ELI BATALLION ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney and today is August 15th, 2016. I am here at the Segal Centre in Montreal with Eli Batalion? And we're going to --

ELI BATALION: Yes.

CW:-- record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record?

EB:One hundred and ten percent permission.

CW:Great. So, I guess, to start, I'd love to hear the story of your name.

EB:Well, I guess there are two -- no, actually, there's three names in my name. Not many people know that my middle name is George. But really, the reason it's George is 'cause it's really Gershon. So, Eli and not "E-lai" -- a lot of people, when they meet me and see my name think that it's "E-lai," except, 1:00interestingly, French people, because they pronounce it "Eh-lee." That comes from a relative, I believe a great-grandfather named Eliezer. And actually, in "YidLife Crisis," I play a character named Leizer. And Leizer is sort of the "cutesification" of Eliezer, which is my Hebrew name and which was the name of my relative, as well. I also have a living relative named Leizer that lives in Israel, as well. And I just though it's -- I find it a hilarious name just because it sounds like "laser" in the English language, which sounds particularly sharp, whereas this character is not. He does not dress particularly sharp, let's put it that way. And Gershon is significant, also -- named for a relative, which means literally "a stranger in a strange land," which kind of ties into my diasporatic global shtetl [small Eastern European village with a Jewish community] adventures the past couple years. And my general experience growing up, particularly in Montreal, which is -- in some 2:00ways, it's like the complete opposite of what it must be like to grow up in Israel, which is -- we're really a minority here, more so than in America, for example, or arguably in various pockets of Europe, as well, because of certain cultural and linguistic differences when it comes to the Ashkenazic community here. So, that name is particularly fitting. The last name, Batalion, is interesting and we've been trying to figure this out. I've been meeting with various Batalions along the way, trying to figure out the origins of this name. One of them, Shira Batalion, was suggesting perhaps it's bat Elion, daughter of Elion or, I suppose, daughter of God, which would be very interesting. I think, also -- I've seen, when I look up the name, 'cause I Google myself every so often. I find there are various Czech things or things that are Slavic or in Eastern Europe that have that name. I think it literally means the same as it does in English, which is a military unit. But I've also had a friend who had a 3:00Polish girlfriend who suggested it might have meant rough or rough animal, which I take as a compliment, as well. So, that's the bizarre composite of my name. It's Eliezer from the Bible, Gershon, also from the Bible, and some rough military unit. And somehow, comedy comes out of that.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW:What do you know about where your family came from?

EB:I know that all of my family -- well, basically all my grandparents were from Poland, various parts of Poland. On my father's side, his mother, I believe, was born and lived in Opt, or Opatow, or Opatów, which I presume Judd Apatow is -- he got his name from there, which actually, I visited with my sister about eight years ago. And it's a very -- it's an interesting little town, more or less in the middle of Poland with a very nice town square, but probably no more Jews. My 4:00grandfather on my father's side is a little bit harder to put down, but my father suggested it might be Krężnica or something like that. He thought he recalled that particular town, which I believe is a little bit in the eastern southern pocket of Poland and -- but basically -- and on my maternal side, my grandfather was from Radzymin, which is basically like a suburb of Warsaw. And my grandmother was from Puławy, which is on the Vistula River, I guess just a bit south of Warsaw. But the interesting thing was that they all eventually made it to the big city and all ended up in Warsaw. That was really the center of Jewish life, although what I found from my Polish journey -- and I've been there a couple times now in the past eight years -- is that there were various 5:00pockets, like Łodz, for example, which were extremely Jewish, almost majoritarily Jewish, so -- but Warsaw was definitely -- in my mind, it's interesting to realize that Warsaw was almost like it was en route to becoming New York. And I think about -- if it weren't New York already. And I think about this hypothetical world where World War II would not have happened, where what would have happened to Warsaw and the potential for Warsaw to actually be a New York. And you'd have the Warsaw Stock Exchange, for example. And I think, I don't know, there's definitely some novel there that ought to be written by Michael Chabon or some -- I don't know. But anyways, yeah, so they're all from Poland. And so, we all came from there, except on my father's side, they immigrated, actually, pre-Second World War. And on my mother's side, they went through -- they escaped to Russia and they went through various refugee camps. 6:00And I actually did this sort of loop, which -- I've met a couple other people that have this story or this origin where I believe they had made it all the way to Siberian work camps and they were making their way back through various Islamic countries. And, of course, the political situation has changed somewhat from that time. But the way my mother describes it, they were well-hosted as they made their way back. And she herself was born in a place called Jalalabad, which I believe is where bin Laden was hanging out. (laughs) So, we have that connection, he and I. But it's a really interesting story and I was surprised to find, actually, Moses Znaimer, who is a major -- well, he's involved in Jewish Public Library and many other aspects of Jewish life in Canada. I believe he had a similar sort of story. And there's a few other people I've heard of that have gone through that process. Anyways, they made it back to Poland, into the 7:00post-war Poland, which was not so idyllic. And then, they eventually made their way to Israel for a bit. And then, from Israel, made their way to Montreal. And I believe, on both sides, they went through Halifax. And I did visit Halifax, and I forget the name of the pier, but there's a specific pier that has information and it had the record of how much money my grandfather came with, and I believe it was five dollars or less.

CW:Do you know what the occupations in your family were?

EB:Yeah, that's a good question. On my father's side, my grandfather had a bunch of textile businesses. Very small businesses where they were creating -- generally clothing for retail shops. And on my mother's side, my grandfather worked as a furrier, as well. So, there was a shmate [rag] theme throughout that 8:00level of things. And as for my grandmothers, they were basically stay-at-home moms, which was probably more work than what my grandfathers did. But, yeah, it's interesting, I mean, because -- and this is a layer that we see a lot. They were in a very -- I guess a manual business that paved the way for a more white-collared generation to follow after them. And then, my generation is -- I don't know what to call what I do. Blue-collared? I don't know.

CW:Purple-collar?

EB:Purple-collared maybe.

CW:Did you know your grandparents?

EB:Yeah, I did, and actually, they were -- so, I grew up in Montreal and they were here in Montreal. And particularly on my mother's side, they were -- they often babysitted [sic] so I knew them quite well. And actually, I think, part of the reason why I have an affinity to the Yiddish language is because that's 9:00pretty much all they spoke, certainly to my parents. They did speak a little bit of Polish, as well, and a little bit of English. But it's really quite remarkable how little English they spoke for all these years that they were here, which I think is testimony to the fact that this is sort of -- a second part of their lives was here in an English world. And those friends that they were around, and family, just they all spoke to each other in Yiddish, anyways. Also, in Quebec, French is a major language and it's progressively become all the more so since the '70s, for everyone to speak. And, yeah, they might have known a few scraps here and there, but really not capable in that at all. And my father's parents also, really no English at all. So, growing up as a kid whose first language was English, there was a bit of a limitation in communicating, particularly on my father's side. But I did -- I was sort of, I would say, unconsciously sensitized to Yiddish and the language and the cadence of Yiddish 10:00growing up in a way that, when I try to write things in Yiddish now, I feel -- I have certain instincts. Whether they're right or wrong, I don't know. Whether they're grammatical or not, I don't know. They're probably not. But I think that they probably come from hearing this at a very early age.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW:Were they frum [devout]?

EB:It's a good question. No, not in the conventional sense, though I would say -- and I would still describe my father in this way -- as very traditional. My paternal grandfather lived very close to where the Lubavitch shul continues to be. Well, one of several Lubavitch shuls, but one that's actually not too far from here, on Westbury. And he used to go in the mornings to daven there. So, he was still davening on a regular basis. He was not -- would I describe him as a black hat or someone who was wearing tsitses [tassels on the prayer shawl] regularly? No. But that was his world, and he continued to socially interact 11:00with them and go to that shul and drink schnapps with them and whatnot. And he was active in that. And my father -- well, I remember when he would say Kaddish at certain points. It was convenient to be there, so he would go in. I -- so, I must have been seven or eight years old -- would go in there, as well, and it's a whole new and interesting world to me. But my father also has this same traditional sense, which is it's not a lot of the -- it's not the kippah-wearing and it's not a lot of the outwards indications of Judaism. But he goes to shul every Shabbos, goes for every holiday, puts on tfiln every day. So, this was the particular way that my grandfather and my father [UNCLEAR]. My uncle, his brother, had nothing to do with that. (laughs) But he did say Kaddish, and that's also really interesting and part of what -- my partner Jamie and I, in "YidLife Crisis," focus on, is, what's the rubric or rule of thumb by which we 12:00choose some of these things but not the others? And I think that choice is indicative of your identity in some way.

CW:Were there any stories from Poland that were passed down in the family?

EB:That's a really good question. I really feel like you should ask my parents, actually, 'cause they'd have a lot of great stories. I think so. I think -- well, first of all, my great-grandmother who came over was, I believe, a shop owner, kind of like a convenience store owner. And it's interesting, 'cause on that side, there's a bit of a history of the women being the commercial leaders and the ones that are taking care of the house and bringing in the income. And particularly, like my great-grandfather, he was the Talmudic scholar, but he did not do anything pragmatic, or so I understand. So, I believe part of the reason 13:00why they came -- I mean, one anecdote that was given was that soldiers would come in and they would just raid and they would just take the money out of the cash register. And it just got to a point where it just felt oppressive and it was time to leave, so the story went. But I think on my father's side, it was really about leaving early not because -- I don't believe that it was a Germanic thing or the threat of Nazism or anything. It was actually, I believe, Polish sold-- I believe. I could be wrong about that. I should fact check that. But anyways, the point being that even in the '20s, they did not find it to be a hospitable place. And my understanding was that my great-grandmother was really the -- she was the one that led the move. And it was not my great-grandfather. 14:00And that this relationship continued here in Montreal where they had, I believe, nine daughters in that family. And she was really -- my father describes his relationship with my great-grandfather in a way that was -- my great-grandfather was very much a Talmudic guy. The way my father describes it, you could point to a page and he would know what was on the other side of it. So, we're talking about at that level. This is what he dedicated his life to. So, I think that he naturally took a shining to my father who was also in kheyder [traditional religious school] -- I mean, literally kheyder, not in prison -- in a kheyder -- or maybe he was in prison when he was three, I don't know. But he says he was in a kheyder learning Talmudic concepts when he was three. So, I think they had a close relationship. But on the pragmatic side, yeah, this was a very different world. And I presume in the religious communities, it continues to operate in 15:00this fashion.

CW:And then, you grew up here.

EB:Yes.

CW:Can you describe the home you grew up in?

EB:That's -- how much time do you have? Yeah, well, it was an interesting home. Well, first of all -- so, my nuclear family is my mother, my father, and my sister as well. My sister's three years older than me. She currently lives in New York but lived in Montreal for, I guess, about seventeen years or eighteen years before she went to college. So, we grew up in definitely a modest abode. We actually grew up originally not very far from the Segal Centre here in the Snowdon area or the Côte-des-Neiges area on Campden Place and we actually lived in the same -- there's a lot -- there's this duplex formation in Montreal, which is very popular. You have a lower unit and an upper unit. So, we lived, for the 16:00first three years of my life, above my grandparents, which I think also ties into this -- my maternal grandparents -- which ties into the closeness with them and the exposure to their life and their culture. And they were also pretty active -- I remember coming to the Cummings Centre or the Golden Age Centre very often. My grandfather used to play chess there. So, being there and being in this community, this was really the hub of Judaism in -- certainly in the early '80s. A lot was going on here. And in 1983, we moved to Côte Saint-Luc. Côte Saint-Luc is a suburb of Montreal. It's on the island of Montreal but it's not governed by Montreal proper, so I believe. And it's very, very suburban. So, there's a baseball field or baseball fields, a hockey arena, a library, and definitely the Cavendish Mall, which was our center of commerce where we had some of the big retail shops. And then, we used to have Pumpernick's Restaurant, which was a key meeting point for many of us. And the loss of that was, to some 17:00of us, the beginning of the end for Côte Saint-Luc. But Côte Saint-Luc was interesting because it was at least ninety percent Jewish. And yet, at the same time, other than the synagogues that you could see there, there was nothing that was explicitly Jewish about it. It was a Canadian suburb in general. It had the hockey rink. Yes, it was called the Samuel Moskovitch Arena, but it was still very much -- if you go anywhere else in Canada, you will see the same template. And so, we grew up -- so, again, we were in another duplex, this time at the bottom, in Côte Saint-Luc, in relatively tight quarters but nowhere near as tight as my parents grew up or my grandparents. And yeah, we went to -- I went to Jewish People's and Peretz School, which actually had a branch -- they just moved, but they were here on Van Horne, which is also -- you have the Segal Centre, which was the Saidye Bronfman Centre, the Jewish Public Library and the Federation Building, Jewish People's and Peretz School, and the Jewish General 18:00Hospital, all within pretty much five blocks of each other. So, this is really a Jewish campus. And so, a large, early part of my life was around here, even though we continued to live in Côte Saint-Luc. And I did my elementary school here, but then my high school, Bialik High School, which is, actually, in Côte Saint-Luc, so it became even more insular at that point. And Jamie and I were remarking on the fact that for many years, we did not have non-Jewish friends. We just didn't know -- our worlds were so insular that we just never had those interactions, literally until college or in my -- probably the CEGEP era, which is kind of like junior college for us in Quebec. But, yeah, growing up in Côte Saint-Luc is both a very Jewish thing and also not that Jewish, either, because it wasn't practically that Jewish. It was not frum. Now it is. Back then, in the '80s and the early '90s, most people were very much secular Jews that would go 19:00to synagogue for the key holidays, but that was pretty much it. Didn't keep kosher in the traditional sense. And my growing up was -- we kept a traditional household and we did have two sets of dishes. And we did have kashrut laws to follow. And we did go to synagogue on holidays and Shabbos and whatnot. But it was always stretched a little bit. And then, the older that I got, the more that I took liberties in stretching that further and further. But, yeah, I would describe my upbringing, despite being in places that were modern places like Côte Saint-Luc, which is the template for Canadian suburbia, as a very traditional upbringing that had with it flavors that probably came from Poland and the Jewish community of Poland. And so, I think that that's painted a lot of my life, because I've always felt tied to that. And, in a sense, always felt 20:00like an old soul that was tied to that past, because I think, in many ways -- it's interesting, talking to more American Jews -- I feel there was something a little bit more special about Montreal Jews in keeping some of those traditions a bit more and a lack of assimilation, which I saw more of or I tend to see more of in America, partially because, I believe, that America was more inviting when it came to the assimilation. And also, I also think English is a factor and that's an interesting thing about Quebec versus, let's say, Ontario, which is Canada but English-speaking Canada. Here, there were various reasons why Jews were less integrated into society. And I think that allowed for the old shtetl culture to continue to survive here.

CW:You mean being -- you want to pause? Oh, do you mean being aligned with the English-speaking versus French? Or --

EB:Yeah, I think that plays a very important role. And it's one that's shifting and changing, especially as the Jewish community, the demographics of it change 21:00here. But it's been an important distinction, because here -- for example, for many years, in Quebec, the government was largely -- they were very compatible with the Catholic Church. And, as a matter of fact, the Catholic Church was really, you could argue, more of the socially-engineered, socially-controlled factor here in Quebec. And, as a result of it -- my father tells a story of when he got something in his eye and my grandmother was taking him around to various hospitals, but the Catholic ones wouldn't take him. Even though it was an emergency, they wouldn't take him. Now, some people might say anti-Semitism. I don't think it was anti-Semitism. I think it was, We protect the Catholic people. If you're not part of our group, then you're not. So -- and --

CW:Is it the French-speaking Catholic?

EB:Yeah, so in this case -- I mean, it's interesting, there's so many layers to it, 'cause then you have Italian Catholic, as well. But the French-speaking Catholic majority had particular institutions that -- since then, there has been 22:00a large rebellion against that and there's actually a lot of anti-church and anti-religious sentiment. And it's probably one of those strongest atheistic strongholds in North America at this point. But for a long period of time, and certainly when my father was growing up in the '40s and '50s, it still continued to be like that. So, as a result, the -- when you flip generations later, these Ashkenazic Jews, they ended up -- they didn't participate in the Catholic and mostly French school systems. As a result of exclusion, they ended up in English school systems. And so, their mindset, their -- and I don't mean this in a negative way -- indoctrination was with more of the English Canadian story. And that passes on to generations. And so, growing up, we had mandatory French classes and whatnot, but we didn't speak French as naturally as other people did, even though we spoke various languages and were learning four languages at 23:00school. And I think part of it was this continued cultural divide. And, in a sense, also, a lack of comfort and -- around speaking French. It's such a hot topic here and there was so much history to it and so much of a feeling of you needed to speak French and it was a politicized thing that it almost made you incapable of speaking it in this weird way, like someone who is just being -- the pressure's on you and you have to do something right now, to do something on demand, and you feel like even though you're fully intellectually capable of it, for some reason you can't do it, as well. So, I think some of the things that happened with my parents being -- well, in my father's case, he was born in Montreal, my mother was not. But sort of coming from immigrant families, those choices and the way the society was created there had impacts on the next generation. And it's interesting to look at Quebec's immigration policies as far 24:00as education is concerned. I mean, now I think they force you into French, which -- it's interesting. It's either -- you can look at it as a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what side of the bed you wake up on. But, yes, language was a large factor and I think that growing up in a French Canadian Catholic society was not the same as those Jews that were in New York, that were in Chicago, in Los Angeles, or Toronto where there was more opportunity. 'Cause it's not -- it wasn't just a purely linguistic thing. I guess you'd call it ethnolinguistic thing. There were limited opportunities. And to this day, I mean, it's kind of unspoken, but it's -- there really are -- certain types of people will be in certain jobs here. And you're not going to find -- you're rarely going to find a Jewish -- an Ashkenazic English-speaking Jew in a high-power position in the 25:00government in Quebec. It's not going to happen. That could very well happen in New York. As a matter of fact, it happens often. Wouldn't happen here, at all. There are natural -- I wouldn't describe them as ceilings. I mean, I don't -- I'm not complaining about it. I'm just saying it's naturally sort of evolved that way. All that to get back to the thesis, which is we didn't have that opportunity. I feel like in America, people were embarrassed by Yiddish. They wanted to move beyond it. It's interesting, 'cause in our Global Shtetl -- at "YidLife Crisis" adventure, we also went to Israel, where there, as well, there's a major embarrassment factor. And it was more than embarrassment and something that's -- Oh, this looks unclassy. It was more, We want nothing to do with that old conception of who we were, as weak people. We have a totally different revisionist view of ourselves and we're going to use language as a key way to do that. So, definitely in America, I felt like there was some lighter 26:00version of that. And I don't think it existed here to the same extent.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW:What was Friday night at home like for you growing up?

EB:Great question. Well, there was always candle lighting. There was always saying the prayers and doing kiddush and making blessing on the challah. Usually meals -- well, always meals. But the interesting thing was, because of the way that my sister and I lived, we would have that, but then we would probably go play Nintendo immediately afterwards. Whereas, for my father, it was not the same experience or not necessarily for my mother. But the point is that we had those rituals and they continue to this day. But moments after, I will just go immediately from that to doing accounting on a spreadsheet. But I've come to -- 27:00for a long period of time, I didn't think much of rituals and I questioned them. But now, I have a lot more respect for them, and I find them very interesting. And I also find the transmission of ritual very, very interesting -- stories that I've heard about people, not just Marrano Jews that continue the tradition but don't know why they're doing it, but even -- one anecdote I heard about people that were lighting candles, their tradition is to light candles in the closet. And I was like, Wow, that's fascinating. They have no idea why they're doing it. So, there's really something interesting about how this broken telephone (laughs) of sorts -- it's a very nice kind of broken telephone, exists. And I'm sure some people have even suggested this as maybe even a genetic basis for some aspects of this. But it's really interesting, and I do more and more every year find it a bit more significant to realize that whatever I'm doing actually does -- is identical or is close enough in spirit to what was 28:00done thousands of years ago. That is meaningful and I think there is a place for that in one's life, to have that.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW:What was the food in the home growing up?

EB:The food was salty. The food was definitely of another era and continues to be very -- I mean, we have certain key bakeries here like the Kosher Quality and Kosher City, Cantor's Bakery, some -- Maxie's, some of these have survived, some not. But it's very -- it is the complete opposite of what is suggested in modern pop culture. Pop culture suggests to get away from carbs and various kinds of breads and refined flours and get into fruits and vegetables. And while we did have those, it was very bread-based. It was about breads and salty fish. 29:00Basically, pickled foods and breads. Danishes and babkas and challahs and challah rolls, this is what I grew up on. And I have a love-hate relationship with it, because I love it but I also recognize, especially the more that these theories come out about this and gluten sensitivity and whatnot -- that there's a world in which it's not the most appropriate diet for now. There was an era in which it probably was, but nowadays, in the world of abundance, it may not be the best diet. So, I have a love-hate relationship with that. And also, get-togethers and Jewish affairs, because they are so filled with these things and yet, fundamentally, I recognize that they're probably not good for me. And yet, I can't stop myself. It's a real addiction. It's a problem. Someone should do a reality show on it. Give me an intervention of sorts. But what's also interesting is learning -- I didn't realize about the whole -- the salty fish 30:00and that whole aspect. I don't know why it never dawned on me but -- I was speaking with Jeff Yoskowitz, who runs the Gefilteria, and he talks a lot about pickling. And I didn't realize -- it should have been obvious, but I didn't realize the purpose of pickling and the whole roots of this, which were to preserve things. And this is what was needed that was, in a sense, almost a form of refrigeration or chemical preservation that was done back in that era. So, I always thought, Maybe we're just a bitter people, so this is why we're into these pickles and this herring. But then, I also realize that that is very much -- it was a pragmatic thing. The other thing I realize in visiting Poland, which really contributed to my "YidLife Crisis," was realizing that many of these foods are entirely Polish foods or Eastern European foods and that even the cheese Danishes that I grew up on -- I could find the original and better one in 31:00a market in Kraków somewhere. And so, all of these things that I associated with being at the apex of Judaism and Jewishness to realize that, actually, they weren't, on paper, Jewish at all -- was a very interesting paradigm shift for me, which made me realize that there are many, many dimensions to identity. And I can share Judaism with a Sephardic Jew or Mizrahi Jew in some ways, but in other ways, there's a lot of things that we do not share at all. And I'm actually a lot more similar culturally, in some aspects, to non-Jewish Poles than I might be to a Jew that grew up in Morocco or Algeria or France, for that matter, so -- and that sort of is a little bit of the thesis or thinking behind what we've been trying to do in "YidLife Crisis," which is showing the different scenario-- it's a very complex Venn diagram of identity, and there are times 32:00when any two people can have some point of similarity versus a third person and then, those similarities and those overlaps can shift. And the world is complex in that sense. So, definitely realizing that about Poland -- first of all, it's made me also interested in my origins, as well, because I feel, as an Ashkenazic Jew coming from a Slavic area, I feel that genetically, I probably am the product of something Semitic from the Middle East and something from a Slavic territory in Eastern Europe and it fascinates me. I haven't done 23 and Me yet, and I'm not sure how detailed they get on that. But I do find it really interesting and I find what's interesting about being an Ashkenazic Jew is in a broad sense, you are literally, genetically this combination of two parts of the world. And what we would comedically say in "YidLife Crisis" terms is that your body is literally fighting half of itself at all times. So, it's no wonder why 33:00we have such gastric issues, because our genes are at odds with each other. But it is really interesting to have both, and I actually -- the more I think about it, forgetting about the genetic aspect, the more that I think modern Western Judaism and the Jewish experience is a really interesting combination of trying on something from, for lack of a better term, I call the Arabic world, and mixing that with, for lack of a better term, what I'd call the Western world or, I guess, the white world. And it's a bit of both, because all of the prayers and all the melodies -- there are many aspects of Jewish practice that I think are very Arabic in nature. Or I was going to say Aramaic, but I guess that's only really a language. But at the same time, there's so many other elements that are very Western European in nature, and that's what I find interesting about 34:00Ashkenazi Jewry -- is we're mixing these two things and trying to reconcile what it's like to have both of them at the same time.

CW:So, I wanted to talk a little bit more about your Yiddish growing up. So, we talked about your grandparents and then you also studied at school, some Yiddish. Can you tell me about the formal Yiddish education you had?

EB:Yeah, the Yiddish education began at Jewish People's and Peretz Schools, which was an amalgam of Jewish People and Peretz Schools, very close to here. And it started, I believe, in the second grade -- I think we started. Either second or third grade, we began Yiddish classes. And I actually -- I remember it quite fondly. We had a teacher -- I often -- there were a few teachers that taught it, but the teacher that stands out the most, her name was Eleanor Moidel, or Ellie Moidel, and she was very strict about Yiddish. And, at the time, it was very intimidating, especially at that young, tender age. But in 35:00retrospect, I really do appreciate it because it was taken very seriously. And I remember that the way that we would learn Yiddish was, we had a book called -- what was it? It was not "Geshikhte [History]," "Mayn folk [My people]" -- I'm thinking it's "Mayn folk" but then I'm wondering, Wait, is that Hitler's book? No, that was something else. Anyways, we had a Biblical book and what this book did was that it told the stories of the Bible, but in Yiddish. So, we actually learned our Torah, originally, in JPPS, in Yiddish. And that was really interesting. And it was a good two-for-one of being able to learn the Yiddish language but, at the same time, get our Judaic studies at the same time, too. And that in itself was very interesting. So, I remember that quite fondly and I believe that we also had some focus on grammar, as well. But the key was really 36:00learning the Bible and Yiddish. In high school -- so, I went from there -- after the sixth grade, we go to high school in Quebec. And I went to Bialik High School, which was affiliated with JPPS, and there we started to learn various pieces of literature from Jewish writers, mostly from the twentieth century, a little bit from the nineteenth century, also as a means of learning the language in the process. And we also -- we worked off of college Yiddish and there was a bit more of a focus on some grammatic aspects, as well. Unfortunately, many escape me at this point but at the time, I wasn't bad at it. And so, that was -- so, basically, in JPPS, I guess I had about five years of Yiddish education, and Bialik went from the sixth grade to the eleventh grade, so that was another five years. So, it was a total of ten years of Yiddish education. And that 37:00culminated, for me, in being the Yiddish valedictorian at Bialik High School. And there's not many. There's only one every year and actually, they don't teach Yiddish as a mandatory language anymore. So, we're a limited edition. But I remember that was a very, very formative moment for me. And it was actually very significant. I remember, in school, the real prestige thing was to be the English valedictorian. My sister was the English valedictorian. But for me, in a sense, it was more meaningful, more true to myself to end up being the Yiddish valedictorian because it was an opportunity to express myself in that language. And really, I remember it was at the Shaar Hashomayim, which is a very large synagogue -- there had to be at least five hundred people in attendance. But maybe -- no, I'd say somewhere between five hundred to a thousand people. And the thing about a graduation ceremony is that you're bound to have lots of bobes [grandmothers] and zeydes [grandfathers]. So, there was an older generation 38:00there, as well. And I remember giving the speech, that the general feeling was a lot of people didn't really know what I was saying but they thought it was hilarious. And, I mean, it was meant to be funny. It was meant to be both significant and funny, talking -- I started off by saying "Ikh bin a poylisher [I'm a Polish Jew], I have a confession, I'm a poylisher," and sort of explaining a little bit -- I think there were some historical elements. It's actually online. Someone put it online a while back. But it was important for me to, A, sort of identify with being able to use Yiddish and orate in Yiddish and B, also recognizing that there were people that appreciated it. And the most interesting thing was that there were people that appreciated it that did not speak Yiddish at all or barely spoke it. And that's also when I recognized there is something that this language as a form of expression is tapping into. The most brute way of saying it is, Well, Yiddish is a funny language, ha-ha-ha. But it's more than that. It's more the nuances and the way that the language works, 39:00in a few different ways, make it a very special language. And this actually carried through to doing the "YidLife Crisis" web series where, in many cases, people do not know Yiddish. And yes, there are subtitles, but people can't always follow them. Or, more importantly, when people are on set, there's no subtitles for them. And yet, they're naturally and viscerally reacting to the way that we're talking in Yiddish. So, there's something really interesting there that I think I spotted at that point, and that was sort of a seed that I planted, walked away from, and came back to about sixteen years later, to do the "YidLife" project.

CW:Looking back at that period, what was your feeling towards, attitude towards Yiddish as you were growing up?

EB:My personal attitude was one of appreciation because I felt like it was a form of, I guess, not respect, but it was the language of my forefathers in a 40:00way that was much more relatable than Aramaic, for example, or Hebrew, for that matter. Because of our background, it really felt to me like this is what we speak, this is what we originally speak and what we come from. And knowing that, for example, my grandfather was a regular "Der Forverts" reader. I believe my grandmother, as well, on my maternal side -- that this was the language that we all spoke and that there were all these institutions that we grew up around in Montreal that were Yiddish focused. This very building that we're in now contains, continues to contain the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre. And it was always associated with me with Yiddish. And actually, growing up, I didn't take part in it but the Yiddish theater -- there are many people from JPPS and Bialik that went and they did their extracurricular as Yiddish theater here. So, we were surrounded by Yiddish institutions. And it's interesting, actually, meeting 41:00more people outside of Montreal growing up, because I find that their attitudes -- I was surprised by the dismissive attitude of Yiddish. To me, it was -- I couldn't believe that people would have a dismissive attitude. I thought everyone loved it. And so, it was interesting to meet people that were dismissive of it, which I guess is a reflection of how I felt about it growing up, was that it's a part of our history and it's to be taken -- there's nothing religious about Yiddish, but it's to be taken as seriously as any of the other actual religious texts.

CW:So, how did you get into acting?

EB:It's a good question. It probably all starts in the seventh grade with a good friend that I still work with now, Jerome Sable, a.k.a. Nechemya Sable, who's actually a mutual friend with Jamie Elman, who I do "YidLife Crisis" with. And we started -- I remember we were in a Jewish history class at Bialik and we were 42:00assigned to do some sort of topic. I think it was maybe talking about the Jews of Greece. And somehow, we ended up working together and -- did we write a rap? It might have started with a rap, actually. And I think there began this friendship, now it is going on decades, of quasi-educational material being done in some animated way. We just had a notion that we enjoyed entertaining and we enjoyed being artistic in our own particular way. And comedic, certainly, and using the institution or the educational aspects of it to have fun in and around it. And I think that spirit is still in "YidLife Crisis," actually. So, there we started to make home videos. We got in on that "America's Funniest Home Videos" craze of that era. It's about 1993 or so. And we eventually made it all the way 43:00to the top of being co-presidents of Bialik High School, where we started to do assemblies. We always had assemblies, forty-five minute periods that were dedicated to Jewish holidays. But in our mindset, it was always about how could we take the Jewish holiday and then create a whole comedy revue based on that holiday, which, if you were actually a stickler for the holiday, was probably very sacrilegious. But we were lucky to have a relatively relaxed administration (laughs) as far as that stuff was concerned. And for us, that was like the "Saturday Night Live" testing grounds where we did all sorts of sketches and skits onstage. And the theme or the restraint was, Well, this is the Rosh Hashanah episode, right? So, it started there, and then Jerome got me into fringe theater, the -- we have a touring Fringe Festival circuit in Canada. There's some in America, as well, but it's been more strongly united and developed in Canada. And Montreal was one of the stops and Jerome got me into it 44:00and he said, "I think we could do one, as well. I'm confident we could do one." And then, as early as 1999, we did our own show and then we start to do that and then tour to other places. And that led to five years of theatrical touring around the world. And so, the acting really began there and then, at a certain point, we graduated into film and video. I say graduated, but we actually started in film and video, but now on a more professional level. Barely. And, yeah, the acting game changed a little bit from that point. But the whole thing -- I never went to theater school. I didn't even really volunteer here for Yiddish theater. It all seemed to just come in a very natural kind of way. And to this day, other than my -- I remember taking an acting class in college and basically, I showed up late twice and she was like, "If you show up late the third time, I'm going to fail you." And I dropped the class. So, that's the 45:00extent (laughs) of my actual formal theatrical training. But it is something that I've always loved and felt very natural in that world.

CW:Can you give an example of one of those assemblies? What would have been --

EB:Yeah, I'm going to try to think about what we did for a specific holiday, 'cause there were different things, as well. We had the teacher appreciation holiday where we basically staged an awards show, but for specific teachers. And I just remember playing -- interesting juxtapositions of playing "Thunderstruck" from AC/DC as the awards acceptance music for a Hebrew teacher, which is really -- it's a very fascinating juxtaposition, the way we set it up. And I remember -- sometimes being at a Jewish school, we'd bring in certain arts -- visiting artists occasionally would come in. Some would do a performance, and I remember there were some who came in -- who was really out there and was doing Middle 46:00Eastern music. And then, we did -- so, our assembly was a week later and we did a take off of that. And the whole thing was just like "Saturday Night Live." What is it that they do? They lampoon the thing that had just happened. So, our event was that this woman had just come spoken and played some sort of lute or something like that. And we created our own version of it and it just -- it went over like gangbusters. I'm trying to remember the specific things that we did. Jerome would have a better memory for this. But it was memorable. As a matter of fact, people in the audience would remember better than I would, because people still talk about them, actually. (laughs) Especially when we go back to the school and we see the staff there, they still remember when Jerome and I were putting on these skits. But it's interesting, because when people talk about school as a formative experience, I think -- I see some people that went to certain kinds of prep school. And I think that that taught a certain discipline for them. And I kind of envy that sort of discipline. But in our school, what I 47:00appreciated was the freedom to just be ourselves, and everyone -- it felt very, I mean, for lack of a better term, heymish [familiar]. Yeah, you're pretty much who you are, and that was accepted. And we didn't -- there wasn't any super-rigid structure. And if you wanted to -- if you had the chutzpah to go and propose that you were going to do this sort of thing, well, so be it. And we were generally encouraged to do it. And that was really important. That was really the beginning of our artistic career. Both Jerome and myself.

CW:Well, I just want to briefly -- we'll talk about this later with Jamie, together, but how -- what was the first conversation about what became "YidLife Crisis"?

EB:That's a great question, and I forget it more every day. But I believe that the origins were -- the premise was that Jamie and I should do a project 48:00together because we had known each other -- we had met, actually, through Jerome, our mutual friend. And I'd seen -- him and Jerome did a web series where he played the protagonist, a neurotic Jewish character. And he had seen -- Jerome and I did a musical horror short called "The Legend of Beaver Dam" and he was a fan of that. So, we were sort of mutual fans and recognized that there was something that we could potentially do together at this point in our careers. And I remember an early conversation was -- I think I was proposing to Jamie that, "You know what we could do? We should do Yiddish versions of 'Seinfeld' diner conversations between Jerry and George." I would play -- I think I'm kind of dressed like George right now. I'm George-esque and he is -- he's not as Jerry-esque as I'm George-esque, but it would work. And if we could just take some of the classic interactions and just do them in Yiddish, it would be -- my 49:00gut was just it would be really, really funny and poignant because our thesis was they're just doing Yiddish vaudeville. I mean, it's just televised and Anglicized Yiddish vaudeville is what they're doing. And then, at a later point, we -- I guess it evolved and then we -- nothing was serious until there was a way to actually have the money to do some sort of production. And then, I found out about grants that were being offered here in Montreal, which actually, in retrospect, are extremely unique, because it's very rare to offer an artistic grant nowadays. I mean, just in general and particularly in the Jewish community, it becomes rarer and rarer. And so, at that time, we started to talk about applying to do that. And then, I think our minds changed a bit and we thought, We should really do our own thing. It's more interesting to do our own thing. And we hadn't really thought about our own voices. But then, it became very obvious that, yes, there's a lot of stuff that we could talk about with our 50:00own Jewish experience that is both funny and poignant at the same time and we don't have to do "Seinfeld." (laughs) And then, that just lead into a different direction and one thing led to another. And it was just constant bootstrapping. It wasn't like we ever set out with a particular idea. The whole thing has been a continuous fumbling forward, (laughs) in a very positive way where we're constantly pivoting based on this or that opportunity or whatnot. And yeah, that was basically the origins of it. But it starts with "Seinfeld," and what's interesting is also that Jamie was on "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and for us, "Seinfeld" and Larry David are very formative figures. It'd be interesting to actually talk to them about Yiddish and comedy. And I fear that they actually would be dismissive about it, and that they wouldn't appreciate it to a certain -- I think they would appreciate many comedians that came from that or that grew 51:00up in Yiddish households. But I'm not sure if they would be intellectually interested in the Yiddish language and how that may have had an effect on their comedy. But from our perspective, there was some sort of connection, some synaptic connection between the Yiddish experience that we had in high school and what we were watching when we watched "Seinfeld" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" that seemed to suggest there is a relationship there.

CW:So, I want to talk about the process, I think probably with Jamie, of making the episodes. So, I did want to talk to you about the travelogue series, particularly, and what your experience has been with meeting and doing Yiddish in these different cities. Yeah, so what -- how did that come about, actually, the travelogue part?

EB:Yeah, the travelogue is another example of the fumbling into the future, 52:00let's say, because that was definitely nowhere on the radar for us. But we started to do live presentations in various places, which is a hybrid screening and sketches and serious discussion, as well, and started to do this in different places. The very first one we did, actually, was here at the Segal Centre, which was a very nice homecoming. But days later, we were in Israel doing the Comedy for a Change Conference in Jerusalem, which was a fascinating experience. And the more that we started to travel, the more that we realized there's a real opportunity -- we were just naturally going on adventures and because we were associated with Yiddish, people were suggesting, You got to be meet this guy or this gal. And so, we realized we should just get a camera on us and we should record this stuff because it's interesting and we could add this to our YouTube channel and people can see our travels. So, we started this Global Shtetl thing and the idea behind it, even though it's not really -- we're not documentary filmmakers. We basically don't know what we're doing, but the subtle thesis behind it is that it's fascinating to see, despite geographic 53:00disparity, large cultural similarity. It's interesting -- like we went to the ROI Summit, the ROI's for young social entrepreneurs. Met people from Latin America -- and to see that even though in a secular way they probably have some very different lifestyle aspects, they probably more or less come from the same shtetls that we came from and were probably neighbors. And therefore, even though they are thousands of miles away, speak with the same Yiddish dialect as I do. But, for example, my neighbor somewhere in Côte Saint-Luc might come from somewhere else in Poland or Hungary or something, and speaks in another way. So, despite the geographic disparity, I might be, on some levels, closer to that person in Latin America than I am to that person that's literally a block away. So, this -- we started with -- the very first thing we shot was actually in Tel Aviv, and we started with Mendy Cahan, who runs this thing called Young Yiddish 54:00in Tel Aviv. I believe they also have a Jerusalem chapter, as well. And it was quite eye-opening to learn about Yiddish in Israel. We'd never thought about it. It was interesting, in our -- we grew up with a secular, Zionist, Yiddishist background based on what Jewish People's and Peretz School meant. And nowadays, to combine those things is -- they're kind of like oil and water. It used to be, fifty years ago, they worked very well together. We never realized that Yiddish may not be well-accepted in Israel. But the reality is, at least institutionally, it's -- I mean, it's very much an afterthought. It's a very small part of Israeli culture. I mean, very few people think about -- also, largely because many people don't come from an Ashkenazic background, necessarily. But many of the founders of Israel were from an Ashkenazic background. And so, what's interesting to find and what we do find in Global Shtetl is you have this two-generations-ago situation where people spoke 55:00Yiddish. Then you have our parents' generation, which is, We either are not going to speak Yiddish because it's professionally inappropriate or because it's bothersome or because it's embarrassing or because it literally reminds us of something that's traumatic and we don't want to associate with that at all and we have a new identity. And then, you have our generation, which is, Oh, what was that Yiddish thing that was -- why don't we hear about that? Or when my parents were speaking it as a code lang-- this is the thing. Here, in Latin America, or in Europe, or even in Africa, people talking about, Yeah, well, my parents, they'd use it as a code language. That comes up all the time, and it's really interesting to hear that. And by the way, I mean, that's not a Yiddish thing. I would call that the modern ethnic or immigration experience -- is that the same pattern exists. So, part of Global Shtetl was about finding out how it's all identical and that was happening in Israel, in specific. And the way 56:00Mendy was talking about it in one of our videos was, yeah, they sort of -- it was pushed away but now people are getting interested in it again. Another place that we did it, and we haven't released this yet, was in Kraków. And what's interesting about Kraków is that the story there is not really about Jews. It's actually about the native Poles there and their understanding of Jewry and also Yiddish, and realizing that not only are they not fully acquainted with things because of the Holocaust and time, but also because of communist rule and revisionist history as a result of communist rule. So, with the reduction of communism or the removal of communism, now there's a void. There's a cultural void and a desire to understand what their grandparents' lives were like, even their parents' earlier lives were like. And when we did our show in Kraków, it was at a -- I believe a seventeenth century synagogue, I believe the High Synagogue in Kraków, in the Kazimierz District, and maybe three percent of the 57:00audience was Jewish but the rest were Roman Catholic. There's an interesting -- I'm not going to say obsession, but a large interest, particularly that's been fostered in Kraków by a lot of institutions, and Warsaw, as well. But I think Kraków's -- they have the Jewish Culture Festival where people are really fascinated by this. And it ranges from a very caricaturistic [sic] interest like, Oh, Jews funny, klezmer -- some classic things that are very superficial to the -- No, what really went on? What is the story of World War II and moreover, what's the story from the Pale of Settlement in, let's say, the seventeenth century up until this point and the interaction between these cultures and the fact that -- someone once quoted me that probably eighty percent of Poles have Jewish blood in them and vice-versa. You're probably looking at one right now. So, what's the story behind that interaction and how 58:00these cultures worked together all these years. And the fact that -- were Jews Polish nationals, or were they loyal to Poland, or were they not loyal to Poland, or how did -- were Poles responsible for -- did they take care of the Jews properly as members of the society? So, these were some really interesting issues that we started to touch on in Global Shtetl, as well. And I think the interesting analogy which I was kind of getting at before is, it's not just a Yiddish thing. They're having the "YidLife Crisis," but they're having a (laughs) Polish life crisis. And part of the fun of our project is being able to unearth that stuff and finding out that we're all having an interesting identity crisis, the more information is available to us, and to sort of celebrate it and chronicle it while we're doing it.

CW:So, from your perspective, what is the role of language and identity?

EB:That's a heavy question. I think it's large. I think language plays a very 59:00important role in identity and it's interesting to ask that question in Quebec because that's a very, very important question and it's something that's taken very seriously. And I think that the -- there's a subtext behind it, but learning French is not just about learning and speaking French. There is a historical component, too. The very act of speaking it, particularly when you were not growing up with it, is an act of -- it's considered polite. It is considered the right thing to do, is to speak the language here. And on one hand, they -- many people here might feel like elsewhere in the world, the right thing is to speak the host's language. But there's definitely a sense of history here and that the French language is very important, and there are literally organizations here, governmentally-sanctioned organizations, not like community 60:00or religious organizations, that preserve the language. There's, as a matter of fact, a police force of sorts that goes around Montreal that polices certain language laws that have been established in Quebec. So, it takes on a very interesting tinge in Quebec, in specific, and it ties back, I think, to history. And there's a pragmatic aspect, absolutely. Let's say here, French Canadians would -- they want to be able to speak their language, they want to be able to go to a store and be able to interact in their own language of their rightful area. But it's more than that. I think no matter what -- when an immigrant comes and learns it, there's still some piece of it that's not -- they're not fully there. They can't fully get there because they don't come from the same historical background. And I think the same applies probably in the Yiddish world just as well. I think, for me, speaking the Yiddish language and being 61:00around it is a very big part of my identity. I think, also, partially because it's a unique thing, and so you tend to gravitate towards those unique factors that differentiate you and make you more individual, more of an individual in a very commoditized (laughs) world with billions of people. So, I wonder sometimes. I wonder if this Yiddish thing weren't a special thing, and if there weren't so few secular Jews that were speaking it, would I have the same relationship to it? Because whether I like it or not, I've now been associated with the Yiddish language in a quasi-public kind of way. And so, it is associated with me and it's part of my identity, whether or not I even chose it. But I do think it is a good store of history and it's emblematic of what I think my identity is, which is coming from this Jewish Middle Eastern -- it's weird, I 62:00can't even associate Jewish with Middle East, I almost think Hebraic or Aramaic or Semitic -- but having that background that comes from that part of the world and then the follow-up to that, part two, which is the Eastern European Ashkenazic experience. And what I love about Yiddish is that it has this absorbent attitude, or I'd like to think that it does, where -- first of all, I don't know what the stats are right now in the lexicon, but the number I've heard quoted is that eighty percent is Yiddish, is German, which sounds about right. And, of course, it's funny, 'cause people think, Yiddish, oh, it's the most Jewish language in the world. It's eighty percent German. There's a massive irony and interest there. And the idea is, yeah, it tells a lot about identity because it's like the way I speak English. It is the language -- it is a secular 63:00lingua franca and it is the pragmatic language. But it carries with it other aspects. It carries the Hebrew words. And when you choose to say a Hebrew word in the Yiddish pronunciation versus doing so in the Hebrew pronunciation, there's something that is emblematic and significant about that, as well. At the same time, it also carries various Slavic words and, particularly as I've sort of seen it being in earshot of members of the Hasidic community, English words. And so, what I like about the language is that because it's, in the sense, impure, it actually is a historical record. You can literally see the layers of our travels, almost like stamps in a passport, as results of the language, versus an attitude towards language -- I mean, the way that some people thought about Hebrew for a long time, which is as a holy language. This is not to be 64:00used in certain ways and not to be modified. That can't do that. That can't be a cultural -- I mean, it's definitely cultural store of a certain snapshot in time. But that's not a dynamic cultural -- you will not be able to see layers in the same way. And that's kind of what I love about Yiddish and I think, as far as seeing it as a part of identity, yes, because I realize I'm not just a Jewish person. I don't see myself that way. I see myself as coming from a lot of different influences and I celebrate that there's many, many aspects to myself and that it's more than skin-deep and that everyone has this, as well. And I hope for a time where people are more cognizant of the fact that they have all these different dimensions and that for any two people, there is a point -- there's common ground, because we have so many dimensions to us.

CW:Yeah. Do you consider yourself an activist?

EB:Do I consider myself an activist? Not in the traditional sense, no. I actually think -- it's interesting, because -- so, there's a large history of activism in the Jewish community. And a lot of this, historically, has been very valuable, I think, and it's been a large contribution to Western society, if not global society in general. But activism, I don't know. I find the term itself -- I'd be interested in unpicking [sic] the term itself, because you have certain images that come to mind, like picketing, for example, and protesting and whatnot. And to me, we live in a particular era where I see this all the time through media, to a point where I feel like many people -- the people that are 66:00important to convert, so to speak, are completely immune to these traditional behaviors of activism. And so, I think that a new activism or the idea -- if you believe in something, then do it in a certain kind of way -- might be more important. And in that sense, you might say I'm a Yiddish activist because -- well, there's nothing to really picket in -- well, there's many social justice causes that many Yiddish organizations do picket and support. But there's not as much, really, to actively go against, but the point is through the work that's done, through the art, it's more, I'm putting my thoughts on display and I'm not telling you these reasons why you have to feel this particular way or you should feel ashamed of yourself if you don't feel this way or it is incumbent upon you to feel this way. It's more, Hey, this is how I feel. And I actually think, at 67:00this particular point in time, that can be more valuable in some senses, because people's defenses are -- I know mine are. And every time I see some sort of political conviction on Facebook it's like, (sighs) I mean, who are you trying -- you're not -- the only way I am going to change my opinions on certain thing-- is just if you provide me with maybe a logical argument or some facts about something and also recognize the other side. But my experience, and I'm sure your experience, as well, is you just see just a litany of different thoughts or opinions, particularly -- I mean, in the American political process, I definitely see this to the point where it's like, guys, you're treating this like sports. You don't have any -- you're rooting for people. You're not giving your support in a particular way based on certain things. You're rooting for something that's emblematic, almost as though they're a mascot for something. Anyways, going off topic here, but (laughs) yeah, activism, it's interesting. I 68:00recognize and respect efforts that have been made in the past and I feel like it concerns me how activists work now and the efficacy of using those traditional tactics. Also, Black Lives Matter, for example. There are some untraditional tactics that are also used in that form of activism, and I wonder what is the right way, between diplomacy, between art, between taking "might is right" types of attitudes, what's the right way to impact change in the world or propose change? And I don't know. I guess I'm still thinking about it. It's a good question. (laughter) Hadn't really thought about it.

CW:When do you use Yiddish in your life other than on set?

EB:That's a very, very good question. I'll be honest, I don't use it as much as 69:00I'd like to, and I really feel like -- I mean, one thing that is interesting about the project is for those that are not initiated, they feel like Jamie and I are fluent in Yiddish. For those that know Yiddish, they can recognize various gaps and inconsistencies and yadda-yadda. The truth is, we long for -- we keep actually trying to find times, like, when can we do the Yiddish Book Center program or this other program or -- well, there's a Yiddish program in a castle in France. And we never can seem to find the time. But the reality is, we want to be able to actually be more facile in Yiddish so that we can truly use it more in our daily lives, and ironically, actually use it as a better code language. That is when it's the most fun for Jamie and myself. But I do use it, I find, often in my head. Sometimes it comes out in Yiddish, sometimes it comes out in a grammatical approach to English that's more Yiddish-style. It's like I 70:00would call "YidLife Crisis" and the lives that Jamie and I lead as Yiddish style in the same way that the famous Brown Derby Delicatessen, which is also right here -- but it's not kosher, but it was kosher-style. So, everything was "ish." It was borderline like that. So, using the Yiddish spirit in the English language comes up a lot more often for us. And it's funny, 'cause I've had people hang out with me and Jamie and then, after a few weeks, they're like, Oh, my God, I'm talking -- like this I'm talking? That they're talking like that and it's interesting, you don't realize that you're doing it and then you hear them do that and you're like, "Wow, I guess we really do talk like that and it really does have an influence." And what's interesting is I'm just transmitting it from my father through them. But yeah, sometimes in my head it will come up, using certain expressions here and there. But the reality is there are times when I feel like it would be great to have a greater grasp on it to really be able to use it more often. The way that my father uses it is just -- it's completely 71:00organic. And I can't use it in that way. But the way he describes it, he thinks in Yiddish. He works in English and French but he thinks in Yiddish.

CW:So, what do you see -- sort of where is Yiddish now, from your perspective?

EB:Yiddish is -- it's at an interesting point. I think there's a few different camps. So, camp one is, I guess, Hasidic Yiddish, Hasid-ish, maybe we can call it. And the reality there is that that's probably the largest-growing Yiddish population in the world by far. And in an interesting way from the secular perspective that generally does not like to give them credit for that, they are 72:00the ones that are keeping Yiddish alive. And it's evolving in ways, too, because there are certain things in the North American lexicon that are coming into that form of Yiddish, as well. A side aspect to that which is of interest to what we're doing with "YidLife Crisis" is also the OTD, or off the derekh [path] community which are native Yiddish speakers who are leaving that ultra-religious community and who are well aware of the use of Yiddish and can speak it but are not religious in the same way, which in some senses is exactly our world with the "YidLife Crisis" project, since it's very Yiddish but at the same time is not -- we are not dogmatic or religious for the sake of being religious in our worldview. So, you also have that group, too, and I'm not sure whether anyone in that group is making it their business -- I mean, they have so many things to deal with in their own personal lives than to champion the cause of Yiddish. But 73:00we may find in the coming years that these people will play more and more of a role, especially 'cause they came from truly organic Yiddish upbringings, whereas we'll find more and more that those of us that are younger, that speak Yiddish, probably learned it because of a college-level course. Not even an elementary school course, 'cause I'm not even sure whether that exists any more. Or a high school level course. But it still exists to be taught academically at the college level, which brings us to that group, which is those that learned Yiddish at the college level and those that are pursuing it mostly as a secular type of affair, which I think would more or less be how one would describe the Yiddish Book Center and various programs under the Yiddish Book Center, as well as a bunch of other organizations in North America and in Europe, as well. And in Israel, as well. And in Australia, as well. And that group is obviously a lot smaller. What's interesting is that there's a little bit of a pop cultural 74:00resurgence in it, which probably has been happening for the last ten or fifteen years, but I feel like that wave is still strong at this point. And the truth is, you can have X amount of articles in "The New York Times" and you can have the Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków, whatnot. The truth of the matter is, it's still affecting a very small amount of people (laughs) in the grander scheme of things. But I think that Yiddish is continuing to be studied as a cultural and historic store of things. And in the same way that there's a resurgence in what -- an interest in what my grandparents were like, which -- also, even the hipster beard thing -- I'm kind of working on one right now -- is also a bit of a shout-out to, Remember those old vintage days? There's a bit of an obsession with vintage and I think Yiddish kind of falls into that. Yintage, maybe, that idea of going back in time and seeing when things were more organic. 75:00And I think that there is a certain portion of the population that's interested in pursuing Yiddish for that reason. And we fall into that. I also see, as I mentioned, the Brown Derby Delicatessen -- you see that also in some of the other analogues of this, which are the music, Yiddish music and klezmer, for example, and delicatessen foods. And I think in both of those areas, you see a bit of an uptick in interest. Again, some of it is sort of, Oh, this is an interesting piece for a cultural part of the media. And so, it can lead you to believe that it is an actually bigger, more popular thing than it actually is. But I do think that people are interested in it and we find ourselves now in a milieu of a bunch of artists who are either -- you'll have the Gefilteria, who are part of this resurgence in Ashkenazic food, but finding new fusion-y ways to apply them in the modern day. For us, it's taking the old language but finding 76:00new way-- or even the vaudeville tradition, but putting into YouTube generation. And the music, as well. There's a bit of a resurgence in some of that music, even -- I mean, I would argue Gogol Bordello, for example, is something that takes something that's old and it sort of punkifies it, which -- some more sophisticated viewers might say, Oh, he's so wrong. That was so five years ago. He's behind. I'm probably a bit behind. But I'd say in the last fifteen years, I've seen that sort of happening. And I think there's another aspect in the Jewish community, which is a desire to keep Jews integrated and a recognition that it's not necessarily going to be in a religious way and so embracing some aspects of cultural Judaism as a way to keep tradition and keep people quite literally in the community and associated with organizations in the community. 77:00And Yiddish, for some organizations, is part of that. For many, I think they either -- they see it as something that's comical or they actively dislike it, which is also interesting. And another interesting thing that's -- I found in our travels is -- and this goes back to the "YidLife Crisis" and the identity of secularism, Yiddishism, and Zionism is I -- and I could be totally wrong about this, but I've seen a political divide between Yiddish being associated with traditional left-wing and the Zionism in Israel being associated with traditional right-wing. And somehow, these polarities have been created in a way that I didn't anticipate. And maybe it's always been like that. I mean, certainly when we do these tours like in the -- London's East End of the creation of these first unions, yes, they're all Yiddish speakers. There's 78:00definitely a left-wing Yiddish tradition there, which is being lost and it's interesting to bring back. But on the other hand, I mean -- but their bosses also spoke Yiddish, too. (laughs) They were capitalists. There are many Yiddish-speaking capitalists out there and there are many Zionists that were Yiddish speakers. So, it's interesting to find this divide and I actually -- in some ways, I'm concerned about it and wonder if this polarity is an analogue to what we see in American media in general, which is just -- there's just more polarity. And it's almost like a media amplification of something that may or may not be true. I think there's aspects of myself that are left-wing, there's aspects of myself that are right-wing. I truly don't know how to vote in most elections for this reason. And I would like to think, actually, most people are like that, as well. Anyways, went off on a very large tangent. (laughter) Keep getting political for some reason. (laughter) But yeah, Yiddish, to get back to 79:00the point about how I see Yiddish now, it actually has a bit of a political tinge to it because the organizations that are behind it, in many cases, also tie back to a Yiddishistic background that was associated with labor movements and social justice and that has certain repercussions in the modern day, like Workmen's Circle supporting a fifteen-dollar minimum wage. I mean, this is -- in the past, I don't know if they would have been considered more of a labor movement or a Yiddish move-- they'd basically do both. But that's a big part of what they do. And so, as a result, you could say, Well, their politics lean in a particular direction. You see very little -- there's obviously a lot of Israel support in the Jewish community in North America, particularly in Montreal, as well. Very rarely will you see a role for Yiddish in that. And very rarely -- I mean, in my experience, a lot of people that are associated with the Yiddish community are not necessarily the most active in the Israel supportive 80:00community, as well. So, I do see an interesting political divide and I think that's a big -- I think there are certain big topics in the Jewish community. I think that's one interesting topic that needs to be resolved. There's also topics of Ashkenazic Jewry versus Sephardic Jewry versus Mizrahic Jewry versus -- and particularly in the Montreal community, you have the Ashkenazic Jews. Well, you have the establishment Ashkenazic Jews that originally came here. Then you have the more Eastern European Ashkenazic Jews that came later, which, by the way, is exactly how it was in London and probably how it was in Toronto. And then, I believe in the '70s and up, you started to get Jews -- and Montreal-specific for this more so than North America, because it is a French-speaking place -- Sephardic Jews from Algeria and from Morocco coming in, as well, because of the French. And now, and I'm not sure what these numbers are 81:00like, but Parisian Jews, because of the climate in Paris right now. I want to say Parisian Jews. French Jews, because of the climate in France right now, and they're coming here, as well. So, the dynamics of this community have changed and are changing a lot. And it's an interesting mix in a way that I don't think exists in most American cities. And I guess Syrian Jewish communities and maybe Persian Jewish communities, as well. But it's interesting here. It's changed a lot. And also, many of the Ashkenazic Jews left because of language-related laws, ending up in Toronto, New York, some in LA as well. So, this is an interesting mix now and I think -- you know, it's actually, I think, quite harmonious, given how many differences there are. It's actually -- it's really nice how harmonious it is. But it's interesting because global Jewry means something interesting. And I actually think the future of Global Shtetl is actually to say, Okay, we did the Ashkenazic thing. Let's explore what it's like 82:00for those that have a Babylonian background, which I find really interesting, or were in a totally -- or in Syria, for example, 'cause there's a whole history there. The "Forward" did something on Iranian Jews. And forgive my naïveté: I didn't even realize that Jews were still living in Iran right now and apparently thriving. So, there's a lot of global Jewish stories to be told. Yes, now I've officially gone off-topic. (laughter)

CW:Well, it's related to the show, so --

EB:Yeah, I guess so.

CW:-- not entirely --

EB:I guess so.

CW:-- off-topic.

EB:It gives us an excuse to talk about anything, so --

CW:(laughs) Well, I want to -- I'm saving most of my "YidLife Crisis" questions for when I have both of you here.

EB:Okay.

CW:But are there other things you wanted to say about Yiddish in Montreal and how you've seen it change, maybe, or adding on to the topics we've talked about now that you want to --

EB:Yeah, I mean Yiddish -- I still think that Montreal is an interesting global 83:00spot for Yiddish because of the institutions that are here. It's still kept an anchor for Yiddish here. And, of course, there are not many places out there where Yiddish plays a significant role. Again, I think that, historically, because of the French language and because of Roman Catholic society here -- that somehow, in a bizarre way, made Yiddish survive here longer. But I think that, like I was saying, the dynamics of the community are changing. And as a result of that, inevitably, the interest in Yiddish, I think, per capita is declining, largely because, per capita, there are less Ashkenazic Jews than there used to be in the Jewish community and Yiddish becomes less significant as the overall Jewish story. And that makes total sense. Now, the Dora Wasserman 84:00Theatre continues to exist. I was really pleased to see "The Producers" done in Yiddish here just months ago, which is great, which goes to mine and Jamie's thesis, which is a lot of this comedy really, it's -- "Producers" was now done in the Yiddish it was always meant to be done in. These people -- Mel Brooks -- I'd be very surprised to find out if he didn't come from some form of Yiddish background. So, there are still events that are going on. There's a Foundation for Yiddish Culture and it's -- of course, the Jewish Public Library continues to be a main source of archives for Yiddish and people are brought in to discuss aspects of Yiddish. And we do our own little part, (laughs) although that was never our intention. But I guess -- well, it was our intention to renew interest in the language and preserve it in a way. It's just we're not a formal organization. But yeah, I think there are some -- there's a future for Yiddish 85:00here. I think a large part of it for my generation, a bit younger, is the vintage thing and going back and understanding the old Jewish neighborhood, particularly around Saint Laurent Boulevard. And to that point, we have a Montreal Jewish Museum that's been set up by Zev Moses, which is great because it's not just a historical record of the city and Jewry, but its actual physical location is very meaningful 'cause it's on the corner of Saint Laurent and Duluth, which is really pretty much ground zero of where Jews grew up in a particular era, which is kind of the heyday, the heyday when, at a certain point, Yiddish was the third most spoken language in Montreal. There were that many immigrants to the city that it was the third most, after French and English. So, yeah, I'd like to think that there's a movement of some younger people. I like calling myself younger. It feels really good -- of younger people 86:00that are taking an interest. The big question to me is the future of Yiddish education, so that people, if they are interested, can pursue it. And this might be an area -- we've talked -- Jamie and I have talked a lot about how to use "YidLife Crisis" and the net as a way to teach, because it's not taught in the same way at our school anymore and that was the only place -- I believe there's a Bialik in Toronto, which is, I believe, an elementary school that teaches it. And I believe there's one in Mexico City. Not a Bialik, but there is a school that teaches in Mexico City. But other than that, I don't know of places -- yeah, Workmen's Circle has -- of course, obviously Yiddish Book Center has stuff, but that's more for advanced than -- people that are on the Yiddish career track. But for more mainstream consumption, I think about my nieces, and how are they going to learn Yiddish? And I think there's an opportunity, we call it [Cohen Academy?], where we can maybe create fun Yiddish videos that can 87:00explain the language. And that's what I think is needed for the next round of potential Yiddish speakers, 'cause the truth of the matter is, I'll be the first to say, there is no pragmatic reason to speak Yiddish now unless you want to live amongst Hasidim or do business with Hasidim. I mean, actually, it'd be pretty useful if you want to do business with Hasidim. But otherwise, it's not -- I mean, English works pretty well. French also works pretty well, too. You don't need it for that reason. It's more the significance of speaking it and that the language is, as I said, a cultural store. So, it's the fun of finding something out -- or my father tosses a really good Slavic word at me that he just remembered in the middle of the night, that says something. That's interesting. And that starts off a whole other thing, which is, Oh, well, what was it like when we were interacting with the Slavic world and how Slavic were we? And so, it's more -- I like it as a historical cue. It's an archaeological 88:00dig. It's like discovering new -- a little goblet here and there. Oh, where's this from? What does this mean? That's the way I see the language.

CW:Great. Well, a sheynem dank [thank you very much].

EB:Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]