MICHAEL STEINLAUF ORAL HISTORY

EMMA MORGENSTERN: This is Emma Morgenstern, and today is December 19th, 2010. I am here at the AJS Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, with Michael Steinlauf, Associate Professor of History at Gratz College, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Professor Steinlauf, do I have your permission to record this interview?

MICHAEL STEINLAUF: You do.

EM:Great. All right. So can we start by having you tell me a little bit about your family background -- what you know about it?

MS:Well, my family background is that I'm the only child of Holocaust survivors -- Polish Jews who came from Warsaw, so we're not talking about a shtetl [small Eastern European village with a Jewish community], and -- unlike most Polish 1:00Jews -- who survived on Polish soil. There were about fifty to seventy thousand such people out of 3.3 million. They survived in hiding; they were never in camps. They were pretty well-educated, and my mother was a graduate of the University of Warsaw and taught history right before the war. And their language -- well, my father spoke both Yiddish and Polish, for he was fluent in both, but my mother didn't -- my mother didn't know Yiddish at all. I should say also -- both my parents survived in hiding, but before he went into hiding, my father was in the Warsaw Ghetto. And I've even -- through the Jewish Historical Institute some years ago, I discovered some German photography of the ghetto, 2:00and I identified a picture of my father in the ghetto. It's kind of like "Schindler's List," and there's my dad, you know? Since then, I've researched a little about them during the war -- not that much, especially my father -- and my father was actually -- both of them made it to Lublin. The war was still on, but the Soviets had liberated Lublin in July of '44. And I've discovered that my father was -- you know, it was -- small groups of Jews were starting to appear -- survivors were starting to appear in Lublin at that time, and at one point, when there was a critical mass of about three hundred of them, they decided to form a committee. This was the first committee of survivors, period. It was in 3:00August '44. And there was a president, a vice president, and a recording secretary; my father was the recording secretary of this group. And then, very soon after, my parents met, but they had both been married to other people before the war. And they took off for various places -- DP camp in Italy -- and then, finally came to the United States. Before that, they were in Paris, where my mother's brother and his wife lived. That aunt of mine lived a very long time, and last month she died in Paris; she was 102. So, this connection -- now, I grew up speaking Polish, because my mother simply didn't know Yiddish, and so my mame-loshn [mother tongue language] is Polish. And I grew up in Brighton Beach, which was -- you know, from Warsaw to Brighton Beach is like -- (laughs) 4:00you know, the distance between those places. And it was before -- nowadays, we associate Brighton Beach with the Russians. This was before the Russians; this was where everybody's bobe [grandmother] and zeyde [grandfather] lived -- you know, the ones who -- they were the poor ones, because they couldn't afford Florida. So back then, the neighborhood where I lived in was these -- it was very Yiddish-speaking, but especially these elderly American Jews who liked to go on the boardwalk all the time. And then kids -- families with kids -- they called us refugees, we were "refugee families." And typically, there was one or two kids -- these were small families. And so, I grew up speaking Polish. Other kids could understand Polish; my parents actually spoke to me in Polish, so I'm one of the few of those kids who actually wound up speaking Polish. But I heard Yiddish everywhere. You'd go into a store -- I mean, Yiddish was everywhere. But 5:00I didn't understand it. I didn't speak it. And so -- you can ask me some more, if you want, about my childhood. As I say, I lived in Brighton Beach from the age of three. I was born in Paris and then we came to this country. And from the age of three till the age of sixteen, I lived in Brighton Beach -- and then went off to Columbia, which -- it's in the same city, but you can imagine, from Brighton Beach to Morningside Heights is a bit of a hike. And then, the next -- I mean, I can -- whatever you -- I can go on to the rest -- I can fast-forward through that period, but you can ask me some more if you want.

EM:Sure. I'll ask you a couple more questions. So, in what ways was your home a Jewish home?

MS:It was a Jewish home because my parents were Polish Jews and they didn't need to go to shul. In fact, we went to Yom Kippur -- basically -- neither of them 6:00were -- for them, they were escapees from the -- you know, they were modern, Polish-speaking Jews from a big city, and they had no interest -- and, you know, shtetl -- you know, when they saw a Hasid -- oy, you know? "Słapak [Polish: clumsy man]," they called him. I mean, he smelled bad, just get away from him. And they were not -- I remember my mother lighting candles once or twice, but it was not a big deal. But my kids -- if I wanted them to have some sense of what being Jewish was, they had to go to Hebrew school. I went to Hebrew school too, but it was a totally trivial, stupid experience. You know, this yeshive-bokher [yeshiva student] who actually went around whacking kids on the knuckles -- a bit of the Old Country. So, it was a Jewi-- in that what were they? They were 7:00Polish Jews, you know? They were Polish Jews. They were modern Polish Jews. My father came from a long line of Gerrer Hasidim. The Hasidim of Ger were known as -- you know, they were wealthier; they were middle-class, largely. They weren't these Orth-- you know, like, wonder rebbes from Galicia. And they really -- beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, they -- the Ger was not far from Warsaw, and they established a real strong base, so that most of the Hasidim in Warsaw who were responsible for the buildup of trade, of commerce, and turning Warsaw into a major city traced back to the mid-nineteenth century. And recently, I've been looking -- 'cause I've been going to Poland for twenty-five years now, and I tried for years and years to locate -- both of my grandfathers 8:00are buried in the cemetery in the -- that big -- have you seen that big Jewish cemetery? It's an amazing place. Two hundred thousand matseyves [tombstones]. It's amazing. It's all overgrown. So, I couldn't find their matseyves until just a few years ago, when the guy there -- the caretaker -- the new caretaker, who's not a crook like the others were -- actually started documenting stuff. And very recently -- and I have -- it's very weird -- I have JPEGs of these matseyves on my computer now -- but I went to check them. He located not only my grandfather Moshe's matseyve, who died in 1930, but two others. In other words, I have Steinlaufs in the Warsaw cemetery. So, I located his father, who died in 1894, and he's buried in the cemetery, and his father, from 1881. So, I've got four 9:00generations from Warsaw. So that -- you know, kind of this sense that who I am was never an issue. I mean, I may not have known about the specifics of these grandparents, but I knew that that's who they were. They were Polish Jews. They were not just Jews -- they were Polish Jews. And they didn't need to daven; they didn't need to do anything. I mean, they went on Yom Kippur -- (laughs) we went to a place that was just -- it was on the boardwalk. It was called Club 21, for ladies and gentlemen over twenty-one. You can imagine somewhat older than that. And once a year, they turned it into a shul. So, that's why my father davened there, 'cause he could walk on the boardwalk in between. And I still remember from this shul -- I mean, these were the real things. These were -- you know, how -- Yom Kippur -- I was bored. I was so bored. I was like -- if you could imagine boredom that you could cut with a knife, you know? It was so densely 10:00boring. There was an aquarium there that I would spend hours in front of. But meanwhile, the images of these Jews wrapping themselves in their talisim on Yom Kippur -- this was something that goes back to my -- you know, it goes back. You know, a nigun [melody] -- no one had to explain to me what a nigun was. And, of course, Yiddish everywhere, although I didn't understand a word. So, that's the kind of thing -- and all their friends were just like them: they were Polish-speaking Jews who had survived in hiding. One of the women there was married -- one exception was this guy who was married to one of the women there. And during such get-togethers -- my parents always invited -- frequently, my mother organized these dinners and stuff, you know, where they'd wind up playing Polish card games after dinner. And -- Yasha, that was his name. Yasha would sit 11:00by himself usually. Why? Because -- and the whole content of the thing was telling stories. And it was all about the war. And so the word for this that they used -- the Polish word -- was "wojna," just simply means "the war." So, they'd tell stories; and I survived here, and I escaped from there. The one guy Yasha sat by himself on the couch, because -- him, you don't ask questions, 'cause he survived Auschwitz. So, that was -- he was in a different category, you know? And Yasha had the number and Yasha just sat there and fell asleep. usually. And they used this word "wojna" -- you know, for war. And it was in the late '60s at Columbia when I was studying stuff, and it suddenly hit me -- that this new word that was coming into use, "Holocaust," and "wojna" were the same thing. (laughs) It was an extraordinary moment. And then, suddenly I was inserted into the stream of history -- you know, when I understood that. And it 12:00was an amazing moment. You know, it was like, Yeah, wojna -- that's what I grew up with. Holocaust -- oh, that's the word now. So anyway, so that's -- so, of course. So, they bond-- you know, these are all their friends, and they told war stories. And it was all -- you know, I was here and then somebody denounced me and then I had to flee here and so-and-so -- you know, they grabbed and they shot and they deported and all this. But it was all basically people talking about how they lucked out. These were the -- you know, it was like, how do you know about the Holocaust? From the survivors, you know? I mean, you know, the six million -- their voices are gone, you know? You know, so these are the people -- these are the lucky ones who survived. And they all had one or two kids mainly -- mainly one. Mainly one kid.

EM:And what was it like for you growing up within a survivor community?

MS:Again, a kid takes things for granted, you know? You don't question a whole lot. I went through a significant period when they embarrassed the hell out of 13:00me. You know, I'd be walking down the street -- Speak English! Speak English! You know. And I couldn't wait to get out. And I already did so in high school, 'cause I don't know if you know New York, but I got into Stuyvesant High School, which is in Manhattan, so I would take the subway every day, and already, I was on my way out. I couldn't stand it. It was kind of -- it was so confining and embarrassing. I just wanted America, which is pretty common. And I got beat up a lot for reasons that are not totally clear, but I sure got -- other Jewish kids -- tough Jewish kids -- I used to have a rough time with them. A lot of Jewish bullies. Anyway, it was not a good time. It was not a happy time for me at all. And my parents -- it was like -- just escaping from them was so important to me. 14:00You know, when I left the house -- and my mother -- you know, instead of saying "See you later," what's the goodbye? "Be careful!" (laughs) My entire childhood, it was, "Be careful!" About twenty years later, I was visiting some friends in Maine -- these were the hippie days -- and me and a friend of mine climbed this tree. And I remember getting to the top of the tree, which I had never done before, and I suddenly, distinctly -- I was doing fine -- I suddenly heard my mother's voice going, "Michael! Be careful!" And I almost lost it. I almost fell out of the tree. I got dizzy, and I'm like, holding onto the tree. So yeah, it was like that. I couldn't wait to get out. I couldn't wait to get out and discover the world, beyond the Jews, beyond these weirdo Jews -- you know, 15:00Polish-speaking -- what world was that, you know? And actually, they were very cosmopolitan, most of them. I mean, it varied. I mean, there were various -- there were people with less education, also, who had married people with more education. It's -- you know, depending on how they survived. But anyway, so -- so yeah. Anything else?

EM:So --

MS:I respond well to questions.

EM:(laughs) Sure. So, can you tell me about when you did get out -- when you went to Columbia?

MS:Well, I went to Columbia -- I was pretty young; I was sixteen. And I went to Columbia. At first, I lived at home for the first year, and then I -- no, I didn't live at home. No, no. I was home every weekend, that's what it was. Because I had a good scholarship to Columbia, which allowed me to live in the dorms, so I was in the dorms at Columbia. And after about a year, the '60s start to happen. And I was totally -- you know, that was my world. I'm totally a 16:00product of the '60s; I totally identified with everything going on, and I parti-- you know, I was in the -- I don't know if the memory of the sit-in at Columbia still exists among -- okay, some people don't even know what ha-- you know, some of my students -- Huh? What? Sol, I was involved in that -- not as a leader, because I couldn't deal with all these political debates, but I -- we took over the buildings, and then when a bunch of -- a little elite took Math Hall. Math Hall had the reputation for being the commune; the craziest people were there. We elected Tom Hayden -- you know who Tom Hayden is? Tom Hayden nowadays is famous for being married to Jane Fonda, but Tom Hayden was a political -- a left-political -- a student movement activist, somewhat older, and he showed up there from outside, wearing his karate gi. So, we elected him 17:00chairman of the Math Commune. And we attracted all these people from off-campus, which everyone at Columbia was terrified of. Because they were -- I mean, some blacks -- the blacks went with the blacks, but we had this little group of seven or eight guys from the Lower East Side who were known as the Motherfuckers of the Lower East Side, and these guys dressed in leather and they were armed with knives and shit. So, that's the reputation we had. And of course I loved every minute of it. And we got busted together in Math Hall. I don't know if you know the writer Paul Auster, he's pretty well known. We were -- the four of us -- me and him and these two girls locked ourselves in this room when that bust came that busted a thousand people in one night. And we sat on the floor, arms linked -- and not for long, because these cops -- they were pissed, 'cause we had 18:00soaped down the stairs and they couldn't get in and they were falling all over each other. And so, when they came in, they didn't ask questions; they just clubbed, and I was the first one to get clubbed in the head. So, very quickly, we got up and we went outside. And I'll never forget -- there's this massive -- there's, like, thousands -- there was a thousand busted, and they crammed us into paddy wagons. And there's these lights everywhere, and everyone kind of just chant, The whole world is watching! The whole -- I was out of Brighton Beach, right? And I was far from Brighton Beach. (laughs) The whole world was -- and I was standing there, proud, with blood streaming down my neck. I got four stitches in the back of my head for that. Little did I know how many Jews were involved in this. It didn't matter to me. But, of course, large numbers of Jews were involved. And I thought quite a bit about -- this was our largely 19:00unconscious answer to "Never again," you know? I mean, the Vietnam War was raging and we saw all this shit on television and we knew the atrocities -- meanwhile, blacks -- this was the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement, so the blacks stopped being nonviolent. And violence was the response of everybody to -- this was our response, you know? You don't sit still. You don't act nice. So, at the same time, managed to get through Columbia with fairly good grades. I mean, I was like magna cum laude when I graduated, so -- don't ask me how. And of course, we did a lot of drugs and all that. So, I don't know -- you can ask me some more about that. But it was a very -- this was the movement into the wide world; this was the movement to get away -- my own personal -- you know. One time early on, I was participating in a hunger strike that CORE organized -- 20:00CORE was a student civil rights movement, and there were a bunch of white kids involved in that, too. And I'll never forget -- my parents didn't know what to make of, you know, the hunger strike, and we're gonna starve to death, and the cops were gonna come and whatever. And I remember -- one day, I'm up there -- I wasn't actually fasting, but I was doing security -- and suddenly, my parents turn up -- these two little figures from Brighton Beach -- and dressed very nicely, very pro-- 'cause they were upper-middle-class Polish people, Polish Jews. (laughs) They showed up, and I was like -- that image of them kinda -- you know, from this other world. I said, "I'm fine. I'm fine. Goodbye." So, yeah. And then, I went on to grad school at Columbia. But I didn't do any (unclear) -- 21:00I mean, I did a master's paper.

EM:So, I know you studied English literature at Columbia, so --

MS:Yeah, I studied -- that what it was. I mean, I did -- my B.A. was in English, and then I went on to grad school at Columbia. I got a master's in American literature. I did this thesis on Edgar Allan Poe, and it was called, "One Day I Woke Up Dead: The Story of Edgar Allan Poe." It was totally a product of its time. And then, I left. I was no longer -- I mean, I had -- I wasn't -- I was being groomed to be a professor of English literature. And in fact, I got sent out for a job at one point -- to Rutgers-Newark. Rutgers-Newark was a -- (laughs) -- so I taught this one class at Rutgers-Newark, and there was a couple 22:00of guys asleep in the back of the room and stuff. It was clear I had screwed up so much at Columbia. A friend of mine, George, stayed at Columbia -- this professor got me this interview, and at the end of the class, I just walked -- in fact, I may not have even been -- I just walked out. I couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle this. I didn't want to be this and I couldn't deal with it, so I just took off -- I left the university. And I finally decided, Well, either there's nothing else to do but to make the revolution. So, I went out West. Everyone was abandoning New York in those days. It was a horrible place, and it was getting worse with the violence and stuff. It was a scary place. The last place I lived in was on East Second Street between B and C, which was drug 23:00heaven. And so, we left -- this woman friend of mine -- and we moved to Seattle. And I said, I'm gonna do politics now; I'm gonna do politics that's gonna make a difference. And I hadn't really before, but now -- so, all sorts of things happened, and I got involved in some pretty crazy, radical politics. But this is the thing -- this is the turning point where I started -- in the midst of all that stuff, friends of mine went and founded what today we would call a terrorist group. And one of my friends got killed trying to rob a bank. And meanwhile, what really spoke to me was less the violence -- I mean, 'cause I had already walked out on -- at Columbia, I had walked out of -- the last time I saw Mark Rudd was -- you know who Mark Rudd was? He was the guy who organized -- he 24:00was a Jewish -- he organized the -- he was the spokesman for the Columbia uprising. And the last time I saw him, he was giving this talk -- do you know what a Weatherman was? Well, he eventually went with the Underground and the Weatherman. And he showed up with a baseball bat at this talk, and he says, "We're in the youth culture and we're gonna" -- and when I saw that, I said, Just violence for the sake -- no. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie "The Wild Bunch," which came out back then. It was a Sam Peckinpah Western where these five guys take on the whole Mexican Army at the end. And there's this moment -- Ernest Borgnine and William Holden are in this movie, and they're these aging bank robbers, and at one point they're deciding to save their friend who got taken by the Mexican Army, and a totally ultimate macho thing -- one guy looks at the other and he says, "Let's go. Why not?" And they go. And of course, they wipe out half the army and they get killed themselves. That kind of 25:00politics, I called it "Wild Bunch politics." I wrote about it. I said, What the hell is that? But what happened in Seattle was, I got involved in -- the word is not in use anymore, the "Third World" -- but it was what really spoke to me. Eventually, I became the editor of this paper called "No Separate Peace." And we were doing community organizing, especially these guys who were in the construction trades who couldn't get jobs 'cause they were non-white. And we had a coalition of people: there were activists who were Chicano, who were Filipino, who were Chinese, who were Native American, and then me and my friend Bruce, who were the two Jews. (laughs) And Bruce is the guy who later got killed, a little Jewish kid who rode his motorcycle all over the place. Politics and his 26:00motorcycle, that was his life. But what did we do? Everybody knew we were Jews, because what? Because we wrote all the leaflets. That's what we were there for. And what I was [digging?] on in these people was less their radical politics -- of course I had the same kind of radical politics, revolution and all this, but I dug -- you know, what was called their national identities, and the way they were national identities in a kind of goles [exile]. And I remember, there was this one joke which I heard -- these two Chicanos were talking. And for me, this summed everything up. Later on, I understood Sholem Aleichem because of this conversation. Chicano activists -- still today -- the homeland of Chicanos is 27:00not just Mexico; it's New Mexico and Arizona and northern Mexico, right? And in their conception, they call this place Aztlán, A-Z-T-L-A-N, and it has ancient roots and stuff. So, this is the line: one guy says, "I come from Aztlán, man!" And the other guy responds, "Yeah, I come from a slum, too." And so, you (unclear). And that for me -- I mean, it's so Jewish, right? Because on the one hand, you're proud. But the irony of it is extraordinary. So, after this debacle in Seattle, I left. But already, I started thinking what to do with myself. I was back in Boston, actually. That notion of -- these people all had these 28:00wonderful national cultures: Chicanos, blacks, Filipinos, Filipino activists -- they were anti-Marcos activists organizing the workers in the fisheries and stuff. They knew who they were.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

MS:So, the point being that these guys -- and women, there were a couple of women -- they knew who they were. They had a really clear sense -- and that what they were doing was good for their people, but it was also good for the world. It was one thing. It was cosmopolitan, but it was also each person pursuing their own culture and developing their own culture, but in a way using these radical -- you know, changing the world. One thing that would happen when you changed the world, you would empower your people -- your people. So, I loved this. And I said, What the hell do I have? I was bar mitzvahed in Brighton Beach. What did I have? Who was I? Was there some nation that I could actually 29:00claim to be a part of? And it started to strike me, and especially after that period, you know, when I was -- and then I was in Boston and Cambridge -- I had to leave there rather quickly 'cause I was connected with them, and they would have put me in front of a grand jury and then I wouldn't have talked -- I would have spent six months in jail, so I was out of there. So, who do I belong to? And it suddenly became crystal clear: a nation, but a nation that's dead -- that's gone, you know? Polish Jews. So, from there on, it's completely logical. (laughs) I mean, all the rest of it. I read a lot about the Holocaust, but I didn't need to read that much. But then, at Workmen's Circle in Boston, I 30:00started studying Yiddish. And then, in '78, I applied to the -- I got into the summer program at YIVO, which at that time was at Columbia. I studied with Mordkhe Schaechter. And maybe I should tell this little anecdote; the literature teacher was this woman who I'm sure you don't know anymore, 'cause she left the field -- [Sore-Ana Zlotnik?]. And my buddies -- I mean, there were a couple of us who were a little older, we were about thirty at the time. I had two buddies: my friend Yoav, who was Israeli, and my friend Malka, who was from France. Malka was significantly older. She was a child survivor in France, and then she had participated in the anti-Algerian War -- you know, in the '50s -- movement. And so, she was some kind of a leftist. She was amazing. And then, my friend Yoav, 31:00whose father had been a very famous general in '67 and then became a peace person. But Yoav was studying the Bund in LA, and he needed Yiddish. So, the three of us bonded in this course. And one day, Sore-Ana Zlotnik, who's teaching this literature class -- someone used the word "Dos yidishe folk [The Yiddish community, lit. "The Jewish people"]." And Sore-Ana Zlotnik, who's totally academic -- she was an academic, she was a young woman -- studied Dovid Bergelson, which is a very academic kind of -- you know, difficult academic writer. So, she's teaching, and her thing is Dovid Bergelson. And somebody said, "Dos yidishe folk." And she responds, "Dos yidishe folk iz nisht du [The Yiddish community doesn't exist anymore]." So, I don't know who it was -- either Yoav or Malka or me -- pipes up, "To ver zenen mir [So then who are we]?" And she responds, "Mir zenen studentn in kolumbye universitet [We are students of 32:00Columbia University]." Fuck you! You know? (laughs) And we gave her such a hard time from that time on. And it was difficult for her. We just ridiculed her. Studentn -- yidishe folk iz nisht du -- vos? Ale geshtorbn?? Ale? Ale? Mir redn yidish du. [Students -- the Yiddish community does not exist anymore -- what? Are they all dead? All of them? All of them? We're speaking Yiddish here.] You know, so, there were these kind of people with this hardcore, radical kind of thing coming up against Yiddishkayt and trying to do something with it. And the real -- and then the final turning point for me was -- you see, it wasn't enough -- and this is where I differ from a lot of Yiddishists. I'm not a Yiddishist for the sake of Yiddishism, but I am someone who has dedicated himself to studying that world, and that's a world that has a place -- had a place and continues to have a place. And my criticism -- always -- of Yiddishists and 33:00Jewish whatever -- you can't study a thousand years of Eastern European Jewish life from Jerusalem or New York. And I lucked out. I got a Fulbright in 1983 to go to Poland. Actually, it was about Yud Lamed Peretz, but I wound up doing other stuff. Anyway, so I spent a year in Poland. I had Polish. And lo and behold, my friends in Poland -- all of them turned out to be -- they were people my age -- meaning back then, moderately young, and they were all involved in the Solidarity movement. And here is a movement -- (laughs) you know, just like stuff I had known back in the -- but as I explained when I came back to the States to my friends, They're just like us, except you have to accept that two world historical figures are Ronald Reagan and the pope. (laughs) And from that 34:00perspective, it made total sense. Ronald Reagan called, quote, communism the "evil empire," and sitting in Warsaw, I understood. And the pope, of course -- the pope kicked the whole thing off in 1979 when he came to Poland. His droshes -- his speeches -- were about the dignity of labor, but with a cross, of course. So, that was very important. And these people -- many of them were Jews or married to Jews or they were half-Jews. And these people I met there were young. Let's put it this way: they were trying to figure out what it meant to come out as Jews. Because their parents were all communists, but they had gotten screwed in '68 and kicked out of Poland, most of the -- but these families decided to 35:00stay. So, here were people who were really -- at the same time as they were Solidarity activists, this group of people were trying to figure out what it meant to be Jewish. Speaking Polish -- and some with Yiddish, too, and trying to learn -- you know. So, you probably know all the stuff that's going on recently in the last period of time -- the big revival, especially among non-Jews -- fascination with Jewish culture that existed in Poland. Nowadays, there's a lot of young Poles studying Yiddish in Israel. (laughs) I mean, it's amazing stuff. But that was just starting then, and I was very fortunate to be there at that moment. And so, my links were really strongest in that way. But of course, I realized that I -- so since then, what I've done is -- so then my academic work has really run along two tracks. One is Polish-Jewish relations, and 36:00specifically -- being there, I realized that -- so I dropped what I was doing for my dissertation for -- I mean, what came out of it was a book on Polish consciousness and Polish relationship to the past -- this book, "Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust." And see, my friends themselves just had a lot of white space there and would not ask all kinds of tricky questions, so I figured, me, kind of as an outsider, could maybe approach this whole business better. So, Polish-Jewish relations, especially after the war -- and the other piece of it is Jewish culture in Poland before the Holocaust. So, I've done a lot of work on Yiddish theater, which I'm particularly -- and then now, I'm coming back to my original love, Yud Lamed Peretz -- who, incidentally, had very strong links to Polish culture. I mean, he spoke Polish, he read all 37:00the Polish writers. So anyway, those two things, I would say -- I mean, that moment -- that movement out of radicalism and into something else, this notion of the national -- and this all ties up with Peretz, too, 'cause Peretz was the ideologue of diaspora nationalism. And if you ask me how I identify as a Jew today, not too many would use this expression, but I'm a diaspora nationalist. That could bring us to a discussion of my endlessly complicated relationship to Israel (laughs) if you want to go there. But anyway --

EM:Well, first, I want to ask you a little bit about Yiddish specifically. How do you use Yiddish in your scholarly work?

MS:I use Yiddish -- by now, after many years of reading, I can speak Yiddish okay. Ikh hob nisht mit vemen tsu redn [I don't have anyone to speak to], you know? Es felt mir, es felt mir mentshn [People are missing, they're missing]. 38:00But gradually, gradually, gradually. You know how Yiddish is used in the academic world -- you know, two Jews who speak some Yiddish ostentatiously speak Yiddish out loud at some conference. It's what Jeffrey Shandler calls "postvernacular," which I totally subscribe to, because it's -- that notion. I use it. Yeah. I mean, I read. I read a lot in Yiddish. I have to, for the stuff I do -- for the history -- I'm a cultural historian, so there's that. And I love Yiddish. The minute you start speaking Yiddish or read Sholem Aleichem or something, you're in this world that's so totally gone. Jews today -- I like the expression, "M'veyst nisht mit vos m'est dos" -- "You don't know whether to use a fork or a knife to eat it." And the vast majority -- I mean, you're probably 39:00-- if you're touching something in Yiddish, it's because you felt that call; you felt that world that's only accessible to us today through the language. Unless you're a black hat; then that's a separate story. But -- so, yeah. So, I use Yiddish and I love Yiddish, but I don't only use Yiddish, and my link to it is not -- I mean, I call myself a diaspora nationalist, but the links to Poland are extremely strong, and to the place. There's a feeling about that place. Sholem Asch once wrote a book in which either -- the line is, "The Vistula speaks to me in Yiddish." And when you go there and you visit enough places -- and I had some wonderful guides back then, too, who took me to a bunch of small towns -- and to 40:00imagine that this is the land; this is the land where we lived for so many centuries, and my own family lived. And they spoke Yiddish. All that -- it's -- so I'm kind of single-minded. I want that world to be better known. Because I think it's really exciting, and not just for Jews, ultimately. It's really exciting. And again, not -- and a good portion of what I do is counteracting this nonsensical -- all this crap about how, Oh, they all lived in shtetls and they were all poor and they all davened. And my own background coming from the largest -- the Jewish metropolis -- and I know it wasn't all that. It was incredibly sophisticated, with modern poetry and what have you. It was an incredible place. At the same time, with roots in the Hasidic world, and roots 41:00with all that stuff. That's what made it strong, 'cause it was a national culture that totally aspired to modernity, but they didn't have to ask who they were. Because even in Warsaw, you take a train and you're in the shtetl. The shtetl was changing too, of course. And that's something that as a Jew. I just don't find. I mean, Israel is Israel -- long may it live, with all its problems -- but it's not that. And even in Israel, a lot of younger people are discovering that. And in Israel, of course, it was ideologically cut out of their education. It was all crap. What do you want to know about? Golah [Hebrew: The Diaspora] -- you know, hunched-over Jews going, Don't hit me! Don't hit me! And who needs that shit, right, if you're in Israel? Sabra. (makes fists and flexes arms) So, it's not my culture. It's not my culture. What is my culture? Something in my mind and something that once existed. (laughs) But it's -- for 42:00better or for worse, that's what I do.

EM:And I know you've been involved in the cultural festival in Kraków?

MS:Yeah. I mean, when I'm invited, I speak. And then they put me up -- then Janusz puts me up and it's very nice. And I've been twice. Over the years, I've become good friends with some klezmer musicians. I'm good friends with, for example, Michael Alpert. And I understood -- you know, from Brave Old World? You don't know that? So, anyway. So, at a certain point, I realized that I don't want to just be an academic, but being involved in other stuff and being involved in Jewish cultural stuff on that level was very important as well.

EM:Can you tell me why that's important to you?

MS:Because it's all -- because it's part of -- because it's beyond academia. Because it's a real culture. I mean, they have the same stuff with virtuality. Who are they? I mean, they're people who were all born since the war. But if you do something long enough, you know? At the beginning, you feel very strange 43:00doing it. Yiddish, this is my culture. I know in theory it had some relationship to my past, maybe the past of my grandparents or somebody's past. But if you do it long enough, if you speak Yiddish long enough -- then, you know. If you identify with this music, if you play this music, if you speak this language, eventually, it becomes yours. Again, I'm not like some. I don't feel Yiddish is totally mine -- and that's something else about living in America and living in the diaspora: I love the fact that I don't have to be Jewish all the time. And some people don't. I would never wear a kippah -- A, because I still carry in me this primal fear of getting punched in the head, but B, because -- I mean, 44:00sometimes I'd rather -- you know, I'm a person who grew up -- whose hero was Bob Dylan and the Stones, and I want to be that person. I don't want to have to remind myself that I'm also Jewish. I am. I don't have to -- you know. But so there's all these different -- so you can do that out here. You can do that out here. You can wear many different things -- in the course of the same day, even. So --

EM:And I know you teach at Gratz College, which is a Jewish college, so --

MS:A Jewish school, yeah.

EM:So, what's it like teaching at a Jewish college?

MS:So-so. I mean, I would rather -- I mean, jobs are hard to come by, and I've been there for a while. You know, I do what I can. I mean, it's not -- it's like some kind of Jewish teacher's college and stuff. I would rather -- I mean, that's why coming to the AJS or coming to any kind of -- it's a breath of fresh air for me. It's very provincial there. And, you know, I do what I can. But it's 45:00certainly not my first choice. I'd rather be in a more cosmopolitan -- see, I'd rather teach the non-Jews. In fact, when I go to Poland and I teach -- last summer I was with some friends who had this amazing institution in the northeast corner of Poland -- Sejny, a little town which they kind of rebuilt. And they're very cool people. And so, I wound up teaching these young Polish kids -- early twenties, probably your age -- for like, ten days in the Lithuanian woods. Every morning we did Yiddish -- I taught in Polish. So, that's a very important piece of it all. In Poland -- the Jews in Poland are starting to be like Jews everywhere. You know, with their little hassles -- their kehilla hassles. But I 46:00always get better reception among these young Polish people -- these kids -- teenagers, many are twenty-somethings -- who are just -- for them, this culture is like a revelation. And they're so -- it's exciting, so they're excited, I get excited, and I rediscover my own excitement. So, that's really what I enjoy doing most. And writing -- I love to write.

EM:For personal (speaking at the same time; unclear) --

MS:I used to do that. Right now, I'm just involved in -- I like academic writing. I enjoy it. And telling -- working on Peretz now as an ideologue -- but you can't separate his writing, his fiction from anything else he did. But Peretzas the creator of a modern, Jewish, Yiddish diaspora culture that was 47:00gonna serve -- he wasn't an anti-Zionist; he wasn't an anti-anything. I mean, he was anti-bullshit, of course, but he believed that the Jewish masses would remain in Eastern Europe -- some would go -- a handful would go to Israel or whatever, but this is where he was and this is where he had to work. And he had -- very different from us -- he had millions of Jews who were Yiddish-speaking and he wanted to do something for them and to deal with what it meant to be in goles [the Diaspora] and to create a modern culture as we know equal with any other culture -- equal with French culture or Russian culture or German culture. And that was a very noble aspiration. And the way he configured diaspora and what it meant -- how you live in diaspora and yet work for the Jews, but not just for the Jews -- that's a fascinating place to be. And it parallels some of my own experiences -- going back to Seattle, really, in the '70s. I didn't know 48:00what it was to be a Jew back then, really -- aside from my birth. But understanding that you have to be two-sided. You have to work for the nation and you have to work for the everybody. So, studying Peretz is another way into that.

EM:Along those lines, what do you think the role of academia is in transmission of culture?

MS:It's what we've got. I mean, it's one of the avenues we have. It's not ideal. I mean, people who learn all their Yiddish in an academic environment -- it's good to have some other sources, but it's better than nothing. So, I'm not gonna complain about the death of Yiddish because somebody exclusively learned Yiddish -- klal [standard] Yiddish -- in a classroom. Too bad. I mean, I'm not as Jewish 49:00as my grandparents. (laughs) So what? And the thing about it is, too, that -- sure, the Holocaust -- you can't ignore the Holocaust, and so that -- but the kinds of dislocations of which the Holocaust is, like, the supreme, major example happen on a small scale elsewhere, too. If you just look at the United States, who are we? If you're just an American Jew, say -- "just," you know -- but your grandparents spoke Yiddish or your great-grandparents spoke Yiddish, and now -- you know, and through the process of modernity, they got rid of it as fast as they could, and their children no longer wanted to hear it, and then their great-grandchildren or grandchildren rediscover it, say. But it's not the same culture as -- you know. So, we're -- the idea of a break -- we all live 50:00with that, you know? And the guy -- I studied with Khone Shmeruk, who was an amazing guy -- a Polish Jew who ran the -- headed the department of Yiddish at Hebrew University. And I will never know what he knew. I will never -- both from the inside and in terms of academic learning. And he died. When he died, I said, Oh, shit. It's us now, you know? And I'm terrified sometimes. Students come to me and they act like I know something. I don't know anything. I mean, I do know something, but it's not -- you know. And then, the consciousness that they will know even less, you know? But that's the way it goes, especially in this world of ours. The premodern world was different; you could transmit stuff and it was essentially unchanged. Not really, but not like now. And my son -- my thirteen-year-old is texting all the time. What kind of culture is that? What's 51:00he gonna transmit? Keystrokes? He'll transmit something. So, I'm basically optimistic, I think.

EM:And would you consider yourself a Yiddishist?

MS:No. No.

EM:Okay.

MS:No. People call me a Yiddishist. And I don't like to argue -- sometimes I do argue with someone I'm -- I can -- you know, who understands. I'll say, I'm not a Yiddishist. I'm not a Yiddishist, because a Yiddishist -- I consider someone from Yugntruf, for example. That's a Yiddishist -- someone who wants to speak Yiddish all the -- I don't believe in the viability of -- but it's not a question of belief, because they'll be into Yiddish in their own way. They'll play basketball in Yiddish. Cool. It's not something I can put a lot of energy into. But I can use Yiddish personally as a way of opening the past. And even if students don't want to learn it -- the best thing to do is to learn Yiddish and pick up Sholem Aleichem or Peretz and then you read. But even if you're too lazy 52:00to learn a language, which most of my students are, or not committed enough or something, but a good number of them have gone on to study Yiddish, but not that many. Then, I say, Okay, you don't want to learn the language? I'll give you what I can -- of what Yiddish could open up into for you. And then, my connection to Poland and all that -- that's not a Yiddishist -- I mean, it is and it isn't, but Yiddishism I see -- I've always interpreted it as something more narrow than what I'm involved in.

EM:And what do you think the future of Yiddish is?

MS:Better than the future of Hebrew a hundred years ago. I always remind people of that. People always ask -- my students constantly in the course -- What do you think the future of Yiddish is? Well, it's better now than it was twenty 53:00years ago had you asked that question. To tell people in the '70s that there'd be a chair in Yiddish studies at Harvard -- Bist meshige tsi vos? Poshet meshige. [Are you crazy or what? Simply crazy.] Pfft. Out of your mind. Cuckoo. Or if you told people in the '50s that those 78s they were all throwing into the garbage of Jewish music -- that sometime in the future, (laughs) the hippest of the hip Jews on the Lower East Side would be digging up odd kinds of klezmer music and performing it and going with it? Inconceivable. So, yeah. Yeah. It's something new. I don't think we're gonna -- I mean, I think interesting things are gonna be happening with the Haredi community also. I mean, in the use of 54:00Yiddish there. And who knows. But there's more -- really, Yiddish is doing better now than Hebrew was about a hundred years ago, a hundred and twenty years ago. It was a completely dead language. I mean, they read, but as a spoken language? So, I don't know. I'm eager to see what new forms it'll take. It's fascinating. I'm always eager to see what the next thing is. And I think there'll be all kinds of -- and there are already. The idea of all these Polish kids going to Israel to study Yiddish (laughs) is, I think -- for me, that sums up -- you know, how -- who can predict the future? And there are these really dedicated young Polish people who, for me, represent -- I mean, they love this stuff. And they see it as part of their own heritage, too, which is really interesting. I don't know if you know -- if you've run across people like that, young people like that. But it's really a revelation.

EM:And what advice would you give to those students -- the Polish students or any other students of Yiddish as they learn --

MS:Advice? Read. Study. Talk. If you're into it, go for it, 'cause it's really exciting. I don't know. Just keep at -- if you have a little bit in interest in Yiddish, keep at it. I don't know. I mean, it's not as though -- you know, if the world was in such great shape and everybody knew what they were doing and everybody had a mission in life and stuff and it was clear, then you wouldn't need this stuff. But people are at loose ends, right? You know, in terms of who they want to be and what they want to do in the world. And you could do worse than get into Yiddish. So, I would -- whoever's got a little bit, I would say, Go with it. Keep at it. And whether it be academia or whatever other -- some 56:00friends of mine in New York -- young people -- have developed a -- there's like this kind of coffeehouse where everybody only speaks Yiddish, and it's an all-night place. And what happens is that they -- and these kids are mainly secular, but then there's these -- gradually, there's been some Haredi kids who have been hanging with them. And this is one of the few places at night, and they don't have to -- but they have all these incredible conversations -- and bridging that gap, which is one of the most important gaps nowadays -- which world you come from and stuff -- which Jewish world. So, that's cool, too. I mean, there's so many different -- there's a lot of different ways of approaching -- and music, of course, there's all these -- Jewish music is hot now. It has been for a while. And a lot of those people learn Yiddish, and a lot of them know Eastern Europe like the back of their hands. I mean, my friend 57:00Michael Alpert, he's a musicologist and ethnographer, and he performs, but he also -- I mean, he knows every language back there, and he's been everywhere, and learning from him is a trip, too.

EM:And I think we'll close here, but I'm wondering if you've noticed any trends or changes with your students as you've taught Jewish studies and Yiddish courses.

MS:It's hard. Where I am, less change, because most of the kids who I have come in contact with -- (sighs) I mostly teach online, and some of those people are -- first of all, they're not kids, some of those -- 'cause there's a lot of adult learners -- who I think the trend -- for some, not all -- there's still some of the old-line kind of, you know, Jewishness means supporting Israel and that's it. But increasingly, I see people questioning stuff and looking around 58:00for different ways to identify as a Jew. I mean, there's this pure -- I'm surrounded by a lot of people who kinda have connections to Federation and that kind of stuff, and the greatest thing they want to do is spend another summer in Israel and all this, and for me, that's just limiting, and I have little to say to people like that. But on the other hand, gradually, 'cause students -- kids go to Israel, but they also wind up taking a backpack and traveling through Poland or Russia or God knows where in Eastern Europe. So, that's a little bit more prevalent -- it's not as -- once upon a time, I thought it would -- that's all there would be, but no. It's very slow, it's very gradual. But there's people who go in directions that I have something to say about. So, that's the 59:00best I can do.

EM:All right. Great. Well, thank you so much for this interview.

MS:You're welcome.

[END OF INTERVIEW]