me. I also want to thank you on behalf of the Yiddish Book Center for 85:00participating in the Wexler Oral History Project. Thank you.

IS:You're most welcome.

[END OF INTERVIEW]