CECILE KUZNITZ ORAL HISTORY

DAVID SCHLITT:This is David Schlitt and today is December 19th, 2010. I'm here at the AJS Conference in Boston, Mass with Cecile Kuznitz, assistant professor of Jewish history and director of Jewish studies at Bard College and we're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Professor Kuznitz, do I have your permission to record this interview?

CECILE KUZNITZ: Yes, you do.

DS:All right, then let's get started.

CK:Okay.

DS:So, can we just start off by you telling me a little bit about what you know about your family background?

CK:Well, three of my four grandparents were born in Eastern Europe and came as teenagers or young adults. My father's family -- my father's father was born in 1:00Kishinev and then the family moved to Nikolayev. And then, they immigrated right before the First World War to Canada, actually, and the family lived in Montreal and then in Boston and then settled in Brooklyn in the '20s. So, my father was actually born in Malden, Massachusetts. But at a very young age, the family moved to Brooklyn and he was raised in East New York, which at the time was a very heavily Jewish immigrant neighborhood. My mother's family, her father was born in a shtetl [small Eastern European village with a Jewish community] in Galicia and he immigrated, as a teenager, to New York. Her mother was the only of my grandparents to be born in New York. She was actually born and raised in Brooklyn. Her family had come over a little bit earlier from -- we're not exactly sure, but we -- from Hungary. And so, she was the only native English 2:00speaker of my four grandparents. And then, my mother was raised in Brooklyn. So, my father was raised in a Yiddish-speaking home because his parents were, throughout their lives, most comfortable in Yiddish. But my mother's parents' spoke English, since her father was a native Yiddish speaker but her mother was actually a native New Yorker.

DS:Okay. Did you grow up hearing Yiddish in the home, then?

CK:Not very much. I mean, my parents obviously spoke English to each other. My mother occasionally would use some Yiddish expressions or some Yiddish words. My father, as I said, knew Yiddish growing up. He didn't really -- he wasn't really comfortable speaking it at that point, but sometimes he would also use Yiddish words or expressions. And if I asked him, he would speak a little Yiddish. But when I was young, when we went to visit my father's parents -- my grandmother 3:00had passed away at that point, but my grandfather had remarried to a woman who I believe was a native Yiddish speaker from Poland. So, they spoke Yiddish between themselves, so I heard it spoken when I was visiting my grandparents. They always spoke Yiddish among themselves, between themselves. But at that point, I really didn't understand what they were saying. But I would hear them talking together when we would visit.

DS:And observance-wise, what kind of Jewish home did you grow up in?

CK:Well, my parents were, I guess, what you might call traditional. They weren't strictly observant by any means, but we would always light candles on Friday night and have a nice Friday night dinner. And we kept kosher at home but my parents would go out to eat and they would eat anything. When people ask me if I grew up keeping kosher, I'd say my parents had three sets of dishes: one for 4:00milchig, one for fleishig, and one for takeout Chinese food. And, I mean, this is true, so -- (laughs) the shul that we belonged to was an Orthodox shul, very traditional in style. But we didn't go regularly to shul. We went on the High Holidays. I mean, later, after my father retired, he started to go more regularly. But I think it was a kind of a throwback in a sense, because my parents were raised in the '30s and '40s to a more immigrant, I suppose, or more old-fashioned style of Judaism. The whole idea of having a modern Conservative synagogue was completely foreign to them, I think. And to me, growing up, I was never exposed to that.

DS:And this is in Queens?

CK:Yes. Yeah, I grew up in Howard Beach, Queens, which is actually -- very heavily Catholic neighborhood. Mostly Italian, some Irish. So, there weren't 5:00many Jewish families around. And the Jewish community was small. And it was, I guess you would say sort of working-class, lower middle-class neighborhood. So, it wasn't particularly Jewish or particularly affluent. When people ask me where I'm from in New York, they never guess that I'm from Howard Beach, 'cause it's not one of the heavily Jewish neighborhoods.

DS:And as far as the Jewish community growing up --

CK:Yeah?

DS:-- was it something that you were involved in? Or what kind of circles did you travel in as a kid in Howard Beach?

CK:Well, in Howard Beach, I went to a local public school. I was one of very few Jewish kids. I think at some point I was the only Jewish kid there. So, I was very much a kind of an outsider. I went for about four years to an afternoon 6:00Hebrew school at this Orthodox shul, which was also, now I realize, quite traditional in its approach. We were taught to daven with the Ashkenazi pronunciation. And there, the -- for a short time, they tried to get sort of a youth group going and create something among the students. But it was also -- there weren't that many students, it wasn't very intensive. So, it wasn't really much of a community, I would say. I mean, it was clear that it was a kind of aging community and that the families in the area that had kids -- I mean, now, most of those kids have either moved away or probably intermarried with all the Italians in the neighborhood. So, it wasn't a very intensive or vibrant, I would say, kind of experience. And I was definitely in a minority being Jewish in that neighborhood growing up.

DS:How did that make you feel?

CK:Well, at the time, I was -- I mean, I was pretty unhappy in a lot of ways. I mean, I was teased, I was beat up in elementary school for -- now, when I think about it, I think that it really probably did have a big influence on me, not only psychologically but in terms of my academic interests, because I think that for a lot of my peers, the whole idea of Jews as outsiders or the idea of actually experiencing anti-Semitism is something that they see as a kind of historical phenomenon. And I think, in a sense, I really grew up with the idea of -- my sense of being an outsider in elementary school in those years was really tied up to my sense of being Jewish. So, I think that I kind of internalized this idea of Jews as outsiders, somehow, because that was kind of my experience growing up, being very much in the minority and being something of a -- I don't want to say an outcast, but definitely being a bit of a fish out of water in elementary school.

DS:Without pushing too hard on this --

CK:Yeah. (laughs)

DS:-- can I ask about what some of your specific experiences in terms of -- did you experience anti-Semitism? And, if so, what was it like and what was --

CK:Well, I did. I mean, I can -- if you want to hear about this, I mean, just growing up on the block, all the other kids were Italian and I would play with them and quite -- I mean, I don't mean to sort of make blanket statements but a lot of them were from sort of immigrant families, not ,particularly well-educated. And there was a girl two houses down I used to play with all the time until school started, in -- which point she was sent to Catholic school. But I remember, when I was very little, I was allowed to walk to the corner and she wasn't allowed to walk to the corner. And so, she asked her mother why my mother allowed me and her mother told her that that was because we were Jewish and Jewish mothers don't love their children. And that's -- and, of course, she 9:00reported this to me. (laughs) So, yeah, and then when I was in school, there were certain times when I was picked on. I was also much more, would you say, academically-oriented at that young age. But it was clear that I was one of the outstanding kids in the school. It wasn't a particularly great school. So, I was a much more serious student than the other kids. So, I guess, for me, the idea of being an outcast for being smart and being Jewish sort of went hand-in-hand, as well.

DS:And did you go for high school to an exam school or you stayed in the area?

CK:No, I -- when I was in sixth grade, I took an exam to go to Hunter College High School, which is a very fine public school in Manhattan. Very hard to get into. And it was a -- I had to fight to even take the test because the principal didn't even -- didn't think that anyone from his school ever had a shot of going 10:00there. That's another story. But I did take the test in sixth grade. The school starts in seventh grade. It goes from seventh to twelfth grade. So, starting in seventh grade, I started to commute by subway from Howard Beach to the Upper East Side where Hunter is. And that was a completely different environment.

DS:How so?

CK:Well, first of all, most of the kids were extremely bright and motivated. It's a very difficult school to get into, which doesn't -- I mean, that doesn't prove anything, necessarily, but it is very -- most of the students were very bright and the student body was very heavily Asian and Jewish. Although I also -- I think I came from a different background from most of the Jewish kids, 'cause most of the Jewish kids came from more affluent families, from Manhattan, more educated -- highly educated parents and so forth. But it was -- it had that sort of immigrant -- it's interesting, because it wasn't the Jews who were the 11:00immigrants at that point, but there were a lot of children from immigrant families, Asian and Hispanic, various backgrounds, who had that kind of first-generation sort of drive to succeed. So, that was one thing. It was very academically stimulating, which was a first for me. (laughs) And traveling into Manhattan every day, spending time in the city was also just a kind of life-changing thing for me, having grown up -- I mean, I had -- I would go into the city with my parents as -- when I was younger. But going every day and getting to explore the city also had a big impact on me.

DS:Did you have any sense in high school that you'd be interested in the field of Judaic studies later on?

CK:No, not at all. I mean, one thing that's interesting to me is that even though the school was heavily Jewish, there was no interest in Jewish culture or observance or anything. And I see how much that's changed now. I mean, I think 12:00it's a sign of just trends in American Jewry overall. Most of my close friends were Asian. They were the kids of Asian immigrants. There was very little interest -- I mean, I was a member of the Oriental American Society because all my friends were Chinese, but that -- there was a Jewish students' group that barely functioned, so I was not terribly interested at that point, yeah.

DS:So, then tell me how you -- tell me about your journey towards the Jewish world generally and --

CK:Yeah.

DS:-- and Yiddish scholarly work more specifically.

CK:Well, I mean, I guess that's a long (laughs) story. Well, I -- when I was in high school, I became really fascinated by New York City and just the history of the city. And I guess I got interested in American history and American urban 13:00history and that was one of the things I wanted to study in college. I mean, I was really fascinated with architecture. That was really my main love. And I started -- I mean, it's sort of complicated but that was one of the things I studied as an undergraduate. I was studying American history and then I think, at a certain point, I thought, Well, this is interesting, but this kind of American history doesn't really relate to me very much. And so, I became more interested in immigration history and issues about assimilation and so forth. So, I started studying some American Jewish history, sort of in that context. I started to get interested in American Jewish history and I think that was sort of the start of sort of moving in that direction, because I then -- I was doing some American Jewish history, so I did some -- so, I was getting interested in 14:00American Jewish history and then when I was an undergrad, I decided to take a course on -- a survey of modern Jewish history, which I really loved and it was one of my best experiences at Harvard, where I was an undergraduate. So, I think I started really to get interested in Jewish history at that point, partly because I had such a good experience with this particular professor, Bernie Cooperman, who was then at Harvard and is now at the University of Maryland. And I think he did have a big impact on me, because if he wasn't such a wonderful teacher and one of the few professors I had at Harvard who really took a personal interest in his students, because Harvard isn't really known for that, (laughs) I might not have sort of pursued that. And also, when I was an undergraduate at Harvard, there was no Yiddish language offered or anything like that. But Hillel -- I started to go to Hillel, which was my first experience being kind of more involved in Jewish communal activities, you could say. And 15:00Hillel offered a -- not for credit, but just one night a week, they offered a Yiddish language class. And I had studied Hebrew in Hebrew school and I had taken different Hebrew classes and I'd never sort of gotten very far. I sort of kept learning the same twenty words over again 'cause it was never very intensive. So, I thought -- I don't know, I'm not sure exactly how I came to it but I guess I thought, Oh, I could try doing Yiddish. I'm sort of tired of learning the same basic Hebrew vocabulary. Maybe I'll do something different. So, I did this just one night a week Yiddish course at Harvard and that was the first time that I actually studied Yiddish. The first course was actually with Rabbi Gold, who was the head of the Harvard Hillel for many, many years, a survivor from Poland and a very, I think, influential figure for a lot of people in that community. So, he was my very first Yiddish teacher.

DS:Well, I want to ask also, then --

CK:Yeah.

DS:You said earlier, in terms of your experience with American history --

CK:Yeah.

DS:-- the fact that -- you said some of it, it didn't relate to you.

CK:Yeah.

DS:So, why was it important to you to study something that related to you?

CK:Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. I don't know. I mean, I guess like a lot of students in college, at a certain point, I guess I started to think about who I was and my background. I mean, I don't remember one revelation. But growing up, being Jewish was something that I always took for granted. I mean, we were very much Jewishly identified but not particularly observant or educated. I was never sent to Jewish summer camps or any of those things. And when I got to Harvard and I was thinking about what groups to join or something, I thought, Well, I'll check out Hillel. I mean, I'm Jewish. And when I got to Hillel, I think it was the first time I really saw young Jewish people my age who were really knowledgeable and observant. I had never really met anyone my 17:00age, I'd just seen all these old people in this Orthodox shul growing up. And so, I thought, Wow, maybe there's something more to this, I guess. So, I guess that maybe got me starting to think about what being Jewish really meant or why it was important to me, something that I had just kind of taken for granted. And I think maybe that got me started thinking in more academic terms about learning more about immigration history and American Jewish history, trying to sort of figure out more about where my parents were coming from and why I felt like my experience growing up had maybe been different from other Jewish kids my age that I was encountering.

DS:Well, and at some point, you moved from American Jewish history --

CK:Yeah.

DS:-- specifically to a -- at least transnational or European Jewish history, as well?

CK:Yeah.

DS:Can you tell me about that?

CK:Well, that came a little bit later, when I was in graduate school. I mean, 18:00first, when I -- and so, I should tell you about sort of how -- before --

DS:Please.

CK:-- graduate school, I -- when I graduated, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. I mean, I was very interested in history and I was really primarily interested in architecture and historic preservation. And I worked several jobs in that field and that was my very first job when I graduated as an undergraduate. But I was also -- I had done a few courses in Jewish history at Harvard before I graduated, and I felt like my interest in that was sort of building and I hadn't kind of explored that sufficiently. And so, I really didn't know what I was going to do or what field I would go into. But I ended up getting a job at the YIVO Institute and I was -- I took off three years between undergraduate and graduate -- before I decided to go to graduate school. I mean, when I started graduate school, I was still thinking of American Jewish history 19:00and I kind of shifted into European Jewish history a little bit later. But in between that, I was working at YIVO for about two-and-a-half years between undergraduate and graduate school.

DS:Well, tell me more about your experiences --

CK:Yeah. (laughs)

DS:-- at YIVO. What were you doing there?

CK:Well, that was really the -- I guess the big turning point for me. I was -- as I said, when I graduated, I really didn't know what I would do, and I ended up just sort of out of the blue contacting a bunch of Jewish museums and archives and things like that, kind of looking for a job. And so, just almost by luck, I was hired at YIVO to work in the archives. And that was a huge turning point for me. I was exposed to a whole world, really, that I didn't know anything about. I mean, I had studied a little bit about Eastern Europe in these 20:00classes I'd taken at Harvard. But very little -- by no means was that a focus of mine. So, working at YIVO was a -- I learned a tremendous amount. And I was hired to work in the archives, so I was hired to work under a grant to microfilm certain collections. So, before they could be microfilmed, they had to be put in order. They had to be arranged, as it's called, to make sure they're well-organized. So, I ended up arranging or rearranging a number of collections and writing finding aids. And I really enjoyed working with the documents and I also did a lot of reference work. And people would -- particularly when they would write in letters -- this was before email. People would send in letters saying, "I'm working on" such-and-such a topic. And I would consult with the other staff who, of course, knew a lot more than I did. But consult with them about what to tell these people and then write the letters, giving them advice or telling them what was at YIVO that could be of interest to them. And then, later on, I worked under a grant to catalog photographs of the Yiddish theater. 21:00So, I spent a lot of time going through theater photographs and entering them into a database.

DS:So, I imagine a lot of the documents that you were working with were in Yiddish.

CK:Yeah, yeah. I mean, when I was hired there, I knew a little bit of Yiddish from these courses I had done at Harvard. But I was by no means fluent and I couldn't read that fast. So, the main collections that I worked on, the chief archivist, Marek Web, who was my boss, tried to give me collections that had other languages where I wouldn't have to really read a lot in Yiddish. But as -- that's really where I improved my Yiddish because I had to use it pretty much every day, just -- I would help -- I did a lot of reference work. People would come in and ask for certain materials and I'd have to get the boxes and I just had to use Yiddish just to find things and file things and sometimes to read things. So, as I worked there, I improved my Yiddish, just from using it. And I 22:00also took some classes while I was working there.

DS:Do you remember who the classes were with?

CK:Well, I took a class with Paula Teitelbaum. These were afternoon or evening classes. And [Sachs?] -- what was his first name? [Avrom Sachs?]. And I also went twice to the zumer program, to the intensive summer program, while I was working. So, I worked half a day and attended class half a day. So, I had Ellie Kellman as one of my teachers and Paula Teitelbaum. And then, in the advanced class, Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter and Avraham Novershtern. And they had -- so, a big impact on me once I got to a more advanced level where I could appreciate more besides -- beyond just trying to get down some basic vocabulary.

DS:And the YIVO building -- at this point, this is still on the Upper East Side? 23:00So, can you describe that for me?

CK:Oh, wow. (laughs)

DS:Just what it was like to work there and what the building was like?

CK:Yeah, it was phenomenal, actually. I mean, I realize it wasn't very practical in many respects, but it was just amazing. I mean, the building itself was gorgeous. It had marble on the walls and crystal chandeliers and -- I mean, my desk was in the basement, which was not so grandiose. But the reading room was gorgeous. But, I mean, it was a very strange thing, because it was also somewhat decrepit. And it was a very heymish [familiar] atmosphere. It wasn't at all like the Center for Jewish History now, where there's security and it's professional -- guards and all that. It was very heymish in a sense. I'm not sure exactly what aspects of that you want to talk about. But, I mean, just physically it was 24:00kind of -- it was beautiful and at the same time somewhat -- as I said, so everything was extremely dusty. I mean, when I went for my original interview for -- to work there, the one question that I remember Marek Web asking me was, "Do you mind working with dust?" Or, "Do you mind working in dust?" Because all the archival collections were stored in every nook and cranny of the building, behind people's desks, and the main storage rooms were in the basement in these terribly bad conditions for archival documents, next to the heating equipment. There was a sub-basement that was like the collective unconscious of European Jewry. It was just this dark room filled with piles and piles of unsorted books and newspapers that were obviously -- were not being cared for in the best conditions. But it was just amazing. They were just drawers of -- you could just open a drawer and you never knew what you would find. It was kind of like a 25:00treasure trove. So, of course, in some ways, the standards were not up to professional archival standards. Books were damaged because they had one floor with these great high ceilings. They just had shelves up to the ceiling and there was water damage at some point, books were ruined. So, in that sense, it wasn't a very good atmosphere. But just the surroundings were very beautiful in a sense and just the atmosphere there was -- it really felt like a family in some ways, I think. There are still a number of East European-born staff members, many of whom are gone now. I don't know, do you want me to talk more about the building itself or the staff or anything --

DS:Well, I'm -- sure.

CK:-- particularly? Yeah.

DS:This is a subject I want us --

CK:Yeah.

DS:-- to come back to --

CK:Yeah.

DS:-- especially -- I want to know about how you went from working at YIVO to studying --

CK:Yeah, yeah.

DS:-- YIVO as a subject.

CK:Yeah.

DS:And maybe we can talk about that now.

CK:Okay.

DS:So, let's -- how did that happen?

CK:Well, do you want me to talk about how I ended up going to graduate school or kind of just jump --

DS:Yeah, no, let's --

CK:-- talk about my dissertation?

DS:Let's do that. And so --

CK:Yeah --

DS:-- you made a cross-country trip from YIVO to Stanford, and this is --

CK:Right. Yeah, well, I mean, I had been working at -- I worked at YIVO, as I said. I learned a tremendous amount. I mean, I was really exposed to just -- not just that I improved my Yiddish and that I learned a lot of facts, but just -- I really felt like I got to see East European Jewish culture to the extent that it still existed in a way that existed in very few places in that point. As I said, I got to work with a number of European-born scholars and staff members and so forth. And it was really an amazing experience for me. And I also came into contact with a lot of professors and graduate students and all of that. So, I 27:00started to think about going to graduate school. And that wasn't an easy decision for me. But eventually I decided to apply and I applied to a number of different programs. And I had heard many good things about the program at Stanford and Steve Zipperstein, who became my advisor. He had been a graduate student at the Max Weinreich Center in the '70s, I guess, when there was a sort of cohort of people there who later went on to be leading scholars in Jewish studies. And at first, the whole idea of going to California just seemed something of a stretch for me, being an East Coast person. And I thought, No, there's no way I would ever consider going to Stanford. But actually, people at YIVO -- several people encouraged me strongly to apply there. And my former -- I found out after all of these years that one of my high school social studies teachers had actually been a student at YIVO and was doing a -- working on a Ph.D. in Jewish history when she ended up kind of dropping out and becoming a 28:00high school teacher. So, she had actually known Steve back in the day and all of that. And she encouraged me, so I ended up applying to a number of schools and I really didn't think I would go to Stanford. And it was actually a very tough decision for me because I sort of -- when I went to visit, I was so impressed by the place and the people I met and by Steve that I really started to consider it very seriously and then I had a very hard decision to make when I ended up going to -- deciding to go to Stanford. So, I, yeah, I made that move, yeah.

DS:And in terms of the ways that you used Yiddish in New York --

CK:Yeah.

DS:Can you talk about that a little bit and then compare it to the way you used Yiddish in Palo Alto?

CK:The way I personally used Yiddish?

DS:Yeah.

CK:Well --

DS:Both scholarly --

CK:Yeah.

DS:-- and personally.

CK:Well, it's interesting, 'cause when I worked at YIVO, there was a lot of Yiddish around. I mean, I guess its work was already conducted more in English, 29:00but there are a lot of native Yiddish speakers. But I always felt like -- I felt embarrassed to speak Yiddish, because my Yiddish wasn't that good and I thought, If Dina Abramowitz is in the library, if -- and Marek, who's in the archives and a researcher comes in and -- who doesn't speak English, I don't want -- (laughs) I figured, let them talk to somebody like that. So, I was always kind of shy about -- I mean, I was involved in Yugntruf and I went to some activities. But at YIVO itself, I never really spoke that much. But I think my Yiddish was improving from reading and so forth. And then, when I went out to Palo Alto, it was -- describing this to a friend, I went to use this expression -- there's a Yiddish saying, b'mokem sh'eyn ish, iz a hering oykh a fish [even when no one is around, a herring is still a fish]? So, in New York, I was like this little herring with all these great Yiddishists around. And then, when I went out to Palo Alto, it was like -- I was sort of the -- I wouldn't say I was the expert, but my Yiddish was good compared to (laughs) the svive [environment] that was 30:00sort of out there at the time. There wasn't really much of a sort of a Yiddishist group or anything. So, I think I was actually more encouraged to actively use Yiddish. I was less inhibited, maybe, without being in New York, feeling like I was in this environment with all of the great sort of figures. And then, once I started graduate school, I was using Yiddish more, reading for research and things like that. So, I strengthened my reading as well, I think by really using it more intensively in some of my graduate work.

DS:And can you describe the svive for me, then, in the Stanford area?

CK:Yeah. (laughs) Well, when I got there, there were two or three graduate students ahead of me in the program that were using -- well, in general, two or 31:00three graduate students ahead of me. It wasn't a large program. And there were a few that were using Yiddish sources, particularly Tony Michels used a lot of Yiddish sources and he works with a lot of Yiddish sources in his work. And there was a Yiddish reading group that was comprised mostly of older people that I went to sometimes. And Gella and Shikl Fishman, Joshua Fishman, the sociolinguist and his wife Gella were spending half a year in Palo Alto. So, there weren't any Yiddish classes, but they organized a Yiddish reading group for some of the graduate students who wanted to work on their Yiddish and they were really -- they had us over to their apartment and they would only speak Yiddish with us or pretty much with anyone, whether or not they knew any Yiddish. They were -- (laughs) so, they really kind of forced us to try to 32:00actively use our Yiddish and they were very generous and, as I said, just volunteered their time to have a -- sort of a tutorial or reading group for some of the graduate students. So, yeah, and then over time, actually, the -- with some of the students that came in after me, the Yiddish component or contingent in Palo Alto actually grew, I think, with some of the students, like -- Sarah Stein came in after me and then Ken Moss, who is -- it's interesting, 'cause Ken actually sort of credits me with exposing him to Yiddish, because we actually met when he was an undergraduate in Israel in an ulpan class and he said that was the first time he met someone who actually spoke -- a young person who spoke Yiddish. But then, Ken went on to become more of a khosid [follower of Hasidism] than I was. So, when he came to Stanford, he -- we only spoke Yiddish together and he -- and that sort of encouraged me, I think, to use it more actively.

DS:And when you say you only spoke Yiddish together, was this generally in, say, 33:00in the homes of the Fishmans? Or would you go to bars, would you be (laughter) outside? How would you use Yiddish in the public --

CK:In the public sphere?

DS:-- square?

CK:Well, we didn't go to bars much in general. (laughs) But I mean, for -- I don't know how personal you want to get this, but Tony and I, who are -- Tony Michels, who's still a very close friend, I mean, he -- his Yiddish is excellent, he uses primarily Yiddish sources. But when we would -- when we talk, we primarily talk in English. And when we would go to the Fishmans, we would talk in Yiddish because the Fishmans only wanted us to use Yiddish. But with Ken Moss, he really just kind of spoke -- we spoke in Yiddish all the time in -- I mean, not in class, but just socially, if we were having dinner together, anything. So, he -- I think once he came, there was -- I sort of shifted a 34:00little bit more to speaking Yiddish more often because he tended to -- we tended to do it, to speak in Yiddish whenever we kind of interacted, not just if it was the Yiddish reading group or the Fishmans or something like that.

DS:And how did you settle on your dissertation topic?

CK:Well, it -- when I -- the first -- well, it's interesting, I hope it's interesting, the first seminar paper I wrote at Stanford was actually on American Jewish history because I was still thinking in that direction. And then, I started to kind of move more towards an Eastern European topic. The second paper I wrote that became my first article was about Vilna and the -- what I call the urban landscape of Vilna. So, it was going back to my interest in urban history and architecture that I had had since high school. But then, 35:00when it came time to settle on a dissertation topic, I think a number of people just kind of independently sort of suggested that I write a history of YIVO because they felt that it was one of those kind of obvious gaps in the scholarship. And because I had worked there and worked in the archives and I knew the collections -- I also knew the people, which also helped because I've heard stories from other people that YIVO isn't necessarily the easiest place to do research or get access to materials, but I had this kind of in from having worked there -- that this might be a kind of natural topic for me because of my experience as a staff member and my kind of familiarity, both with the collections and with the institution from the inside, as well as my interests. So, I think it was -- actually, my advisor, Steve Zipperstein, as well as one or two other people kind of -- it sort of occurred to them that this would be sort 36:00of a natural fit for me.

DS:And I want to return to YIVO specifically, in a second, but you talked about studying the urban landscape of Vilna. And I'm wondering, had you been to Vilna or Eastern Europe when you wrote this paper, or later on when you were starting to write on YIVO?

CK:Yes. Well, I first went there in the summer of -- think it was 1993. I had just started graduate school and I was in Israel for the summer doing an ulpan, and just by coincidence, I had a friend from a completely different field, from my undergraduate, who was teaching -- he was a lawyer and he was teaching in Kaunas under the Civic Education Project, which is a project funded by Soros. I mean, it's completely disconnected from Jewish culture. But he was actually in Lithuania in '93 and so I went to visit him. I sort of met with him and, I mean, that was really fascinating because in '93 it was still just the -- I mean, of 37:00course, it was no longer the Soviet Union, but you could see very much the influence of the Soviet period and Soviet culture and obviously the backlash against that in independent Lithuania. And nothing had been gentrified or fixed up and there was no awareness of the Jewish history of Vilna there at the time. So, it was really fascinating and I was just there for a short time in Eastern Europe. We also went to Poland. And then, it was after that that I did this research. I mean, I had heard a lot about Vilna working at YIVO and I -- a number of Vilna natives were at YIVO, working at YIVO either as staff or as volunteers, elderly survivors. So, I had heard so much about the city and to actually see it in '93 was very interesting. And I think that contributed to this research that I did.

DS:How did your expectations for visiting the city match up or not match up with the reality of your visit?

CK:Well, I mean, it was very poignant to go there because, I mean, of course it was nothing like prewar Vilna in terms of the population or anything. And, as I said, it was -- now it's very different, but there wasn't really any recognition of the Jewish history. And nothing had been sort of fixed up because it was just at the -- right after the fall of Communism. But there are parts of the old Jewish quarter that are very much physically intact. And it was kind of a very powerful experience to just kind of walk in those streets, because it's still -- unlike, let's say, Warsaw, where virtually the entire Jewish quarter was leveled with the destruction of the Ghetto, there -- I mean, there was a lot of damage in certain parts of the city in Vilna, the old city. But there are certain 39:00streets that are still there and you can walk down these narrow streets and it's just like you read about in Grade or something. And then, you come to the part -- this area that was the shul-hoyf, the synagogue courtyard that was the most fabled part of the old city and it's -- that was completely leveled, really, by the Soviets. And there's a school there and I think now there's some kind of statue. But at the time, there was nothing. So, it's very powerful to kind of see that, something that kind of evokes that mood of the history, the Jewish history of the area, and then you can almost see it physically falling away when you come to just these gaps in the landscape, these areas that were flattened after the -- during the war or after the war. So, yeah, and then when I came back, I spoke to this -- there was a volunteer at YIVO who had -- was from Vilna. His name was Shlomo Kowarski that I was very close to. And I saw him 40:00after I went on this trip and I thought he would be so proud -- maybe not proud, but he'd be pleased that I had visited Vilna, 'cause he was this kind of big patriot (laughs) of his hometown. And when I told him, he said to me, "What you saw, that was not Vilna." Of course, after the war, it's -- I mean, it could never be the same. But, of course, it was still very, I think, important for me to see it, physically, what was there.

DS:Yeah. Well, then I guess we should talk about the experience of studying YIVO during the period of the war and leading up to the war and --

CK:Yeah.

DS:-- and how did you settle on that specific time, as opposed to the -- doing a longer overview of the institution?

CK:Well, it was partly just a matter of practicality. And there's so much to 41:00cover, I don't think I could have gone much further chronologically within the scope of a dissertation or a book, one book. And at the time, I said I had -- sort of shift my interest from American Jewish history to Eastern Europe, but I was still interested -- one of the reasons I was interested in YIVO was because it was a worldwide organization and it had this branch in New York as well as in other parts of the world. So, I thought it would allow me to get some insight into not just Jewish culture in Eastern Europe, but also in the United States and so forth. But I -- going into the postwar period really is very -- I mean, it's fascinating, but it raises a whole other set of questions, once you're talking about after the Holocaust. So, I'm not sure, did I answer your question? (laughs) I kind of lost myself there a little bit.

DS:Sure, yeah, but I think also just -- I'm curious about the tensions within -- 42:00inherent within the period of studying --

CK:Yeah.

DS:-- an institution when it's literally under siege, literally and figuratively --

CK:Yeah.

DS:-- and whether there is an appeal to that or -- and how that relates to your other interests, as well, and the intersection of the -- of personal and existential fears (laughter) with their commitment to scholarship.

CK:Well, I mean, I think originally, when I was approaching the topic, I wasn't so much interested in the aspect of the sort of under siege aspect or how they kind of dealt with all of the difficulties that they faced in the -- as the interwar period wore on and then, of course, in a much starker form during the war itself. I think in a sense what I was more interested in at the beginning 43:00was the kind of the flourishing of Yiddish culture at its high point. I mean, originally, I had really been interested in the late nineteenth century and I really thought I would do some topic that was earlier, like pre-World War I. But I think what drew me eventually to the interwar period was the sense that that was when things sort of came together for a kind of flourishing of Yiddish culture that wasn't really possible earlier. And later on, I think I became more interested in this, and I appreciated just the tremendous difficulties that the founders of YIVO faced, even from the very beginning. I became more interested in how their work could be seen as a kind of resistance to all of the obstacles and all of the difficulties that they had to deal with.

DS:Yeah. Can I ask how you would define your own scholarly work and your work as 44:00a professor? Do you see yourself as a Yiddishist? Or how would you define yourself?

CK:As a scholar? As a professor? Yeah, well, my training is really in modern Jewish history. It's not in Yiddish language or literature, per se. And I feel like I'm kind of straddling two fields in a certain sense because I feel very much committed to studying Yiddish and I have a strong interest in Yiddish language and literature, although that's -- my field is history. So, I feel like modern Jewish history and Yiddish studies are, I mean, two distinct fields that obviously intersect and I'm interested about the point where they intersect. I 45:00mean, personally, I feel committed as a Yiddishist and that's -- I think it was an article by Dovid Katz where he sort of talks about the sort of two meanings of being Yiddishist: a Yiddishist is someone who studies Yiddish and a Yiddishist as a -- someone who has a certain kind of commitment to Yiddish. And I guess I would fall into both categories. In my teaching, I'm primarily teaching history classes. But I did just, for example, finish teaching a course on Yiddish culture that was obviously an academic course, sort of structured around the history of Yiddish culture. But I think my sort of personal commitment as a Yiddishist also came into that course to some extent.

DS:Well, can you speak more specifically about your experience teaching that course and how the undergrads responded?

CK:Well, I think the undergraduates come to these courses for a variety of reasons. Some of them have some Yiddish in their background. One of my students, 46:00his grandfather was a partisan during the war and he knows sort of a smattering of Yiddish. So, some of them come from a kind of personal interest and maybe they have certain stereotypes about Yiddish. They think, Oh, it'll be fun, I'll learn curses or I'll understand certain jokes or something like that. Other students have no connection at all to the culture or the language, so it's really something more academic for them. So, I think there's -- as I found with all of my Jewish studies courses, there's a mix between students who are there for just -- they're taking it the way they take a course on any other subject and students for whom it's a more personal kind of identity, something that brings up identity issues. So, in that course, obviously, I ran it like an academic course and I tried to be rigorous and all of that. But I think I also 47:00did bring in some of my own personal experiences or I assigned the students to read some things that I'd written. And I think when we got to talking about the more contemporary Yiddish scene at the end, I think I kind of -- I mean, I wouldn't say I set myself up as an example, but I sort of talked about things that I'd been involved in or events that I'd gone to to illustrate the points and I think the students find that kind of intriguing. They're always curious, I guess, to know what their professors are doing when they're not in the classroom. (laughs) They're attending klezmer concerts or what are they doing? I don't know.

DS:So, what were you doing? (laughs) What were you doing?

CK:What was I doing? (laughter) Well, just as an example -- I mean, I used this in class. I mean, this -- I wouldn't say this was a typical weekend, but one of the -- I think just a few weeks ago, when the semester was kind of winding up, I was in New York for the weekend and I went to see a performance of a play by Leivick that was being performed in English translation and then I went to a 48:00board meeting of the Fishman Foundation for Yiddish Culture, where I'm on the board. This is a family foundation run by Shikl and Gella Fishman. The meetings were conducted in Yiddish and then we voted on what project to support and we decided to support this project for a Yiddish farm, which also had its founding meeting on the same day, which I attended, a kind of organic Yiddish-speaking farm project. And then, in the evening, I went to a Yiddish reading group. So, I had a -- that was not typical, but I was trying to give the students just a sense of what kind of activities are sort of out there. And also, a lot of them -- I think a lot of people everywhere have the impression that Yiddish is pretty much dead as a spoken language. So, I was trying to just sort of point out that here I went to three different activities in one day where I was just conversing in Yiddish as the primary mode of communication.

DS:How has it been teaching to different student populations? You were at Georgetown before at Bard, and I don't know -- I mean, I suspect more of your students at Bard were Jewish than at Georgetown, but correct me if I'm wrong.

CK:Well, I mean, I think in both places, I had a mix of students. Georgetown is a Jesuit university but there's a large number of Jewish students just because of its reputation and so forth. And at Bard, I've also had a mix of students from very different backgrounds. So, at Bard, there aren't really any students who are Orthodox or -- there are a few students who have day school backgrounds, but the overwhelming majority of Jewish students have very kind of weak sort of connection. They're not very actively involved in Jewish life and not all that 50:00knowledgeable in most cases. And I think at Georgetown, it was roughly the same. I mean, it didn't attract a lot of Orthodox students or anything like that. So, I've had a really wide range of students, a lot of Jewish students who, I think, are kind of exploring their identity on some level, particularly a lot of students who come from mixed backgrounds. They may not have even been raised Jewish, but one parent is Jewish, so they know that's kind of in their family and they're curious. But I've also had a lot of foreign students and right now I have a Native American student who's raised -- he was a native speaker of a Native American language with no real background in Jewish studies at all. So, there's a wide range, I would say, yeah.

DS:And what do you think is the academic's role -- or speaking personally, what do you see as your own role in transmission of culture?

CK:Well, I think that's a question that is relevant to all of Jewish studies, not just Yiddish studies. I think this is something I've thought a lot about, actually, because I think Jewish studies developed as a field, an academic field alongside other ethnic studies and black studies and things like that at a time when it was very much wrapped up with identity politics in the '60s and the '70s. And when I was in graduate school, we were kind of taught, well, this is a rigorous -- it's a purely academic field. It's a rigorous field, just like if you were studying French history or Chinese history or African history. You're studying Jewish history and it's purely an academic thing and whatever you choose to do or practice in your personal life is completely separate. But what I found, at least in teaching, is that in practice, it's still very much wrapped up in politics, identity politics and other kinds of politics, not only among the students but also among faculty and administration, so that in practice, I 52:00think it is a very -- I found, in my experience, I found it to be a hard line to kind of walk, because I started out with this idea that, I'm going into the classroom as a completely objective sort of expert on these topics and I'm not there to talk about my personal practices or my personal involvement. But I think, especially at Bard, which is a small school and there's a lot of contact between students and faculty, the students really expect to sort of get to know the professors on a more personal level. So, it doesn't really work to kind of say, I'm going to keep my personal life totally separate. So, I guess I've gotten somewhat more comfortable with sort of dealing with sort of identity issues or personal issues in the classroom because it's -- I've just found that to come up so much.

DS:And do you think -- and would you say the same about Yiddish as a language? Is it -- in terms of what -- do you think that there's a -- what is the role of academics in language transmission in terms of Yiddish? And does Yiddish -- 53:00should it take a privileged space, apart from other languages? How should we treat Yiddish?

CK:(laughs) Well, I think it's clear that as the number of native Yiddish speakers is diminishing and as the settings where Yiddish is a spoken language is diminishing, aside from the Hasidic world, that it is -- it's increasingly important in the academic settings to teach Yiddish and to expose students to Yiddish, that that's increasingly where students come to encounter Yiddish. So, I don't sort of openly proselytize with my students but I always sort of encourage them all, if they have an interest, to study Yiddish language. And I do think it's important to make that available to students, that it's becoming -- the academy is becoming increasingly where interest in Yiddish and studying Yiddish is taking place. So, I mean, I definitely support that and I volunteer 54:00-- I'll probably be doing this next semester, basically, on a volunteer basis, teaching a Yiddish language tutorial for students if they're interested because I feel like if they have that interest to learn some Yiddish, I want them to have the opportunity. So, I guess I would say I have a personal commitment to Yiddish beyond just another academic subject.

DS:Well, we're actually -- we're nearing the end of our time, but I want to ask --

CK:Okay.

DS:-- with that in mind, what do you see --

CK:Yeah.

DS:-- as the future of Yiddish? I ask very grandiosely.

CK:Yeah. (laughter) Well, I was discussing this in this course I just finished teaching, trying to get the students to consider different points of view. Well, I think it's clearly flourishing among Hasidic communities, which I think is the most under-studied area of Yiddish studies today. But I think it's really growing, if anything, not just because of the high birth rates but because I -- from what I can see, there's a real consciousness about wanting to preserve 55:00Yiddish. I feel like Yiddish is becoming more mainstream in many ways -- in Jewish culture in general. There's more awareness of it, and I think from what I can see in Israel, the kind of traditional hostility to Yiddish is really starting to break down and there's a tremendous interest in kind of rediscovering this culture. But I'm very skeptical, I think, of those people who argue that all of Yiddish culture will be in translation. I mean, I think it's just obvious that so much is lost in translation, that you can't -- I mean, maybe that will be important for -- as a means of access for people who don't know any Yiddish. I'm not against translating Yiddish literature, but I don't think you can really preserve a culture in that way. So, I mean, I think there is a sort of broadening of interest in Yiddish. But I think the danger is that the number of people who really have the depth of knowledge who are -- really speak the language fluently and really have that depth of knowledge of the 56:00language and the culture is really diminishing. I mean, just from thinking of the people I worked with at YIVO, so few of them are around still, who were really immersed in that culture. I think Yiddish culture will definitely continue in various forms and maybe in new forms. And I think, as I said, I mean, just in the time since I've been involved, I can see that the interest has sort of grown and students even younger sort of discovering Yiddish and I think that's great. But I think the sort of -- the real challenge is to kind of preserve the depth of knowledge somehow when you don't have native speakers around, making sure that it's not only translation or it's not only klezmer music, even though I'm a big fan of klezmer music. But making sure that there's the kind of resources available to really preserve the culture and the language and all of its richness, too.

DS:So then, what advice would you give to somebody, (laughter) to a student of 57:00Yiddish, then?

CK:A student -- well, in what sense? You mean, someone who wants to learn the language, learn?

DS:Language and culture.

CK:Yeah.

DS:Yeah, someone who would be a self-defined Yiddish student.

CK:Well, I think -- well, I mean, it depends what you want to learn the language for. There are lots of people who learn it just to do research and don't really speak it and that's fine. That's obviously valuable. I mean, if you're going to do a topic that -- where you have Yiddish sources, it's important to know the language as a research language. I mean, if someone really wants to use it more actively and be involved in Yiddishist activities, I think I would encourage that. I think it really does take a real commitment, as I said, especially given the situation today to really have that -- to really do that well, to do it thoroughly. So, if people want to sort of dabble and that's all they really want to do, I mean that's better than nothing. But if people are -- really have a 58:00serious interest in Yiddish language and culture, I guess I would say to -- that to recognize that it really takes a lot of effort, I think. Just like anything, I suppose, that you really have a commitment to to really do it well. Because given the state of Yiddish today, there are real challenges, I think, in sort of really grasping the language and the culture.

DS:Right. Well, I just want to ask are there any other topics that you'd like to touch on before we wrap up? Is there anything that we haven't discussed that you'd like to speak to?

CK:Well, I don't know if there's -- I suppose you've covered everything. I mean, I suppose I have lots of stories about when I worked at YIVO, but I don't know how much -- you could probably talk for several more hours about that. And, I mean, what's interesting to me, I guess, as a historian studying YIVO is that -- well, there's many interesting things about it. But now, I realize -- I mean, I look at the prewar period, I read these things and I -- obviously, that's a 59:00historical period now. But now I realize that even the period when I worked there, in the early '90s, has kind of become a historical period because, as you asked about, the YIVO on Eighty-Sixth Street is gone and a lot of people have passed on. So, it's strange to think of myself as someone who's become part of history, in a sense, that the YIVO that I knew when I worked there that -- it was really a privilege to work there -- that so much of that has already disappeared. I meet young graduate students, they're, like, Did you know Dina Abramowitz? When I knew Dina Abramowitz, I worked with her every day and, I mean, of course I recognized what a tremendous resource she was. But it's just odd to think that this is already kind of part of history. So, yeah, I'm glad I had that experience. And, like I said, I (laughs) had some memorable experiences there that I -- people ask me, Well, will you write a sequel to your book on 60:00YIVO so you can sort of spill all the gossip you learned when you were there? (laughs) And I don't --

DS:And will you?

CK:Well, I don't -- I don't think -- well, that's another point. I don't think I could, because when I started -- I hope I'm not going on too long, but when I started at YIVO -- I mean, when I started writing on the history of YIVO and I was looking for people to interview who really remembered the prewar YIVO, I thought, What a terrible shame it is that so many people are gone, that there are so many people who I just missed interviewing, and so forth. And I thought, It's such a shame that people haven't done this earlier. But then, as I went on longer, I think I came to the realization that maybe nobody could have written the history earlier because it was so personal and people were so involved in different political movements, in the Bund and -- there was so much -- people were so personally invested that I think earlier, it would have been really difficult to write it because people didn't have that kind of distance, that it 61:00was something they were so personally invested in. So, I guess in the same way, maybe someday someone will interview me about what YIVO was like in 1990 when I started working there. But I don't think I could write that history because it's so personal for me, yeah.

DS:Okay, well, I want to thank you so much for spending the time and for sharing so much with us. And we're going to wrap things up now.

CK:Okay, well, thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]