JALDA REBLING ORAL HISTORY

ALLIE BRUDNEY: This is Allie Brudney, and today is March 11th, 2014.  I'm here in Berlin, Germany, with Jalda Rebling.

JALDA REBLING: Yes.

AB:  And we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project.  Jalda, do I have your permission to record this interview?

JR:  Sure.  (laughter)

AB:  Thank you very much.  So, can you tell me briefly what you know about your family background?

JR:  Oh, I know a lot about my family background.  My mum was born in Amsterdam in the Jodenbuurt, and early in her childhood, there was already -- little fight in the family.  Her father really insisted, "We are a Dutch 1:00family, and in this household we are speaking Dutch!"  But they had a little krom, a little business running like all the people there run.  And those who were living in this neighborhood were the poor Jews, and they all came from Eastern Europe.  So, my grandma, if she wanted to communicate and if she wanted to sell something, they needed to speak Yiddish.  So, that's how she learned Yiddish, on the street.  In Amsterdam, she grew up later in the Nieuwe Kerkstraat, and around the corner was the famous Weesperstraat.  Today, still, you can see some places there, and there's a little shul in the Nieuwe Kerkstraat.  It's, today, a house there, people are living -- but they left the signs, the outer signs at the wall.  So, that's where she grew up.  And, as it 2:00was a poor family, she could not go to school.  But she had to stay at home, and she had to learn to sew.  She was a seamstress.  But she wanted so much to dance.  So, she went in there at the -- in the break time, in the afternoon break, and she took dance lessons.  And she became a dancer, and her daddy was very angry with her.  And she came to Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir, to the Zionist youth organization.  And she fell in love with a boy, but the mom of this boy was not very content with this relationship, because she came from the Jodenbuurt, so she was not wealthy, had not a wealthy background.  And she was so disappointed about it that -- another love came along, and she went out into Shalom Ansky 3:00club.  So, where they were singing Yiddish, and it was the workers, the Bundists -- and she learned -- and she -- so, she had already a lot of Yiddish and a lot of Yiddish songs, but she learned more of it, and she learned a lot about the background.  And she was a beautiful lady, so she performed in Yiddish and dancing, and professor David Shneer found little pieces of programs from 1934 and 1935, so long before she met my daddy.  And then, she became famous and a dancer in a revue, the Bouwmeester Revue in -- biggest revue 4:00theater.  She was one of the girls, even though she was pretty small.  She was at the end of (laughs) the line, and -- but she never stopped to sing Yiddish songs.  And then, my daddy, he came from Germany in 1936, and they lived all together in Den Haag in "gemeenschap" as they called it, a house where different young intellectuals lived and shared all the expenses.  And he fell in love, and he was a German musicologist.  Yeah, that's the right word, musicologist.  And he was a pianist, but -- and he had a PhD in musicology.  But he never had heard anything about Yiddish music and Yiddish songs.  So, he fell in love with 5:00this young, beautiful woman, and he fell in love with the music.  And in 1938, they started their own programs with Yiddish songs and dances, as it was usual in this time.  David Shneer calls it a "Yiddish variété."  I don't know if -- or "Yiddish revue."  I don't know if it is the right terminology, but it was a combination ofdances and music, yeah, and songs.  And my daddy played already, in this time -- and that's very important, because that -- some things people mostly don't know -- he played in -- already, in this time, the music of the Leningrad school of Soviet Yiddish composers, who took Yiddish melodies and 6:00made classical music of it.  So, Krein and different of these composers.  So, he played them already in the end of the '30s, in Amsterdam.  And now comes the story that is very interesting for you: in December 1939, they wrote a letter to Vilna.  And now, you have to imagine that the letter went through the occupied Poland, through the Nazi Germany, to Vilna.  And they got an answer from Vilna with the stamp of the date of the fifth of March, 1940.  (laughs) This letter, 7:00we still have and it is now in the archive of the Akademie der Künste, and a copy of this letter you'll find in the YIVO archive, with Yiddish songs and nigunim [melodies].  It's interesting for me that my mom never performed these songs.  I will record them now for her hundredth birthday.  We took all the material together and -- I don't know why.  I cannot ask her why.  But some of the nigunim, my daddy Eberhard Rebling, sat for piano, and he played them very often.  And also, after the Germans entered the Netherlands, the whole group went into resistance.  There is the legend that my mom and her sister and also my little sister, Kathinka, never had worn the yellow star.  I don't know if 8:00this is really true.  I don't know it.  But as soon as the -- they got the letter that they had to go to the Sammelstelle [German: gathering place], to the Umschlagplatz [German: transit point], they went into the underground immediately.  And the underground in the Netherlands was very good organized.  They gave illegal house concerts, and there was a whole organization, "De Vrije Kunstenaar," and they edited a newspaper, a monthly, yeah.  And it was even so that they were able to help the musicians with food carts and things so that they could make -- that they were able to survive in the underground.  And when 9:00we gave the materials of my parents to the Akademie der Künste, I got back a big box of what they did not need, and also a big box with "De Vrije Kunstenaar."  They could not find the name Eberhard Rebling there, but he wrote there under the pseudonym of Pete Van Norden, so I gave them the whole (UNCLEAR) back and said, "This Pete Van Norden is Eberhard Rebling, so I think you want to keep this," yeah.  The house was betrayed in 1944, the 10th of July, and -- yeah, and during the illegal house concert, they also played Yiddish music, yeah.  And then, my daddy could escape thanks to my Aunt Janny.  And the children were saved by the resistance.  That was a whole 'nother story, how 10:00they took the children.  My sister was two and a half years old.  And the two women, Janny and Lin, my mom, went from Westerbork to Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen.  And in Auschwitz -- in Westerbork, they met already Anne, Margot, and Edith Frank, the women of the Frank family, in the Straflager [German: detention camp], because they were in the -- organized illegal being, and that's why they had the special Schutzhaftbefehl [German: protective custody warrant].  They did not know that this will save them their lives -- in Auschwitz, they were called out of the transport, the last transport that went from Westerbork to Auschwitz, and they thought that would be the end.  But it was the contrary.  They were taken out of this transport because they had been Schutzhaftbefehl, they were -- they had a process.  Yeah, and there are many 11:00stories that -- my mom was singing Yiddish songs in the concentration camp.  That's what they did to support each other as good as it was possible.  And when they were liberated, she came back the 27th of May, 1945.  My parents found each other back, and my aunt and my mom came back to Amsterdam.  And she was very sick, but already, I guess, in September -- you have to prove it with David Shneer, because he has all the papers.  (laughs) She gave the first concert, and she immediately started to perform.  And once -- and 12:00psychotherapist here in Berlin said singing kept her alive.  So, they performed Yiddish in -- they immediately, I guess, in 1946, already they went to their first tour, to Scandinavia.  They came back several times to Scandinavia with the Yiddish songs.  They went to Poland, to -- which -- they went here to Berlin, to the UNRRA, to the DP camp.  So, they toured through the DP camps.  And they were zamler.  They collected Yiddish songs.  So, there are not only this Vilna material, but they are more songs -- as I told you already, my father wrote down -- in the beginning, my mom herself wrote them down.  They collected a lot of Yiddish material.  I did not find, in any archive in this world -- not 13:00in the YIVO in New York, not in the YIVO in Vilna, not in the library in Kiev, and also not in Jerusalem.  So, they really saved some material, yeah, and then in the beginning of the '50s, they decided to go to East Germany -- a very difficult decision for my mom.  And I think always, she did not really know what was waiting for her, because she did not know Germany from before the World War II, the whole atmosphere there.  And so, it was a very strange situation I grew up with.  I learned German on the street, and at home, we had a different 14:00language, we had different food.  We were -- had totally different life at home than our life was outside.  And it was not easy to be a single Jewish child in a German class, (laughs) and -- but it was how it was.  And so, for me, as a child, these Yiddish songs, they're very important.  And it took me many years to understand what I explain to you now.

AB:  Why did your parents decide to move to --

JR:  East Germany.

AB:  -- East Germany?

JR:  Because they were left-wing people -- and as you might know, in the end of the '40s, beginning of the '50s, we had a lot of trouble with the Cold War.  A 15:00very, very difficult time, and if you ask older Americans, especially from the left-wing side, people who came out of the Workmen's Circle of the whole Bundistic world -- and in the Netherlands, my father had a job as musical redactor of the communist newspaper, the "Wahrheit," what was big newspaper, right after the war.  But then, there was, inside the communist party, a lot of trouble.  And my daddy did not follow them.  (laughs) He was not (makes air quotes) konform [German: compliant] as we tell it, say today.  So, in 1949, he lost his job.  And so, my parents had economical -- very difficult time.  My 16:00mom used to give dance lessons, but she was sick five years after the war.  And to be afraid of hunger -- and then, I was born with -- two little kids is not a nice thing to have, yeah?  I also, though, meanwhile, in America, people with the same meshugaas as we had don't throw away piece of bread, (laughs) because the time of the Depression was also not very nice.  So, I always try to describe that in Europe -- happened similar things as in America for people to understand what was going on.  So, and in East Berlin, they were offering a job for my daddy, so that's why they went.  And Anna Seghers, a very famous writer, 17:00she said to my mom, "We need you here to help to clean the ruins out of the heads of people."  And my mom was able to reach -- not the heads, not the brain, but the heart, and neshome [soul], as we say, of people, with their songs.  And, I mean, if you imagined it today, you think I'm telling bobe-mayses [tall tales].  But in November 1952, they gave a concert with the Yiddish songs in the Haus der Deutsch-Sowjetische Freundschaft, the House of the German-Soviet Friendship in the Kastanienwäldchen, and -- with Yiddish music.  And she never stopped preferring Yiddish music.  And so, the '50s, she became already pretty famous, yeah.  Till today, people telling me that they remember 18:00her.  So, she became a very famous Yiddish singer, and for me, there were two things I was not able to get together.  So, mommy, as long as she was outside and on the stage, she was a powerful woman.  But when she came home, she fell into the famous depression and was in bed.  And so, my daddy was not there, my sister was not there, and I was alone with her and all these dibukim [dybbuks] (laughs) hanging around there.  So, for me, to be Jewish was this dark fear of what was connected to the Shoah, where nobody was talking about it in the 19:00family.  And there were this -- was this joy in her songs, and this power in her songs.  It took me more than forty years to get these pieces together.  (laughs) And there's -- this happened in Elat Chayyim in Upstate New York.

AB:  We'll get to that.  So, you touched on your home a little bit and how you spoke a different language and had the different food.  Can you maybe describe that a little bit more?

JR:  It was a Jewish Dutch home, and -- with different food, with different customs than the kids had -- I was playing with on the street.  And so, I was always a very lonely child, because I did not -- was not able, really, to connect to them.  And --

AB:  Were there -- in what ways -- was your family involved in any Jewish life 20:00outside of the home that --

JR:  Not very much.  So, we -- my mom was never a member of the Jewish community, even though she did a lot for them, had very close connections to them, played for Hanukkah events and whatever.  And she had a very strong relationship with Rabbi Martin Riesenburger, who was the rabbi in those days and who was an amazing man who still is not enough acknowledged for the amazing work he did to help people.  [BREAK IN RECORDING] It's very difficult to explain who -- to people who don't know it, but to be a Jew has nothing to do with, what do I believe, but it has to do with how I behave.  And to be a Jew goes deep, 21:00deep, deep, very deep into our daily life and to our behavior and our view of the world.  And to think about what you eat, for example, that was always very important for my mom.  And she went on her bicycles very far to go to the little market to get fresh vegetables and things, straight from the farmers, so that food was always very important to us.  Good food, real food, I mean.  Yeah, and there was always this music.  And in this music, there were more stories than she was able to speak out -- yeah.

AB:  You mentioned briefly what -- that you were, not surprisingly, the only Jew in your class --

JR:  Yeah.

AB:  -- and what it's like -- can you maybe talk about that a little bit, just growing up as a --

JR:  It was lonely.  Very lonely.  So, that's why these friends of my parents 22:00and their children -- it was this Jewish left-wing intellectual circle in East Berlin, and it was a big one.  Jewish intellectual circle, and -- with their children, and these are the people to whom I connected till today.  So, this was also -- this circle of my parents was very important, and I had always real problems to really connect to the people in the neighborhood.  Never really worked out, yeah.  So, finally, I ended up in a strange profession.  I became an actor, and finally, my mom took me in -- on the stage, and wanted me to sing with her Yiddish songs.  And I said, "No."  And she said, "Yes."  And I said, 23:00"No."  You know the mommy-daughter thing.  And it was for a -- it was in 1978, she wanted to do something for the fiftieth anniversary of Anne Frank.  And you have to imagine that in those days and the end of the '70s, Anne was still not this big, big, big -- like, sometimes it feels like a Catholic Ikone [German: icon], (laughs) what they are doing with Anne, and -- but she had the feeling, "I have to do something for her," and she was looking for somebody who would be able to read from the diary, and I was an actress, so she asked her daughter.  But we did not know that this program for Anne Frank would be with us for the next ten years, between Jerusalem and New York.  Yeah, so she asked me to sing 24:00some of these songs.  Finally, mommy determined, so she pushed me and I did, and then friends said to me, "Hey, meydele [young woman], go ahead."  And then, I started to study Jewish history.  I took Yiddish lessons with wonderful man, [Motik Weinrip?], who came from Poland.  And then, my mom came with her litvish yidish [Lithuanian Yiddish dialect], (laughs) so there was already this play with "meydele" and "maydele" -- "Men zogt nisht 'zugn,' men zugt 'zogn' [You don't say 'to say' 'zugn,' you say it, 'zogn']," (laughs) all these little things.  And when I started with my first program, it was -- we called it "Dos 25:00lid funem yontef [The song of the holiday]."  It was around Jewish holidays of the year.  My mom said to me, "You are meshuge [crazy], nobody's interested in this."  This time, she was wrong.  (laughs) And therefore, it's a reason -- I think I have to go to -- a step back.  In the second half of the '70s, we have a phenomenon.  And this phenomenon is that people suddenly were interested -- what happened in the Shoah.  And this is, in my opinion, to do with the change of the generations, grandparents and grandchildren always can talk better together than parents and children.  So, the grandchildren grew now up and 26:00started to ask what happened.  It's interesting to me that at the same time, you find the first neo-Nazis, yeah?  Also, these granddaddies started to tell how wonderful it was during the time that Germany was a big something.  And in -- after '67, my mom had, in the official East German culture, no place anymore.  They took her out of the TV shows, they took her out of radio shows.  And so, in the '70s, they thought, Okay, we do some concerts outside the country.  But perhaps it's now time to retire.  And then, in '75, she got an invitation for the annual -- big culture festival in East Berlin, for the 27:00Berliner Festtage.  And it was for -- in the Deutsches Theater, and it was sold out in a minute.  And here starts her second career.  From this moment on, she was every single year in the Berliner Festtage, yeah?  So, the evening for Anne Frank was only one of the projects she had in her head.  She was born in 1912.  So, she was already in her late sixties -- yeah, in her late sixties.  And she was thinking about something new to offer the people.  And in the end of the '70s, it was very interesting that, also, Germans started to be interested in Yiddish music.  You might know about the famous speech of 28:00Bashevis Singer, when he got the Nobel prize -- that he said, "Yiddish is the language of the powerless, those -- language, what does not have words for weapons and war, and these words all are coming either from Russian or from other places."  And we had, in Europe, these atomic weapons.  And they -- becoming higher and higher and higher.  And then, they wanted to explain -- us, in East Germany, We need to protect ourselves with Russian nuclear weapons.  And we thought, What?  (laughs) And we did not like that.  And now, you have phenomenon in the churches, people were protesting against nuclear weapons with 29:00Yiddish songs.  So, Yiddish, in East Germany, became something like a language of resistance.  Young people started to sing Yiddish songs to protest -- Germans -- to protest their parents and their grandparents, but also as a tool to formulate their longing for freedom, their longing for openness and all their political longings.  Yiddish is the language -- is a language -- what is close to German.  Many Germans think they understand Yiddish, what is an huge 30:00misinterpretation.  They don't.  And it has humor, something missing in German and in German culture.  And it has a poetry you cannot translate into German.  And the third point is -- and this took me, also, many year-- to figure this out.  So, things I did not know in this time.  And its poetry is full of a deep spirituality, what is a deep Jewish spirituality.  So, when you look up all these songs of the Arbeter-Bund, yeah, in ninety-- I'm now jumping a little bit -- in ninety-- I guess '98, there was, in Hamburg, and a big exhibition of 31:00the Arbeter-Bund from Beit Hafutsot.  Fantastic exhibition about the Arbeter-Bund.  And so, in Hamburg, they ask me, "Jalda, can you make us program with Yiddish Workers' Union?"  I'm thinking, Hm -- I was in medieval material right at this time, and I was not interested to do these Bundistic songs, but I said, "Okay, let me think about it."  And then, I went to look in these books then, and after a few days, I came out with -- wait a minute, this poetry is poetry from the Tanakh, yeah?  "A shvue, himl un ert [An oath, heaven and earth]" -- "A shvue," it's the story of Abraham.  God says to him, "You will be like the stars on Heaven and like the sand of the sea."  And if you look at 32:00this poetry, it's all coming from the Tanakh.  So, they got their poem for the program.  (laughs) But it became a little different.  So, Yiddish has also this deep spirituality -- what most of the Yiddish that -- especially the non-Jewish Yiddish singers don't get.  But that's why people loved it so much, yeah.  So -- and then, we toured -- the whole family with Yiddish programs and the Anne Frank programs as the only Yiddish theater of East Germany around the world.  We were in Yad Vashem, and we got there the Yad Vashem medal, and we were in Israel in the Beit Hafutsot museum.  We were in different theaters 33:00there.  We went to Paris, we went to Amsterdam, opened there the big Anne Frank exhibition in 1985.  And we were, also, in the US, in the fall of '80 -- '96, and we played a concert in Amherst, and it's how we connected with the National Yiddish Book Center, and how this famous typewriter came to me.  It's another story how I got it back into East Germany, but that's a whole other story.  And yeah, we performed there in the Hebrew Union College, and then in different places.  It was -- the last time I was in the US, and the lady came to me and said, "I remember your concert in Hebrew Union College in ninety-- October and November in 1986," yeah.

AB:  Are there any of these many performances that stand out?  Can you describe maybe what it was like to be traveling around and giving these amazing performances?

JR:  I mean, we were at so many places -- yes, to be in Yad Vashem was very special.  To be in the Hebrew Union College -- were very special.  To have a picture in "The New York Times" was special.  (laughs) But very often, these are not famous places, but are becoming deep -- touching.  I mean, in Israel, after the performance in the Beit Hafutsot, suddenly a man came up to my mom, 35:00and she looked at him once and twice, and he was a frum [religiously observant] man, and it was one of the two boys she saved in Bergen-Belsen.  So, these are the real moving moments.  Or, for me, was very funny -- when we were in -- I grew up with "Don't bow for anybody except for God."  I mean, in a left-wing household, little strange saying, but it was meant -- no respect for any authority, especially not in Germany.  So, that's how I grew up, and it gave me a lot of trouble.  (church bells ring) Okay.  That's the church.

AB:  Ah.

JR:  It's now ringing for five minutes.

AB:  Oh.

JR:  My Renewal Church, and the church is one of the reasons why I feel very 36:00protected here, yeah.  So, I have strong relationships with these people.  They saved Jews during the Shoah, and this was a very important place in 1989, in Berlin.  And yeah, I was also singing in this church, Yiddish songs, and -- in 1989 --

AB:  Wow.

JR:  -- when we were here in the whole topsy-turvy situation.  Everybody's talking about -- of the 9th of November, 1989, I say, "No, the real change happened 9th of October, 1989."  That's a different date.  (laughs) Yeah, and that was, by the way, Yom Kippur.  Oh!  (laughs) So, I came out of the 37:00synagogue and went to -- straight into the church, and in this nigh], the power of the state, of East Germany, disappeared.  We were strong, yeah.  But also with Yiddish songs, here you are.

AB:  This really goes on for five minutes?

JR:  Yes.  (laughter) So, that's why I go on to tell you that --

AB:  Yeah, no, it's great.  (laughs)

JR:  -- some things that are not important for your interviews, but --

AB:  But that still might be --

JR:  -- what might be important for the background --

AB:  Yeah.

JR:  -- why I'm still in Berlin -- by the way, a city I've wanted to leave my whole life long.  And when we finally got fulfilled, our daughter's job and our mommy's job in 2008, when my daddy passed away with ninety-six years --

AB:  Wow.

JR:  -- zichrono livracha [Hebrew: may his memory be a blessing] -- and we sold the house, and we were free, then we had a crisis.  (laughs) And we thought, hmm, might be better to stay here, because we know the way and know how to survive, so -- and now, we -- meanwhile, grandma's -- (laughs)

AB:  And your sons --

JR:  -- so, another reason to stay, yeah.

AB:  Your sons live here, too?

JR:  Yeah.

AB:  Yeah.

JR:  Yeah, two of them.  The third is not here in Berlin, but he's still in Germany, so it's not so far, yeah.

AB:  Where does he live?

JR:  In Duisburg.

AB:  Okay.

JR:  Yeah.

AB:  Not that far.

JR:  Yeah.

AB:  Okay.

JR:  Okay, so where we have been?  You are the interviewer.

AB:  Yes.  Where were we?  You were talking about a --

JR:  No, yeah, about -- important of the Yiddish in East Germany.

AB:  Yeah.

JR:  So, when the wall came down and Germany was runned by American musicians 39:00who came to bring the klezmer revival to Germany and to Berlin -- it makes me always so angry, because we had this klezmer revival.  My opinion, there was nothing to revive, yeah, because it was never -- there was no moment that klezmer was not played.  Yeah, always on the chupah or wherever there were these old musicians who made good music.  And even here in East Germany, there was a lady -- what was singing Yiddish songs the whole time, and people knew them, and she produced records, and she was on the radio.  So, people knew her, yeah?  And then, Americans were coming, "We brought Yiddish music to Berlin" -- makes me a little bit angry, because in 1984, the whole Rebling family was at 40:00the first European Yiddish Festival in Zurich.  And we had -- that was where I also met -- no, Kapelye I met for the first time in '86, in Cologne.  But in 1984, was this first European Yiddish Festival, so we had Myriam Fuchs and we had wonderful performers from all over Europe.  And my question was -- and where was Dora Tencer from Warsaw, and where is the Yiddish theatre -- Tricy Abramovich and Yisroel Berkovitch from Bucharest, why are they not here?  We are talking about a European Yiddish Festival, and they are there.  It's not that in the East, everything is dead.  It's nonsense.  But you don't know it.  Here's the problem, yeah?  It was a time long before internet and computers and all of that.  And so, I was thinking, on the way back home, we 41:00have to do something like that in Germany, because here we are in the middle.  Crazy idea.  Totally crazy idea.  So, I was asking several people, [Helmut Ares?] in Dresden, forget it.  I had other friends in Dresden who said, "Nice idea, but who will go to support it in East Germany?"  I went to my beloved teacher in -- Eugen Golomb in Leipzig.  He was chair of the community there, of the Jewish community.  One of my most important teachers.  I always went to -- find in the little Jewish community of East Germany, somebody who was willing to teach a woman, huh?  It's another point, so -- and he was willing to teach a woman.  And so, I got a lot of toyre [Torah] from him.  And then, there was a 42:00German lady here, Liane Düsterhöft, and she had a little Wohngebietsklub [German: residential club] in the area where people are living -- there are little clubs where people were able to meet.  And in those places, you had a lot of Yiddish music, yeah?  And she got a new job, in the Kulturhaus in Ernst-Thälmann-Park.  They opened a new house for culture, and she was looking for ideas.  And I had an idea.  (laughs) And we started in the 27th of January, so liberation day of Auschwitz.  We started with three days of Yiddish culture, and I was asking several people around here who are involved with Yiddish culture here in Berlin -- we had no money.  So, we just -- we had the space, and we just started.  There was such a little notice in the "Berliner 43:00Zeitung."  The three days were sold out within one hour.  Suddenly, the newspapers came, the West German TV came.  (gasps) Everybody was scared.  I said, "Why are you scared?"  "Yeah, who is willing to give the Mister Merseburger interviews?"  I thought, I'm willing to give -- "Yeah, but he will ask you questions and you have to ask for permission!"  I was a freelance actor, so whom I have to ask for permission?  I have to ask nobody for permission, and if he has questions, I will answer these questions.  But the same evening, there was this mic from the ZDF, and there was suddenly, the opening evening, another mic.  I said, "Who is this?"  And I went after the wire, and it turned out it was "Aktuelle Kamera," the anchor news of East German 44:00TV.  I said, "What?"  (laughs) So, the next day, we were at the front page of the "Neues Deutschland," and we did not understand why.  We really did not understand why.  That -- the good thing was that somebody helped us into the official UNESCO commission of East Germany, so we did -- our project became part of it.  And now, UNESCO does not have money, but with the name UNESCO, you can open lot of doors.  And now, we were able to realize our dream.  So, we brought in musicians from the East.  And then, the Wall came down, so we brought in musicians from the West.  So, this Yiddish festival in East Berlin 45:00became the first meeting place when -- right after the wall came down -- from Yiddishists from East and West, yeah?  So, I remember a talk, and it was in January, 1990.  We had Myriam Fuchs from Warschau.  We had Kannovitch -- what was the name, from Vilna.  Oh, I'm so bad with names.  We had [Zimon Sharkofsky?] from Munich, all Yiddish speakers, yeah?  They're discussing -- how will the Yiddish future be?  (laughs) Yeah.  And so, it was -- and Josef Burg from Czernowitz, yeah?  We had in 1974 -- we were the only -- who had a 46:00big event for the seventy-fifth anniversary of the YIVO, what was founded, also, in Berlin.  And we had people from YIVO in New York, Adrienne Cooperman [sic].  Adrienne came and Michael Alpert was there, and Henry Sapoznik was there.  And we had, also, [Esfir Abramsohn?], and -- so, people from Vilna.  And we all met in East Berlin in those days.  So, that was very important.  Not American musicians who came and started at a Yiddish Festival of East Berlin, by the way.  Alan Bern had the big -- we organized for him a big workshop before the festival started.  It was a klezmer workshop.  In the beginning, it was Giora Feidman, then we had a little fight Giora Feidman.  And 47:00then, Alan Bern took it over, so it was at the East Berlin Yiddish Festival that he had his first big klezmer workshop.  (laughs) No, there was already Yiddish music in East Berlin before these American musicians -- who are wonderful musicians, no questions.  But if they are telling you they brought Yiddish back to Germany, that's not true.

AB:  So, I want to go a little back.  Can you tell me: who are your mentors in learning Yiddish, in singing, in acting?

JR:  So, I'm -- I went to -- after I finished school in 1969, I went here, Berlin, to the actors' school, the famous old Max Reinhardt school.  And today, Hochschule für Schauspielkunst "Ernst Busch."  And it was a time that the 48:00students were important and not the famous names of the teachers.  And we got a very, very, very good education, and we're thankful for this.  And one of my teachers, [Rudi Pankhe?], who came from Bohemia, gave me also a lot of life wisdom on my path.  So, I -- and I played theater and did what the young actress has to do.  I was in the TV, I was in these film magazines, these young faces who were coming and disappearing.  And yeah, so -- and then, my mom took me on the stage, in 1978.  And that's where, really, my engagement with Yiddish music started.  And my focus was, from the middle of the '80s, let us say, one 49:00of my beloved teachers, Israel Berkovitch, in Bucharest -- we went twice to visit him.  But, by the way, in his archives, you find the letters I wrote with this typewriter.  (laughs) His archive is here in Potsdam.  Very funny.  And also, [Josef Bor?].  I don't know where his archive went, in Czernowitz, he also got letters written with this typewriter.  (laughs) Yeah.  And, yeah, and I have many teachers, and -- yeah, from the -- Israel Berkovitch, we got a lot of material, especially all this material we performed from the murdered Soviet Yiddish writers.  You can imagine that this -- in the context of perestroika -- 50:00we are still in East Germany -- in the context of the perestroika, where suddenly the slogan, "Von der Sowjetunion lernen heißt siegen lernen" -- to learn from the Soviet Union means to -- "siegen" -- to --

AB:  "Conquer"?

JR:  No, not "to conquer" --

AB:  Right, okay, to --

JR:  -- is "to be the hero," let us say --

AB:  Yeah.

JR:  -- these words.  Is not the right word.  I know the English word, but it just does not now come into my head.  And that was a slogan, if you posted it somewhere on your jacket or so, you got in trouble with the Staatssicherheit.  So, in this time, especially the Soviet Yiddish writers, the murdered, became very important for us.  And so, I was studying Der Nister and Leyb Kvitko, and 51:00Perets Markish, and all these poets became very important for us.  And they also became very important for the "Tage der jiddischen Kultur."

AB:  You mentioned the rabbi in -- from Dresden?

JR:  No, that -- it was the -- he was not a rabbi in Dresden, Helmut Aris.  No, he did not support me.  (laughs) He did not want to support me, because I'm a woman.  And, yeah.  But, the one in Leipzig, [Eugen Golomb?], he was a very important teacher for me, and -- because I had a lot of questions, and he was willing, with me, to go deeper in these questions.  And these were very often, also, spiritual questions, or questions related to all our Jewish holidays.  52:00And so, I -- he really helped me to reconnect.  But still, to go to the synagogue was, for me, mourning, you know?  And even at Simchas Torah, our sweet cantor, here, Olean Ingster -- there was this moment of joy and then he said, "And now, I ask you to hold the kids quiet, and now we want to go on with our tfilah [Hebrew: prayer]," yeah?  And it was mourning, was always mourning.  So, I was not able to find a joy to be a Jew.  And this is what I found in nineteen-- no, now I am 2005 -- sorry, I'm an old lady.  I'm mixing the times now.  (laughs) The joy to be a Jew, I found in the year 2005, in Elat Chayyim, Upstate New York.

AB:  Can you tell me about that?

JR:  I think there's lot -- a lot more to tell in between.  So, we had this Yiddish festival.  We were running it till 1997, and we -- it was as long as the UNESCO decade went.  We focused on different places: on Poland, Romania, when we came with the Yiddish in Romania, the newspapers -- "Yiddish in Romania?  No, it was always Poland and Russians, that" -- what do you know?  What did people know, yeah?  No, nothing.  Ukraine, I remember that -- we there for one week in Kiev, in the early '90s, and that was a challenge.  And we brought our sick artists from Kiev to Berlin.  Most of them right now in the United States.  And so, we stopped in 1997.  The last one was about the 54:00Arbeter-Bund and about Russia, Jews in Russia.  And -- but my artistical focus went into the history.  So, when -- in the '90s, everybody was starting to play klezmer music, and I said, "Okay, just do it."  I started to look for -- wait a minute, Yiddish comes from the medieval German.  What do we find there?  And found, in those days, a lot of material and started to explain Germans that Jews are neighbors, not strangers.  And many of the Jews are living way longer in Germany than some of you guys (laughs) who came from France and from I don't know where, yeah.  So, to explain -- people that Yiddish culture is strong -- related to the German culture, and you cannot separate the one and the other.  55:00And the moment I was deeper into it, into the whole medieval material, I was curious to find music.  And there is new music.  There are these famous three melodies of Ovadia HaGer, and we all recorded them in 1999.  But now, I wanted to learn nusach [variants].  Oh, find in Germany, in the '90s, somebody who is willing to teach a woman nusach.  But then, in those days -- so, in 1993, on a tour in America, on Long Island, we were invited for a bar mitzvah, and I saw for the first time in my life a woman with a Torah in her arm, and I was scared.  (gasps) Heaven, thunder, something happens!  Nothing happened.  56:00(laughs) And then, I said, "Wait a minute, women are allowed to do that?  I want to learn this."  And in those days, we Jews, we younger Jews -- it's also now twenty years ago -- suddenly understood we will stay here in Germany, because after the Wall came down and the Allied Forces is left, Jews were scared.  The Germans had their big Reich back.  And our protectors disappeared.  So, I'm very happy that we still have Americans here in -- armed Americans here in this country.  I'm happy about it, (laughs) because I'm Jewish.  But we were scared.  And slowly, we understood that a pretty young German democracy is strong enough, and we started to trust it.  So, we started 57:00to renew our Judaism also in Germany.  So, a new movement started.  Women started to read Torah.  And it happened that I was leading at the first Bet Debora congress for the first time Kabbalat Shabbat.  And then, I got the famous call of the Jewish community, "Can you lead High Holidays in the synagogue?"  Oranienburger Straße was this group of these crazy people.  But they had to take care for us, because we all were members of the Jewish community.  And I said, "Yes."  Hang up the phone and (gasps) what did I do?  And then, I got via Elisa Klapheck some recordings of Hazzan Jack Kessler, and I had three different makhzorim [prayer books for the holidays] on my knees, and the famous book of Ismar Elbogen, "Jüdische Liturgie [German: Jewish Liturgy]," and we went for a holiday to the south of France, and I was sitting for four 58:00weeks beneath a beautiful tree.  (laughs) It was hot.  With Jack Kessler in my ears, with whom I fell in love because he is so careful with the poetry.  So, I fell in love through him, with the poetry of the siddur, with the poetry of the makzor.  Siddur and makhzor.  And then, I had a lot of questions, as I understood the whole thing.  And I started to write him emails.  And I got a lot of emails back, and one of these emails said, "Come."  So, one day, I bought a ticket to New York, went there to Port Authority, (laughs) bought a ticket to [Kingston?], (laughs) ended up in a gasoline station in a Sunday 59:00afternoon, late afternoon, in the middle of the rain, and did not understand that in America, Sunday afternoon -- and let us say eight o'clock in the evening, so Sunday evening, middle -- in the summer, in the rain, you will not find a taxi what drives you the last four miles.  But finally, somebody came, an angel came.  Took me from this plane -- "Yes, I'm the local electrician.  I know this place, Elat Chayyim."  So, I landed there.  (laughs) And in this place, I experience, for the first time, an entire Tisha b'av.  So, they were setting, erev [eve of] Tisha b'av with candles, very dramatic, and we're saying Eichah [Hebrew: Book of Lamentations], and it was very dramatic.  And Rabbi Marcia Prager said, "When you are in the deepest death and you find in the 60:00darkest darkness the spark of light, then this will be the turning point."  And I became so angry.  I had something -- what do you know about us European Jews?  What do you know about our darkness?  What do you know about our nightmares?  Nothing.  And I went to her -- and several days later -- so, I experience for the first time how our liturgy takes you out of this deepness and through Mincha and Maariv the next evening.  And in the same week, one evening, came out from the evening, from the Maariv tfilah, I suddenly saw thousands of little lights.  And I thought, Okay, Jalda, you are getting mad, you need professional help.  You are here, Upstate New York, in the middle of nowhere.  61:00So, I was not able to call my family home, and I have not the sources to postpone my flight.  So, I have here now to talk to somebody and to explain them -- I have to survive somehow the next days till I'm going back, and I'm thinking and thinking and thinking.  And suddenly, fireflies, millions of fireflies.  And there was the light in the darkness.  So, I found the light in the darkness of being a Jew in the prayer at Tisha b'av, in the middle of nowhere, at Elat Chayyim, Upstate New York, thank-- to my wonderful teachers.  And then, they help me with the morning ritual.  We planted a tree, this -- 62:00still, this tree moved together with the Torah from the old Elat Chayyim in Upstate New York to the Isabella Freedman, and this tree has a little story.  So, everybody knows the story behind this tree.  (laughs) And so, I was able to reconnect to a point where my mom was before the Shoah.  And that was through the spirituality.  And now, I was able, not only to feel somehow the spirituality in this Yiddish music, but I was able to give it on -- to pass it on to next generation.  And therefore, I'm very thankful, yeah, that I'm -- yeah, so -- do a lot of Yiddish, teach in Yiddish, performing Yiddish music.  63:00I'm not part of the whole klezmer business.  That's not my cup of tea, because I very often think there are some missing pieces.  But that's okay, because I'm not a generation -- I mean, while the -- mama's generation, and it is my story, and the young people are going a different way.  But I think they should know what stands behind it, and how this Yiddish music was -- or the whole Yiddish culture was keeping alive for my mom and helped me, and those who are around me, to find the path to the joy to be a Jew.  And today, in Germany -- and we are 64:00talking now about the year 2014, for many Jews, it is still scary that there are Jewish women who say, Wow, it is so great to be Jewish.  (laughter) And it is, not only because we know how to celebrate, not only because we have this great heritage, which really connects us to Har Sinai [Hebrew: Mount Sinai] all over, even in Yiddish music, and what connects us to King David, to the Tehillim [Hebrew: Psalms], to the Tanakh, to the poetry of the Yiddish music.  But also, because, as my teacher at Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi always said, I strongly 65:00believe that this Yiddish part of Jewish culture in this big orchestra of the culture of the world has enormous pieces to contribute, really to contribute.  And he always says, "Like a body has a liver and a heart and a -- kidneys and whatever, and every little piece is important, yeah?"  So, if you break your pink-- you are not able to handle your daily life, so we all need it.  And that's why we have to go on, and that's why I loved National Yiddish Book Center, because you are not saving only books, you are saving heritage, and you are making it possible for a next generation to use this heritage however they will use it.  We don't know how they will use it, but they use it.

AB:  So, you said you teach some Yiddish, or --

JR:  Yeah, I do teach Yiddish songs.  There are people who are coming to me, and want to sing Yiddish songs.  So, I help them.  (laughs) And I explain them a lot about where everything is coming from, and what it does, and -- especially the context.  I have another story for you.  In Potsdam, they opened a -- don't know when it has been -- it must have been somewhere in the '90s.  Professor Grozinger started a Yiddish archive there in Potsdam, and for the opening, he had two people who was working with him.  One was the famous Jascha Nemtsov, and -- who is now director of the cantorial program in Weimar, and the 67:00other one was [Aron Egshett?], and Grotzinger insisted that Jalda is there because I made the contact to the Israel Berkovitch archives, so that -- the Berkovitch archive came to Potsdam -- Andre Yendrosh did all the catalog work, but I made the collection.  And so, he wanted me that I'm also there, and what I did not know when I came there to talk about the program -- that the two boys had already made the program.  And they said, Yeah, there are two songs we have.  We have them as a field recording, we have them as a piece of the Leningrade Schule [German: Leningrad Conservatory], of the piano piece.  Nemtsov is a very good pianist.  Of the Leningrade Schule, and we have them as 68:00a Yiddish song.  And we want you to add some medieval song of this poetry.  (laughs) "What?  What do you want?"  I mean, Yiddish comes from the medieval German, and we have some medieval German poetry.  Very few, but we have some.  But, okay, let me know the songs.  So, one song was "Margeritkelekh [Little daisies]," okay?  To find medieval love song was no problem.  And I came up with the medieval "Eshet chayil [Hebrew: Woman of valor]," (laughs) and the other one was a song, "In yam fun di trern [In an ocean of tears]," and it was a song about the big yam -- about the big ocean of tears, what people have to -- 69:00the people who are working so hard, and the ocean will collect all their sorrow, and there will be the -- wait a minute, "Shirat hayam [Hebrew: Song of the sea]."  So, I add to the program the -- a piece, an "Eshet chayil" piece from Süßkind von Trimberg, and a piece from "Shirat hayam."  So, I brought in this opening, in the -- very -- connection to our roots, where the poetry comes from and where the poetical imaginations come from.  And I will tell this piece, and one of the performers there said, "Yeah, imagine in saltsikn yam fun undzere trern [in the salty ocean of our tears], and they are talking here about the 70:00meshiakh [Messiah].  They" -- and he was telling it like fun -- "they changed the meshiakh -- as the workers' movement, that this -- they will bring the new meshiakh."  And then, I said, "Yes, that was the energy of the Worker's Circle.  Yes, that was how it was.  (laughs) You know, and there is no fun, no, that's it.  That's the point.  We want to change the world now."  And I found a quote from -- what is his name?  Yeah, who was telling -- name will come immediately.  Was telling the story as he was -- as a child in kheyder [traditional religious school], and everybody was talking about what will happen 71:00when the meshiakh comes, then the world will be turned.  So, what did the little boys do?  They thought everything would be standing on the head, and so they started to -- trying to walk on hands and to stand on their head.  And he says, "Later on, I left the traditional Jewish life, and I was thinking a lot about the dream of the meshiakh.  And I became a leading person in the workers' movement, but the strong emunah [Hebrew: faith], the strong emune [Yiddish: faith], I had in -- that the meshiakh will come -- is still there, because our world can be changed, and it will be changed."  Yeah.  What is his name?  72:00(walks away and comes back with a book, flips through book) Jalda!  Manes Sperber.

AB:  Yeah, okay.  Have you -- what would you say is the place of Yiddish within Jewish culture in Germany --

JR:  Yeah, in Germany?  No place.  No place.  You have Jewish -- Germany -- no, it's wrong what I am saying.  No, I have to go three steps back.  When the people from the former Soviet Union came, there was a fight here in the German klezmer scene.  There were voices who said, "This is no klezmer, what they are playing.  This is Russian music."  And I said, "Wait a minute.  You grew up with American klezmer in your ears.  But that's the music of those who still 73:00were there."  And then I had to teach, in 2007 or eight, in [Alfort?], the first cohort of the Jewish social workers.  And these are all Russian people.  And they came -- "Yeah, we have no knowledge.  We are coming from the former Soviet Union, and we have no knowledge."  I said, "Wait a minute.  What is it that makes you Jewish and makes you feel Jewish, even though you had Shoah and even though you had gulag, what is the pintele yid [essence of a Jew]?"  And then, they came up with the most amazing stories.  They came up with some Yiddish songs, they came up with the goldene yoykh [golden broth], with the chicken soup.  But they came up, also, with some stories that -- one woman 74:00said, "Yeah there were two times a year, my daddy took me always to a place and wanted me to put my hands on the wall there.  And he wanted me to stand there for a while this way."  And many years later, I understood that was a synagogue.  And then I said to them, "You are teaching us how to keep Yiddishkayt."  And in this context, Yiddish is very important.  So, I was teaching in Alfort, the women of the Jewish community.  Women who are living in -- on social support by the state, and the men always say -- women go up on the balcony, no knowledge, but the women have to go up to the balcony -- and my way 75:00to connect with them was with Yiddish music.  And I was asking, "Which songs you are" -- and sometimes, they only had the melody.  So, I sometimes have with the melody the text, (laughs) and so, that was my way to connect.  And so, in this sense, Yiddish is still very important.  But the young people are going out, many of them are leaving the community as soon as they are becoming lawyers.  And so, they are here, the Russians are here now more than twenty years, twenty-five years.  So, the young generation often are going out, and they are interested in pop music, Israeli pop music.  Yeah, that's it, so there is no -- a real interest in Yiddish.  There is an interest in klezmer music.  76:00You have some Yiddish classes, but in Jewish life, I don't think that it's -- plays an important role, especially -- perhaps with the elder people, yeah?  My colleague Mark Aizikovitch, we had for -- another piece, sorry.  We had done Yiddish theater here, for -- the Hackesche Hoftheater for twelve years.  And my colleague, Mark Aizikovitch, one of those who came from the former Soviet Union with few knowledge, yeah?  But suddenly, the Yiddish door was opened.  The Yiddish door here in his brain were opened, and suddenly, all the stories from his early childhood in Poltava, in the Sholem Aleichem Street came up, and he started to tell all these stories.  And he passed away this -- last year already.  No, this year, in the spring where somewhere -- no, last year.  Year 77:00ago.  Time is so fast.  And we gave a concert for him, for his memorial.  And there, where these old yidn [Jews], they came to this concert, or mostly old people.  There are few youngsters who are still interested in Yiddish, but in the Jewish life?  No.

AB:  What would you say is the place of Yiddish within the broader, non-Jewish culture?

JR:  Yeah.  Yes, it's still a place, even though -- if we look from the big picture -- so, the Klezmeritis we have in the '90s -- East Germany, ten years before -- and was because of the -- looking at the history.  But for those -- so, I see the difference between my kids -- I have two born in the '70s, and one 78:00born in 1990.  So, the whole history for Jewish kids, Shoah is still very close, yeah?  But for the kids of the same age, it's far away.  So, as the history disappears more and more, the group of those who are interested in klezmer because it's fun music, and klezmer and Balkan music, let us say -- put us in this box -- is still there.  But it is a special group of people.  These are the people who are going to the klezmer summers, to the Yiddish summer in Weimar.  And, yeah, and this -- Andrea Pancur.  I mean, you have a lot of -- it sounds like Yiddish, yeah, in some German areas, yeah?  You have there -- still some Yiddish, and she made a program about Yiddish in the Bavarian 79:00language, yeah.  So, she put -- was putting there -- things together.  Yeah, it's -- things you can do, but it is for performance and not for daily life, yeah. 

AB:  So, we're sort of -- we're coming to the end of our time, but I want to just ask: is there anything else that you'd want to touch on?

JR:  So, I had -- let me repeat, I think it was -- is important to tell why Yiddish was in East Germany so popular already in the late '70s, early '80s.  That's what I mentioned.  I have to that the East German government -- so, they 80:00-- no, I tell it in a story.  There were youngsters in Leipzig.  They wanted to commemorate the 9th of November, the Kristallnacht.  In Germany, you don't use this word.  It is called the "Pogromnacht."  And they want to commemorate Kristallnacht.  And they came together with candles.  And then, the police came, destroyed it, because it was a non-allowed demonstration, but nobody was arrested.  They were afraid to get in trouble with the Jewish question.  They didn't want to get the term anti-Semitic in their international view.  So, that's why Yiddish opened a space.  And I gave in Alfort a concert in -- for 81:00the night of November 1981.  A big church, and it was crowded.  Hundreds of people were there.  And perhaps, twenty percent came to commemorate the Kristallnacht.  The rest came because something happened there that was not part of the official culture life, yeah?  So -- and that was a very special atmosphere in East Germany, in the '80s.  And that's an important point.  I told you about Yiddish festival, so -- that it's legend that American musicians brought Yiddish back to Germany.  They brought Yiddish back to Germany.  It's a crazy formulation in the formulation itself.  And I told the Hackesche Hoftheater -- I told a little bit about misunderstandings we had with German 82:00klezmer musicians.  A huge topic, because we were the Jews.  (laughs) And what else?  No, I think from my point, we have it.

AB:  And I have just a couple more questions.

JR:  Please.

AB:  How do you think that language has influenced your sense of identity?

JR:  A lot, because till today in our daily life, there are a lot -- Yiddish terms.  Well, also, always in our daily life -- and that makes us different from our non-Jewish neighbors.  So, what we call "Yiddishkayt," when I came with the term "Yiddishkayt" to England, where we developed a lay-leader training, they were very scared about this word, "Yiddishkayt."  "No, no, no, 83:00we want to stay with synagogue music, with Jewish liturgy and not with Yiddishkayt."  So, "Yiddishkayt" is more than only Yiddish language.  It is food, it is behavior.  Or if you are coming into a synagogue where you have many people who converted to Judaism, it's very often pretty cold.  So, what we getting then?  There's missing Yiddishkayt here.  How bring you in Yiddishkayt?  How can you explain it?  I don't know how to explain it.  It's a mixture of way of life, a mixture of food, culture, music, this -- it -- in all terms.  So, Yiddish helped me a lot to stand on -- strongly on my very 84:00special Jewish legs here in the middle of Jewish Germany, yeah?  The synagogue here in East Berlin was yekeshe [German] synagogue.  There were some yidn, but it was yekesh, yeah?  And sometimes, I'm very yekesh.  (laughs) Always on time!  (laughs) So, yes, strongly, very strongly, even though I don't speak to my children Yiddish, but they have also some wordings, some items in their daily life.  I'm curious how much our grandson, Reuben, will take this over.  We will see.  He is sixteen months now.  Proud (UNCLEAR).  (laughs)

AB:  Then what advice do you have, both for aspiring artists and for future generation?

JR:  I didn't get your question.

AB:  What advice do you have for future generations?

JR:  Just move on.  Just trust your path, as my wonderful teacher [Rudi Pankhe?] always said.  Trust your path.  If everybody says you are crazy and you have the feeling "I have to do that," then go on -- and to do it, yeah?  It's what we did with the Tehillim project, where I finally found Tehillim in the Qur'an.  So, just go ahead and do what you need to do, and keep what you have and play with it.  And, ah, that's an important thing.  We say the kavanah [Hebrew: intention] of one generation becomes the kevah [Hebrew: text, lit. "words of prayer"] of the next generation.  So, one -- where we were creative and created something new, the next generation says, "That's the way it 86:00has to be."  But halachah is an ongoing process, so find your own new ways to play with Yiddish.  Find your own new ways.  Ah, and important advice: please translate Itzik Manger into English.  In America, nobody knows Itzik Manger, it -- I'm getting crazy.  All these Jews don't know Itzik Manger.  They have here little song, there little song.  Via Facebook, I just got the message by my beloved colleague, Linda Hirschhorn.  She says, "Oh, I -- you can see me in "The Megile of Itzik Manger."  I said, "Wow!  Great piece!"  My most beloved character is Fastrigosso.  Yeah, everybody who knows "Megile" does not know Fastrigosso.  Fastrigosso, it's that if you have a sewing machine, the counter 87:00thread, the "fastrige" -- and Fastrigosso is the old lover of Esther, and he is a very, very wretched character.  And through Fastrigosso, Manger is teaching us the whole tragedy of Megilat Esther, what we always playing as a fun story.  But Esther lost her own life, so go ahead -- we've got to -- and go do good things.

AB:  Thank you very, very much, both, yeah, on behalf of the Book Center, as well.  Thank you so much.

JR:  And my love to the National Yiddish Book Center.

[END OF INTERVIEW]