BRACHA WEINGROD ORAL HISTORY

PAULINE KATZ: This is Pauline Katz, and today is November 23rd, 2010. I am here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, with Bracha Weingrod, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Bracha, do I have your permission to record this interview?

BRACHA WEINGROD: Yes, you do.

PK:Thank you very much. I'd just like to ask you about your family -- and as far back as you remember, any interesting stories or where they came from?

BW:Well, my mother came from a small place in Mogilev -- that's White Russia -- and it was called Bykhov. And I had no idea where Bykhov was. But when we were 1:00at Yarnton, near Oxford, there were a group of young Jewish students learning Yiddish as well who were going off to Poland and Russia to rekindle the possible children of Jews who had been there, and they had a map -- a very detailed map of the shtetlach [small Eastern European villages with Jewish communities]. And there, for the first time, I found Bykhov. So, it has probably gone out of existence, except for being on the map. (laughs) Anyway, that's where my mother comes from. I am not sure where my father came from. But I know that they came from Russia to Canada in 1911.

PK:And did you grow up in Canada?

BW:I grew up in Canada. I grew up in Winnipeg, which I thought was "Vinnipeg" 2:00till I was fourteen. (laughs) And then I realized, I was in Winnipeg and not "Vinnipeg." But it was a very Yiddish community. Very Yiddish. It was a town of about -- when I grew up -- of seventeen thousand Jews, with at least five Yiddish schools -- because the folkshul [public Yiddish secular school] couldn't get along with the Talmud Torah couldn't get along with the Bundists couldn't get along with the Sholem Aleichem Shule couldn't get along with the Peretz Shule, and so everyone had their own -- but a very warm and lively community.

PK:Did you go to one of those schools?

BW:Yes, I did. I went to the Peretz Shule -- a very good shule. But unfortunately, my mother, who was a widow -- I hardly remember my father; he 3:00died when I was two. She couldn't afford the -- as they called it, the skhar-limed [tuition fee] -- sachar limud. And so, they didn't allow me to go on past third grade. But the people that took me in and took me under their wing were the Sholem Aleichem Shule, which was the Arbeter Ring, where I -- if you know them -- we had maps of Birobidzhan on the wall and we also had a balalaika orchestra -- a lot of singing. It was a place where you spelled "emet" -- alef-mem-tav -- we spelled it "emes" -- ayin-mem-ayin-samekh. So, you know where I'm coming from. (laughs) It was very socialist, very -- it wasn't exactly 4:00Bundist, but it was sort of international Judaism and not heavy on the religious side.

PK:When was this?

BW:This was in -- you're very clever not to ask me how old I am -- I am very old -- but it was in the mid-'30s, when I used to go to English school and Yiddish school. And English school and Yiddish school -- every day, we -- my group of friends, we had English school and Yiddish school, and then -- not on Saturdays -- and I think on Sundays -- but we went every day.

PK:Can you tell me about that group of friends?

BW:Oh, they were wonderful friends. But we did spend (coughs) -- my most memorable years were in the Peretz Shule, (coughs) where they would sort of have a community Oneg Shabbat on Friday night. And there was a wonderful man called 5:00khaver [comrade] Frayden -- we always called our elders khaver this or khaver that. And khaver Frayden would get up on the stage and read from Sholem Aleichem. But he would read and he would act and he would (speaks with a high-pitched voice) be a woman and he would (speaks with a low-pitched voice) be a man. And he enthralled us all. And we little kids sat around the stage -- literally, at his feet. And I think those productions, that kind of entertainment, that Oneg Shabbat, was one of the central things that endeared me for my love of Yiddish. (laughs) As well as the choir -- this was the Mak'hela, where we sang Yiddish songs. And then, I went on to be trained -- so-called -- as a Yiddish teacher near Toronto in a camp. And interspersed with the Russian 6:00songs, we also (laughs) learned Yiddish.

PK:What camp was that?

BW:It was called Camp Naivelt. And a friend of mine, whose name is Fradle Freidenreich, and who just put out a book on Yiddish secular studies -- a great big book that I am about to buy -- wrote about that camp in the book, and about the many camps and the many informal ways kids grew up with Yiddish in America and Canada. So, that was the beginning of it all. And then, I kind of forgot about it in a way. I taught -- I taught at the Peretz Shule in Winnipeg. I also 7:00-- my husband was going to school at the University of Chicago, and I taught in Chicago at the Dovid Pinski shule. And I taught singing at another shule in Chicago -- I've forgotten the name. But it was still sort of a part-time thing. 'Cause you couldn't make a living (laughs) teaching Yiddish. Anyway. And what else?

PK:How did you find your way back to --

BW:To this? Well, we came to Israel, and I was warned several times not to come back to Israel until I had at least a master's degree. And I loved language, and I knew Hebrew pretty much. And I became very involved in America -- in Newton, Massachusetts, where we lived -- with dyslexia. And I was in a very good 8:00program, where we tried to understand needs of dyslexics and how to teach them English in a very logical way. And so, I got my bachelor's degree -- this is after having four kids (laughs) -- and then my master's degree from Boston University in kind of a -- today they would probably call it neurocognitive studies -- and learning disabilities. And then I came to Israel, where I was promptly told by the head of the David Yellin Teachers College, "Dyslexia?" he said. "We don't have that in Israel." But I later discovered that there was lots 9:00of dyslexia. And so, I began working in the field of dyslexia. I taught students at the David Yellin Teachers College. I opened up a teachers' center through the goodwill and fortune of the Kohl Foundation -- Dolores Kohl. And I began -- in 1974, when we finally settled in Israel -- the Israel Dyslexia Society, which was a branch of the Orton Dyslexia Society. And my work has been very much in English-Hebrew problems -- and trying to proudly proclaim that if Hebrew was only written with Yiddish lettering -- without the dots, dashes, pintelekh 10:00[little dots] underneath, over, above -- kids would learn Hebrew simply, and Hebrew would not be such a secret language. Everything would be explicit -- explicit letters of the words. And the meaning is something that is usually taken care of from the home, from the surroundings, but the reading -- which has always been the Achilles' heel for -- not so much for Israeli kids, who come with a huge amount of knowledge from their home, but for the huge immigrant population, Hebrew is a very difficult language to learn. So, anyway. But all my pleas, all my letters to the editor, all my papers that I gave at conferences -- 11:00to no avail. Hebrew grammarians are -- I think you call them grammarians -- are too stuck on the holy rules of grammar, and you can't change (laughs) -- you can't change Hebrew. How did we get onto all this? (laughs)

PK:How did you end up deciding to translate "Dos familyen kokhbukh [The family cookbook]"?

BW:Right. Well, this is something I usually -- I spoke about in LA and in Vancouver, and I'm going to speak about this perhaps today and at the 92nd Street Y on Monday. Very good friends of mine -- who are no longer with us, unfortunately. He was a professor of Assyriology all his life at the Hebrew University, and she, an archaeologist at the Israel Museum -- Miriam and Hayim 12:00Tadmor -- gave us this book. He always went abroad -- anywhere he was, he was foraging for books. (laughs) And we had a common love of Yiddish. Although he's really a Harbiner Jew -- he and his family fled Russia and came to Manchuria after the Revolution, so his father actually is buried in Harbin, in Manchuria. Anyway, they gave me this book, and it sat on my shelf for many, many years. And do you want to hear the rest of it all? It's an oysgeshlepte mayse [drawn-out story], as they say. But when we were in Stony Brook on one of my husband's 13:00sabbaticals, we met a couple of very nice people, Lew and Rose Coser, and I think they are also no longer with us -- I know she died. And she took enormous umbrage at Irving Howe when he wrote "The World of Our Fathers." And I know that her husband, Lew, and Irving were friends. She said, "The world of our fathers? Staytsh, vu geyt es [What's that about]! Where's the world of our mothers?" she said. And she began interviewing Italian and Yiddish older women in New York. And my husband and I had been in Sardinia in Italy for, oh, close to two years. He was doing his fieldwork there. And I knew Italian -- not too well, but a 14:00little -- and certainly I knew Yiddish. So, I said, Let me help you. And I began to help her translate the interviews of Italian- and Yiddish-speaking women. And then, it suddenly hit me: I said, "Rose, how can you do a book on the world of women without a cookbook?" I said, "You know, in Jerusalem, on a shelf in my kitchen, (laughs) there's a book, and the next person that comes to the States from Israel, I'm going to tell them to bring the book." And that's when they brought the book, and I began to read it seriously for the first time. And I just -- a love affair. Her attitude, her Yiddish -- which was Germanish Yiddish -- it's Austro-Hungarian or German -- and the kind of -- everything came back, 15:00from my auntie Sonia, from my mother, from my auntie Rivka, from the whole family -- the words, the sayings -- how to do it, how to make it -- it all spoke to me. And so, after I retired from teaching at the David Yellin Teachers College in Jerusalem, I said, Now I'm going to take my time and I'm going to translate it. And I actually had the book -- and I had it re-bound, because it was in bad -- you know, in not a great condition. And I began to read it. And I just said, I've got to do this for myself. And I did it for myself. And one thing led to another. (laughs)

PK:Had food been very important to you before?

BW:What?

PK:Food, cookbooks --

BW:No. No. No. I'm a pretty good cook, and I cook traditional meals. And for yontev [holiday], Shabbos -- I'm always in the kitchen. I enjoy it. But I'm not a cookbook person. I look at a cookbook and I see what I have in the house and I put things together. (laughs) So, I was never a cookbook fancier. But what I loved -- and her introductions to food groups in 1914 were amazing. The only fat you should use is pure olive oil. In 1914 -- that oil from grains is far 17:00healthier than shmalts and fat from animals. I mean, and all kinds of -- you know, try lemon juice instead of salt. And her ideas were a professional nutritionist's. And she was a lady with an attitude, (laughs) 'cause she -- as it says in the introduction to the book, it's an attempt to -- I think she was trying to teach the women who came from Poland and Russia during that great immigration period -- she was trying to tell them to break the chains of heavy Yiddish cooking -- shtetl cooking. And she has a subtitle, which I don't see 18:00here. Interesting -- maybe it's on the supplement side -- no, it's not in here -- it says: "This book is dos yidishe familyen kokhbukh in the style of French, Italian, German, and American kitchen" -- so that she was trying to raise the level. And you could tell -- I mean, where in a Yiddish cookbook do you find mock turtle soup? It's all kosher, by the way. But she tells you how to do it in a kosher way. (laughs) And oxtail soup. M'gefint dos in di faynste restoranen [You find it in the best restaurants] -- you know, she's always trying to be the elegant cook. And there's a marvelous chapter on kokhn farn krankn [cooking for the sick] -- which is rare in cookbooks in general, but that was the time when 19:00typhus was around. And anyway, she has lots of -- what do they call it -- political no-nos in her discussions of (laughs) -- and I left them in, because that was the feeling of the time. She has a recipe for Indian trout. "If your husband" -- she says, "if he happens to be a sports fan, if you're lucky, oyb ir hot mazl un ayer man geyt aroys un er geyt fishing [if you're lucky, and your husband goes out fishing]" -- that's what she -- "then, you bring in the trout, and," she says, "if you do it the Indian trout way, over coals and wrap it in a 20:00leaf," she says, "even white Americans," she says, (laughs) "will love it." (laughs) She's very cute. You know, "Herring should not be eaten during the summer months; it's bad for the mogn [stomach]." She's very concerned about the mogn. And many other things. I could go on and on. So anyway, I started to translate it. And I loved it. And then, suddenly, some friends of mine read it and said, Hey, you know, you should send it to someone. Well, that wasn't such a happy story. I sent it to Joan Nathan. Joan Nathan is the big doyenne of Yiddish cooking in this country. And she said, "Look, I can't promise you a publisher, but it sounds interesting. Go for it." So, I continued. And when I had quite a 21:00bit done -- now this original cookbook has 695 recipes and 363 pages. I only have 190 pages and I only did 200 recipes, but I thought it was enough to give a flavor of what that era was, because she was talking maybe not to the first stream of immigration, but to the second group. And the woman who wrote the introduction, Hasia Diner, really did a lot of work on food. And she has this wonderful book called "Hungering in America [sic]," and talks about Irish and Italian and Jewish immigrants. And she recognized that this book was really 22:00written for the people who already were a little more comfortable in America and wanted to be Americans -- you know, they really wanted to know the ways of the kitchen in America. And anyway, so I sent it off to many publishers. And I got the most wonderful, warm, enthusiastic, empathetic rejection letters that you ever saw. (laughs) You know, We love it, but we can't do it. Oh, we just finished our budget for last year; maybe we'll consider it next year. One company kept it for six months and kept me on a string. And then finally I said, You know what? I'm not getting any younger. (laughs) And I found a 23:00self-publishing company connected with Amazon called CreateSpace, and I did it through them. And that's the story.

PK:Now, earlier you said that when you started reading it, you were remembering some of your own family.

BW:Yes.

PK:Can you tell me more about that?

BW:Well, it evoked scenes. It evoked mayselekh [fairy tales]. It evoked an atmosphere of my parents and of the family -- who were, after all, the immigrant generation.

PK:Can you tell me what it looked like? I mean, the atmosphere --

BW:Well, the atmosphere was poor. It was poor. Everybody was poor. But -- as my uncle Avrom said, "In America, you have holes in your socks?" He says, "You 24:00throw them out and you buy a new pair!" It was, You don't have to mend them. Growing up, we were -- second generation, we would laugh at our elders. But there was such a charm and such a lovely feeling of family, of heymishkayt [coziness], of getting together, of songs, of yontoyvim [holidays], of certain maykholim [dishes] that we would eat and everybody knew. And we knew who specialized in the really good chopped liver and who made the best tsimes and who did the best -- you know. And I was certain that part of the Shabbos ritual was to spread newspaper on the kitchen floor, because that happened every 25:00Friday. (laughs) And as I grew older, I realized it was just my mother's way of protecting the floor after she cleaned the kitchen so that when she served or people might come in, it was all clean. (laughs) Anyway. We were in a Jewish ghetto in Winnipeg. That's the truth. It was a poor immigration. It wasn't the rich -- it wasn't the pushers and the doers of New York and Montreal, maybe. It was the shuster [shoemaker] and the shnayder [tailor]; it was the tailors; it was the shoemakers -- whose children became amazingly incredible scholars -- Rhodes Scholars and big doctors. As my mother used to say, "Oy, iz er a groyser doktor [Wow, he's a big doctor]." And there was just a feeling that I -- in 26:00fact, I -- this book, it took me on a trip to my roots. You know, people often go -- take a boat, a plane -- they go -- I felt I was doing this with this book. And I had translated for friends of mine. They came to me with a pad of paper -- you know, about twenty-five pages that their grandmother wrote in Yiddish. And, you know, I had to hold it this way and that way until I could figure out the words. But I translated for them. And (sighs) the stories were amazing. In fact, I should send you some of the things that I translated for people. Very touching. And those were not easy times in Russia and Poland -- getting out, et cetera. So, as I say, this was really a labor of love.

PK:Can you describe how it's changed you?

BW:It changed me by being -- also, I must say that while I was -- being in Jerusalem, I began taking a course in Yiddish from a wonderful woman, Chava -- her last name is difficult to pronounce -- Turniansky. And she spoke in beautiful Yiddish -- from Mexico. And she gave me -- she lit me up again. She revived, she rekindled that old Yiddish that was on tapes in the back of my head. And to her, I owe a great deal. But listen, I did this book with Weinreich in one hand and "Der oytser fun yidisher shprakh [The treasury of the Jewish 28:00language]" in the other hand. (laughs) And I even -- but many of the words, I had to go to a German-English dictionary for, because she was -- obviously, her background was German -- or Austro-Hungarian -- I can't figure out -- anyway. But it made me feel very good. And then the production of it was -- oh, after the translation, which was simple, I thought, Okay, I'm done. But then, the pictures -- I wanted some illustrations. And I went through hundreds and hundreds of pictures. In fact, I have a disk now, if anyone wants to see -- about twenty of the images that I used for the book, which came from YIVO, the Museum of the City of New York, the Tenement Museum, there's a postcard 29:00collection at the Hebrew University -- all of that era -- HIAS. And I wanted something in the book that was descriptive of that era. And I wish I could have afforded to do it in color, but it's all in black and white. (laughs) Anyway, that was the hardest part and took the longest time. Also, the fact that I'm not that literate in computer language, so the transfer of all this information to the people who were going to publish this -- I really had to hire people to do this. What's a PDF? I didn't know. What's a this? What's a that? And how to -- 300 DPI or -- anyway. That was much more involving than I thought. But I really, 30:00at that point, was determined enough already -- I have to do it. (laughs)

PK:To switch gears --

BW:Sure.

PK:-- why did you go to Jerusalem? Or what --

BW:Oh, this was long ago. I could give you the short answer -- that in 1973, with four children, we had this schizophrenic episode and said, Let's go. (laughs) But it's longer than that. I met my husband in 1949 -- '50 -- in Jerusalem. We were on -- quite well known -- the Machon L'Madrichei Chutz La'Aretz -- we were youth leaders in training. I came from Young Judaea -- Yehudah HaTza'ir -- and he came from Habonim. And we intermarried. (laughs) Anyway. That was such a euphoric time in Israel -- '49, '50. A very tough time. 31:00A lot of immigrants coming. But -- (sighs) I mean, it was -- we made it. There was a Jewish state. I mean, it was the most exciting thing that happened to us, and I think we sort of fell in love with Israel and fell in love with each other at the same time. (laughs) And we got married in '52. And always wanted to go back, but my husband also fell in love with the University of Chicago. (laughs) He's an anthropologist and a very -- and has concentrated very much on Israel as a source of his anthropology and his studies. And we're lucky that three of our children are with us in Israel. One is here in Connecticut -- who drove me to the Yiddish Book Center. So, can't complain. But that's how -- the '73 war 32:00really scared us. That was the war that really (sighs) found us a little paranoid. We were living in two worlds, and then we said, Enough already. We're still young enough; we can do it. Packed up our stuff and the kids and came back to Israel. And we've been there ever since. For better -- better days were the early days; worse days are the last many years, unfortunately. But we won't get into politics, will we? No.

PK:Do you feel that your Yiddish language and your interest in dyslexia are --

BW:Together?

PK:Yeah.

BW:Well, they're together -- they're fascinating, because I had always claimed 33:00that you didn't have to change your typewriter -- Yiddish orthography was Hebrew orthography. You had very little changes to make. But I always felt that there was something so wonderful in the ability to pronounce Yiddish -- to pronounce every single part of Yiddish. The vowels weren't hidden; they weren't two-faced -- you know, mit a pintele, on a pintele [with the little mark indicating a vowel sound, without the mark], a khaf and a kaf, and all the rest of it -- the things that gave kids horrible trouble in Hebrew. I said, Let's do it in Yiddish. Well, I even appealed to the Israel Academic Language Foundation. I only found one supporter there. All the rest were not -- but of course dyslexia -- and trying to discover the root of problems in kids, which is a huge range, 34:00between neurological problems and visual problems and attentional problems and -- you know, the whole gamut. But it made me more sensitive to language, I think. That's all. And I just really enjoyed -- the problem is, I really don't have anybody to speak with in Israel in Yiddish. The Yiddish of Mea Shearim is a paylisher [Polish] Yiddish: (makes squeaking sounds while pinching her nose) m'redt fun der noz [they speak through their nose] and it's -- vay iz mir, vi iz der kite, v-- gayn in der heym [Oh dear, where is the school -- let's go home]. I don't speak that kind of Yiddish, and so I never found that Yiddish congenial. So, I have very few people -- because we either speak in English or in Hebrew -- among my friends and where I come from. I teach in Hebrew -- I used to teach in 35:00Hebrew. And Yiddish never came up. Although I was invited to give a series of lectures in Beys Ya'akov. Now, Beys Ya'akov in Jerusalem is a very religious seminar for women. And I came and I said, "Okh, sof kol sof, hob d'meglekhkayt tsu redn haynt in yidish [Oh, finally, I have the opportunity to speak in Yiddish today]. Nu, ver ken farshteyn yidish [So, who can understand Yiddish]?" Well, I think three hands went up out of this whole group of young mothers and women. Either they didn't understand my Yiddish, which is very possible, or they didn't really -- they were afraid to hear a lecture in pure Yiddish. And I don't know whether I could have even done the whole lecture (laughs) in Yiddish, but I just wanted to see. Anyway --

PK:We're winding down on time --

BW:Yeah.

PK:-- but is there anything that you wanted to just share?

BW:Just that I'm really amazed at this place -- the fact that somebody dedicated 36:00their lives and continues to collect things in Yiddish, and that -- (sighs) the shame. You know, I've -- Sholem Aleichem, Sholem Asch, Bashevis Singer, Peretz, Mendele -- so many wonderful Yiddish writers. How will it get out to the young people who are missing this period, this language, this warmth, this understanding of their roots? My contribution with this little cookbook is just sort of a drop in the ocean. But it has touched people. And that's what I'm kind of amazed at. It says something to those who can still remember -- or to the 37:00young people who want to remember. And I keep saying, Why aren't we doing more? We need to hire a whole troupe of translators and begin to bring out things that young people really should know, have to know -- and that are very interesting and very beautifully written. But that's the shame of it.

PK:What advice could you give future translators?

BW:(sighs) Oh. Well, I wouldn't tell them to translate cookbooks, but I would tell them to translate beautiful children's stories, children's poems -- things that could be -- with accompanying pictures -- that this is how zeyde 38:00[grandfather] lived or this is how bobe [grandmother] lived -- and so that children growing up and the adults who will read it in English will be able to relate to it, maybe occasionally with the Yiddish on one side and the English on the other side. But something. There are wonderful stories -- "Motl peysi dem khazns [Motl Peysi, the cantor's son]." I mean, there are so many things that can be translated that are of interest. It ain't "Harry Potter," but it's just as much fun. And I think our kids are missing out on that, my kids included. They never had that, aside from the few Yiddish melodies and songs that I sang to them -- they weren't included in my life. So, that's the story. And that's 39:00what I would wish -- that we had a whole, huge slew of translators, and we would get to work and put things out.

[END OF INTERVIEW]