PAUL AZAROFF ORAL HISTORY

ISAAC MOORE:This is Isaac Moore, and today is February 10th, 2015. I am here with -- (laughs) -- oh my God, sorry --

PAUL AZAROFF: Paul Azaroff.

IM:I forgot your name. (laughs) I'm a little nervous. Okay, I'll restart. This is Isaac Moore, and today is February 10th, 2015. I'm here with Paul Azaroff in Boca Raton, Florida, and we are going to record an oral history interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Paul, do I have your permission to record?

PA:You certainly do.

IM:Thank you. So, I'd like to start out by talking about your family background.

PA:Um-hm.

IM:Can you tell me briefly what you know about your family background?

PA:Oh, sure. Yeah. My immediate family -- my mother came from a city called 1:00Białystok, which is in the northeast part of Poland. And she came to America in 1929 with her sister and her mother to join a third sister who had been here since before World War I. She left behind her father, two brothers -- married, children -- they all died in the Holocaust. They didn't want to come to America. And, you know, they were urged to come here -- they didn't want to come. My father was born in New York City. He was born in 1908, and his parents came to America in 1905 from a city in Belarus called Gomel, or Homel'. And they lived in the Lower East Side. And my father was working for a man named Paul Bernstein. And Paul came to work one day and said, "I've got two sisters-in-law just arrived from Europe. If you marry one of them, I'll make you a partner in the business." (laughs) So, he went to the house, he met the two sisters, and chose my mother -- and married her. He spoke a little bit of Yiddish. She spoke only Yiddish, Polish, Esperanto, but not English. And then, six months later or 2:00five months later, the Depression happened, and my father had no work. They were out on the street. And my mother was pregnant. (laughs) And so, that was the beginning of my family. Four years later, I came along.

IM:Do you have any stories about your grandparents?

PA:Yes. Well, my grandmother came to America, and she spoke only Yiddish. Wouldn't learn English, didn't have to learn English, 'cause New York was such a Jewish city that she did very, very well speaking Yiddish. And she was my best pal. I loved her, and she loved me. I hung out with her. And I only spoke Yiddish to her. My mother didn't learn English for my years, either, so she spoke Yiddish. And my father spoke Yiddish to her. So, Yiddish was the language of the house. And when I started going to school, they wanted me to go to yeshiva. And I went for three days and I --

IM:Great.

PA:-- I wouldn't go to yeshiva. So, I went to English school -- public school. But after school, I went to kheyder [traditional religious school], for Hebrew, and then Sundays I went to Yiddish school.

IM:So -- great. I'd like to talk about the house you grew up in. Can you --

PA:Yeah.

IM:-- describe the physical space of your home?

PA:Well, we moved. My mother found that if -- in those days, if you moved to a new apartment, they gave you a paint job and a month's free rent. So, we must have moved ten times before I was five years old, it seems to me. We lived in a lot of -- but always within a block or two of -- always in the same area. But we moved a lot. So, we -- but -- and we rented. My father was -- chased pigeons. Do you know what that is, pigeon chasing? Well, it's very common among Jews and Italians -- and Arabs, also. We had a roof -- on whatever house, build-- whatever apartment we rented, my father made sure we had a flat roof. He'd put coops up there. He had hundreds of pigeons. And in the morning, he'd get -- when he was off, he'd take a great, big bamboo pole with a red rag and chase the pigeons. And they'd fly around in cir-- beautiful circles, all around, ever widening. As soon as a neighbor who had pigeons saw my father's flock was out, he'd send his pigeons out, hoping the two flocks would intertwine, and when they came back to roost, he'd have some of my father's better pigeons. Then the 4:00dealing would start: I want my pigeon back. What will you give me? And if they couldn't settle, you could send a kid up to steal your pigeon back. And then, it got kind of dangerous. And so, we always had pigeons, and my father was a pigeon trayber -- we call them a pigeon chaser. And that's why we always had roofs -- wherever we went, my father looked at the roof, not the apartment. It didn't matter about that. And my mother used to report him, because the pigeons brought rats, you see? And so, my father said, "I don't know who the hell snitched on me." (laughs) My mother always kept -- we knew -- my mother knew. But she always was reporting it to the health department for the rat-- his pigeons were bringing rats into the backyard.

IM:To get back to the home --

PA:Yes.

IM:What about your house felt Jewish growing up?

PA:Oh. Well, we spoke Yiddish. We were Orthodox. We were kosher. I couldn't use a pair of scissors on Shabbos. I couldn't turn the radio on Shabbos. It was -- you know. We ate only Jewish food. I remember once going to the movies and I won 5:00a bag of groceries. And it was -- things like peanut butter and popcorn and all kinds of American stuff -- macaroni and cheese. My mother couldn't read the label. She got really mad at me for bringing such food into the house. You know? (laughs) And she said -- so we didn't even know American food. To this day, I can't eat peanut butter. It's somehow a very strange, exotic food that I don't even taste. But it was a very Jewish house. And Yom Kippur, my mother would always put a -- had a special -- I still have it -- a tablecloth that would go on the table with a siddur, a prayer book. And the yortsayt likht, the candle you light for the memory of the dead, and that would be a sign that we don't eat that day. It was a very Jewish home. And also, the conversation was very Jewish. My mother had endless stories. I thought she was making them up, and I was a lousy eater. And whenever she would -- to get me to eat, she would tell me a story. I don't know if she ever repeated a story twice. And I thought she was making up stories. And she's talking about black Jews in Ethiopia called Falashas and all kinds of things like that. And later on, I went to university 6:00and I was studying -- I realized, these were all true things -- maybe a little bit garbled, but she knew a lot. So, I grew up in a very Jewish household. Very Jewish.

IM:Who were the people in your house growing up?

PA:Well, my sister is four years older. Her name's Libbe -- Libe -- Libby. And my father, my mother. My grandmother off and on lived with us, but she and my father didn't get along, so she'd move out and then she'd move back in, and so it was back and forth. And we had a big networked family. We had my mother's sisters and my father had five brothers and sisters and their families, so it was a lot -- big family. And that was -- my father's family are very American. They were a very all Amer-- my father was the only one married to a non-American person. The special word for it -- non-American Jew -- was called "maki [embarrassment, lit. "plague"]." And that was a terrible word. And once in a while, my father's family would refer to me as "the maki son," and I hated that, you know? (laughs) Because my mother spoke Yiddish and didn't speak English. So, it was a real divide.

IM:And how did that divide manifest itself in the home?

PA:Well, it didn't manifest it in the home as much as my feelings. I loved my mother's family and I really didn't like my father's family. They were strange to me. They didn't have our customs, our ways, our mannerisms. So, there was a barrier. And I loved my -- my mother had two sisters. Her older sister had been an opera singer, but since she came to America, she didn't pursue that, but she had a beautiful voice. And we sang in Yiddish. And I loved going to my aunt Pearl's house. She was a wonderful cook and she would always sing and I loved her music. And the other sister played in the mandolin orchestra in New York City. And she was completely involved with Jewish culture and Jewish language and everything Jewish. And so, it was a very Jewish world we lived in. I always -- when I went to Poland, I felt very much at home there. And I felt I grew up in Brooklyn, Poland, you know? (laughs) Because I felt my life was so much more like the life that I saw in Poland than it was American life, you know?

IM:As a young boy, you spoke Yiddish with your grandmother. Can you tell me more 8:00about her?

PA:Oh, my bobe [grandmother]. (laughs) My bobe. She was a vegetarian. We don't know why, but she took an oath some time in her young life that if something happened, she would give up meat, and she never tou-- she ate -- mostly, she ate apples. Her room was full of apples and she smelled like apples. She never changed her clothes from the turn of the century, so she wore high button shoes. And she wore long black dresses with little white flowers and sleeves with lace at the end up to here and up to here. And she wore a sheytl [traditional women's head covering], which was red. But her own hair would peek out. I always couldn't figure out why bobe had red hair up here and white hair on the sides, you know? And then one day -- my mother was in business years later, and I was around nine, ten years old, and my bobe was sleeping, and my mother said, "Go wake her up. We're gonna have some tea." And I went into the bedroom. It was dark. My bobe was in the bed, but her head was on the dresser. (laughs) And I came out screaming, "Bobe's head is on the dresser!" "No, no, no." She explained to me, "Bobe has a sheytl, and that's a form." And she says, "She's okay." 9:00(laughs) So, I learned my bobe was wearing a wig. I didn't know that. But she had the most amazing earlobes. She had two sort of silver raspberry earrings that hung down her long earlobes, and the holes of her earlobes were really, really big. And she was living there with my aunt Pearl and there was a stoop. She sat on the stoop on the chair. And she'd always teach me Yiddish songs. And if I sat at the right angle while she's teaching me, I could look through her earlobes into the window and see my aunt Pearl combing her hair. (laughs) So, I used to lie to myself and look through the world through my bobe's -- the hole in her ear. Because she had these wonderful, big earlobes with these big holes, you see? And so -- I don't know if that's answering you, but anyway, that's one of my memories of bobe. She was wonderful. She was great. And I still miss her to this day. They didn't let me go to the funeral because they thought I'd be hurt, but I think I was more damaged by not going and saying goodbye to her. And so, I didn't (UNCLEAR). And I still feel she's around somehow, which maybe is not a bad thing.

IM:Can you tell me more about your relationship with her in the home?

PA:Oh, yeah. My bobe loved shmates [rags]. You know what shmates are -- you know, junk. And when you saw her coming -- she'd be coming down the street -- I could see her two blocks away, walking. And she'd go -- and in those days in New York, you'd put your garbage in front of the house to be picked up. And she'd go to every garbage pail and she'd bring me trucks and dolls -- all stuff -- my mother would throw it out. She goes, "You can't have it. It's shmutsik [dirty] from the garbage." And she would yell at my grandmother. "Vos tustu, what are you doing? Why are you giving him such junk?" And I used to then take it out of the garbage and clean it up. And I loved the toys she brought me. She brought me a boat that was half broken, but it -- I used to take it to the water and the ocean in Rockaway and it was fine. So, we had a special relationship. And she also had -- she sold buttons. There was a street in Brooklyn called Blake Avenue where people had pushcarts, and they would sell bananas and they would sell pants and they would sell everything from pushcarts. And my bobe had a sta-- 11:00outside of a kosher butcher shop, she had a stand where she put bricks and boards and she sold buttons. I don't think two buttons matched. But people used to come looking for a button that matched a dress they had, and they'd find buttons. But while she was doing that, people would go into -- the back of the butcher shop was cages full of chickens, and people would come and pick out a chicken and then have the shoykhet [ritual slaughterer] kill -- slaughter it and bring it to my grandma to flick it. She was a chicken flicker. So, she'd sit there selling buttons and plucking chickens. And when she got to the pin feather, she'd singe them in a little -- like a Bunsen burner, and I love that smell to this day, the smell of burnt feathers. But I used to sit with her and try to sell buttons and clean up the feathers after she had a big bunch around her. And it was like magic. She was a magical lady for me. Flicked chickens, sold buttons, told stories. Had two colors hair. Had earlobes you could look through. Amazing lady. (laughs)

IM:What was important about that relationship with her -- to you?

PA:I knew she loved me. And we had a special bond. I just knew it. My sister 12:00didn't care for her at all and has no memories hardly of her. My brother wasn't born. He's named for her. He was born a year after she died. But we had a special relationship. And I thought she was magic to me. She was just wonderful. Also, I used to go up to her room. And she was very -- she went to shul every day. Every single day. She loved -- she was very, very Orthodox. Very religious. And very superstitious, also -- a little bit of a witch, you know -- (laughs). And I'd go into her room and she'd be sitting in her rocking chair. She had one window in her room. There's a book called "Tsene urene" -- a women's prayer book -- and she'd be sitting there and davening and crying. And I used to love watching her. And this, she'd sort of withdraw from me. And even that was wonderful, 'cause I just would watch her, and her body language was so different than anyone else that I knew in my world in those days.

IM:Do you remember which shul she attended?

PA:I know it was on Wyona Street. I don't know the name of the shul. But years later, when I got married in Winnipeg, the rabbi who married me had been the rabbi of that shul on Wyona Street. And I had to prove I was Jewish. I said, "How can you ask me to prove? I speak Yiddish. I speak Hebrew. I know your shul 13:00on Wyona Street. My bobe was" -- you have to bring -- I mean, I had to have documents to show that I was Jewish for him. But I don't know the name of the shul, no.

IM:Your family subscribed to several newspapers.

PA:Yes. Yeah. We always had -- daily -- the "Forverts" and the "Tog." I would go to the store around the corner, Bea's Candy Store, and I'd pick up two newspapers. And then on Shabbos weekends, the "Bialystoker" came -- that was a special newspaper -- a weekly newspaper -- from my mother's town of Białystok. She was very proud of her city. And I remember it was sepia-colored. It was brown -- it wasn't black-and-white, it was sepia tones. And my bobe would insist that I read the captions. It was all full of pictures -- pictures that were current events -- and I had to read all the captions under each picture. And I used to love doing that for them. They were so proud of me that I could read Yiddish.

IM:When did you read the newspapers?

PA:I was about eight, nine, ten years old. It wasn't the newspaper, it was just the captions under each -- it was a whole paper full of pictures. "Bialystoker," 14:00it was called. And I used to -- it was my job to read the captions. And I used to read to them. I don't know how well I did it, but I read. And they were proud.

IM:Did your family ever listen to the radio --

PA:Yes.

IM:-- growing up?

PA:Yes. We listened to Jewish radio all the time. All the time. We used to come home from school for lunch, and it was always Yiddish programs on the radio. And in the evening, it'd be Yiddish programs. There was a serial -- I remember "Kinder on a heym -- Children without a Home" -- that we used to listen to once a week, and it was really a tear-jerker. And -- yeah. My mother always had -- WEVD was on all the time. And also, every Thursday night, my family would go to a special store to buy records -- one record a week. And we could pick it out. And it was either Jewish -- either Yiddish or Russian. Those were the only two kinds of records we had. Russian music, 'cause we loved Russian music, and Yiddish music. So, we had a fantastic collection of 78s. But every Thursday, we got a new one. And we had to talk about which -- what we're getting.

IM:Do you remember any of the names of the artists?

PA:Oh, sure. Of course I do. Yeah. The Barry Sisters, Jan Peerce, Moshe Koussevitzky, Prince Nazimoff -- ah, Prince Nazimoff in New York City -- Nazaroff or Nazimoff? I think it was Nazimoff. He used to -- he was a batkhn [wedding entertainer]. Do you know what a batkhn is? A batkhn -- at a wedding, you would have somebody come along, and he would make you laugh and cry. He would tell, "Bride, you're gonna be married now. Your mother's gonna make you crazy. You're gonna have to work and your husband's gonna abandon you." And then he'd make you laugh and cry, laugh and cry -- like Chinese food, sweet and sour. Anyway, but my mother had a business in a place called Rockaway. And people went to the beach. It was second house on the beach. And that's what they did. But on a rainy day, what did you do? They sat on the porch. And Prince Nazimoff would go from house to house, and he would come on the porch and ask your name and then make a song about you. Right on the spot. Rhyming. On the spot. And we used to wait for him to come. And then he had records, so we had some of his records, 16:00also. Yeah.

IM:Did you read as a young child?

PA:Yeah. Avid reader. I had a big library of books. Yeah. I used to read a lot. Yeah. But mostly, my reading -- here's what happened. My mother had two brothers and her father -- my grandfather -- I've never met them -- and their families. And they all died in the Holocaust. And then when the war was over, my mother wrote to the Red Cross to find out what happened to her family. And about a year later, in '46, a letter came one day. And it said they were all gone and told my mother the story of what -- as much as they knew. And that gave me a tremendous feeling of guilt. While I was going to Rockaway Beach with my mother every summer and eating ice cream cones and hanging out with my friends, my family was dying. And so, I decided I had to do something. And what I had to do was, I had to do something for my people in return for the fact that I didn't suffer. So, I developed the idea of Zionism. I was gonna go to Israel, I was gonna live in a kibbutz, and I was gonna work, and I was gonna do something for my people by 17:00building a new country. So, I became an avid Zionist. I read every book on Israel and Palestine. And then I went into Egyptian history -- anything that was even a bit tangential to Judaism, I wanted to have also. I just used every book in the library. I used to bring home seven, eight books. And so, became a Zionist. And eventually, I joined a Zionist organization, 'cause I found there were other people like me who also wanted to do something about building a home. And so, that became my life after that. And that got me to Israel, of course.

IM:You mentioned feeling guilty about --

PA:Yeah.

IM:-- about having a nice time?

PA:Yeah, well --

IM:What did your parents think about your feelings?

PA:They didn't know. That was my secret. I never told anybody what I was feeling. Never told anybody. Until years later. They had no idea. Just knew I was interested in Israel. But they didn't know that my motivation was the fact that my mother's family -- my family -- were all killed -- and while I was enjoying myself and not feeling anything. And so, I needed to -- I made a vow to 18:00myself, I would do something with my life to balance it out somehow, you know? And so -- and I -- when I went to Israel, I was miserable at first. I went in 1950. I was homesick and I got sick in Israel. And one of our neighbors, who was a survivor of the Holocaust, Mrs. Kessler, lived next door, and she gave me -- just as I was leaving to go to Israel, she gave me "The Black Book of Polish Jewry," a book of pictures and documents all about the Holocaust. And when I was in Israel, really homesick, I would look at that book every night and I knew I couldn't leave I had to -- this book kept me there. Until about a year later, I was no longer feeling homesick. But for the first year, I felt homesick every single night. I wanted to go home. And that book helped -- kept me there.

IM:Thank you. I want to get back to talking about your family now.

PA:Yes.

IM:What were the most important holidays or events during the year growing up for your family?

PA:Jewish holidays. We didn't know about goyische holidays. We knew Christians 19:00had Christmas. We lived in an all-Jewish neighborhood, so -- I think I liked Simchas Torah the best of all, 'cause we'd go to shul -- it was down the corner -- there was a shul on every block, but the shul down the corner, Mrs. Schulman used to make chickpeas -- called arbes -- big, wooden barrel full of 'em, with lots of pepper -- and I always put my hand -- we could eat all the -- and then you had an apple with a flag and a candle, and you walked around with this candle -- they don't allow that now, 'cause of fire regulations, but in those days, they didn't have that. And it was just wonderful walking around and taking out the Torah, dancing with the Torah. So, I liked that holiday. I liked Pesach. I liked Hanukkah. It was not like today -- we didn't get -- we got some money. We used to play cards on Hanukkah and roll hazelnuts. We put a board on a slant and rolled them and drew a line. Whoever got close to the line won all the hazelnuts. And I liked all the holidays. We celebrated them all some way or the other. Some are happy, some are sad. But we were -- I went to Jewish school. My mother was also, you know. My father didn't care about religion, so he didn't -- 20:00he stayed out of it most of the time. He wasn't part of it. He liked the food. (laughs)

IM:Were there any foods you particularly liked, celebrating these holidays?

PA:I liked everything my mother cooked. I thought she was a wonderful cook. My sister says, "Mama was a terrible cook." I say, "I think she was wonderful." So, whatever she made -- she made blintzes, you know, and she made kugel that was great and she made rice pudding. And she -- we had bagels and lox every Sunday morning, of course, like most Jewish New York families. And I liked it all. I liked it a lot. I had never eaten treyf [not kosher]. I remember the first time I ever had treyf, it was, like, it really felt -- to this day, if I eat shrimp or pork -- and I do -- I always feel guilty about it. I'm aware I'm eating it, you know -- I'm aware that it's not just food. It's something that I shouldn't be doing, but I do, 'cause I like it, and I don't care anymore. But we grew up in a -- you know, eating Jewish food.

IM:Why do you think you'd feel guilty about eating --

PA:'Cause it was inculcated into me at a young age, that there's this treyf, 21:00this is forbidden, we're not supposed -- Jews don't eat this. I don't really believe that much that food is that important. My grandchildren would die if they heard me saying this, 'cause they're so frum [pious] -- they're so ultra-Orthodox. But they know that I'm not kosher. So, I break taboos, 'cause I really don't care about rules like that. I don't think that God really cares about what I put into my mouth. And so, I eat it, but I'm always aware when I'm eating it that I'm eating something I shouldn't be eating. (laughs) The thought never fails to pass my mind.

IM:Is that difficult to engage with?

PA:No. No, not at all. Actually, I've done it for so long now that it's not -- you know. I remember being in Paris and some friends took me to a very, very good restaurant. They said, Don't ask what you're gonna have. So, I ate this dish and it was delicious. And finally I said, "What is it?" And they said, It's calamari. And I said, "What's that?" And they said, Squid. And I felt I had to throw up. I didn't throw up, but I felt -- I got sick -- the idea. So, I knew it was psychological. I enjoyed the food; once I knew what it was, then I got sick on it, 'cause it was calamari -- squid, you know? But no, I don't -- it's not a 22:00struggle. It's just being aware of -- and I think, Hm, that's the Jew in me, you know? (laughs) The Jew in me is aware that that's not -- that's forbidden food, but it's good. (laughs) No more than that. Yeah.

IM:Okay. I'd like to talk about the community and neighborhood now. So, you were born in and grew up in Brooklyn, New York --

PA:Yes.

IM:-- during the thirties and forties.

PA:Yes.

IM:Can you describe your neighborhood?

PA:Yes. It was mostly Jewish. And it was a very close neighborhood. We lived in each other's homes. My mother, if she cooked, she'd send food over to her neighbor, if the neighbor cooked. We also had a few Italian families, and they joined us, also. But Mary, who lived next door, was Italian, knew that we were kosher, so she would send over -- if she made something that we could eat -- then she would send over spoons and plates -- so my mother wouldn't allow us -- in the backyard, we could eat it. So, I was eating treyf even then, I guess, yeah -- with Mary. But she was the only person whose food I ate that was not Jewish. Other than that, we ate in each other's homes. We did homework together 23:00in each other's homes. We played ball on the street. And, you know, it was a very -- it was a nice -- a very good neighborhood. And we had a good life on the street.

IM:Did you live in a Jewish-specific area of Brooklyn?

PA:Yeah, most certainly. Yeah. It was a very Jewish neighborhood. And you could get by just speaking Yiddish in that neighborhood. A lot of the kids would play on the street in Yiddish, because our parents spoke Yiddish at home. And I really started to learn English -- really -- when I went to kindergarten. I told you I went to yeshiva for a few weeks, and then I went to public school. And in the public school, they had Yiddish-speaking teachers in kindergarten -- Mrs. Weissman, who could speak to me the first few days in Yiddish. But it didn't take me long -- I don't think -- how long -- a month, and I was speaking English. Well, I knew some of it, because I had heard it, but the fact is that she had -- they had to edge us in. And my class was ninety-eight percent Jewish. We may have had one Italian girl, I remember, who was in our class, and one (UNCLEAR), a little black boy, he would sit in our class. And the rest was all Jewish. So, in many ways, they had more trouble fitting in than we did, you 24:00know? (laughs)

IM:Who were your friends growing up in the neighborhood?

PA:Oh, well, every kid on the street was my friend. I had an Italian friend, Sonny. He was my best pal. I had a friend Marty, he lived a few blocks away. And then there were two girls on the streets who were in my class, Rozzy and Elaine. There was a doctor's son, Lionel. The street was full of kids my age. But what happened was that I was about nine years old, and one day, my father and mother and I went for a shpatsir -- that's just an aimless walk, a stroll. We used to do that after dinner. And we walked, and on the corner of my street, there was an empty store. It had been empty for years, it seemed to me. I thought of it as a haunted place. And we walked up to that store and I looked in the window and I saw boys and girls dancing horas, dancing in circles. And I felt there was something going on in that room that was something I needed to help -- to be part of. But I couldn't walk in, I didn't belong there. It was a club of some 25:00sort. And they all were wearing blue shirts with white strings here. And I saw them, and I thought about them. And for about a month, I used to look through the window. And then one day, they were gone. And I felt like I had lost something. And about three months later -- two months later -- I was walking way down on Sutter Avenue, way, way out of my neighborhood, and I see people with blue shirts and white going upstairs into a building. So, I follow them up. And it was them again -- they had moved. And they became my life. That was a Zionist organization, very left-wing. And I had all new friends then. And I lived my life there. I was always there -- every day of the week I would go there. And Saturday and Sunday we were together, and Friday night was a big night for us. And there, my two worlds came together -- my interest in Zionism and this movement which was gonna take you to Israel.

IM:Can you tell me the name of this organization?

PA:Hashomer Hatzair, the Young Guard. You've heard of it?

IM:Yes.

PA:Oh, okay. Hashomer Hatzair. It was wonderful.

IM:What sort of activities did you do?

PA:We used to go on picnics. We used to go to see -- (laughs) -- we had a thing. About eight of us -- we would go -- on a Saturday night, we would go by train from Manhattan. And we waited till the plays were half through. People go out into the street during the theater. And -- especially if it was a play that had been on for a while -- then we'd go into the theater and hold back until we could see what seats were empty and see the second half of every single thing on Broadway. And before that, we'd go to Rappaport's Restaurant on the Lower East Side, 'cause if you went in there and you ordered a cup of coffee, you had access to a big metal bin full of onion rolls. And so, there would be eight of us, and one would order coffee -- (laughs) -- and the rest would grab all the rolls. And they never said a word to us. So, we all had rolls to eat. That was enough, you know? And we could go into the city and have a wonderful time in Manhattan. See a play, walk around, eat rolls, and go home. And the whole thing was the cost of a subway ticket. So, that was an activity. We used to go away to summer camp together -- up in the Catskill Mountains we had a big summer camp, and I loved going there every year. And mostly we had classes on Zionism, on 27:00Marxism -- we read "Das Kapital" from Karl Marx, of course, and we had to learn about dialectical materialism, you know? But we also learned Hebrew songs and Yiddish songs and talked about Israel. And -- oh, we also had something known as shlikhim -- a couple who would come from Israel for two years to be with us and to inculcate us into Israeli life. And they were magical people. They were really wonderful. And that was a new kind of a Jew -- not like my mother, not my father, but people who had lived and worked on a farm and had muscles and saw how -- you know, and didn't wear makeup and had a purpose in life. And I was really mesmerized. I wanted to be just like them. So, it was -- I don't know if I've answered your question.

IM:How did you use Yiddish in this organization?

PA:Oh, only -- we didn't -- all of us spoke Yiddish, I think, for most of us, 'cause most of us were kids of parents who had come from the Old Country, so Yiddish was a common thing. We sang in Yiddish songs -- Yiddish folk songs. I 28:00remember one girl from California, Shoshanna, who taught me how to eat my first avocado -- (laughs) -- and she sang the song "Margeritkelekh [Little daisies]." It was a wonderful Yiddish folk song. I had never heard it before, for some reason. And I loved her, because she sang so beautifully. And I loved that song -- I still do, to this day. And so, we learned Yiddish songs. We learned Russian songs, communist songs -- we sang Italian communist songs -- "Avanti Popolo." And we also made fun of the American government -- Goodbye, America, goodbye forever, we're off to Palestine because we are so clever -- you know, things like that. Goodbye, Yankee fashions, the hell with your depressions -- you know, and things like that. So, it was sort of a very renegade kind of group. We were doing very brave things, we thought. But the idea was, we would all go live in a kibbutz and be farmers and milk cows and spend our lives rebuilding the Jewish people. That was our goal. And I did. (laughs) I did.

IM:You mentioned earlier, you attended the Yiddish theater --

PA:Yes.

IM:-- in Manhattan?

PA:Well, in Brooklyn first. My first memory was, I was about four years old, and we went to the Hopkinson Theatre, which was very close to -- it was like a short bus ride -- it was a Yiddish theater in Brooklyn. And I had never been to the theater before that of any kind. And the curtains parted, and the reds were redder than anything I had ever seen, and the blues were -- the colors were magnificent. I couldn't get over the colors. The play was a love story; I don't think I understood it. Not that I didn't understand Yiddish, but I didn't understand love -- I was a little boy. It didn't matter. I loved the colors, I loved the lights, I loved where I was sitting. And then we went all the time to Second Avenue -- and also to Hopkinson, whenever there was -- my mother loved theater, and we went with her to the theater a lot. And then later on, because I learned there was also Broadway. I never knew there was an English theater; I thought theater was a Jewish thing, you know? But we went to the theater a lot. And Yiddish movies, also, because we had a lot of Yiddish movies playing in those days. To this day, I have a club, and once a month, I show one of those Yiddish films from the 1930s. And they love it, you know, 'cause it's a great 30:00document of --

IM:Do you have any favorite actors or performances?

PA:Well, of course, there's Molly Picon and there's Maurice Schwartz -- and Herschel Bernardi -- the young Herschel Bernardi in "Grine felder [Green fields]." And yeah, a lot of them. But I don't know if I have -- it isn't the -- these films weren't that great. Maybe "The Dybbuk" was great, you know, and -- there were a few good ones, but most of them were really B-movies. It's what they preserved: the streets, the body language, the clothing, the gestures, the language. And so, when I look at these films, I'm looking at them not so much for the artistry, though sometimes it's there. I'm looking for a way of life that has by accident been documented on film, especially those films made in Poland. These people knew. When Norman Jewison made "Fiddler on Roof," it's Jewish life as seen through the eyes of a non-Jew. And it's nice -- it's a wonderful film -- but something is missing. And when you see "Tevye der milkhiker [Tevye the dairyman], which is the same stories as -- you know -- and with Maurice Schwartz, you just know that this is how life was. This is how my 31:00grandparents lived their lives -- my great-grandparents. And so, I love the Yiddish films because of that.

IM:Do you remember how you reacted to seeing these performances as a young boy?

PA:It's like my mother telling me a great story. I just would go -- my jaw would drop open, my eyes would get big, and I'd just sit there and I'd just let it wash over me. I just loved it. I loved it. But I still do that when I see a great movie today -- I feel the same way. I just love being told a good story.

IM:Can you briefly tell me about your education, both in terms of general education --

PA:Sure.

IM:-- and Jewish life?

PA:Well, I went to public school, but at the same time, I went to Yiddish school once a week and to Hebrew school till my bar mitzvah. But then I took Hebrew in high school -- they allowed us to have Hebrew as a foreign language. So, I took Hebrew, because I was preparing to go to Israel. And then I graduated high school -- I was very young -- I was fifteen when I graduated, because they had something, rapid advance, where you could skip a term every other term, and I kept on skipping. So, when I was fifteen, my father and I had a really bad 32:00relationship. And I was getting bigger, and my mother was afraid that I was going to defend myself. He used to beat me badly -- all the time. And so, she was afraid. So, when I said to her, "I want to go to Israel," she -- my aunt Pearl -- my mother's older sister -- had passed away and left me a few thousand dollars. She says, "You'll go to" -- and we had just discovered that my mother's cousin, Riva, had -- in Paris -- Renée? -- had survived the Holocaust and was hidden in an attic. And she was in Paris, living with the man who saved her life. Her husband was killed. And another Riva, who was a Yiddish actress, had been in Uzbekistan, and she came to Paris to play in the theater -- her name was [Riva Kalezhnikov?] -- she and her husband were well-known Yiddish actors. And then, their brother -- two brothers -- had survived and were in Israel and married and had families. And a cousin was in London. So, my mother planned that I should go to London, go to Paris, meet the mishpokhe [family], and then go to Israel. And it was very cheap -- it was, like, seventy-five dollars from Marseilles to Haifa, I remember. So, I went to London, and my cousin met me in 33:00London. And I remember -- I went on the Queen Elizabeth, the boat -- the first. And there was mostly old people on that ship. And there was a young man -- nineteen, eighteen years old -- who was from Idaho, I think, and he was going to go to England -- Europe -- to ride the bike. But since I was the only other young person, we used to hang out together. But he was a goy. (laughs) I had heard stories about goyim, you see, so he scared me. (laughs) He was a good American boy -- a bicycle guy, you know? A young kid. He didn't kill Jews. But to me, I didn't know. I had heard about goyim, and I knew the people on my street were not goyim, and the non-Jews I met were black, were Italian, and they weren't goyim, so he must be it. So, he wanted to know if I wanted to share a room with him when we got to London. So, my cousin was at the train where I -- you get off the boat and you take a train from Southampton into London. And I said, "Get him away from me." He said, "What's wrong?" I said, "He's a goy." My cousin -- he's crazy, you know. So he said, "Okay." I felt badly about that, 'cause I never said goodbye to this kid. And so, I was in London with my cousin for a month. Then, I went to Paris. And I thought my family had written ahead to 34:00my aunt -- or my cousin -- I call her an aunt 'cause she's older than me -- she's my second cousin. I thought my family had written that I was coming. So, I get to Paris and nobody's there to meet me. I didn't have much money, so I found a very cheap hotel -- it was a brothel, actually, I didn't know it -- run by some Chinese people. I had a room way at the top floor. And all I had was a note to my aunt. And she wrote -- the name of the street was C-h-a and I couldn't make out -- there was, like, a long line -- it could be any letter of the alphabet. Thank God, the phone books in Paris are arranged not by name but by address, so all the streets were arranged alphabetically. So, I found about seven streets that start with C-h-a. And I spent the next two days walking to every one of those streets till I found Rue Chaudron. And I found the house -- the numbers I could read. And my aunt -- the cousin, Riva -- was in Holland. And the concierge came to the door and said -- you know what a concierge is, it's the -- you know, the -- and it was like an atrium house with -- a tall building 35:00-- that's the house she was hidden in throughout the war, in an attic. And so, I -- she said, "She's in Holland. She's in Holland." So, I went back to the hotel, and all I had to eat was -- I would go out every day and buy a loaf of French bread and a Brie cheese. And my little brother's kindergarten teacher had come to the boat to say goodbye to me for some reason. She brought me a big, round thing full of coffee sucking candies -- coffee. So, every night, I put a candy into a glass of water -- and you shouldn't drink the water in France anyway, in those days -- and I would dissolve it. So, in the morning, I had a dissolved candy and a piece of cheese and bread, and that was my -- and I tried to make that last the whole day. That went on for like, two days, till about the third day, I hear voices through the elevator. "Azaroff, Azaroff!" I go downstairs, and there's Riva -- she's come back from Holland. She took me back to her apartment. And it was an amazing apartment. It had no bath -- no toilet. To wash, you went to the public bath once a week. Otherwise, you had a big shisl [bowl], and you -- (laughs) -- washed yourself. And she was a wonderful cook, and I loved her food. Her French fried potatoes were unbelievable. Her steaks 36:00were great. But one day, we went to the store to buy some meat, and it was horse meat. Ugh! (laughs) I saw a dead horse in the window, and I realized, she's buying pieces of that horse! So, I never ate meat again after that in her house. I didn't know. And I stayed there for about a few weeks, and then I took a train to Marseilles and got on the boat -- the Negba. It was four days from Marseilles to Haifa. And that was a story in itself, 'cause on that boat were two famous people: Lena Horne and Sholem Asch. Lena Horne -- I think I saw her once, I'm not even sure. In that boat, the whole steerage was full of Moroccan children being taken to Israel -- orphans, the children of -- I don't know, but a whole boatload of children, and she was down there all the time with them. She had married a Jewish guy in Paris, a French Jew, and so she was in those days quite involved with Jewish things in Israel. But up on board, on the top deck, the ship was full of people from Austria, from France, from all countr-- all going to Israel to see families they hadn't seen since the war -- before the war. And 37:00sitting on top of the ship holding court was Sholem Asch. And he's talking about how wonderful America is -- how the Jews in America are rich and they have power and they're -- you know, wonderful. And I was a left-winger, so I would say things like, "There are poor Jews in America and they're exploited." And then, finally, to seal the whole thing off, I said what my mother used to say about him: "Everybody knows you converted to Christianity," 'cause he wrote books about Jesus and Mary. His purpose was to show their Jewishness, but people misunderstood -- anyway, he grabbed me by the neck, wanted to kill me. He started to choke me. So, they grab-- pulled him away from me, and they said to me, I cannot be in the same room with him. And I got to Haifa. And waiting at the port there was my two uncles -- I call them uncles, but they're my mother's cousins -- Nasha and Herschel. And they're calling, Azaroff! Azaroff! And I waved to them and I came down. And they took me to Misha -- my uncle Misha lived in Haifa with his wife and family. It was very close by to the port. And they 38:00had a big party -- about thirty, forty people in that room -- all knowing my mother, my grandmother -- you know, all glad to see me. And it was really -- I was overwhelmed much too fast, you know? And then they all left. And at night -- Misha had two children. They weren't his children. His family had died in the Holocaust. He married a woman who was widowed who had a boy and a girl, and the girl, Fanny, had the same name as Misha's daughter, who was killed. So, he really loved Fanny like she was a reincarnation of his daughter. And it was a happy marriage, too. He loved Carola. She was a wonderful woman. So, I took Fannie and Avi, the two kids, for a walk on Herzl Street in Haifa and bought them ice cream. And I bought myself an ice cream cone. And it was terrible -- it was saccharine. I threw it away. And the kids were so insulted. Why did you throw it away, they said to me. And I said, "Because I didn't like it." And they said, You should've given it to us. You know, 'cause they had -- it was terrible austerity in Israel at the time -- terrible austerity. In fact, the next day, Fanny was eating my Colgate's toothpaste. She thought it was delicious -- she 39:00was licking it. She thought it was wonderful. And anyway, so there was great poverty in Israel at the time.

IM:As a native Yiddish speaker, what was it like to be in Israel during this time?

PA:Well, it was -- well, yeah. Misha never learned Hebrew, and his wife, Carola, came from Poland, so they spoke Yiddish. Even the kids knew Yiddish. But it was funny, 'cause I spoke American Yiddish. So, when I -- my mother had written a letter to them saying -- telling about -- saying, "Ikh hob a fir-rum apartment [I have a four-room apartment]." But in Israel, they say, "Ikh hob a fir-tsimerdike dire [I have a four-room apartment]" -- you know, so not "room," "apartment," but "dire," and not -- anyway, so my aunt says to me, "Your mother is sick." I said, "No, she's not sick." "Yes, your mother wrote. She has rheumatism." "Fir-rum." (laughs) She thought that meant she has rheumatism. I said, "No, no." And I didn't know how to say "dire" in those days, but I learned very quickly, there was American Yiddish and there was Yiddish Yiddish, and I 40:00had to learn to speak Yiddish Yiddish. But also, Carola came from Warsaw, and she had a Polish accent. And when I came back to America years later and I said "yo [yes]" instead of "ye" -- which a Litvak says -- my mother says, "Where did you learn to speak that way?" (laughs) You know, 'cause I learned to speak from Carola her kind of Yiddish a little bit, too. But then I want-- my aunt says I sp-- I knew some Hebrew. And I -- within a few months -- I was very young, and I knew some Hebrew -- I was speaking Hebrew -- you know, maybe not the best, but over the years, I went to university in Isr-- in Hebrew, so -- you know, I was in the army -- but I spoke Hebrew pretty quickly.

IM:Were you conscious of yourself as a native Yiddish speaker in Israel?

PA:I know that we weren't allowed to speak it on the street. When we'd walk -- we'd speak Yiddish in the house, but on the street, we'd speak -- she'd speak Polish, German, anyth-- but not Yiddish. Broken Hebrew. It was forbidden. They even had police -- language police. If you spoke Yiddish, they'd stop you from speaking Yiddish. It was against the law. And Ben-Gurion hated Yiddish. During the war, a girl escaped from the Vilna Ghetto, who was my teacher eventually -- 41:00Rushke Koshak was her name. And Rushke came to Israel during the war. She had managed to get out of Europe and come to Israel. And she spoke to -- before there was an Israeli government -- before there was an Israel -- there was the Sochnut, the Jewish Agency, which became the government later on. And she addressed all of them in Yiddish. And Ben-Gurion said, "A lovely girl. Too bad she speaks that ugly language." He hated Yiddish. And he had laws passed not to allow Yiddish theater, Yiddish newspapers, Yiddish speaking on the street. They would actually accost you on the street if you spoke Yiddish.

IM:How was that experience for you?

PA:I don't know. The strange one I do remember was really -- shocks me to this day. One day, I was walking with my aunt down the street and she ran into a neighbor who obviously had a new baby carriage and a new grandchild. And my aunt looked into the carriage and said in Hebrew, "Mamash aryan -- a real Aryan." And we're talking about five years after the Holocaust. The best compliment you 42:00could pay to a little blond baby was that he's an Aryan. I was shocked by that. But they didn't know what they were saying, without being aware that what they were -- how the words were hitting me. But I remember being shocked by that expression -- "mamash aryan" -- "a real Aryan." But I was just happy to be there. I wasn't there -- I went to a kibbutz very quickly. Within a matter of a few weeks, I went to a kibbutz. And I didn't want to be in an American kibbutz, 'cause I didn't want to speak English. So, I went to an Argentinian kibbutz, 'cause I wouldn't speak Spanish -- I'd speak Hebrew with them. Yeah. Because I wanted to really become Israeli. (laughs) That was important.

IM:How did your relationship with Yiddish evolve or change while in Israel?

PA:(sighs) It didn't change in Israel. But I started using it less and less as I spoke Hebrew. And it really -- when I came to Americ-- when I came back -- I lost my citizenship, so I couldn't come back to America. It was during McCarthy days, 'cause they said I was a communist -- and I was a socialist, but not a communist. So, I went to Canada. I went to a lot of places, but I finally ended up in Canada. And in Canada, I taught Hebrew and then I -- a whole story. But 43:00when I moved to Vancouver, there was a Yiddish circle -- a wonderful man, Chaver Basman, organized a Yiddish circle for people who spoke Yiddish. And in Canada, there's a lot of young people who spoke Yiddish, 'cause they have a very good Yiddish school system. And I joined them. And we would get together once a week and read Yiddish literature. And slowly, I realized, I've got a treasure I have to hold on to. So, that became the beginning of my rediscovery of Yiddish. You know, 'cause even my mother, who always spoke to it in Yiddish, now, when I came back from Israel eight years later -- with television, she was reading American mag-- she had learned English. And she was -- you know. I still spoke to her in Yiddish, but she understood English quite well. So, I -- but it was in Vancouver. And also, my wife's family -- I'm divorced, but my wife's family were strong Yiddishists, which was one of the reasons we got together, because we both loved Yiddish. And so, we spoke Yiddish at home quite often, not for the kids to understand. And to this day, when she was visiting just recently, we still communicate in Yiddish.

IM:So, you left your parents' home at the age of fifteen.

PA:Fifteen and a half, yes.

IM:How, if at all, did your Jewish identity change after leaving New York?

PA:(sighs) In Israel, one doesn't need it -- you are Jewish. You don't have to -- in New York, you have to do things to be Jewish, you know? And you felt you were on the outside. Even though it was a very Jewish city, somehow Judaism is something you did in addition to being American. In Israel, it was all one piece. It was just -- on Jewish holidays, everything was closed. On Shabbat, there was no traffic. On Yom Kippur, the city just -- the world just closed down. So, you couldn't escape being Jewish. You were aware of -- you know, just -- something that's just -- you just lived. You didn't think about it. You knew that you were part of a Jewish people and you knew that your people had just gone through a horrible trauma and there were things you had to do -- like living in the kibbutz -- and, you know, I lived there for three -- almost three and a half years. I was a shepherd, by the way, which was a wonderful thing to be. (laughs)

IM:You mentioned in the US you felt like you had to do something to be Jewish. 45:00Can you tell me more about that? What do you mean by that?

PA:(UNCLEAR) you had to do -- it's that you were aware that you weren't -- you were aware that there was Christmas and that wasn't your holiday. You were aware that people -- you know, that some of the kids in your class -- or some of the kids -- not in your class, but kids on the block went to communion, they had the little black things on their head. You were aware there was -- that you were not -- you were a minority, that you weren't -- even though you felt like a lot of Jews were living in that neighborhood, you were aware that in America, it wasn't all Jewish -- that Judaism was something you had to make an effort to observe. Whereas in Israel, you didn't feel that way -- at least I didn't feel that way. It was just -- I never thought about it, really. At first, the first few weeks, I thought, That policeman is Jewish. The garbage collector is Jewish. It was such a strange thing, you know? But after a while, you stop thinking about that.

IM:Can you remember a time when you felt particularly Jewish in the US?

PA:No. I can't. I always felt -- I've never not felt Jewish. The most important thing about me is my Judaism. So, I've always felt Jewish. I'm always aware of 46:00it. You know, I'm interested in everything Jewish. No. I can't remember any particular time I felt more Jewish than others -- maybe at my bar mitzvah. I don't know. No. I don't think so.

IM:You mentioned earlier you were involved in Zionism and you were interested in communism. Can you --

PA:Well, socialism --

IM:Socialism.

PA:-- yeah. But we were -- I was in a very left-wing organization.

IM:Could you talk about the relationship between Yiddish and your interest in socialism?

PA:Yes, sure. Because there was a strong movement within Yiddish -- the Arbeter Ring, you know -- and the Bund in Europe. They were anti-Zionist, anti-Hebrew -- they were Yiddish. Jews had always been multilingual, but then with the coming of Zionism and socialism in the early twentieth century, there was a divide -- a division. You either chose Israel and Hebrew -- and it was Sephardic Hebrew, not Ashkenazi Hebrew, which was also part of the rejection -- or you chose Yiddish 47:00and socialism, and you would stay behind in the countries and change the economy of Russia, of Poland, of America. And so, it was a clear choice. And I was caught between the two of them, because I loved Israel, I loved Hebrew, but I had to sort of, in a way, keep -- in Israel, keep a little bit of my -- not too much, but to keep a little bit -- my Yiddish love a little bit -- for myself. Because even when I was in the kibbutz, my Argentinian friends all went to Yiddish school and they all had this love of Yiddish. And so, even then, in this environment in which I wanted to live in all Hebrew, still Yiddish popped up as being something we had in common. And Hebrew, in a way, was artificial for a long time. It was something you were learning, something that you -- you know. We had many -- I remember I was in the kibbutz not long and I had come back from a hard day in the fields and I was thirsty and I wanted to have something to drink. So, people were serving the tables, so I asked for a seyfl -- oh, no, I said I needed a cup of -- obviously, I needed a cup to drink some juice in -- 48:00they had cold juice in the table. So, instead of saying, "I want a cup" -- I said, "I want" -- "seyfl" is "cup" and "seykhl" is "brains." I said, "Ani rotzeh seykhl -- I want brains." And they started to laugh, because they asked, Do you need seykhl? So, there was times when funny things happened -- you know, with the language. And also, the Hebrew word for "bric-a-brac" is "nak-nik" -- is -- no -- the Hebrew word for "frankfurter" -- "hot dog" -- is "nak-nik," and the English word for "bric-a-brac" is "knickknack." And I got to the point where I couldn't tell one for the other, I remember. I couldn't remember whether I want to eat a nak-nik or eat a knickknack. (laughs) You know, things like that were happening to me -- confusion. But you worked -- it worked itself through eventually.

IM:Can you tell me more about your attraction to socialism?

PA:I'm no longer a socialist, you know, but in those days --

IM:When you were younger?

PA:When I was younger --

IM:Yeah.

PA:Well, we were taught. We were indoctrinated. That was what they called it. You came to Hashomer Hatzair and you were indoctrinated. You had courses in Marxism. And you understood why you must not believe the "New York Times" -- it 49:00was a capitalist newspaper, and of course they wouldn't report about Russia -- the truth. And Stalin was our hero. And when I lived in Israel, I was in the army, and I remember jumping off the back of a truck, 'cause I was getting a -- I was hitchhiking, I was on a truck, and I jumped off, and a man was selling newspapers. And it had a great big black border, and the words, "Stalin is no more," and a big picture of Josef Stalin -- like he -- our great hero had died. Later on, we heard about, you know, what horrors he had committed, but we believed it. We believed it. We were wrong, of course. But it felt nice to be in a minority -- like, you had a truth, a political truth that nobody else shared, and your truth was gonna save the world, you know? That's the way you felt about it. You know, we're gonna liberate the workers of the world. (laughs) You know. It was youth.

IM:Can you elaborate more on this feeling of being a minority and how that played into your --

PA:You mean where -- minority in New York or in America?

IM:In your attraction to socialism. You just mentioned this --

PA:I didn't feel like -- actually, no, we had a secret -- like a cabal. We had a 50:00secret knowledge that nobody else had. It was our job to impart it to others. That we knew the answer to the world's problems. It was all part of "Das Kapital," where -- you know, how labor -- how the only way a capitalist can make money is by exploiting his workers -- by paying them less and charging more for his product, which he then sells to the workers. We had it all worked out, you see, and we -- it was so clear. And that once the workers take over the means of production, then all -- there'll be no more -- all that -- you know. And we said those things and believed it. The Yiddish word is "narishkayt [foolishness]" now -- you know, it's not true. We see what happened with communism. But in those days, you were young, and you wanted to -- you know, young kids think they know all the answers.

IM:So, I just want to briefly touch back on your childhood.

PA:Yeah.

IM:Looking back on your childhood, what values or practices do you think your parents were trying to pass down to you?

PA:I can tell you the truth. My father had no -- passed nothing down. He was a tough guy. And he scared me. Even when I was a grown man and a grandfather, if I spoke to him on the phone and he raised his voice, I would -- he didn't knew it, 51:00but I knew, I was afraid -- still -- always afraid of him. So, but my mother was a wonderful woman. She was wise, great sense of humor, very broad-minded, and yet very steeped in Yiddishkayt. And she imparted those things to us -- the importance of giving charity -- of tsedakah, not charity -- tsedakah -- of following the mitzvot [commandments] in the Torah, of loving the Jewish people, loving Jewish culture. You know, all those things became part of it and are with me to this day. You know, I have a Yiddish club here, and I do it because it's my homage to my mother. It was her language. And I do it as a volunteer. I've got something like fifty people coming to that club at times. And I do it all because it's my way of honoring her. Plus, I love it. But -- 'cause she was a special woman. I mean, we all had mothers who were special women, of course, not just me, but to me, she was my mother, so she was special.

IM:How does your connection to Yiddish, Yiddishkayt, and Eastern European Jewish 52:00heritage fit into your broader sense of Jewish identity?

PA:I love being an Ashkenazi Jew, but I'm really angry by what I call cultural imperialism that we don't give equal billing for Sephardic Jews and Mizrahi Jews. In the course of the years as a teacher, I have had man-- I have a lot of -- I teach adult education, and I've had students who are Sephardi, and I make sure that I spend as much time talking about Sephardi culture and Sephardi heritage as I do Ashkenazi, 'cause I don't like the fact that in America, because the first Jews to come were Ashkenazi -- well, not the first, but the ones who came in big numbers -- that unless you ate gefilte fish and spoke Yiddish, you weren't a Jew. Well, Sephardim don't eat gefilte fish and don't speak Yiddish, and they're Jews. So, I really -- I'm interested in the plurality of Judaism. I like all the different ethnicities of Judaism -- the subdivisions -- not just Ashkenazi. I am an Ashkenazi, but I would imagine my Sephardic friends are as happy to be as Sephardim and love it as much as I love my culture.

IM:In your life and your family, how does that connection -- your Ashkenazi connection and your Yiddish connection -- fit in to your sense of Jewishness?

PA:It is my sense of Jewishness, more than the religion, in a way. It's that love of Eastern Europe. When I went to Eastern Europe, I felt at home. I really felt at home there. The people. The body language. The way they moved. The way they used their eyes. Everything was so familiar to me. I really felt I was at home. But it's just part of my essence. I really can't separate it. I don't know how to answer that question. It's just -- it's the most important thing about me, you know?

IM:How, if at all, has language influenced your sense of identity?

PA:Again, listen to my English. The intonation is (UNCLEAR) Yiddish. (laughs) It's everything. Partly, it's growing up in New York City in a very Yiddish environment. When I lived in Canada and I met Canadian Jews, I always -- they 54:00were so Canadian, you know? So, they didn't live in the intensive numbers -- and maybe because they were more acculturated, more integrated into society -- I don't know why. But Jews who grow up in New York -- even Jews from -- I remember I had cousins from Ohio, and whenever they came to visit us, I found their language -- the r's -- "surprise" and "river" -- and I heard such a strange, harsh language. And they didn't have the softness of New York City language. And I thought, They can't be Jewish. They pronounce their r's. I always spelled "surprise" without an "r" -- or the second -- you know, I always did "suprise," never "surprise." So, I remember hearing their r's and calling things -- a seesaw, a "teeter-totter" and a lollipop was a "sucker" and I thought -- (laughs) -- it was all such a strange thing. But in New York City, even the non-Jews were Jewish, you know? 'Cause they spoke English like we all did. My friends did the same intonations. It's just part of the culture, you know? It's distinctive.

IM:You also speak Hebrew.

PA:Yes.

IM:How do you see these two languages in your life -- like, in terms of the way you use them?

PA:I don't know how to answer that. I really think that modern Hebrew is Yiddish with Hebrew words.

IM:Can you elaborate?

PA:Yeah. It's not my idea -- other people have said this and I've read books about it, but -- that the first people -- Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who created -- revived the Hebrew language, was a Yiddish-speaking Jew. All the first Zionists who came to Israel who created the modern Hebrew language were Yiddish speakers. And so, they took -- it's not biblical Hebrew they speak in Israel, it's modern Hebrew. And modern Hebrew, very often, sounds a lot like Yiddish. Like, when you walk into a room, in Yiddish, you say, "Vos hert zikh [What's going on]?" And in Hebrew, you say, "Mah nishmah [Hebrew: What's going on]?" And the same intonation, the same Talmudic intonation. So, I just -- it's a matter of changing the words. I didn't have to do much more than that. The words fell into the same place, and the expressions were often -- the idioms were often the same 56:00idioms. So, it was just a matter of new words around the same sort of stem. And there are theories. There are people who are linguists who claim that modern Hebrew is really -- well, first of all, Yiddish is a Slavic language, because the Jews lived in the Slavic lands, and even though the words are Hebrew and German, the grammar is Slavic. When I studied in Vilna -- and in Oxford, too -- the students who came from the Slavic lands learned Yiddish grammar like this, and the German speakers -- people from Germany and Austria -- found a lot of difficulty with Yiddish, because the grammar is so different. The words may be familiar, but then they throw some Hebrew in that, and they're lost. So, there's a theory that Yiddish is a Slavic language, as is Hebrew, because it's based on -- but I'm not sure -- I'm not saying that as though I know what I'm talking about. I just guess that and it feels comfortable to me. But I don't really feel a dichotomy between the two.

IM:You've mentioned you've participated in numerous Yiddish programs around the world.

PA:Yeah.

IM:Can you describe the programs you've attended?

PA:Well, I went to one one-week course in Rutgers. And that's what -- that was '95 or '96, and that really pushed me over the top as far as -- I really needed to go back and study Yiddish. So, then I went on a trip the next year -- in '97, I took a trip to Eastern Europe, because it was the celebration of -- no, the commemoration of the two hundredth anniversary of the Vilna Ghetto, and I wanted to go, 'cause my family's related. And I learned that in Vilna, they had a Yiddish program, first year. And I went back the next year. It was, I think, seven weeks I spent in Vilna. I loved Vilna. I had wonderful teachers. And I fell in love with learning proper Yiddish again: grammar and reading literature and being exposed to different theories and meeting people from all over the world who were learning Yiddish, too. And so, the following year, I went to Oxford, 'cause I heard it's a very good program. I didn't care for it at all. I thought it was terrible. I liked my teacher -- Gennady Estraikh was wonderful -- but the program was a shambles, so it was -- everything that could be wrong was wrong with it. It was terrible. And the next year, I went to Columbia. And that 58:00was very good. That was eight weeks. I spent a whole summer in New York City. And I enjoyed that tremendously. And then I've gone to various conferences. I've met other Yiddishists. I translated a book -- there's a Yiddish author who lived in Vilna in the 1860s, Ayzik Meyer Dik, and I discovered this book had not been translated into English, so I and a friend -- she teaches Renaissance literature at Barry University, and she came from a Yiddish-speaking home, and I taught her how to read, and all of a sudden, she realized, This is my language. I know it, anyway. She knew the vocabulary, she just couldn't read it. So, we started to read, and we came across this book by Dik -- the joke was, I'd come into her house, she says, "Paul, have you brought your Dik with you?" You know. (laughs) I'd say, "Yes, I've got it." But anyway, so we translated the book into English. It took us four years. And it was published.

IM:And which book?

PA:It's called -- "The Shopkeepers of Vilna," I think it was called, I forget 59:00the name. (laughs) I forget the name. But it was a small -- it's a novella. And we did it bilingual -- one side was Yiddish and one side was English. And it was difficult. It was difficult, because there were things you had to have -- you don't have footnotes in a novel, but we had footnotes. Because, for instance, they're talking about -- she looked like she had just -- after Neilah. Well, unless you know that Neilah is the last prayer of Yom Kippur and they've been fasting for twenty-five hours, you don't know what it means -- that the person hasn't eaten for twenty-five hours -- so you have to put a footnote, 'cause there's no way we're doing that in English. So, we found that that was something we had to compromise and put footnotes every, every page -- especially when it came to holidays. There's one part of the book where she says, "He was twenty-five years old and another man would have been married and divorced fifty times by now." Well, it just so happens that in Europe, when a man was a traveler and he had to s-- that on Mondays, he would divorce his wife and marry her on Friday, because if he was killed or disappeared and there weren't two 60:00witnesses, she's an agunah -- an anchored woman. She can never marry anybody else. And so, he would give her a quick divorce and marry her again on Friday. You know, so you had to have a footnote. And the book was full of footnotes. But the traditions in it were just amazing. Amazing. It talks about this ugly custom of women wearing white sheets. The women would dress up and cover themselves and then cover their whole bodies with a white sheet, like a burqa. And I've seen pictures now of women in Eastern Europe during the nineteenth century dressed that way. And they were just -- like the burqa, they would take -- they'd dress up and bundle up to get rid of their shape, and then on top of that, put a white sheet, and walk around the streets. So, it was a fascinating undertaking of research, of amazing research. 'Cause also, a lot of Slavic word-- anyway, it took four years.

IM:What did you get out of translating this novella?

PA:(sighs) The richness of the language. The beauty of the language. The integration of the language and the religion and the customs and the -- 61:00everything was all mixed together. It was wonderful. It was a great -- you know. And the fact that he writes in a colloquial Yiddish, he writes the way people speak. 'Cause prior to him, really, books were written in Yiddish in a kind of stilted Germanic Yiddish that nobody spoke, but the rabbis decreed this was the proper Yiddish for women. Like, if you read the "Tseno Ureno," it's written in a language that nobody spoke. And after Dik, really, came Sholem Aleichem and Mendele Moykher-Sforim and (UNCLEAR) Peretz, who picked up that and wrote the colloquial language that people spoke. And that's what made them such great writers. They probably put my words on the page. Well, for me, it was wonderful coming that close to that language, you know, and seeing how much of it I had and how much of it I'd lost. So much of my Yiddish was Americanized in America, you know? So, getting back to that purity of sound, you know.

IM:What did you learn from translating this work?

PA:Oh, lots of customs. Amazing customs. There's one part where -- she has one daughter -- the woman in the book has one daughter who's not getting married. 62:00So, she calls in a soothsayer. And the woman takes hot lead and melts it and pours it into water, and then takes the shapes that form and tells the future through shapes. And then, I heard later on in other books that they did it with wax also. You know what I'm talk-- if I'm describing it correctly -- I had never heard of that custom. Or, when a person died, you would take wicks -- you know the wicks you make candles out of? -- and stretch it out along the perimeter of the grave, and then use those wicks to make the special havdalah candles that they use on Shab-- on Saturday night, the special braided candles? I mean, amazing things that our people did, you know, that I didn't know about that -- lost, lost, lost. And it was for me, a revival -- and a chance, when I teach, to tell my students these things, you know? Because they're precious. They're wonderful things that have gone away with the modern world.

IM:Earlier you mentioned translating the novella you got back to the purity of 63:00the word -- of the Yiddish. Can you tell me how that made you feel?

PA:Well, it was just -- it just -- it didn't make me -- I don't know if it made me feel as much as it made me just aware that -- of nuances, of words that I was maybe misusing or that I should include in my vocabulary and make better use of, you know? Here. Most American Yiddish speakers will say, "Ikh glaykh dos [I like this]." Now, in English, the word "like" has two meanings. "This is just like this" and "I like you" -- different meanings. American Jews took the comparative word "like" and made it the word for "affection." So, they'll say -- "glaykh" means "straight" or "just like," okay? "Dos iz glaykh azoy vi dos -- This is exactly like this." They say, Ikh glaykh dir. That means, "I'm exactly like you." What does it mean? But it's American Yiddish. It's a corruption, you know? And so, I was aware -- doing this work sort of brought me back to what I should be saying, or a better way of saying -- "Es gefelt mir [I like it]." "Ikh hob es holt [I like this]." You know, there are words to use in Yiddish, but not 64:00"glaykh," you know? But that's true of everything I've done in Yiddish. All my studies in Vilna also did that for me, purified it somehow.

IM:So, you're currently running the Yiddish circle at the Weisman Community Center --

PA:Yes.

IM:-- in Delray Beach, Florida.

PA:Yes. Yes. It's the second one I've run. I did one in Hollywood for fifteen years.

IM:Can you tell me more about that?

PA:Oh, it's wonderful. It started with six people. Now -- two weeks ago, we had sixty-two people. We meet at ten o'clock on Friday mornings for two hours. And the first and third Friday, we read literature. The second Friday, we see a Yiddish film -- a classic. And the third Friday, we have a shmues-krays [conversation group], where they just -- they do all the work. They talk, they prepare recipes, jokes, stories -- anything they want to. So, we have a variety. And some people who don't know Yiddish just come, 'cause we translate the Yiddish into English when necessary. So, we have people just come to hear the translation. But it's a wonderful group of people. There are survivors, there are young people, there's all different ages. And they love it. And they become 65:00very strong friends over the last four-and-a-half years. Real friendships have emerged. And I have great respect for them. And I'm not -- my Yiddish is not the best. I shouldn't be teaching. But I needed a Yiddish group, because I need to have Yiddish in my life. By creating this -- no. Thirty years ago, I could have walked down the street and heard two ladies talking Yiddish. They're gone. They're not talking and walking. They're dead. They're gone. To hear Yiddish, I need to find, through a Yiddish club, people who also like Yiddish. So, I found these wonderful brothers and sisters, you know?

IM:Have you ever met anyone with the same Yiddish accent as yours?

PA:Litvak? Sure. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, my grandchildren -- I have six -- seven grandchildren, and six of them are very, very Orthodox. One is not, 'cause his fath-- my son has one child in Vancouver, and they're just living a normal North American life. My daughter had six children, and she was very, very frum, and she raised six -- five boys and a girl who are very, very 66:00frum. Peyes [sidelocks], the whole thing -- black hats. And they live -- most of them -- one is in Israel, one is here, and four of them are in Lakewood, New Jersey. And they all go to litvisher [Lithuanian Jewish] yeshivas, so they speak Yiddish, and they have the litvish accent, which is our accent. So, I'm delighted by that -- you know, to hear them speaking. And then, we speak Yiddish when I see -- when they call me on the phone, they speak to me in Yiddish. It's wonderful.

IM:How does it make you feel to have grandchildren who speak Yiddish?

PA:I love it, because nobody else has that. I mean, American kids don't speak Yiddish, you know? But I lucked out. And so, it's wonderful. I gloat over it. (laughs) It's really wonderful. And I know my mother would be happy, also. My grandmother. They would all be happy -- that this is continuing, you know?

IM:What has been most important for you to transmit to the generations after you about Yiddish or about Jewish identity?

PA:I don't know if I can answer that. I don't know. It's something you feel and 67:00-- I can't transmit it. 'Cause I know -- nobody transmitted it to me. I picked it up from -- my environment was rich, and it came at me, and I grabbed it. But nobody said, You've got to do this, you've got to do that. I never heard that. So, I can't do that to anybody else. Either they find it or they don't. It's their problem. I can't -- I have no words of wisdom. Except for, I think, I tell my grandchildren whenever I do something and it's kind and they say, Oh, how can we repay you? I say, "You don't. You pay it down. You do -- whatever I've done is good, you do to the next generation." That I do feel -- you know, that you give -- you don't pay back to the person who's doing it, you pay it forward. I don't really have, other than that, a philosophy to impart.

IM:How, if at all, has Yiddish played a role in your role as a father or grandfather?

PA:I don't know. I know that we spoke Yiddish at home, but my children didn't 68:00understand it. They understand -- my daughter and son -- when they hear it, they understand it quite well, but they can't speak it, and they don't love it. They just -- so my wife grew up in a Yiddish-speaking home, as I did, and so we used Yiddish a lot in the house. I remember once we were visiting my mother in Brooklyn -- we were in Brighton Beach -- and whenever we were in Vancouver, we'd talk -- we would speak Yiddish, 'cause no -- well, we're walking down the street in Brighton Beach and she's telling me something about a lady and I said, "You can't speak Yiddish here. They understand it." (laughs) But, so we had a lot of Yiddish. My daughter understands a lot, but her children -- you know. I don't know if I answered your question.

IM:Did you ever teach your children Yiddish?

PA:Once. I remember one day sitting with my daughter, she asked about it. But no, no. Never. She learned Hebrew -- and so did my son. They went to talmud-toyre, Hebrew day school, in Vancouver, and they learned Hebrew. And 69:00then, they both went to Israel at different times and learned Hebrew also. But no, not Yiddish. It never worked out that way. No.

IM:You mentioned earlier about being proactive and grabbing on to that when you were a child and growing up.

PA:Yeah.

IM:Could you elaborate more on that -- what you mean by being strong?

PA:No, it just means that -- well, I guess I can. My mother spoke Yiddish, my bobe spoke Yiddish, the neighbors spoke Yiddish. We had Jewish music in the house, Jewish radio in the house. We ate Jewish food. We celebrated Jewish holidays. We followed the Jewish laws. It just -- and if you didn't -- my sister never liked it. She felt it was -- she didn't want to be foreign. And so, she rejected -- her Yiddish is not -- she understands it, she can't speak it ever, and she never learned to read or write it. And so, it's just -- so you have to grab hold of it. It was there, but she didn't take hold of it. She wanted something else -- America. And that's her choice, you know? She now envies me a little bit, 'cause she knows how steeped I am in Yiddishkayt, and she didn't take advantage of it. But I took advantage of it. Nobody said to me, Do it. I 70:00just loved it. I loved my bobe. That was what is was. And my bobe was, you know, all Yiddish. And I loved my mother, too. So, it was -- it was something you do, something you have in your soul. It yearns for something that makes it click.

IM:Do you see that as something that's passed down or just something -- one's activeness?

PA:Well, I know that my grandchildren are all very proud of the fact that they've learned Yiddish. They didn't -- again, it was thrown at them. They went to yeshiva, and at yeshiva, when you're learning the Talmud, which is written in Aramaic, you translate it -- it's called "ibertaytshn [to reinterpret]" -- you translate from Aramaic to Yiddish. And they were forced to do it. They never had lessons in Yiddish. They just did. And they learned Yiddish. And they know how much it pleases me. So, they're pleased -- they're glad -- happy to please me, and they feel a connection with it. But again, they didn't -- it was inflicted upon them, in a way. It wasn't a punishment, but they -- you know, if they hadn't been there, they never would have chosen Yiddish. But they have, and they're happy as a result that they're closer to my love of it. And I'm thrilled.

IM:To what extent do you think language plays a role in transmission between generations?

PA:I think it means everything. It means everything. 'Cause each language has its own way of expressing itself. And Yiddish has its own way -- of endearment, of being sarcastic, of being angry. And it's different than English and it's different than French and it's different than any other language. And I think that I inherited that. 'Cause my mother could be very sarcastic when she wanted to, and I could pick it up. And another person would say, "She said nothing." And I said, "Oh, she said a lot." You know? But I -- it's -- each -- I think every language, every -- if you go to a Spanish home, they have things that they do that are uniquely theirs, so they understand. But --

IM:Could you give any examples of what you just mentioned?

PA:Yeah, the sarcasm. Let me think. No, I can't think of something right off the bat. But I wish -- no. But I wish I could. I can't think of anything. I'm sorry.

IM:That's fine. How, if at all, do you see Yiddish as a bridge between older and younger generations?

PA:I think what's happening is, the older generation doesn't know Yiddish, and there's a new generation coming along of people -- at the Yiddish Book Center, at places like that -- who do know Yiddish. So, I think that -- it's, you know -- bobe Stephanie is gonna take -- have an aliyah with her granddaughter, Yocheved, you know? That bobe's name -- you know, there's a whole generation -- my generation of Americanized Jews who threw away Yiddish. And their grandchildren are now -- if not Yiddish, then Hebrew -- are coming back to having Jewish names and Jewish culture. And so, it's a complete reversal. It's not the old people who carry the culture. It's the young people who are rediscovering -- some are discovering Yiddish. Most of them, of course, are discovering the Hebrew part of Judaism. But I don't think -- with few exceptions, most American Jews really don't care about Yiddish. They look down 73:00at it. I've met Jews who don't even call it Yiddish -- they call it "zhargon [jargon]" -- you know, which is an insult. And they say, Why are you studying a "zhargon"? (laughs) Or, It's a bastard language. I say, "No." It's got so many foreign words. So, does English! They're called fusion languages! They borrow beautifully! That's what makes them so rich, you know? Oh. (laughs)

IM:As a native Yiddish speaker, how does -- what do you think about that reversal you just mentioned -- about the older generation throwing it away and the younger coming back? Could you --

PA:I don't think there are enough younger people. Too many younger people are following their grandparents' obsession with becoming Americanized and throwing it away and think there's nothing to it. But there are some. You know, in the frum world, of course, it's very prevalent. And in the secular world, too. There are many secular people -- non-Jews and Jews -- who are learning Yiddish. And it's wonderful. But to learn a -- I mean, you know, when a language is taught in a university -- Latin is taught in a university -- it's a dead language. It's when a man and a woman make love in Yiddish, when two kids fight in Yiddish, when a mother scolds a child in Yiddish -- that's when it's living. And the 74:00people who are learning in Yiddish in college are not gonna be doing that. They're gonna academically know how to speak Yiddish, but I don't know -- except for the frum Jews -- if anybody is really making love in Yiddish or fighting in Yiddish or going shopping in Yiddish. And that's what makes a language alive. And that's not happening so fast. It's not dying, but it's having a hard time.

IM:What does Yiddish mean to you today?

PA:I think I've been saying it all along. It's my essence. It's my essence, you know? It's what I love.

IM:Do you think there's a Yiddish revival?

PA:Yes and no. I think that among the Orthodox Jews, it's not a revival, except that now Yiddish has become the new holy tongue. For Orthodox Jews, Yiddish was the everyday language which they used to avoid speaking the holy tongue. On Shabbos, when they studied, when they wrote, they would use Hebrew. Hebrew has become the language of Israel. The secret language among Orthodox Jews today is 75:00Yiddish. It's the secret language of Orthodoxy. So, it's become -- it's playing -- it's become the holy tongue, in a way. And if you want to hear it, you have to go into Mea Shearim or Crown Heights in New York or Lakewood, New Jersey to hear Yiddish spoken by young kids on the street as they're playing. So, I don't know if that's a revival. That's a continuation -- continuum. The fact that you or other people of your generation are learning Yiddish, it's not a revival. Because you're learning it academically, but you're not gonna make love in it, you know? And you're not gonna have a fight with your wife in it, either. And that's what's happening to it.

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

PA:I don't know. I can quote Bashevis Singer, who said, for a thousand years, people are saying Yiddish is a dead language, and it's still here -- kind of thing -- I'm misquoting him. But I have no idea. I don't think that it has -- it's gonna have the millions of people speaking it that spoke it before the Holocaust. But there'll be hundreds of thousands who speak it. And of course, 76:00remember, the birth rate among ultra-Orthodox Jews is tremendous -- ten, eleven children -- and they speak Yiddish. So -- and also, if you look at the biography of most Yiddish writers, most Yiddish intellectuals in the nineteenth, early twentieth century, they came from a Yiddish-speaking home, came from yeshiva, and ran away. Well, maybe in the future, there's a trend that Orthodox Jews will also have some offshoots who will run away and still use Yiddish. There's a little bit of that one meets in different schools -- people from a Hasidic background who have left religion, but hold on to the Yiddish. Have you met any of those people?

IM:Yeah.

PA:So, now whether that's enough to be a revival, I don't think so, but it is a sort of interesting sort of outgrowth of what's happening in the Yiddish world. I can't speak -- I can't tell the future. I don't know. I'm not good at it.

IM:So, you've dedicated a lot of your life to Yiddish and teaching and that sort of work.

PA:Yeah.

IM:How do you see your own self and work in terms of this broader conversation 77:00about Yiddish and the future of Yiddish?

PA:Say that again? I'm not sure I understand the question.

IM:How do you see your own self and your own life in terms of the broader picture of Yiddish today?

PA:I don't. I don't. I'm teaching Yiddish mostly to older people. They're gonna go like I go. Their children are not gonna learn Yiddish. I'm not teaching it to young housewives, and I'm not teaching anybody who's gonna take it home. So, I'm holding on to it. I'm holding on. 'Cause I love it. So, I hold on to it. And I'm satisfied to have my club and to have -- once a week, to hear Yiddish and read Yiddish, but I don't think I'm having an impact on the future. Maybe some university professors are, but I'm speaking to an older crowd, really -- of people who spoke Yiddish like I did and who have the same nostalgic feelings. They're comrades. But I don't see a future. But I live in the present, so let someone else worry about the future. (laughs)

IM:We're nearing the end of our time, but I'd like to ask if there are any other 78:00topics you'd like to touch on?

PA:No, I think we've more or less exhausted it. I can't think of anything I haven't talked about that we -- no, I don't think so. No. You've done a good job. (laughs)

IM:I'd like to ask if you have a favorite Yiddish word, phrase, or song you would like to share with us.

PA:Oh, gosh. I wish you had told me this in advance. I would have thought of something. I'm sure I do, but I'll have to think about it when I get in the car. I can't think of anything right now off the top of my head. I can't think of anything. I'm sure there are, but I can't think of something. Sorry. (laughs)

IM:No worries. What advice do you have for future generations?

PA:I think I told you before -- I don't. I have none. I have none. My mother gave me advice once. It's a bit coarse, because my mother liked coarse words. Am I allowed to say -- be coarse?

IM:Um-hm.

PA:And I remember coming to her once -- I was living in Vancouver, I came to New York to see her, and I asked her an eytse, advice. And she says, "Listen, baby." 79:00She says -- in yidishe [in Yiddish], she says, "Listen, I fucked up my life. Fuck up your own." (laughs) And so, that's my advice to my children also. I said, "Don't come to me for advice. We all screw up our life in our own way. It's your time to screw up your own life. I'm not giving you advice." So, I have no advice for future generations. I don't know if you can erase it if you don't -- if you can't have it. You know. But that's what she told me. She was wonderful. It was good advice. (laughs)

IM:(laughs) Well, thank you --

PA:Okay. You're welcome.

IM:-- for speaking with me today. It's been a pleasure --

PA:It's my pleasure.

IM:-- to interview you.

PA:Okay.

IM:And on behalf of the Yiddish Book Center and the Oral History Project, I want to say thank you again.

PA:Thank you for having me.

[END OF INTERVIEW]