MAIA EVRONA ORAL HISTORY

AGNIESZKA ILWICKA: This is Agnieszka Ilwicka and today is 19th December, 2016. I'm here at the AJS conference in San Diego with Maia Evrona and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Maia Evrona, do I have your permission to record this interview?

MAIA EVRONA: Yes. (laughs)

AI:Thank you very much. Could you tell me briefly what do you know about your family background?

ME:Well, my mother's parents were both born in -- I guess you could say they were born in Poland. Her mother was born in Grodno and she came to the US when she was five. And my grandfather was born in Łodz, and he came to the US as a 1:00baby. And he was a galitsyaner [Galician] and she was a Litvak and they always said that they had a mixed marriage. And I don't think that they were joking. (laughs) And my grandmother's parents had some family in Connecticut who had an egg farm. So, a chicken and egg farm. But I don't think that they actually slaughtered chickens. I think that they just sold eggs. So, they had an egg farm in Connecticut for a long time. And my grandparents eventually took it over. And so, both of my grandparents had come to the US during the First World War and they each still had some family who were still in Europe. And so, after the Second World War, my grandfather had three cousins who had survived who were all 2:00brothers. And so, my grandparents sponsored them, and at least one of those couples came and lived on the egg farm for a little while before they got set up in the US. Yes, and my father actually converted to Judaism when he was nineteen. And his family was -- his mother was Swedish and his father was Irish. And Evrona's actually my middle name, but I use it as my last name for my writing. And I keep my real last name a secret. (laughter) Not exactly a secret. I just like to say that. (laughs) But, yeah, that's -- and my mother -- my great-grandmother, my mother's grandmother never really learned English. So, my 3:00mother actually spoke Yiddish until she was eight and my aunt, who's a bit older than my mother, can still sort of speak it. But she says that it's too strange for her because she can't remember learning the grammar. So, yes.

AI:Did you ever -- heard them speaking Yiddish?

ME:Yeah. My mother insists that she can't speak it. But every so often, she'll know a word that a beginner wouldn't know. And my aunt will speak it sometimes, but always stops because she says that it just feels too strange. (laughs)

AI:Do you have any famous or infamous stories which you would like to share with us?

ME:About Yiddish or --

AI:And your family.

ME:Well --

AI:The good beginning as the mixture between Litvak and galitsyaner.

ME:Yeah, well, they had kind of an infamous story or -- I don't know if my mother will mind if I share it, but my great-grandfather -- so, my mother's grandfather had actually had another family in Grodno before they left, who was a secret. And so, he left behind a daughter in Europe and he kept it a secret for his whole life. And then, just before he passed away, he told my grandmother. And then, my grandmother kept it a secret for her whole life and then just before she passed away or some -- a few years before she passed away, she told my mother. So, by the time she told my mother, there was kind of nothing that could be done about it. We didn't even know what the sister's name 5:00would have been. So, she would have been my grandmother's sister. And so, we've always been rather sad that we couldn't really even try to find this sister. But I think it's maybe -- had something to do with being immigrants and keeping secrets, I guess. But -- so, my great-grandfather, I think, actually was -- felt extremely guilty thinking about what would have happened to this daughter who stayed behind. So, that's kind of a sad story. (laughs) I don't know if I can find something better.

AI:Do you think that keeping secret is typical for the Jewish world?

ME:No, but maybe it is for people who are trying to make a new life in a country that they're not familiar with. And they think -- my mother's mother -- I mean, 6:00she was American. She had lived here since she was five, but she was still very much an immigrant, I think, and very -- I think she kind of thought that she was -- I think she was rather suspicious and she thought that everybody was ultimately -- who wasn't Jewish was ultimately anti-Semitic. And so, she -- after they sold the egg farm, they moved to a town in Connecticut called Meriden. It's close to New Haven, where most of their neighbors were actually Polish Catholic. So, it was sort of ironic that they had left Poland and then ended up in this neighborhood where they were kind of --

AI:Together. (laughter)

ME:Yeah, surrounded by Polish Catholics. But, yes, and so -- but I think they 7:00were very much a first-generation family.

AI:Would you say that you grew up in -- Jewish home?

ME:Yes, yes, definitely. Actually, like I said, my father converted to Judaism and when my mother met him, she thought that he was a nice guy but that that was very, very strange that he had converted to Judaism. But then, as she got to know him better, she saw that he wasn't -- he'd actually -- often times, when people convert, they become very Orthodox. But he had converted with a Reform rabbi, so he was a bit more laid-back about it. But, yes, it was very important 8:00to them that we had a Jewish home, and they gave us all Hebrew names and -- or Israeli names. My name means something different in every language, I feel like, so --

AI:So, what is your name in Hebrew?

ME:Well, I suppose it comes from the Aramaic and it's like water. But I know that's -- in Greek, Maia was a Greek goddess. So, she was the mother of Hermes. I know that there's Maia in Polish and Maia in Swedish and Maia in Hindu -- it's something different in every language. (laughs)

AI:Did you get a Jewish education while you were growing up?

ME:Yeah, my parents sent me to Hebrew school. But when I was -- I stopped going when I was ten or eleven just because I had become very ill. So, I had a chronic 9:00illness growing up that took a long time to treat. And so, it was kind of a decade when I was not really attending much of anything, of any kind of school. So, I never had a bat mitzvah or anything but my parents had very much wanted me to and -- yeah, so, yes. And it was always very important in our house, so.

AI:How did -- do you remember how did you celebrate Jewish holidays? Did they give impact -- on you?

ME:Yes, yes. I always liked Jewish holidays. The High Holidays, we would go to the synagogue and on Hanukkah. It was a very American Hanukkah. We did the presents and my parents usually had a party. And I think one of my favorites was always Passover, but maybe it's partly because it was you know, a spring holiday 10:00and there was always something very special about it. Yes, and -- but I think it was -- not until I was in Israel that I knew certain holidays like Lag B'Omer. It's not really a big thing in the US, but in Israel it was a very big thing. So, yes, it was very much American holidays, American Jewish holidays. Let me think. It was -- yeah. I'm trying to think if there was a nice story. Yeah, I still go home usually at least at the High Holidays in that home, spend that there. My favorite holiday in Israel, though, is Hanukkah, because when I was 11:00living in Israel for a little while -- because I loved the menorahs outside and the lights everywhere, because people keep their menorahs in these glass boxes that are outside and it's very beautiful.

AI:When did you move to Israel?

ME:So, I lived in Jerusalem from about 2008 to 2010. And then, a couple years ago, I was in Tel Aviv for a few months because I felt like I had been in Jerusalem but hadn't gotten to know Tel Aviv. So, I went back to do that -- and not being that interested.

AI:And why did you choose to come to Israel?

ME:Well, when you grow up and you're Jewish, you hear about it all the time. And I wanted to get to know it for myself. At the time, I was very much in love with the poetry of Yehuda Amichai and his poems are all about Jerusalem. And so, I 12:00was dying to go and live in Jerusalem because I loved this poetry. And that was kind of where it started. And then, people had discouraged me because I was pretty young at the time. I was about twenty and -- or twenty-one and -- but I really wanted to go because of the poetry. And then, even though Jerusalem is not as -- maybe lively as Tel Aviv, it has its own magic that I really fell in love with. It's a very beautiful city, even though it has so many problems. (laughs)

AI:We now know -- how did you learn some Hebrew. And I assume that while being in Israel, you also pick up more.

ME:Oh, Hebrew? Well, the funny thing is my Hebrew's actually still not nearly 13:00that -- it's still not very good, because I had -- before going to Israel, I had been teaching myself -- well, I had originally started teaching myself Yiddish when I was a teenager, with a textbook. And then, I had gone to some classes at the Arbeter Ring. And I had attended the Yiddish program in Vilna. So, I was still so focused on Yiddish when I was in Israel and translating from Yiddish, while at the same time I was also in a Masters of Fine Arts program in the States. But I only had to physically be at the program twice a year, and the rest of the time I was working mostly on my own and corresponding with the advisor that I had. So, I was sort of distracted and I would -- and I didn't 14:00really have time to go to as many Hebrew classes as I would have liked when I was actually living in Israel. But I've tried, I -- since I came back, I've started translating some poetry and -- because that was when my Yiddish got very good, when I was translating poetry. So, I've been trying to do that with Hebrew. But I don't always have the same amount of time. So, I think that Yiddish has kind of won (laughs) in the Hebrew-Yiddish war inside of me, so -- for now, at least.

AI:Who were your first -- teacher of Yiddish language?

ME:So, well, I mean, I was just teaching myself with a textbook. So, you could say that Sheva Zucker was my first teacher because it was her textbook. But I've never actually met her, and then -- and so, I took some classes at the Arbeter Ring with Dovid Brown. And since then, I've had a bunch of teachers.

AI:Like whom?

ME:So, Yitskhok Niborski, and Dov-Ber Kerler, and Avrom Lichtenbaum, yes.

AI:Who's your favorite one?

ME:Oh, I can't answer that. (laughs) No. (laughs) They were all very wonderful.

AI:In your literature choices, when you made your -- the first decision to translate from Yiddish into English, who were the first poets or writers who inspired you the most?

ME:Well, I liked Sutzkever from the beginning. And his poems were the first ones that I tried to translate. I also was translating from really from the beginning -- some poems by Anna Margolin. And they are still two of my favorites. And 16:00they're very different from one another. And since then, I've also translated some poems by Yoysef Kerler. And so, I've also tried to translate some of the songs, which is very hard because they have to be especially musical in the translation. Yes, but I think Sutzkever might have been the first whose poems I tried to translate. Him and Anna Margolin.

AI:Do you remember the first poem of Sutzkever which you approach and which inspired the most?

ME:It was "Toys," "Shpilekhlekh," which I still -- it's one of his more well-known poems, but it's still one of my favorites. I think it's a very good poem.

AI:We started before our interview conversation about copyrights and how difficult is sometimes to publish.

ME:Yeah.

AI:And I would like to bring up the story (laughter) to the audience of the Yiddish Book Center --

ME:Okay, well, it's a very modern story. So, when I had originally decided that I wanted to publish some of my translations of Sutzkever -- his work is still under copyright, so I needed to have permission. And it was very hard at first to obtain that permission. And I think what I did initially was I contacted the Yiddish Book Center and they directed me to another translator of Sutzkever, who said that he had obtained permission from Ruth Weiss that had -- at least while Sutzkever had been alive. And he said that the last time he had contacted Ruth Weiss, she had said that she no longer wanted to be responsible for giving out 18:00permissions. But the problem was that, at least this translator and Ruth Weiss said that Sutzkever's family did not want to be contacted personally. So, then I contacted Rush Weiss, and she said the same, and she directed me to Avram Novershtern in Israel and said that maybe he could grant the permission. And he said that he didn't have the authority to grant the permission, but told me that I could do essentially what I wanted because the family didn't want to be involved in granting permissions. But that's not enough. (laughs) In the US, especially, one has to have official written permission. So, I think what I eventually did was I contacted Ruth Weiss again and I sent her some of my translations and she liked them quite a lot. And so, she gave me permission. And 19:00apparently, when Sutzkever had still been alive, maybe he had given her the authority to do that, or his family had. But it still wasn't quite enough. One has to have -- it's really better to have permission directly from the rights holders. But so, I began with the permission from Ruth Weiss and I published some translations in journals. But it was very difficult for me to apply for fellowships and grants for the translations because I didn't have an official written permission from Sutzkever's daughters. So, eventually what happened, after so many people had told me that the family didn't want to be directly contacted, somebody shared some of my translations on Facebook. And I saw that Sutzkever's granddaughter, Hadas, was liking them. And so, I then decided to 20:00contact her directly through Facebook. I sent her a Facebook message and I asked her if she could possibly help me get the permission -- get a written permission letter from her mother. And she got back to me right away and said yes, and had me email her the form that her mother needed to sign. And I did that, and the next morning, her mother had emailed me a permission letter. And it was very funny because it was after years, really, of people telling me that they didn't want to be directly contacted. But I don't know if it's okay for anyone else to directly contact them. Maybe it was just that she liked my translation so much. I don't know.

AI:So, you began translating Sutzkever and, with time, you became one of the Sutzkever translator into English.

ME:Yes.

AI:How many poems did you translate?

ME:Well, right now I have a fellowship to translate a whole book. So, the book that I translate is called "Lider fun togbukh." It's "Poems from my Diary," though I've also translated a few poems from other books. But right now, I'm mostly focusing on this and I don't -- I'm not even sure how many -- I've translated more than seventy, I would say. Probably more than that. But I have many rough drafts that aren't finished yet. But most of those translations are from "Poems from my Diary."

AI:Would you like to share some of your translations with us?

ME:Oh, yes. I was going to print one out. I think I know one by heart but it might only be in the translation. Should I recite it?

AI:Absolutely.

ME:Okay. It's called "The Fiddler Plays" and it's one of my favorites. So, the 22:00poem goes -- give me a minute. "The fiddler plays and grows ever thinner. Thin and thinner. Already thinner than the fiddle bow, thinner than a string. In place of its master, by itself, the fiddle plays. Thinner, ever thinner. And its master burns for his faith on a white pyre. The fiddle plays alone now, ever thinner. Thin and thinner. The fiddler cannot pass it a sip of water. On their own, the songs play and they play thinner, thinner, until sounds glow on the pyre. Sounds glow. Sounds glow in the pyre, glow thin and thinner. Now the darkness plays without fiddle and without bow. It plays without sounds and it's playing thinner, thinner, thinner until we sparkle all through its black eyes. Oh, darkness, for whom do you play ever thinner, thin and thinner? For us, these 23:00small tears? Are your favors destined for us? Music from tears, tiny tears, thinner, thinner, thinner, together with the white pyre and the dark earth." So, it's one of my favorites.

AI:A sheynem dank [Thank you very much], Maia. (laughter) Do you know any Sutzkever by heart in Yiddish?

ME:Well, I can try that one, although I might be a bit too nervous.

AI:Please --

ME:If I'm not nervous, I can do it. It's "Der fidler shpilt [The fiddler plays]." "Der fidler shpilt un vert alts diner, din un diner,/shoyn diner funem fidl-boygn, diner fun a strune./Antstot ir har, der fidl shpilt aleyn diner, diner,/un ir har brent af a vaysn shayter far zayn amone./Der fidl shpilt aleyn 24:00alts diner, din un diner,/der fidler ken ir keyn trunk vaser nit derlangen./Aleyn di klangen shpiln un zey shpiln diner, diner,/biz vanen afn shayter glien klangen, glien klangen./Es glien klangen afn shayter, glien din un diner,/shoyn shpilt aleyn di fintsernish on a fidl un on boygn./Zi shpilt on klangen un ir shpiln -- diner, diner,/biz vanen mir tsefinklen zikh in ire shvartse oygn./O, fintsernish, far vemen shpilstu alts diner, din un diner,/far 25:00undz, di kleyne trern? Es bashert undz dayne gnodn?/Muzik fun trern. Kleyne trern. Din un diner,/tsuzamen in vaysn shayter un dem shvartsn bodn." I might have gotten some of that wrong.

AI:What's the feeling of stepping into the world of Sutzkever and just bringing this out with this mystic mist of poetry?

ME:It's a very interesting experience. I definitely feel that my understanding of his poetry becomes deeper. And when it works the best, I feel like there's this meeting of my voice as a writer of poetry and his voice as a writer of 26:00poetry. So, it's like we both end up writing the translation together, if that makes sense. It definitely -- having translated so many of his poems, they definitely -- it affects me in my life and I'm always thinking about them and always in awe of them. But also, it just -- it's good for me, because it helps me keep the events of my own life in perspective because he went through so much. And also, is very inspiring because you can feel in his poems that this is 27:00somebody who, despite having been through such horrifying experiences, still really loved life and had a lot that he was thankful for. And that really inspires me in my everyday life, yes. It's interesting, I feel very close to the poems that I have translated. But it's a strange thing because as a translator, I feel like I don't always understand a poem until I've translated it. But then once I've translated it, I don't always know if I fully understood it or I've only understood it in the way that I've translated it. So, I don't know how much I'm putting into it. And it's interesting to wonder if a poem that I've 28:00translated -- oops, keep messing with the microphone -- if a poem I've translated, if somebody else would translate it the same way. And I have translated some poems that were also translated by other translators and our translations are very different. So, there's no one way to translate a poem and, yeah, I think that poems are almost -- once a writer writes a poem, it doesn't -- it's its own being, I think. So, that can keep -- I think that the translations are just extensions of the original poems. So, it's like the art keeps expanding and continuing from that one original poem. So, it's fun to be 29:00part of that. And I certainly feel that my writing has definitely been affected by translating so many poems, particularly poems by Sutzkever since he -- most of my translations are translations of Sutzkever. (laughs)

AI:Maia, you also translate from Spanish.

ME:Yes.

AI:Yiddish is not only your one language, and I would like to know what you think in comparison about translations from Yiddish into English versus Spanish. What's the difference between languages and cultures from your perspective as a translator of poetry?

ME:Well, personally, my connection with Spanish is different than my connection with Yiddish. So, with Yiddish, I feel like I'm translating one of my languages, 30:00even though I didn't grow up speaking it -- that I felt like is part of my heritage. Spanish, I learned in elementary school. So, I have a funny relationship with it in that I don't have any family members who are from Spanish-speaking countries. But at the same time, it was very much part of my childhood because I learned it in elementary school. So, I certainly have a different relationship to it, and when I'm translating from Spanish or hearing Spanish or listening to music in Spanish, I think of being a kid and doing my homework and things like that. But at the same time, it does touch a deep place inside of myself because I learned it as a child. But it's very different. The 31:00poems that I've translated are not only poems. They're songs. So, I translated some of the lyrics from Atahualpa Yupanqui, who's the Argentine songwriter, and no one had really translated his songs before. So, I felt like I was contributing something. But at the same time, I feel more of a responsibility to translate from Yiddish just because there are so many fewer translators from Yiddish, whereas there are many translators from Spanish. And even if we do have significant problems in the US in terms of prejudice towards Latin America and Latin Americans, which is very evident right now with our new president, it's still a more -- people know that there's wonderful literature written in 32:00Spanish, whereas people still think of Yiddish -- so many people think of Yiddish as just kind of a cute language that doesn't have great literature written in it. And so, I feel more of a responsibility to do something to dispel those misconceptions about Yiddish. So, Spanish is something that I do occasionally for fun, I guess. Or, in this case, I loved the songs so much that I wanted to share them.

AI:But you are one step ahead because you also do sometimes translation into Yiddish.

ME:Yeah, well, I've tried, but I wasn't confident. I tried to translate some Leonard Cohen songs into Yiddish. But I wasn't confident in how -- I wasn't 33:00confident that I could make them sound like they were written by someone whose first language was Yiddish, since mine wasn't. And it's much easier to translate into one's own native language. But I'm still trying and I think I might have to collaborate with somebody whose first language was Yiddish to make sure that the poems sounded natural. But it's still an ongoing project that I'm planning to keep doing. And I thought maybe I could even publish some of them in the "Forverts" or something like this. But, of course, Leonard Cohen songs, they work well in Yiddish, and I think he would have liked it. (laughter)

AI:A recent example is Daniel Kahn.

ME:Yeah. Yes. Yes, that was very nice, the -- and actually, Daniel Kahn and I talked about potentially collaborating on another translation of the song "One 34:00of Us Cannot Be Wrong," which is one of my favorites, and it's one that I've been working on.

AI:Why did you choose Leonard Cohen?

ME:Oh, I love Leonard Cohen. (laughs) He's one of -- yes, he's a great love of my life, Leonard Cohen. And we were talking about how my great dream in life was to be a Leonard Cohen backup singer, and I'm a bit devastated now that I have to let that dream go. But I can still be his backup singer in my own way, I think.

AI:No doubt. (laughter)

ME:Yes.

AI:And I think Leonard Cohen has definitely yidishe neshome, which means the Yiddish soul.

ME:Yes, and I'm sure he would have agreed. It's interesting, I saw -- it's a 35:00very old talk that he gave, I think in Montreal or maybe in New York, in which he was debating somebody. It was from a long time ago. I think he was still in his twenties at the time. He was debating a writer, I think from Montreal, who wrote in Yiddish. But I don't recall which writer it was. And the writer he was debating was saying, I think, that real Jewish writers had to write in Hebrew or in Yiddish, that they had to write in a Jewish language. And Leonard Cohen said that this was like arguing over which meat stores were more kosher, which kosher meat stores were more kosher, which I thought was very good, because I very much feel like a Jewish writer even though I write in English. But it's an 36:00interesting conflict, I think, to write in a language that isn't traditionally a Jewish language but to be very much a Jewish writer. I think that you can do it, certainly.

AI:Definitely identity, it's very self-oriented thing and --

ME:Yes.

AI:-- and especially in writing, we decide who we want to be.

ME:Yes, yes, exactly. But at the same time, it's funny, 'cause as a Yiddish translator but also as a writer, I think a lot about languages and who they belong to, because even -- there are many non-Jews who learn Yiddish and 37:00non-Jews who learn Hebrew. And I've always -- I always try to be welcoming to those people, because I feel like it's very nice that they want to do that and then -- but at the same time, it also makes me think about English differently. And also, I think about Spanish differently -- that I learned as a child. Because if you think about it, in some ways, English began as a Christian language or -- so, you can say that in Great Britain there are pagan traditions and things like that. But in English, if you say that somebody is a good person you say that they were a real Christian. And it's sort of like in Yiddish calling somebody a mentsh to call somebody a Christian in English. And if you can say that something is a good deed, that it was a Christian thing to do. And in some ways, that's sort of -- you could argue that it's kind of putting down 38:00other religions and that implicitly, especially in English, that -- and then England, where there was pretty severe anti-Semitism for a long time, that the insinuation is that it's not a Jewish thing to do. It's a Christian thing to do. So, it's something I think about, and I also think about it in terms of Spanish. I actually wrote a poem once about it, about how I felt a bit strange because Spanish is such a Catholic -- seems like such a Catholic language. But at the same time, there have been Jewish writers in Spanish and there's a strong Jewish community in Argentina and in Mexico and in other -- in Spanish-speaking countries. And now, there are more Jews who are living in Spain, even. So, it's interesting to think about who owns certain languages. And there was a time that 39:00-- when you could argue that German was a kind of Jewish language. And then, after the war, it was very much not. So, it's complicated. It's an interesting thing to think about.

AI:Maia, the whole galaxy of this whole Jewish/non-Jewish discussion today, where would you put yourself? Where is your place? Because you are not very religious person --

ME:Yes.

AI:-- and you belong to Hebrew-speaking community, but not quite. You belong to Yiddish-speaking community more. But where is Yiddish?

ME:Yes.

AI:And how you identify yourself today?

ME:Well, I feel very much culturally Jewish. And I'm not a very religious 40:00person. But at the same time, I like Judaism and I feel connected to it -- connected to it enough that I can get infuriated by certain aspects of it like --

AI:Like what?

ME:Like, oh, you know, the treatment of women in some very Orthodox or Hasidic communities. Things like that bother me. And, at the same time, I feel like, even though I do feel very much connected to Judaism, when it comes right down to it, if I have a religion that I really follow, I think my religion is writing and literature, 'cause I'm very bad at conforming myself to a religious schedule that -- my whole life centers around writing. And if I have, really, a religious 41:00belief in something, it's in the power of poetry and the power of art. So, it's a funny thing, but I still feel very much connected to Judaism. But I'm not somebody who -- I think that you can still be Jewish culturally and ethnically even if one isn't a very religious person, and I very much feel that I am. But it's a complicated problem, the question of how Jews remain Jews if they're not -- if religion is not quite so -- such a strong factor. Yeah, I hope that answer is okay. (laughs)

AI:Of course, absolutely. I think that, yes, of course. Daily, your writing is 42:00Yiddish-oriented, especially now because of this translation, right?

ME:Yes, it's very much inspired by the translation work that I do. And the Yiddish literature that I read, it very much inspires me, though it might not always be obvious. Sometimes, it's more subtle, but yes. And I very much feel that I'm a Jewish writer, so --

AI:Are you part of any group or larger projects or any -- where is the place where you can simply share your writing?

ME:Well, in the past I had a writing group. And, of course, I was in a MFA program, but that was a while ago now and -- but I publish some of my writing 43:00and literary journals and I'm trying -- I would like to publish a book but it's very difficult to get a book published. And so, yes, I guess I'd share my writing that way. And I have a website. (laughs) But I share my writing on that.

AI:Yeah, I've seen your website. (laughter) It's very beautiful and I strongly recommend it. Could you give the address to your website?

ME:Oh, it's just my name. It's MaiaEvrona.com. So, I guess right now I'm sharing my work that way. And sometimes, I've done readings in New York for some of the publications that have published my poems. Yes. And so, I'd like to do more of the readings. I love doing readings. I think it's because I -- part of me still wants to -- is kind of a frustrated singer. So, if I get to do readings, then it's kind of a way of performing, which I think is nice. And I very much -- I 44:00like poetry to have a certain -- I like poetry to be musical and to be capable of being performed in that way, because I think it's a nice way of sharing it rather than just seeing it on the page. And I think that's why poets who are also songwriters become so beloved, so why we really love the poems of Leonard Cohen or some Yiddish poems that have been set to music like Itzik Manger, and that it -- there's something about hearing a poem as music that I think really transmits the emotion of it in a very powerful way.

AI:Do you have any Yiddish poetry which you would like to sing?

ME:(laughs) No, not right now. I think we'll just stick with the one that I recited.

AI:But if you would like to sing, then which one it would be?

ME:I don't know. I actually do have a -- interesting story that I could tell about -- I dance the Argentine tango and I have sometimes in the past organized -- they're called milongas, which are tango dance -- they're tango dances where people just come and they dance. But at my milongas, sometimes I play untraditional music. There are tango dances that are very traditional where they play only Golden Age tango, but sometimes people will play what are called alternative, alternative to traditional music. And so, in the past, I've played 46:00some Yiddish music. And usually, people like it. And people always really like it. I play a lot of things by Chava Alberstein. And there were two times when I decided to play her version of the song "Rivkele," which is -- very sad song and, like, "Rivke, di shabesdike, arbet in fabrik [Rivke, the Shabbos widow, works in a factory]." But Chava Alberstein's version is very lively, and it almost doesn't -- it sounds like something to dance to. And I felt very conflicted about playing this because, on the one hand, it was good for tango. It worked. But on the other hand, it's a very serious song and I felt conflicted about whether we should be having fun dancing to this song when it was a song from the Holocaust. And I was very, very unsure of whether to play it or not. 47:00But in the end, I tried it, and I was very impressed with how people really understood that it was a serious song. Everyone commented that it was very sad, and that they could really feel something from the song. And there were a couple of people there who were familiar enough with Yiddish to catch the word "kontsentratsye [concentration]," so they understood that it was a Holocaust song and they came up to me and asked me about it. And so, then I tried playing it again after that, and again, everybody asked me about this song. And it wasn't -- I don't think I would say that anybody really had -- exactly had fun dancing to it. They understood that it was serious, and that affected the way that they danced. And so, I felt like -- I did have my reservations about 48:00playing it, because it isn't something that people should be having fun dancing to. That would be extremely insensitive. But on the other hand, if I didn't play it, then people wouldn't have this exposure to this Yiddish song that was written during the Holocaust and wouldn't really know that -- might not know that these kinds of songs existed from that time. So many people have -- they just think of Yiddish as this cute language, but here's this very beautiful, very serious kind of protest song. And so, in the end, I was glad that I played it. But I haven't played it since then, because I still feel uneasy about it. But -- so, that's my story.

AI:Thank you for sharing this with us. Maia, I would like to ask you, from your 49:00perspective, what is the place of Yiddish in American culture? And I don't only think about American Jewish culture, but --

ME:Yes.

AI:-- in general?

ME:I think it's in a very unfortunate place, where people just -- even though I would say that -- I would say it's -- I'm oftentimes really dismayed that people just think of Yiddish as this -- as not a real language, as just this cute language. And a lot of that is just informed by having been exposed to immigrants who don't quite -- who speak broken English, who then have to inflect 50:00their English with Yiddish words. And it sort of -- some of the attitudes about Yiddish come from just a -- kind of the way people interact with immigrants. And I think also -- I think even for American Jews, that they oftentimes have this association with Yiddish and this view of Yiddish. And even if they know a bit more, it's oftentimes influenced by -- maybe prose writers like Roth or "Portnoy's Complaint" and this kind of view of it, and not really seeing it as a serious language. And then, it's also interesting to see how certain words get a 51:00bit sanitized in English, like chutzpah. It really means gall. It doesn't mean the good kind of nerve. But I think that for that -- bad words in a foreign language never have the same power when you hear them and you don't speak that language as they do in the original. And I've noticed this when I've been traveling, even with English swear words, like "fuck" and everything, that people will use them much more casually if they're not native English speakers. And sometimes, I've been pretty shocked by some of the contexts in which I've heard English swear words used when I've been traveling. So, it can be frustrating to see Yiddish words kind of not understood very well or used 52:00incorrectly. But it's interesting, because I noticed even in Israel, some Yiddish words have been -- that the same thing has happened, that they've been a bit toned down. So, there's this Yehuda Amichai poem in which he talks about a woman having chutzpah in her hips, and I don't think that he's talking about gall. And it's funny because chutzpah's originally a Hebrew-derived word but it's gone into Yiddish and then gone back into modern Hebrew and changed a lot in the journey. So, it's interesting. But it's always rather frustrating for me to have to explain that I'm a Yiddish translator to somebody who doesn't know 53:00much about Yiddish, because they just think of the stand-up comedy they've seen about Yiddish and things like that, or they'll insist that it's not a real language. And even Jews will do this and it's just -- sometimes I just -- I don't even want to get into it. I don't even want to talk about it. But then, other times, if they do know a bit more, then they get very excited. And sometimes, I almost prefer talking to people who don't -- who know absolutely nothing about Yiddish, who don't have any preconceptions, who don't have any idea what it is, because then I can just explain it and I don't have to deal with --

AI:Prejudice.

ME:Yes, exactly, so --

AI:And I would like to know more about -- do you think that there is a Yiddish 54:00revival? And I'm not talking only about America, but also places such as Berlin and other in the world?

ME:I'm not sure, because I know some of the issues with the idea of a Yiddish revival have been that it's somewhat ahistorical in that people don't -- they think that because people are studying Yiddish now that they weren't studying it twenty years ago or that they weren't -- or that people weren't writing poetry in it twenty or thirty years ago. So, at the same time, I think that some ideas about it are changing. I know, talking with first- and second-generation Jews in the US, that sometimes they have more of a tendency to think that there isn't 55:00any literature written in Yiddish, that it isn't a real language, that it's just a dialect. And then sometimes, if you talked with younger people, they will actually know more. And I know -- in Israel, it was hard for me sometimes to tell people that I translated poetry from Yiddish because there was just so much prejudice from a lot of people. And in Israel, they tend to associate it more with the ultra-Orthodox. But I think in recent years, sometimes I've had a different reaction. Or maybe it was just that I spent more time in Tel Aviv where people were more -- they had more of a sense that there was literature or that -- I talked to people who would tell me that when their parents first came to Israel that they felt like they had to stop speaking Yiddish and they would try, and then now the children of those people, as adults, actually wish that 56:00they had known it and are more interested in learning it. So, I think that there might be a greater interest and greater respect. At the same time, I think it's important to note that there have always been people who have taken Yiddish seriously and who have studied it and translated from it. And it's funny to talk about a revival now because in Israel, say, after the war ended, in New York, after the war, there were actually people who were writing in Yiddish. So, there was maybe a stronger Yiddish community then. And I've never been to Berlin, so I can't really comment on that, but --

AI:But you've been to Lithuania during the summer program, so you --

ME:Yes.

AI:-- got the sense of European --

ME:Yes, there were many Germans, actually, in the classes that I was in. But at the same -- it was hard for me to understand, 'cause sometimes people would just tell me that they were there because they thought that -- they were German linguists and they thought Yiddish would help with their understanding of German. But certainly, I had a sense that there was more respect. But it's hard 'cause you can't -- I wouldn't draw conclusions just on my classmates, because these just might be people who happen to be especially interested, so it's hard to say. Yeah. (laughs) I think that's -- (laughs)

AI:What do you see as the future of Yiddish?

ME:The future? I don't know. I hope that it will continue to be studied. I don't 58:00know that it will continue to be spoken except by the Hasidim. But I hope that it will be -- continue to be studied. The funny thing about Jewish culture is that for two thousand years, we hung onto Hebrew and hung onto Aramaic. So, I don't see why we can't hang onto Yiddish, too, even if it's not spoken at home. It can just be -- there can be a switch. (laughs) And in Spain and -- they have the Golden Age of Hebrew poetry, and maybe we can still -- you never know. Jewish culture is interesting.

AI:We're nearing to the end of our interview, but I would like to ask you, first 59:00of all, if you have any story which I did not ask you about and you would like to share now with the audience?

ME:No, nothing that I can think of, sorry. (laughs)

AI:Okay, then I have two last questions.

ME:Okay.

AI:My question is do you have any favorite Yiddish word or phrase?

ME:Oh, actually, I think I do, although sometimes -- I'm still discovering words that I like. But I think from the beginning, one of the first Yiddish words that really struck me was "solovey," a word for "nightingale." And I'm not sure that it's really the more common one 'cause I've also seen "nakhtigal," but -- and I think "solovey," it's from Russian or from Polish. But I love it because it sounds like a solo that one sings of woe, of pain. And it's just so perfect, but 60:00it's not -- it didn't begin that way. It was kind of a loan word. So, I think that that's my favorite one. I think it's very poetic and it sounds very beautiful, yeah. I hope that doesn't sound like I like only sad words. But it's just -- it sounds beautiful on the tongue, solovey. Yes. I think that that is my favorite.

AI:So, my last question to you is what advice do you have to translators from Yiddish into English or other languages?

ME:Well, I think that one really has to create a work in the language one is translating into. So, it's important for something -- for a translated work to 61:00look natural in the original. Sometimes I'm frustrated with some of the translations I read because I feel like -- sometimes I think translators, they cut things that they don't need to cut, so when -- sort of a complicated sentence will end up looking very simple in English because some words were cut. And I'm always puzzled by this, because I think the words could have remained. And I'm never sure why translators do that, if it's that they think that there's some kind of fundamental difference between the way that sentences are constructed in Yiddish and the way they're constructed in English, or if it's 62:00something to do with how the translator's understanding what they're reading. But that always frustrates me. I think things can stay complicated even in the translations. Yes, and I would just encourage them to do it. We need more translators and more good translators, and translators into languages other than English. So, I hope that people will continue to translate from Yiddish. And it's tough. It's tough to get translations published. So, I think it took me about two years. So, I would just encourage them to keep trying.

AI:Thank you, Maia. (laughter) A sheynem dank on behalf of the Yiddish Book Center Wexler Oral History Project and my own --

ME:Oh.

AI:-- for sharing your story with me and the audience of the Yiddish Book Center. Thank you very much.

ME:Well, thank you for having me.

[END OF INTERVIEW]