JACK WIENER ORAL HISTORY

EMMA MORGENSTERN: This is Emma Morgenstern and today is March 3rd, 2015.  I'm here at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City with Jack Wiener, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project.  Do I have your permission to record?

JACK WIENER: Of course you do.

EM:  All right, thank you.  Okay, so can you start by giving me a little brief history of your family background?

JW:  Yes.  Let me repeat what I told you before.  (laughter) My parents came from Poland.  They were born in small villages outside of Warsaw, and they migrated to Warsaw.  And eventually, as young people, they joined the Bund, the 1:00Jewish Bund.  And what made the Bund distinctive was that they were basically communists in their thinking, but they believed that cultures should retain their languages and so on.  So, their sense of Jewishness was a profound commitment on their part, obviously, even though they came out of religious backgrounds.  My mother's father was a melamed [traditional Jewish teacher].  So, he taught children up through kheyder [traditional religious school] and so on.  And so, there was always this kind of sense of Jewishness.  And then, when they went, they got married before my father left.  And in an effort not to be conscripted into the Polish army, he was told, you take a train to Danzig.  You go to some consulate and you get a visa, which he did, a Cuban 2:00visa.  And so, he went to Cuba and my mother followed three years later.  And then in, I think, yeah, my mother came in 1929.  My sister was born in 1930.  And then, in 1933, a little Cuban history, Machado was overthrown by Batista.  And subsequently, in '34, I was born, so -- and we always spoke Yiddish at home.  When I came to United States, and I went to Detroit in 1944, I was shocked to realize that I was treated as though, my God, my Yiddish was like an astounding thing.  So, I was enrolled in the Farband Shule, which was the 3:00school from the LZOA, the Labor Zionist Organization.  And every time there was a Jewish poet that came to Detroit, they chose me to recite a poem or read something of the writer, that kind of thing, because in Cuba, every kid my age spoke Yiddish.  So, there was one kid.  His name, oddly enough, was Lazarus.  Can you imagine?  Lazarus.  And he didn't speak Yiddish well, although he went to Centro Israelita, which was the kind of socialist Jewish tog shule [day school] in Havana, yeah.

EM:  So, what are your memories of growing up in Cuba.  So, you were there until you were about ten years old?

JW:  I was there until I was ten, right.

EM:  Yeah.  So, what are your memories of that?

JW:  Well, I enjoyed it a lot.  I remember it very fondly.  We lived on the second floor.  We had a very small apartment that actually consisted of two-and-a-half rooms.  It had balconies.  There were vendors that went down the street selling pineapples and bananas and so on.  And I would run down.  I had these little platanos [Spanish: bananas], and I would eat a bunch of them and it was great.  And I was very free.  I don't know, I remember it really well.  My next-door neighbor was a Lithuanian little girl by the name of Patasha, it was my first love.  There was the very memorable Nochebuena 5:00[Spanish: Christmas eve], which was like a free Christmas thing.  They didn't have Christmas in Cuba.  They had El Día de Reyes, the Day of the Kings, on January the sixth, and that's when you got presents.  But, of course, I didn't have anything to do with that.  I didn't get presents, and I didn't grow up with the sense of a seder.  I knew nothing about -- because my parents were just not traditional.  They were fraye yidn [non-observant Jews, lit. "free Jews"], something which doesn't mean anything to most people because they don't come out of a background of that kind of religious traditional Jewish background, which was so true of European Jews living in Poland and the Ukraine and Russia, Galicia, et cetera.  So, these were people who felt incredibly Jewish and they said, No more of those rituals, et cetera.  And so, they became socialists, they became communists, they became Zionists.  They were people who 6:00were trying to create a whole new world.  And so, there was a wonderful sense of idealism that was a part of my background.  I couldn't imagine not thinking of having a more equitable distribution of wealth.  So, that when I have to deal with Republicans, (laughs) it just drives me -- there's really something fundamentally wrong in their emotional life that they can't make that consideration.  And, of course, that I immediately champion people like Buffett who say, "Why in the hell should my secretary pay more income tax than me?"  That kind of thing.  So, Cuba was a wonderful place.  It was only as a consequence of going into psychoanalysis many years later, in New York, where I 7:00came in 1958 to attend Julliard, actually, in the dance program -- that as I went through my feelings, my thoughts, my problems, my conflicts, et cetera, more and more of the past began to come alive.  And then, I could remember moments and issues that were really emotionally traumatic and striking.  But by the time I left, I actually was so looking forward to coming to the United States.  United States to me always was Hollywood.  In Cuba, I remember seeing two films by the time -- ten years old.  I was never inside of a car until we went to the airport.  I don't know, in retrospect, I realized that I lived in 8:00some internal fantasized world that felt totally happy to me.  And it was only many, many years later, as a result of analysis, which, if you pursue it seriously, you do arrive at some very depressive moments.  Eventually, it's quite liberating.  But you do arrive at issues that are quite profound, and usually get repressed and forgotten.  Not by everybody.  I mean, some people actually shape their character and life around their traumas.  But I didn't.

EM:  So, you mentioned the Centro Israelita in Cuba. 

JW:  Centro Israelita, yeah.

EM:  Yeah.  So, can you tell me a little bit more about what that was and what that was like?

JW:  Well, it was a tog shule, and a tog shule had a half a day of Jewish 9:00subjects and half a day of general subjects: some Cuban history, math, things like that.  I can't remember the rest of it.  The Jewish part of it, of course, is you learn how to read and write.  And then, mostly, you grow up with stories.  Frida was my first-grade teacher.  And she would tell stories, and the stories were of Abraham and Sarah, and there were Bible stories.  But they were told from a historical perspective.  But for a very long time, I considered myself part of the lineage of Avram V'Sure [Hebrew: Abraham and Sarah].  This is the Polish accent.  (laughs) And it was amazing.  What comes 10:00to mind associatively as I'm telling you this is at a certain point, I went to a talk at Rodeph Sholom on Eighty-Third Street, near Central Park.  And it was about the Akedah.  It was the story of Abraham trying to sacrifice Isaac, right?  And in the process, there was going to be a psychoanalyst there.  There was a rabbi, of course.  There was a Catholic nun, who was incredibly knowledgeable.  I mean, real scholarship.  There was a Muslim.  I don't know if he was an imam.  I think he was just someone who, somehow, they got to represent a Muslim point of view, who -- really, it was shameful.  I mean, he 11:00knew so little.  But in the process, I went over that story.  I re-read it before going to the lecture.  And I realized that Avraham would always go out and talk to God after he had an argument with Sarah.  I thought, Gee, he really had someplace to go (laughs) when he had to deal with his half-sister.  Did you know that about Sarah?  Sarah is a second child of the same father, but a different mother.

EM:  Yeah.

JW:  So, it was a half-sister, yeah.

EM:  So, why did your family move to Detroit?

JW:  My father was one of those Jews who could hardly make a living.  Everybody thinks the Jews always do very well.  And by and large, they do nicely.  But my father was one of those Jews who just didn't.  And there was, 12:00of course, a lot of reasons that made him reticent to really assert himself and be much more aggressive in getting what he needed and wanted, et cetera.  And so, consequently, we came to the United States, because his father lived in Detroit.  Now, the sad part of it is that they did not talk with each other for twenty-one years.  My father was angry with his father because his father went to Berlin to work, I think, with a brother who was in the leather purses business, et cetera, and left him with his mother and his younger sister and an older sister.  And he was in a Polish school.  At the age of seven, they took 13:00him out, because he had to help her and the little kreml [small shop] that she had, which was part of the market.  And so, he would sleep on these bags at night, and supposed to guard them.  And that was terrible for him.  His life as a child was cut short so early that it was hard.  And then, his father came back when his mother died, he was eleven years old, and soon thereafter left again.  He remarried a woman who left her husband because the husband began to smoke on Shabbos.  I mean, that was serious.  I mean, it doesn't seem serious to modern Jews, but it's a serious thing when you did that.  It was like 14:00driving on Yom Kippur to go to synagogue.  I mean, you just didn't do it, in the same way that you would never -- you might complain about something to your parents, but you would never call them names, you would never shout at them.  You grew up with the sense of derekh-erets [respect].  You always respected your elders.  That, it will lead to another story with Isaac Bashevis Singer.  But (laughs) that will come later.  So, that's how we went to the -- and eventually, my mother convinced my father, says, "You have to write to your father.  You have to ask him to help us," which he did.  And his father, rightly and I think wisely, managed to get -- he had a sister in Detroit who was 15:00married to a man who had used furniture stores and had made money.  And at that time, all you had to do was put up five thousand dollars to guarantee that an immigrant would be supported.  And she did.  She put up the five thousand dollars which is -- in 1944, it was a considerable amount of money.  And that's how we got to Detroit.

EM:  And how did Detroit compare to Havana in terms of the Jewish community there?

JW:  Oh, it was practically the same.  No, I'm joking with you.  (laughs) No, no.  (laughs) No, I mean, the Jewish community in Havana, I mean, I think I 16:00remember the fact that at the height of the Jewish population in Cuba, it was something like twelve thousand.  So, obviously people like my father had come, there were people before.  The Sephardic Jews were there from much, much earlier, of course.  And they had a much more secure position within the governmental -- the accommodations which were made for them and so on.  They had more rights.  And it was only the European Jews who eventually began to form a union that began to ask for certain rights from Batista, et cetera.  But it was a very close community.  Also, maybe to contrast it, I mean, to give you some sense, in regards to your question -- see, my answers are always very long-winded, (laughs) because I think associatively.  And Rosa and Srulek, 17:00friends of my parents, would walk by.  We lived on the second floor.  From the street, they would go, "Sure, her nor!  Ir zaynt in shtib? [Sarah, hey!  Are you home?]"  And my mother would go out to the balcony.  She says, "Oh, kimt aroyf [come on up]," asking them to go up, right?  And she says, "Oh, before you come up, go to the corner and get some strawberry seltzer."  So, they get a pitcher of strawberry seltzer.  Or she would make coffee and they would have bread and butter.  It was simple.  But there were no telephones.  We had a cold stove and we had no refrigerator.  It was a very different life, very different.  When I came, I had to talk to people two generations before who 18:00remembered that quality of that kind of life in America.  By the time I got to Detroit, people had stoves, they had refrigerators, they had cars.  They were workers, but they had all these things.  They had radios.  We didn't have a radio.  So, life was very, very, very different.  I was shocked, actually, but I was so intent on being American and having this adventure suddenly come to me.  And it's only in retrospect, as a result of my analysis, that I even have some sense of what in hell was going on emotionally from my parents, from myself, that gives me some semblance, literally, of what happened, of what was going on.  But I lived in this bubble, basically, as a lot of people do.

EM:  And did your family get involved in any Jewish organizations when they --

JW:  Oh, almost immediately.

EM:  Okay, and what were those?

JW:  Almost immediately.  First of all, I attended my first seder that March, in 1944, with my grandfather.  And it was a very funny incident.  The word "kulo" in Hebrew means "all of us," right?  But in Spanish, "culo" is "derriere."  So, when he was going over the Haggadah and he'd use the word "kulo" -- and my sister and I would break out laughing.  And my parents, who understood why we were laughing, would try to quiet us.  But that was my first experience of a seder, actually.  It was very comic for me.  (laughs) What was 20:00your question?

EM:  I asked if your family was involved in Jewish organizations or --

JW:  Oh, yes, yes, it was immediately, interestingly.  My parents joined the LZOA.  They became involved with Farband.  And I, by the time I -- eleven years old, I joined Habonim, which was the youth organization that was of the LZOA.  Habonim then, eventually, at some point -- I guess it was the middle or late '50s -- joined Dror, which was a more international group.  But they were all part of Mapai, which was in contrast to Mapam, both who -- I guess they kind 21:00of disappeared or merged over the years.  I stopped keeping track of Israeli politics, and especially after Likud took over.

EM:  So, you said you had your first seder, but did you celebrate other holidays once you came to the US, other Jewish holidays?

JW:  Well, I became aware of Purim, which is soon.  I became aware of Hanukkah.  I eventually learned all about Lag B'Omer and Tisha b'av and Shavuos and Sukkos.  And have I left anything out?  (laughs) Yes, I became aware of all these things.  And by the time I am seventeen years old, I'm a hilf-lerer 22:00[teacher's aide] at the Farband Shules.  So, I started to do that.  At sixteen, I knew enough Hebrew to work for the talmud-toyres [Talmud Torahs], and I would run the recreation part.  So, before the classes began, we had ping-pong, we had volleyball, and I would use Hebrew words for all these things, et cetera.  And then, eventually, after being a hilf-lerer in Farband, the next year I ended up going to Israel as part of the second workshop of Habonim.  When I came back, I started teaching at the talmud-toyres, because by this point, after leaving Israel, I spoke Hebrew really fluently and was mistaken for 23:00being an Israeli because my accent, my mivta, came out of that Jewish background.  So, when I went to get a blouse before coming back in the WIZO, which had all this Yemenite beaded kind of blouses, which were very fashionable at one point, the woman says, "Is this for your aunt in the United States?"  Because she assumed that I was an Israeli and that kind of thing.  And so, I taught for the talmud-toyres, because by this point, I could read.  I could read all the tfilot [Hebrew: prayers] and all the brachot [Hebrew: blessings] in Hebrew, and I could translate and talk to the children about the grammar and so on, that kind of thing.  And then, after I came back from the army, when I was in Korea, I taught in Sholem Aleichem shules.  And so, I have this very strong 24:00kind of Jewish, especially Yiddish background.

EM:  And what year were you in Israel?

JW:  It was 1952, '53.

EM:  And what was it like then?

JW:  Oh, it was wonderful.  You would stand and you'd hitch and you'd get a ride easily.  People would pick you up, and you'd travel from Tel Aviv to the Galil Elyon, or you'd take an old Egged bus that would -- (imitates bus) and going up to Tzfat, up the hill.  Then, if you were stuck, you would just walk into a kibbutz and you would say, "Do you have a place for me to stay 25:00overnight?"  And they would accommodate you, and you'd have breakfast in the morning.  It was very different.  Tel Aviv was Dizengoff.  It was small. 

EM:  And what were you doing there?

JW:  Well, the Habonim youth workshop was, after the State was created in '47, they used to have -- when you would -- usually, as part of the movement, you would eventually join a garin, which was an organization of people who were going to make aliyah, right?  And this group would then go and HeChalutz would help them.  You'd usually combine with some other group, that kind of thing, although we did have one totally American kibbutz.  Urim was the totally American kibbutz that was south, and -- I think southwest of Beersheba.  So, 26:00Habonim had a workshop, because you used to have -- preparation for aliyah was Hachshara.  And it was usually they had some sort of farm in upper New York here, and people would work on the farm, they would get prepared.  It was a preparation for living on a kibbutz, literally, how to take care of animals, so that it wasn't too much of a shock when you got to Israel and you joined a kibbutz.  And so, at that point, they decided it's best to close the Hachshara here and to have people go to Israel.  So, the first workshop just went to Kfar Blum.  Kfar Blum was all of the Americans who intended to make aliyah before 27:00the Second World War.  But the war broke out, and you couldn't go to Palestine at the time.  And also, all the English and South Africans and Australians, people who wanted to go to Israel and the war broke out and it was impossible to go.  Right after the war, these people came together, went to Israel.  They joined a group that had a kibbutz by the Dead Sea that Israel had to give up because it went to Transjordan, and they combined and then became Kfar Blum.  Why can't I remember?  There were Latvians, Jewish Latvians.  I forgot.  When I got to Kfar Blum, the fact is that there was just me and there was another guy 28:00from Winnipeg who spoke Yiddish.  And so, we went to the refet, which was the barn, for the cows, because Moyshele, a little guy, only spoke Yiddish and Hebrew.  So, everybody else spoke -- they didn't speak Hebrew at all, so we went.  That's how we got there.  So, that was the trip.  While I was in Kfar Blum, however, Habonim had made a commitment to the Machon, which was run by the Jewish Agency, and it was called Machon L'Madrichei Chutz La'Aretz, which was an institute in preparation for leadership outside of Israel.  Chutz La'Aretz.  I notice you're smiling every time I come up with these names and so on.  (laughter) It surprises you, right?  Yeah, these were terms which were so -- (laughs) they were so much a part of my vocabulary at one point.  And the two 29:00people who were supposed to go to the Machon, which was in Katamon, in Jerusalem.  One person got sick, another person couldn't go.  And so, to fulfill their commitment, they went to Kfar Blum, which was one group, and our workshop was very large.  So, we had one group went to Kfar Blum, another group went to Geva, which was a much fancier kibbutz.  I mean, it was really much more developed and more beautiful, so on.  And so, I ended up being chosen to go to Katamon.  So, I spent most of my time in Jerusalem.  And that was wonderful.

EM:  Great.  Well, let's talk a little bit more specifically about Yiddish and 30:00how that kind of affected what you did later on with the Yiddish Theatre.  So, you said that you spoke Yiddish at home when you were in Cuba.  Did you continue to speak Yiddish at home when you moved to the States?

JW:  Yeah, of course.  I always -- when I spoke to my parents, I spoke in Yiddish.  And very soon after coming here -- since I came here basically to go to Julliard, I made a kind of spontaneous and somewhat rash decision that I was going to be an artist when I was in Korea.  It came out of being alone, and exposure to a part of Americana that I absolutely did not know about.  I mean, these people from Biloxi, Mississippi and places in southern Illinois and the hills of Kentucky.  And, I mean, these were goyim that I absolutely knew 31:00nothing about.  Just nothing.  And just, I couldn't imagine what they were like.  And then, I would write to friends in Detroit and I would get very few letters back.  People went on with their lives.  And so, I felt very much alone.  And I finally decided that I was going to be an artist.  I was going to express my feelings, not as a part of the Jewish community or as a part of going to Israel or so on, so forth.  I would express it in a more private way, right?  Okay.  So, the decision, in retrospect, encapsulated my anger, my disappointment, which I didn't think about.  I just thought in terms of, I have choices and I make decisions.  So, I kind of spike up my commentary along with 32:00my more current way of understanding my life.  (laughs) And so, I immediately started to work, to make money by teaching in the Sholem Aleichem shules.  I started to choreograph.  And then, I decided that I really needed much more training, because I made the decision rather late in life for people who are going to be dancers.  And obviously, I chose modern dance, not ballet.  And I went to Julliard.  And so, very soon after that, I joined the Fred Berk Dance Company.  Fred Berk represented Israeli dancing at the 92nd Street Y here in New York.  And then, he had a modern folk dance company, and I joined that 33:00almost immediately through a friend from Detroit, Jerry Katz, who was in the company.  He eventually moved back to Detroit.  And then, I met, of course, people like Felix Fibich, who came from Europe and was known as the choreographer for Hasidic dancing.  So, he would always be the choreographer for things that were done by the "Tsukunft," this was a magazine that used to exist, and other groups that would create programs and performances and so on to raise money or to celebrate some anniversary.  And so, I joined him, and he was 34:00the one who actually recommended me to the Folksbiene Theatre.  And that's how I got around to the Folksbiene Theatre.

EM:  So, when you were growing up or even in Julliard, were you reading Yiddish literature?  I mean, what was your --

JW:  No.

EM:  No.

JW:  No, no.  No.  No, no, I started living as part of this artistic intelligentsia community, right?  We had no specific cultures, et cetera, et cetera.  I joined this worldwide artistic community, 'cause I thought, as a dancer, you express yourself physically.  It's a language that's understood everywhere.  It's not local, right?  And especially if you're doing concert 35:00dancing, you're expressing feelings, concepts, thoughts, that kind of thing, which is understood worldwide.  So, I kind of pulled myself out of my mishpokhe [family] and pulled myself out of my Zionism.  I pulled myself out of my Yiddish culture, in a way, which have -- many thoughts about over the years, et cetera, and because when you do that and you're a young person, you think of freedom, liberty, a kind of concrete separation.  And in the process, of course, what you end up doing, or what I did -- I should qualify my comment -- I ended up really repressing real feelings that I had for my parents, for the 36:00friends that I grew up with, et cetera, et cetera.  And it's a cover-up for trauma, a cover-up for anger, cover-up for feelings that are hard to deal with and they take effort and time and courage to be able to handle these things, and to -- what I now call, quote-unquote, growing up. 

EM:  So, even though you say that part of your life was very divorced from Yiddish culture, do you think it was -- I mean, looking back on it, do you think it was informed by your upbringing, your Jewishness, that kind of thing?  Or was it really totally separate?

JW:  I like your word totally.  I'm totally Jewish.  I mean, you cannot escape -- when I talk about equity, (laughs) when I can sit here and tell you a 37:00story about Avraham going to talk to Adonai [Hebrew: the Lord].  At that point, it wasn't Adonai, it was Elohim [Hebrew: our God], and because Sarah was making fun of him or he had an argument with her, et cetera -- that is so incredibly Jewish.  Over the years, I -- at one point, I met a fellow analyst who was an Episcopalian minister, priest.  And we would have lunches, and I would talk about everything I knew about Tanakh, all the stories and so on.  And I certainly don't consider myself a scholar on Tanakh.  But it was just knowledge 38:00that I grew up with.  It was references that I could easily make.  I wrote a book in 2011 which I self-published, called "The Way of the 4th Toe: Into the Feeling Body," an effort on my part to kind of put together my understanding as to how we can really live in the body.  It's not a great book, but it was a good effort on my part.  I start the very first part, which is the simplest part of the book, which is instructional.  I start with a quote from Exodus, yeah.  "Na'aseh v'nishmah [Hebrew: We will do, and obey]."  The back story to that is -- the apocryphal story is God went around offering the Ten Commandments to all sorts of different tribes and people.  Everybody said, Well, what's in 39:00it?  What's in the contract?  And when he finally joined the Israelites and they said, We will do, and then we will hear.  And what I had to say to people about living in the body is, Why don't you try the following things that I'm suggesting, and if it feels to you like you inhabit your body more, then you can read further into the book and understand some of the reasoning behind it.  So, that comes out of my Jewish background.  I mean, I didn't come up with quotes from -- I mean, later on, I did.  I quoted Rodin and Tolstoy and so on.  But that's just my Jewishness.  I mean, I feel it profoundly.  It's a part of my cell structure, literally.  And I don't say that in a cavalier way, because 40:00things are happening on a cellular level as we talk. 

EM:  Great, so let's get to some of the juicy stuff.  (laughs) Let's talk a little bit about your time with the Yiddish Theatre in the '60s.  So, can you tell me how you --

JW:  Yeah.

EM:  -- came to be involved in the Yiddish Theatre.

JW:  Yeah, I mentioned Felix Fibich before.  And I think he must have been in touch with Dovid Licht.  Dovid Licht was a director of the two plays in which I was involved with the Yiddish Theatre, with the Folksbiene.  And he was from Argentina.  And he'd come up to New York and he would direct these plays.  And the Folksbiene Theatre would perform, I think, Thursday, Friday -- no, maybe 41:00Friday night, not, because it was Shabbos.  And then, Saturday night, and then two performances on Sunday.  I hope I'm remembering this correctly, but -- so, there were four performances during the week, right?  And it was always during hours that I had available to do this.  So, he introduced me to Dovid Licht, and Dovid Licht had me read some lines, and he listened to my Yiddish accent, which at that time -- this was sixty-- I looked it up.  I suddenly went through the resume.  I was looking for papers, and I couldn't remember that I did this in '61, '62.  Actually, it was '63, '64.  Those were the years.  So, I guess 42:00it was the fall/winter of '63, then, fall/winter of '64.  So, that was my involvement with the Folksbiene.

EM:  And how did you -- I mean, you were a dancer before, but how did you get interested in theater, in particular?

JW:  Well, what happened was -- and again, long-winded response.  What happened is I began to realize that the people that I was with in Julliard were really dancing circles around me.  They had started dancing much, much earlier, and although I was very passionate about what I felt was in my body that I needed to get out, nevertheless my physical skills, my dance skills, were limited.  They were adequate, so that I eventually went to an audition for 43:00"West Side Story," for the movie, and out of the 250 people who were there, I made the last twenty-five, right, with Jerome Robbins sitting in the audience and approving of whatever decisions were being made.  So, that was very reaffirming.  However, I worked with people like Weidman, who had partnered with Doris Humphrey.  These were all the people who created modern dance.  They really formed modern dance in New York.  And it was a small community.  I mean, at one point at Julliard, the Bolshoi Ballet came to New York.  It was the very first import of something from Russia after the Cold War that was 44:00brought to the United States.  The person in charge of that was Sol Hurok, who was a big impresario.  We were invited to a rehearsal.  It was at the old Metropolitan House, which was on Forty-First Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue.  The people who were invited were practically the whole New York dance community, and we sat in the first ring.  That was it.  Nobody in the orchestra, nobody in any of the other levels.  And that was a remarkable experience, which I won't get into.  But I began to realize that, as I got more 45:00and more involved with becoming technically more proficient, I was losing a relationship to that passion inside of me that wanted me to be a choreographer.  So, it's almost as though the process of developing more and more control, which is with skills -- and are involved with, and it's a question of mastery -- took me further and further away from that passion internally.  And I could feel that I was losing something, that I was shifting away from something that drove me, that was so important and so valuable.  It's like losing a connection to your insides.  Now, to most people, I use the word soul.  But the word that really comes to mind, given this interview, is "neshome [soul]."  You lose a connection to who you feel you are.  And I began 46:00to look around at most dancers that I had worked with and was working with, and I felt that they were dumb.  There was something missing, from my perspective.  Maybe not for them, obviously.  But from my perspective, I felt that they were not involved in some sort of monumental mission of some sort.  Now, this is obviously my own prejudice, no question about that.  And so, I began to shift to theater.  I thought, Oh, if you get involved in theater, it's more emotional, it's more passionate.  There's more room for both words and movement and ideas.  And I, obviously, was shifting back to some sort of relatedness, a greater relatedness than movement.  'Cause in movement, there's 47:00always this communication through our bodies, right?  And we either sense it and understand it, like falling in love or feeling desire or passion.  And obviously, I was beginning to move towards wanting a greater kind of verbal dialogue, and I was moving away.  That world, that dance world, of course, is the world of the infant.  The infant senses the mother, right?  And they discover that they can move their hand, and a joke occurred to me during a session yesterday, in which I said, "They suddenly discover volition.  But their only word for that is mama."  (laughs) And you keep telling the infant, No, no, no, that's a volitional action on your part.  They say mama.  So, to 48:00understand that the nature of words are always connected to certain sensory experiences, and therefore what a word means to you may not be the same thing that a word means to me.  People very often argue around words rather than saying, what is that person's sensory experience in relationship to those words?  'Cause that's what that word really means to the person, and not just an idea of the word itself.  So, I began to move away from dance and move into theater, and eventually, I went to study directing with Gene Frankel, who always used choreographers in all the pieces for which he won the Obie Awards, Off-Broadway.  And I studied directing with him, and very quickly began to use my choreographic skills, which I think I should qualify.  I began to use that 49:00kind of physical sensitivity to direct people.  So, I wasn't working with people's minds or their feelings.  I was working with my projections as to how something should sound.  So, I wasn't really involved with the people.  I was involved with myself still at that point.  However, it was effective.  And so, almost immediately, there was a weekend workshop, and Frankel chose the plays that I worked on.  So, I began to feel that I was a good director and so on, that kind of thing.  And it worked.  I mean, it really helped me, eventually, to get some important directing jobs, which had to do with that.  But I was really slowly beginning to become more and more socialized and more and more involved with relatedness and so on.  So, the aloneness that was what made me 50:00choose being a choreographer was fraying at the edges.  I obviously began to feel the need for people and closeness.  So, I was returning back to my mishpokhe.

EM:  And so, you got into directing before or after you were involved with the Yiddish plays?

JW:  Before.

EM:  Okay.  And so, then how did you end up -- you were an actor in the Yiddish Theatre, right?

JW:  Oh, yes.

EM:  Right.  So, how did you end up doing that?

JW:  Because Gene Frankel said, "You have to know more about acting."  I said, "Oh, this is a wonderful opportunity to me to learn more about acting."  But actually, when you join the Folksbiene Theatre, nobody talks about acting.  51:00They tell you what to do and you do it.  And it's acceptable or it's not acceptable.  They make a comment and then you make an adjustment.  So, really, I didn't learn anything about acting, per se, through the Yiddish Theatre.  But I did have an acting experience.  And occasionally, I would actually experience waiting for my cue line and going totally blank, I mean where I had no idea what I was going to say.  I knew that I was supposed to walk out on that line, and I would literally take a step onto the stage feeling totally blank and then automatically, somehow, the words would come flowing out of my mouth.  And so, I know what that trauma is all about.  And, of course, in retrospect, I didn't belong there.  I'm not really an actor.  And the idea of performing and being 52:00on the stage was becoming increasingly more and more secondary in my life as other aspects of my life, my personality were developing.

EM:  And so, what was the first Yiddish play that you were in?

JW:  It was "Backlane Center" was -- I don't remember the author for that.  "Backlane Center" was a play about the changes which were happening in Jewish life.  People who were the directors of Jewish centers, directors of things 53:00were Jewish intellectuals.  And eventually, they managed to create buildings and form organizations, and there was always a kind of idealism.  And they would appeal to people.  It's like the whole growth of the Yiddish Book Center, right?  Goes along and he suddenly has this idea, I'm going to collect books, and he starts collecting books.  And he said, What the hell am I going to do with all these books?  Anyway, one thing leads to another.  But it comes out of a very heartfelt, idealized notion of what needs to be done, what he needs to do, what he needs to save, what needs to be saved.  It's not just books.  It's his neshome that he's saving, right?  And it keeps growing, it keeps developing, and lo and behold, things get digitalized and what have you.  54:00(laughs) And so, the center, the big issue in this play, is that eventually, a person on the board is this man who made a lot of money in the plumbing business.  His son is a lawyer, and he feels that the director should give up his position and we need a more professional person.  The lawyer should now become the head of the center.  So, I'm this nasty, arrogant young man who's challenging the director of the center.  So, that was "Backlane Center."

EM:  Do you remember any of your lines from the play?

JW:  No.  (laughter) It's amazing.  I did a lot of plays before, going to Wayne State University and being part of the theater program, and I don't 55:00remember plays.  I don't remember the lines from plays.  I don't remember choreography.  I think I would have to even go over the steps for "Mayim Mayim," which is an Israeli dance that everybody used to do.  I can still do the hora reflexively.  (laughs) I mean, just a few bar mitzvahs and a couple of weddings will help you to do that.  But there was a funny line that I do want to share with you.  The actress who played the wife of this person who was the director of the center, this wonderful man whose name, unfortunately, I have forgotten, but tall and elegant and perfectly cast for the role -- the wife was an actress by the name of Spaisman.  Spaisman just died, I think, couple years 56:00ago.  And there was -- articles about her in the obituary of the "Times."  She should be someone who is to be praised.  She was very energetic.  She had red hair and she had a wonderful sense of play and fun, et cetera.  At the end of the play or close to the end of the play, there's a New Year's party, and Dovid Licht chose some music about "Auld Lang Syne" or something like that, something very sentimental.  And the director, I think his name's Dovid, a good name, he doesn't show up.  So, she runs home.  He obviously lives nearby the center, and -- like a rectory next to the church, and he's in a chair.  And she says to 57:00him, "Dovid, Dovid, efn uf di oygn -- open up your eyes, open up your eyes!"  And, of course, he has died and her joke line, which was shared among ourselves -- she never said it out loud -- is she would run in, she'd say, "Dovid, Dovid, efn uf di hoyzn," which is "Dovid, Dovid, open up your pants."  (laughter) That was Spaisman.  She was wonderful, absolutely wonderful.

EM:  And what was Dovid Licht like?

JW:  It's a good question.  He was pleasant, quiet.  Basically orchestrated the production.  I guess the theatrical term is he's a director.  He's a 58:00mise-en-scène director, borrowing from the French, and that is someone who traffics: come in, go out at this line, come in from here, go out from there.  And he would pretty much outline how he saw the production and how he saw the characters, and yet you filled it in.  You did what you needed to do as you understood it.  And that was the extent of it.  It was a very simple level of interaction, in retrospect.  And that's all I remember.  He might have done much, much more, and I'm being unfair to him.  As I reconstruct some of the stuff, I do have the sense that I'm not giving enough credit to the people, 59:00which is a testament to how self-involved I was, that I don't really recall, although I do have memories of the way I sensed these people. 

EM:  And what about the second play that you were in?

JW:  Ah, the second play.  The second play was called the "Der elefter yoyresh -- The Eleventh Inheritor."  And the writer was Dluznowsky.  He was a small man, very sweet.  Lived at the Belnord on Eighty-Sixth Street, where Isaac also lived, Isaac Bashevis Singer.  And that had to do with coin collecting and looking for special coins that had become very valuable.  Right.  So, I don't 60:00know enough about coins nowadays to even make a reference as to what that was about.  But that was it.  And then, there was a young woman in the play, and we were lovers and so on.  So, it was all about fortune, inheritance, and eventually that it's secondary to love.  So, that's a good Jewish play.  (laughs)

EM:  And who was the director of that play, do you remember?

JW:  Dovid.  Dovid Licht.

EM:  Oh, Dovid Licht, okay.

JW:  Yeah, Dovid Licht was the director.

EM:  Right.

JW:  Are we running out of questions?

EM:  No, no.  (laughs)

JW:  No, it's just -- (laughter)

EM:  Definitely not.  So, what was the theater like at that time, the actual physical theater?

JW:  Well, it was in the old Workmen's Circle building, which was on East Broadway.  The "Forverts" was downstairs, on the first floor, off the street.  61:00Dovid Cahan -- or Avram Cahan, I guess, akh, ver veyst [who knows]?  Was still alive, and he was still the editor and publisher of the "Forverts."  And on the second floor was a small theater.  I don't remember how many seats there were.  Two hundred, five hundred.  Tops five hundred.  Certainly tops, five hundred.  And that was the Folksbiene Theatre.  So, it was a small stage.  The makeup rooms, my God, the makeup rooms were up some steps.  So, there must have been some mezzanine or another floor, and then you'd walk down to the 62:00stage.  I haven't had that thought since I left the Folksbiene Theatre.  It was really small.  But one of the peculiarities is that people would sit in the first row and they would actually put their coats on the stage, because they didn't put it on the floor.  They didn't want to hold it in their laps.  They would put it on the stage.  And it was not unusual for them to suddenly, when I was in "Backlane Center" and I was behaving so rudely towards this scholarly intellectual director of the center, they would talk out.  Shame on you, you should talk like that to a person.  That was the Yiddish theater as I remember 63:00it.  (laughs) And not everybody, but there was always someone who would do something like that.  And I mean, you would never see that here.  I mean, it would look very, very strange.

EM:  And so, who was in the audience?  Was it younger people, older people?

JW:  Oh, it was older people.  It was the remaining Yiddish-speaking, dying Jewish community who would go to the Folksbiene Theatre.  They were people in their sixties and seventies.  There were some younger people, also, who would go.  But increasingly, it was less and less younger people.  And what has happened with the Folksbiene Theatre subsequently, is I don't know.  I mean, I just stopped following it altogether.  I don't know if I ever went to another 64:00Folksbiene production, actually.  I admit shamefully, in front of this camera and to you.  (laughs) But other things were going on in my life, so.

EM:  And did you ever go out anywhere after performances?  Was there like a Yiddish theater scene in New York, or --

JW:  No.  No, no, no, no, not -- I didn't.  There was the Royal Cafeteria on the corner, and that's where we would go between the Sunday afternoon performance and the Sunday evening performance.  So, that's where we'd go.  And you'd get a ticket, then your ticket would be punched, depending on what you 65:00got.  And I didn't revisit that place until I acted for Bruce Davidson, a photographer, who wanted to become a filmmaker.  He got a grant and he was going to do a documentary on Isaac Bashevis Singer.  And he decided that he would like to combine a story with documentary material, right, which he did quite nicely.  And the actor -- by that time, I had a dance school, and it was called the School for Creative Movement.  It lasted from 1962, when I first started it, to 1992.  So, for thirty years, and at one time grew to over 350 66:00students, with over 210 children from three to fifteen, 150 or so adults.  I had a book called "Creative Movement for Children" that was done in 1969, that was a beautiful photographic essay on the work that I had discovered and began to work with, and one of the few books in the area.  And so, the people who saw this -- I used to have summer workshops for teachers.  So, I had people coming from Germany and Sweden and Finland and New Zealand and so on, so forth.  So, it took on a sense, a real cachet, a neighborhood school with an international reputation.  And his wife, Bruce's wife was a student of mine.  And she 67:00recommended that he needed an actor to play Mrs. Pupko and Mr. Pupko.  And the story is a story of a man who's in the insurance business but wants to be a writer.  And he has a wife, and the wife has a beard.  He never takes her out, and he doesn't want her to get rid of the beard.  So, that's the story.  So, I played that part.  So, when I played Mrs. Pupko, of course, I had this incredibly long makeup period, and we went down to the Royal Café down there.  And so, that's the next time I visited it.  And subsequent to that, I don't know.  Maybe once, I went with my wife, my current wife, because I wanted to share something of that East Broadway experience, and so I showed her the place 68:00and so on.  But that was the only place.  The only other thing was Thomashefsky, who was a Yiddish actor and director, producer, which most of these people were.  They usually would have to initiate programs, and we'd sell possibilities to, like Ben Bonus, et cetera.  And he, again, through Felix Fibich, was going to do this play.  So, we went up to Washington Heights, where there are some wonderful apartments.  And he would give out the scripts to all of us.  We sat around, and he said, "I'd like you to read the following part.  You're going to be this or you're going to be this."  And then, he'd have a coat slung over his shoulders, very à la 1930s Hollywood.  And he sat down.  It was his living room.  And then, he proceeded to read all of parts, and we 69:00simply followed the script book.  So, that was my relation to the Yiddish theater (laughs) and this social reality.  No, I really wasn't a part of it at all.  It existed, but I just wasn't a part of it.

EM:  So, let's talk more about this film.  So, you said it incorporated documentary and the story --

JW:  And his story.

EM:  -- a story by --

JW:  Right.

EM:  -- Singer.

JW:  Yeah.

EM:  Or Bashevis.  So, did you have interaction with Bashevis that --

JW:  Oh, yes.

EM:  Okay.

JW:  Oh, yes.

EM:  So, tell me about that.

JW:  Well, my first interaction with Bashevis is that I had gotten a summer camp job with Chagigah.  Chagigah was a celebration.  It was a two-week 70:00program in the arts, the Jewish arts that was set up by NFTY, the National Federation of Temple Youth, and it was a way of getting young people and late high school, early college who were still involved with Jewishness, and to introduce them to a part of Jewish life that was not just plain, traditional -- had to do with the arts.  And the fellow that was chosen for that was Isaac Bashevis Singer.  So, when I came in as a theater director, they decided to do "Gimpel the Fool."  "Gimpel the Fool" had been translated by Malamud, I think, maybe.  Terrible.  My memory is getting terrible.  And it showed up in "The New Yorker," and it began to celebrate Isaac Bashevis Singer as a writer, 71:00particular style, et cetera.  And the guy who was in charge, and my saying, calling him "this guy" tells you how I felt about him.  (laughs) The editor was Paul Kresh.  So, Paul Kresh took the story and he kind of put it together almost like a play, but it really wasn't.  I mean, he just, in my opinion -- if you ever get this, Paul, if you're still alive, (laughs) I'm sorry, you didn't do a good job with this.  But I began to reshape it and reform it.  And fortunately, there was another Davidson, Charles Davidson, who was a cantor in Philadelphia, and he was writing the music, and his composing ideas and my theatrical ideas, my directing ideas, really came together beautifully.  And 72:00so, we did "Gimpel the Fool," we put it on stage.  It was obvious to me that the story was part surreal, which is his own personal experiences, and part social.  And so, I would have these surrealistic elements and these dreamlike elements, and then I would have something that followed more like a plot of the play, since Gimpel was forced to marry this prostitute.  And his revenge was eventually to urinate on the dough that, as a baker, he was making.  And so, people were essentially eating his shit, right?  And that was his revenge.  That was "Gimpel the Fool."  It's a wonderful story.  And like most of 73:00Singer's, it reaches into some very anal, very early ideas.  He was an interesting man, but cold-blooded.  And the play was very successful.  It was wonderful.  It came off beautifully.  All the young people who participated were just delightful.  My directing was superb.  (laughs) The way I conceived of it really worked.  Charles's score was wonderful, Charles Davidson.  And subsequently, a friend of his who was also a cantor on Long Beach saw this and he says, "Oh, we must bring this to Broadway.  And definitely, you, Jack, and Charles will be important to this idea."  And he had already done something of 74:00Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" there in Long Beach, because Long Beach had a lot of very wealthy Jews who were involved with RKO and with theater and that kind of thing.  And he got their backing for this.  And so, we began to talk to Singer.  We went to a dairy restaurant on Broadway where Singer would go.  We met him for lunch.  And by that time, I had this experience with doing "Gimpel the Fool" and Chagigah in Warwick, New York.  And I convinced Isaac to 75:00write.  And he says, "I've never written a play.  And you want me to write a musical.  I don't even know how to write a musical."  I said, "You know what?  You choose the story and I will create a structure for a musical," which he did.  He chose the story.  And I said, "Oh, your dialogue in your stories is so wonderful.  When you have the characters talk, it's so wonderful.  You can write the dialogue."  And I convinced him that it's possible, but I would give him a structure, right?  Because it's not a story.  This is going to be a musical, it's going to be a play.  And so, I structured something, and one Sunday morning, I delivered it to his apartment at the Belnord, on the fifth floor?  Fifth floor.  I think it was the fifth floor.  And then, I didn't 76:00hear from him.  Months and months go by, and we eventually meet at the Ansonia Hotel on Broadway and Seventy-Third, Seventy-Fourth.  Yeah, Seventy-Third, I guess.  And he proceeds to read it.  He has taken my second act and put it into the first act.  He took the first act and put it in the second act.  Di frage iz, "Far vos?" [The question is, "Why?"]  Why did he do this?  Because he's still thinking of a musical in terms of an old-style play.  The format, the structure for an old-style play is you introduce the characters.  And then, as a consequence of introducing the characters, you begin to introduce the conflicts, and then you have a resolution of the conflict.  So, that was actually the structure.  What happened, in 1947, is, in the United States, is a 77:00musical, whose name does not come to mind -- but it suddenly said, No, we introduce the environment in which these characters live and then we deal with the conflict.  So, that's the way I structured the musical, so in that kind of way.  And the example that comes to mind that might make sense to you is "West Side Story."  So, in "West Side Story," you see the fence, you see this attitude, and it's only little by little that you get the story of Tony and Maria, the love story.  So, the world was becoming -- in theater was becoming increasingly more and more sociologic in nature.  It was more involved with 78:00what was happening in society, and it was becoming more Marxist in a way.  Less Victorian, less involved with the individual from that point of view.  So, the world was changing and musicals were changing, plays were changing and that kind of thing.  I was livid when this happened.  Livid.  And I was still so steeped in derekh-erets that I couldn't find the chutzpah to speak up and to say, "What in the hell did you do?  What did you do?  I gave you a structure and you changed it around.  What's the matter with you?  Why didn't you call me?  You didn't understand it."  Many years later, apropos to this incident, he used to go down to Four Brothers, which was a Greek diner on Eighty-Seventh 79:00Street and Broadway.  And he would sit with Alma, his wife, and they would have lunch.  And, of course, they always had very good rice pudding, which the Greek restaurants usually do.  But I had a studio on Eighty-Seventh Street, just a little further west.  And after classes, I would go there sometimes with some of the students, and I would have lunch.  By that time, we had done the film and so on.  There's more to that other story, but I'll leave it out.  I finally had had enough therapy by that time, so I was beginning to feel that there was some value to my particular feelings about something.  Didn't make me 80:00right, but at least I would honor what I felt.  And I came up to him and I said, "Isaac, do you remember the play, 'The Mirror'?"  No, the actual structure for the play was based on something called "The Shoemaker."  I don't remember if that was the actual title for it, but it was "The Shoemaker."  But subsequently, it was another play.  Eventually, it was revised, and there was always an effort to get it produced.  It kept being rejected because the playwright that I brought into the first effort to bring Singer to Broadway 81:00ended up screwing me.  Not uncommon in the theater.  And the guy peddled it to basic producers like Merrick and Cohen at the time, et cetera.  And they kept saying, "I'm sorry, we don't think this is really the right material."  And the guy eventually called me up and he said -- his name was Mendelson, and he said, "Could you give me an analysis of why it keeps being rejected?"  I said, "Mendelson, you screwed me once.  I don't do anything without being paid up front for you."  And so, he said, "Okay, I'll pay you."  When I think back to what I charged him, I should have charged him at least five times as much.  Never mind.  I was still my father's son, and you don't charge too much.  (laughs) It's not the right thing to do.  So, I looked at the play and I realized what I had done is the person who eventually talked Mendelson out of 82:00taking me as a director was -- let me take my revenge.  (laughs) His name was Eric Blau.  Eric Blau did "Jacques Brel is Alive and Living in Paris," for which I was supposed to be the director, but it didn't work out because he wanted it earlier and I said, "No, I can't do it," because at that time, you direct something Off-Off-Broadway like that, you get fifty dollars on your contract a week.  Well, you can't support a family on fifty dollars a week, so -- and so, I saw what happened in the play.  Eric had taken my ideas that had to do with where the ballets came in, where the songs came in for the musical, and he connected it with his own writing of scenes, which were not unlike what 83:00Singer did.  It was an old-style format, literally.  And the things did not mesh stylistically.  They were off, right?  Okay.  So, you come in in hippie clothes and it's an event where everybody's wearing Chanel.  Obviously, things don't fit, yeah, okay.  And so, it kept being refused by producers who were used to looking at material and saying, Yes, this is going to work or I'm sorry, I'm not going to spend my time getting someone to revise all of this.  It's not worth it.  Okay, so fortunately, that was the story.  But subsequently, another play that Singer had done kept being -- there was an effort to keep 84:00producing it.  Kept being sent to different people.  Eventually, it was down to Yale.  Epstein did it.  And everybody kept refusing it, kept saying there's something wrong with that second act.  It doesn't fit with the first act.  So, everyone had the good sense to see that there was something wrong in the structure of how something flows.  And that, you have to have a sensibility of what constitutes something organic, something that really moves through that is essential, that you can see it weaving through the piece, right?  I'll go back to the word "neshome."  You have to understand the spirit of something that weaves through a piece.  And that's what makes a good story or a good poem or a 85:00good program, and with all these long-winded terrible asides, which constitute the way that I tell something.  (laughs)

EM:  So, just going back to Bashevis, what was he like as a person to you?  What were your interactions like?

JW:  Well, I can only speak about him from my prejudice and from my experience with him, because I found that when I confronted him at Four Brothers and I said, to finish that little story, anecdotally -- I said, "You know what you did?  I gave you a structure for that play."  He opened up his eyes and he was looking at me like, of course, had no memory at all of this.  And I said, "You 86:00were a ganef."  You know what the word "ganef" is?  Yes, it's a "thief."  But to call someone a "ganef," and if you come out of that Yiddish background, it's a nasty attribution to call someone a "ganef," yeah.  And he said, "Oh, as God as my witness, I would not do something like that."  And I said, "God is your witness and you did do it."  And, of course, Alma, his wife, was totally quiet, because she was his servant.  Looked after him, made sure he had his coffee with his milk.  He was demanding, and as far as I'm concerned, he was not a 87:00particularly nice man.  I'm delighted that he got the Nobel Prize for Literature and that he was able to deliver a speech in Yiddish, which made all Yiddish-speaking people supposedly very happy.  But my personal experiences with him is he left a very sour note, as I, in a certain way, I delight in being able to tell you the story for the record, so it's archived.  (laughs) But he was courteous and pleasant, but really, another thing that comes to mind, perhaps apropos to your question, is when I played Mr. Pupko, I'm sorry, it was Mr. Pupko, at the Royal Cafeteria, in which Singer accuses this man.  He says, "You're not a writer.  What kind of a sentence is this?  How do you connect 88:00this adjective to this particular noun?"  That kind of thing.  He insults the man, literally.  And eventually, there's a scene with Mrs. Pupko.  She confronts him with the fact that he had caused a man to die, that he had hurt him so deeply that he had a heart attack.  Apropos to that part of the story that I'm telling you is that that's the accusation was made against the American Psychoanalytic when Winnicott came to United States to talk, and they really were not involved with his ideas, as most people are nowadays, and they insulted him and hurt him.  And they were accused of causing his heart attack.  And it's hard to believe that other people can give you a heart attack.  However, 89:00they can.  We are so connected to each other as human beings.  We're so sensitive to each other, that if you're connected in a particular kind of way, someone can really kill you with their words, right?  Young people know this, because when they fall in love, they can feel that kind of hurt, the way someone says something to them or rejects them.  Or something is said, and that's what causes young people to commit suicide sometimes, it's so painful.  And going off in this direction is making me forget what I was trying to tell you about Singer.  Oh, yes.  As for playing Mr. Pupko in the Royal Cafeteria, or the 90:00Cafeteria Royal -- is it was a very short scene.  I needed to get back to teach some classes for children at three o'clock in the afternoon.  My makeup started at 5:30 in the morning.  It was to make me old, and so on, so forth.  The cameraman didn't load the things correctly.  We're waiting for the light.  There was a delay.  I figured it's going to be very easy.  I'll just play off of him with the few lines that I had.  I found him to be so incredibly without any emotion.  "So, what was it that you asked me?"  It was like that.  Cold.  Cold.  No feeling at all.  There was no movement in it.  He was 91:00really a storyteller in his own mind, a fantasy.  Years later, I discovered that, in fact, he was very nasty to some of his former wives and lovers, which he wrote stories about, and also that he was not good to his son.  But that was something that happened in passing.  I'm not quite sure exactly what it was.  And, of course, among Jewish circles, he was always being compared to his brother who was a real writer, and didn't write in that kind of small, little, narrow world of fantasies that Isaac was writing, which, of course, began to appeal to modern man.  We're very involved with the small little world of 92:00perversity and sexual desires and narcissism and so on, so forth.  But at the time that he started to write, of course, he was part of the "Bintel Brief," which was something that appeared in the "Forward," which were like stories.  And people had problems and questions.  And I don't know what the American -- there was always a column where you asked someone and someone would always give you answers.  You know?

EM:  Like "Dear Abby," you mean?

JW:  "Dear Abby."

EM:  Yeah.

JW:  Thank you.  Perfect.  (laughter) "Dear Abby," yes, that was it.  And so, he was never considered, really, a major writer among Jewish circles.  It was only because the world was changing, and our considerations, just as I was 93:00describing the difference in theater between exposition of characters and the subsequent developments that took place in terms of musical theater, which was much more sociologic and talking about culture and so on, so forth.  And our world became increasingly more and more me-involved, more narcissistic in nature.  And subsequently, from a psychological point of view, more involved with perversities and those kinds of issues.  And fortunately, there's a shift that's taking place, and people are becoming more responsible and -- like MoveOn organization and --

EM:  So, we only have a few minutes left.

JW:  Yes.

EM:  (laughs) So, what is your relationship to Yiddish now, and are you interested in sort of passing that on to future generations?

JW:  Well, the word that comes to mind is "kharote."  "Kharote" is "regret."  I regret that I don't speak Yiddish with the same fluency that I had at one point, where phrases and idioms just come easily to mind.  You don't think about it.  They're just there.  They're part of your language, part of your ability to express colorfully how you feel about something, how you think about something, that kind of thing.  So, there is that regret.  And otherwise, I don't have a powerful feeling about this business of the legacy of language, the 95:00legacy of Yiddish, the legacy of Jewishness.  I still have come basically to honor -- there are good people and there are people who are not well.  I really have a very strong psychoanalytic perspective.  And there are wonderful moments that exist between us as human beings, and there are difficult moments that exist between us as human beings.  But this is true wherever you go in the world, literally.  There are nice people, there are not nice people.  And usually, the not nice people, it's because they've suffered.  They have felt terrible pain and they've decided to protect themselves and always look to see what do you have in mind and what's your motivation, and so they don't listen to 96:00what you feel.  They're always suspicious.  And so, they're steeped in their own paranoia and their own pain, their own hurt.  And sometimes, it's very hard to get people out of it.  And when they get organized, they create havoc.  ISIS, Rwanda, yeah.

EM:  So, you find that you're much more interested in the legacy of good than the legacy of Yiddish, is that --

JW:  The legacy of --

EM:  Of good --

JW:  Good?

EM:  -- rather than the legacy of Yiddish or Jewishness.  I mean --

JW:  That's --

EM:  -- feel free to challenge that, but --

JW:  Good is giml, vov, tes.  (laughter) G-O-O-D, right?

EM:  Yeah, yeah.

JW:  Yeah.  Yeah, I am.  I am.  That's very well put.  It's very cryptically put.  (laughter)

EM:  Well, maybe explain that then a little bit.  I mean, explain why you're 97:00not all that interested in a legacy of Jewishness.  I mean, because your whole life, you've been so steeped in Jewishness, so --

JW:  Yes and no.  I mean, when I tell you these stories, and I speak about myself historically, it looks like, Oh my God, you have really such a rich Yiddish background.  But I think that I'm much more, with time and with age, I think I have become much more involved with the fact that there are people who are interested in really feeling.  And there are people who are interested, basically, in their ideas.  And ideas without feeling are dangerous, because 98:00you can end up justifying practically anything.  And people who work with feelings, they're richer in terms of the moment.  They're more present as you talk to them.  And they may not have wonderful ideas as to what to do and how things should go, et cetera, et cetera.  But they're usually more appropriate to the situation and to what's actually happening.  And I think that has dictated my own personal growth, which was like exiting an obsessional world and a world that was involved with a certain kind of fame, a certain kind of achievement, a certain kind of celebrity, and to appreciate just the pleasure of 99:00sitting here and talking with you.  (laughs)

EM:  Well, before we finish up, is there anything I didn't ask you that -- any story that you want to share that I haven't asked you about?

JW:  No, actually, I'm so delighted that you thought of the time, because I need to get to an appointment by one o'clock.

EM:  Oh, okay.  (laughter)

JW:  So --

EM:  Well, I guess we'll end it here, then.  (laughter) Well, thank you so much --

JW:  So, I think it's a --

EM:  -- for agreeing to do this.

JW:  -- good place for me to stop.

EM:  Okay, very well.

JW:  And it would be nice to tell you more stories, (laughter) but maybe some other time.

EM:  Okay, great.  Well, thank you.

JW:  Thank you very much.

EM:  Thanks.

JW:  Okay.

 [END OF INTERVIEW]