JOE (YOSSL) TIGL ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY:So, this is Christa Whitney, and today is February 12th, 2017. I am here in Melbourne with Yossl Tigl, and we're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record?

YOSSL TIGL: You do.

CW:Great. So, to start, can you tell me where your family came from?

YT:My family -- my father was born in 1919. His mother died when he was four weeks old, and he was brought up by his grandparents, who were Orthodox, Hasidic. And he was born in Warsaw. But the period that he grew up as a child was a very dynamic environment. He went to the TSYSHO Shule, so he was very much 1:00a Yiddishist. He was taught in a Yiddish school. Went to SKIF at a young age. And he was from Warsaw. My mother had a very different upbringing. She was more in a sort of provincial shtetl [small town in Eastern Europe with a Jewish community] of Będzin, which was in the Zagłębie region. She grew up in a very large family. So, that's where they were from. And of course, during the war years they had different experiences and then found each other in a deportation camp after the Holocaust.

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CW:So, can you tell me about your family background, starting with your father?

YT:So, my father was born in Warsaw, in 1919. He had a traumatic start to his life. His mother died after childbirth. He and his older brother were brought up by his grandparents, who were Hasidic, unlike --

CW:Do you know which rebbe it was?

YT:No, no. My father died quite young, at sixty, and I was only just on the 2:00verge of adulthood, and so I didn't have the benefit of hearing some of his stories firsthand. I knew a lot of his story. I'm named after his older brother, and his father disowned him and his brother and went off and had another life and some other children. So, I don't know a lot about that, other than that episode. So, he was brought up in a very intense family with his grandparents, but he was brought up as a Yiddishist, so he went to a Yiddish day school, which was the TSYSHO Shule, which was run by the Bund. In Poland. It was a period of enlightenment for academic Jews and Jewish life in Warsaw. The Bund was very active. So, he was a youth member of that environment, and very -- very, very motivated by the theater. And he set his objectives to be a stage and screen star. And went to youth theater workshops and ran youth theaters -- in fact, he 3:00ran a youth theater --

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YT:-- and he moved this theater through the ghetto until it was captured by the Germans prior to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. It's one of the reasons, possibly, he survived, that the Germans -- albeit imprisoned him -- fed him, because he was of use to them to help them take over buildings and wire them up and do a bit of carpentry and odd jobs for the Germans as they were taking out the buildings in Warsaw. So, that's my father's pre-war experience, was very intense drama, you know, performing things like "The Dybbuk" onstage before the war. And had visions of him having this career in the arts, and that drove him for the rest of his life. My mother had a very different upbringing. She was in a more provincial town closer to the German border, in Będzin. She's one of four children and had cousins and uncles and -- most of them perished in the war, but 4:00a very intense family life. And you know, played the mandolin in school, and it was a very school-driven -- she learned Yiddish as a after-school language. They didn't speak Yiddish as much in her home. Her home was more Polish. And she spoke Polish with her siblings, but learned Yiddish after school. And again, they weren't a particular religious family. But it was still a driver for them, until her -- I don't know how much detail you'd like me to give you about her experience -- her town was one of the first ghettos in Poland, 'cause as the march of the Germans came through Poland, that town was occupied by the Germans. The ghetto was formed very quickly. And so, for the first -- from 1939 to the end of 1943, she was a slave laborer in the ghetto. And while that was harsh 5:00conditions, they actually fed her, because she had a job to do. She worked in a factory producing garments for the Nazi war effort. So much so that there's actually a little clip of her in a film about Będzin on YouTube. You can see my mother as a seventeen-year-old, with the yellow star. And so, when they liquidated the ghetto in the end of '43, she was relocated to Auschwitz-Birkenau and survived the war. But when she arrived there, she was of reasonable health because she had been fed. So, there was a difference with some of the people coming out of places like Warsaw Ghetto and Łódź Ghetto, which were just interned. But she actually had a job to perform. So -- and that was my mother's story, coming from Poland.

CW:And you said your parents met in a DP camp?

YT:Correct. So, my mother was rescued from the death march out of Auschwitz. She 6:00had just survi-- I mean, many survivors will tell the tale of how close they were to death. She was in Mengele's selections many times, was in the infirmary, and wrote in her later years -- my mother was still alive in '96 -- she wrote in her later years that there was two or three times when she was -- thought she'd been selected and spent one evening in the crematoria and managed to survive. So, while she's not religious, she felt that something, someone was smiling on her. My father -- I'm not quite sure of my father's journey from the Warsaw Ghetto, finishing in one of the smaller concentration camps. But they ended up in Zeilitzheim in a DP camp. My father immediately returned to what he knew best, and he ran a Yiddish theater in the DP camp. It's where my parents met, and like a lot of the romances that occurred after the war, it was a very brief 7:00relationship before they got married. My parents got married under a makeshift chupah at the beginning of 1946 with very few people around, and signed a piece of paper, and I think my father bought a band of some sort. I'm sure it wasn't gold. And they started their lives together. And he wanted to bring up his family in either New York or Australia; those were the two locations he put down for immigration. He was driven by the fact that both of them had Yiddish theaters. And that was where he saw his career moving forward. And so, they spent nearly five years in Belgium waiting for their immigration allocation. It was a period of intense reliving your life, getting on with life, enjoying life, being proud to be alive. So, there was a vibrancy amongst their friends. They 8:00were involved in Tsukunft, which was the older organization of the Bund. So, they had camps in France at the sea. And my mother was a sea-worshiping human being after her experiences in Poland. Just always wanted to be near the beach. In fact, we grew up here, near St. Kilda, because that was where the water was. We had to be near the water. My mother was a sun worshiper. So yeah, so the opportunity came to come to Australia through the activities of the immigration authorities and the Bund. It was very active in relocating people to Melbourne. And they arrived in Melbourne in 1950. My mother was pregnant with my sister, and she was born in June 1950. And they set about building a family life here. My father's dream was to have a career, a deep career in the Yiddish theater, which always had a negative impact on his income-earning career. Unfortunately, 9:00my father never really overcame his start. He was always battling for the dollar. So, you know, and that characterized most of his experience living in Australia until he passed away at age sixty.

CW:And did they talk much about their early lives or the war?

YT:Yeah, they did. So, my father when I was a child growing up, was incredibly involved in the David Herman Theatre, which was the Yiddish theater at the Kadimah. I remember as a kid growing up in the '60s only a couple of minutes from where I live here, in Elsternwick, in Ripponlea, we had a delicatessen, and we lived in a dwelling on top of the delicatessen. My father -- now, see, you learn certain words when you're growing up, and ikh gedenk az s'iz bloyz geven "probes" un "zitsungen" [I remember that it was just "rehearsals" and "meetings"]. "So where are you going tonight, Dad?" "Ikh gey af a zitsung [I'm going to a meeting]." And I couldn't quite work out as a young child in the '60s what is actually a zitsung and what is a probe. And there was a lot of probe. 10:00So, my father was continually involved in a play or a cabaret or a reading, plus he was also a teacher in the Yiddish school. So, we had a very, very deep Yiddish home life. So, Yiddish was the major language spoken at home. Being a child of the '60s, we had a TV, so I learned a lot of my English from school -- so until I went to school, up to kindergarten, my Yiddish was very fluent. It's what we spoke at home; it's what I heard. While our home was literally two rooms and two bedrooms, it was always full of people. It was the time when you didn't go out; you went over to someone's home for a shnitke, which is a sandwich, and a brandy or a -- my father wasn't a drinker, but I remember that people would be always filling the house before and after rehearsals and what have you.

CW:Theater people, mostly?

YT:Theater people, school-related people, just their cohort, the other survivors. So, damaged people, but people with a rich life, wanting to get on with it. And Yiddish resonated through our house. But I didn't get a lot of my father's stories because we didn't have the -- I didn't have a father that went and threw a ball with me or took me to the park a lot. We would go on oysflugen -- we would go on picnics. But we were always with other couples. So, I didn't get my father's stories as much. Whereas my mother had a very zealous way of wanting to share her stories: so much so that she did English classes through the '60s and '70s to improve her English and started writing down her stories, because she felt the flikht [duty], that you must tell. And her stories are amazing, what she did to survive the Holocaust, and the stories of her home life in Będzin, the whole experience. I know my mother's journey from childhood to 12:00her journey here with much greater detail. Plus the fact that I was also an adult to hear and read these stories. Whereas I was just twenty when my father passed away, and like a teenager, when I got my car at eighteen, I was far less interested in my parents than, you know, enjoying my life. So, I didn't quite get steeped in my father's stories as much. I mean, I value them, and I respect it, and it imbued in me a sense of community and my love for Yiddish, and that's my Jewishness. So, my father barely walked into a shul from pre-- from 1939 to the mid-'70s -- was when my sister got married, in '77, that he started to find a more open relationship with the rabbis. An interesting story is my father worked for the "Yidishe Nayes" here in Melbourne. So, that was his last job, for 13:00the last thirteen years of his life. It wasn't a great-paying job, but for him it suited him down to the ground.

CW:Was that a daily newspaper?

YT:That was a weekly --

CW:A weekly.

YT:Yeah, and so the "Yidishe Nayes," which is still around in a different form, the "Jewish News," had a Yiddish section. And it had that Yiddish section until probably the late '80s. And he was a contributor to that paper. He had one photograph of himself that I remember on those blocks that they used to do for the offset, the setting up of the newspaper, that was his favorite photo. It was a Clark Gable shot, you know, him on an angle. It was very much his theatrical photo, and he used that for years. Even when he was getting older, that was the photo that he used. And I remember that photo clearly. So, he was a contributor to the paper. The Yiddish theater was a vibrant component of the community up to the late '80s, early '90s. So, he was very much -- everybody knew him 'cause he was one of the directors and stars of the theater. So, we knew we were a -- I 14:00wouldn't call it a celebrity household, but we were a known family for those reasons. And so, that was a big part of our upbringing. So, the "Jewish News" allowed him to have relationships with a lot of members of the community. It was driven by the theater, but because he worked for the "Jewish News," he would meet people in his walk of life. And when my father passed away, I was twenty years old. We got a letter from the rabbi of the yeshiva in Melbourne. And my father was very much an atheist. Well, an atheist or agnostic; I couldn't put a label on it this many years afterwards, but he certainly was not interested in the shul. He'd been brought up with kheyder [traditional religious school] in his life. The war experiences made him very -- gave him an uneasy relationship with HaShem [Hebrew: God, lit. "the name"]. And when my father passed away, we get this letter from the rabbi saying he wishes us -- he sends his condolences, 15:00and he says he'll miss his Thursday afternoon teas with my father. We had no idea what this was. Again, I'm twenty, struggling with my mother, who was quite devastated by my father's loss, trying to be an adult very quickly. And I rang the rabbi. And the rabbi said that every Thursday, my father would bring him the "Jewish News," and they would sit for fifteen, twenty minutes, talking about life, religion, and politics. And I said, "I had no idea!" And he said, "This was going on for years." They would have a gleyzl tey [a cup of tea] and sit and talk about life. And this is a serious rabbi. This is a rabbi that inspired fears in generations of young men that went through yeshiva. He was larger than life. And I remember speaking Yiddish to him, just being blown away by this experience that I didn't know anything about. So, yeah, people lead interesting lives. And so, my father was very active in the school and was a very much a -- 16:00during his golden period in Australia, sort of representation of Yiddish life in Melbourne. He was right in the thick of it. So, that was part of our upbringing. But more on the theatrical side rather than the academic side. While he was involved with the school, it was certainly more the Kadimah and the theater. I'll tell you a funny story -- there was a running joke in our house. We didn't have a lot. You know, on today's standards, we were probably quite a poor immigrant family. Didn't realize it at the time, 'cause you judge yourself by what you see around you. But my mother would often miss tablecloths and vases and other bits and pieces in the house and wonder where they'd gone. And the mystery was always solved a few weeks or months later when she'd be sitting in the theater watching one of the plays that's run, and there's our tablecloth, and there's our vase, and so there was this sort of blurring of the lines between what was on the Yiddish stage and at home.

CW:And what was your father's name?

YT:Shi, Shia Tigl.

CW:And what's your mother's name?

YT:Genia.

CW:So, can you describe the home a little bit more?

YT:So, we moved a little bit when I was young. So, I was born in 1960. So, interesting time to be born, obviously. An enlightened period in Australia as it was in America. So, when I was born, we lived in a small apartment on Brighton Road, which is just near the beach. We then moved a couple of times to other apartments, and then we moved to a delicatessen on Glen Eira Road, which was a little hub of Jewish activity -- and still is, 'cause it's around the corner from the Adass shul. So, it's now very Hasidic. But it's a melting pot suburb. So, my earliest memories are sharing a bedroom with my sister -- which is probably not ideal for a teenager to be with a younger brother in her room. And 18:00I remember this place as being quite dynamic and large. It had a lounge room at the back of the delicatessen. My father made foods like sour milk in the delicatessen. I remember him making the sour milk. So, he would culture the milk on the window ledge because that's where the sun came in, and he would tend to those. I don't believe he made much money in that delicatessen. It was really just a vehicle to allow him to close shop at 5:30 p.m. and have a bit of dinner and then run off to the theater. So, there was always people in the house. I had uncles that weren't biological uncles but they were single, vagabond travelers that were sort of involved with the theater, and they would come to dinner. My mother wasn't so much a balebosta [homemaker], but I think through the -- and my father was a cook, so there would be lots of cooking going on. There was always 19:00cholent in the house. So, our house smelled of cholent from Fridays to Sunday nights, 'cause there was always a big pot of cholent in the oven. So, I'm sure it precipitated my father's early demise, eating cholent, but nevertheless, that was the part of it. I had a teenage sister who, like a lot of teenagers, was moody, so we had a -- not a great intimate relationship as I was growing -- she was nine and a half years older than me, so we weren't close siblings growing up. But it was a very lively household. We would go for dinner at other friends' homes, and we all lived close, so there was that closeness in terms of proximity, so -- call it a ghetto mentality. So, that was what growing up. A lot of my friends that I grew up with I knew -- we went -- well, we might have gone to different public schools. We would meet -- it was very natural for us -- it wasn't a question of, Do we, don't we? We went to Yiddish school on Sunday 20:00mornings, and we went to SKIF in the afternoon. And that was Sunday. You didn't question it. You didn't have alternative activities like going ice-skating, roller-skating, or going for rides on your bikes, going places with your parents; you went to Sunday school in the morning, you went to SKIF in the afternoon, and then you went to SKIF camp. So, that was that intense Yiddish experience. Didn't like Sunday school 'cause I didn't like the academic aspects of it. I didn't like doing my homework. But it just was the natural thing to do. It was what we did. There was not a question about it at the time. We didn't go to shul. I didn't have a religious bar mitzvah, but I had a celebratory bar mitzvah. So, I prepared Yiddish poetry readings and what have you.

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YT:On readings we -- again, my father says we have a flikht, we have a responsibility, to do the right thing around our culture and what have you. So, 21:00I was mentored with the acting gene to go to readings, to perform at school functions outside of school. I have probably done -- I'm now fifty-seven -- probably I've done forty-odd ghetto academia memorial evenings, where I've read poetry or sung. I've been to Yom Ha'atzmaut functions through school reading because my father imbued in me that you must perform, and you must perform Yiddish well, and you need to articulate. And I had other mentors from school that would seek to use those skills that a young person should read and recite. So, went to many recitals. And I was introduced to the Yiddish theater. So, I 22:00remember the Yiddish theater from the moment I could walk. I would know all the backstage and the frontstage, and I was taught to usher and do lighting --

CW:So, where was it located?

YT:So, originally the Kadimah was in Carlton, which from here is the other side of town. It's where the first wave of post-war immigration landed. So, the Kadimah had a theater, a hall, opposite the Melbourne General Cemetery, which always used to -- I found quite a surreal place. And so, you had life on one side and not on the other. And that was there until 1967, where it was relocated here to Elsternwick. I was seven years old. I remember when it burnt down and when it was rebuilt. And I had mentors there that were families that would work backstage, and so my father encouraged me to be just part of the fabric of the theater. So, I learned how to do lighting and sound and climb ladders, and I 23:00just -- it was a home away from home. I was there on the weekends. I understood all the dynamics of theater. We would have visiting artists, where I would accompany my parents to a gleyzl tey with a visiting artist, and, you know, even though I was a young person, I may be bored by the artist, that was part of what we did. Kids would run around while the parents were standing around speaking Yiddish. In those days, there was a sense of community where the Yiddish-speaking men would gather on a Sunday morning near Echlin Street here, which was another Jewish street near the beach, and just stand around having a gleyzl tey on a Sunday morning, talking about politics and life. And hundreds of men would just walk up and speak Yiddish. It was a phenomenal experience. And it just seemed normal, as a kid growing up. So, for us that was the vibrancy of you 24:00living your life. I remember as I got a little bit older in my teen years, one of our community leaders, Bono Wiener, who was very close to my parents, tried to express to me why you have to be passionate about Yiddish in life. And he said, "You have to be proud to live. You have to be proud to be Jewish. And you have to be proud of your politics. You have to be proud to say what you agree with and what you don't agree with." And Yiddish seemed to be that expressive azoy gayt es [so it goes], azoy tit men [that's how it's done]. And my father had one saying for me as a spiritual, philosophical saying. And he says, "M'darf zayn a mentsh [You have to be an upstanding person]." So, whenever we got onto politics and, you know, I was starting to get interested in left-wing politics because it was the Whitlam years. So, Whitlam was -- the Labor party had been in the wilderness for twenty-three years at that point. We were very conservative, 25:00followed the "Rule Britannia" in Australia. And here was this Labor party embracing multiculturalism. No one had ever heard the term "multiculturalism" in Australia. We knew what it was, because we were living that life. But, you know, Australia still had a very -- was very white Australia. I remember going to school, and I would take my lunch out of a paper bag, and there would be a very uneven rye-bread sandwich with yesterday's klops [meatloaf] or schnitzel in it. I'd look at these kids with plastic lunchboxes with white bread and peanut butter and maybe a slice of cheese on white bread. And I would hanker for that. Now I -- you know, white bread, why would you buy white bread? Well, my father used to say, "S'iz vatn. M'est nisht vatn. [It's cotton wool. We don't eat cotton wool.]" "Vatn" is "cotton wool." Right? He said, "Why would you want to eat cotton wool?" So, it sort of extended into, you know, we were ethnic kids, but you didn't feel that you were that different to Aussie kids, because the 26:00home life was so rich, and the schools we went to tended to have some immigrant kids in it. So, we hung around with the wogs. In Australia, we called Italian and Greek kids "wogs." But in an affectionate way. Probably offensive to -- when you think about it nowadays. But we didn't see it as offensive. It wasn't done as a racist thing, it was done as how we were identifying with the immigrant experience. So yeah, that was the sort of the environment I grew up in.

CW:So, what were the ethnic groups in the neighborhood?

YT:Growing up in the East St. Kilda/Ripponlea area, I mostly remember Jewish kids growing up. And again, in Melbourne, they were very much from the Poland experience. We moved out of here at one stage to Doncaster, which was like moving on the other side of town. My father wanted -- he had a dream he wanted to have his own house. And we couldn't afford to live here, and my mother didn't 27:00want an old house. She said, "I've got to live in a new house." So, we moved to Doncaster, where there was a new wave growing 'cause the blocks were big and it was sunny and it was open, and they were building a shul there. And my father, while he wasn't a shul-going Jew, felt that being near the shul, people will move there. It was a terrible mistake. My mother was depressed for a year, and we only lived there for just over a year when we sold it again and moved back to a smaller townhouse here. But there was the ambition to just grow a little bit economically and have a better life. But the kids there that I remember being at school with or in the neighborhood, there was a lot of Italian kids and Greek kids. I don't think I can remember much about an-- there wasn't a lot of Asian kids when I was growing up. We didn't really understand the cultures and flavors of other societies when we were growing up. I think Chinese and Italian food was 28:00about as continental as it got, beyond Jewish food. So, as a kid growing up in the '60s, there really wasn't a lot of that. It was only really in the '70s and '80s that Australians realized that there's a much broader world out there, and food and music and what have you started to influence Australia. But that was after we had a Labor government for a few years, and things changed dramatically post-the Vietnam era and what have you, and Australia was seen as far less of a colonial outpost, so you got to know cultures. But as a kid growing up, yeah, I think it was only when I was in high school that I really got an appreciation for Italians and Greek kids. Mostly it was Aussie kids. You know, I didn't experience as a kid growing up a lot of anti-Semitism, not in any overt way. And when I was at high school I did -- not, I don't think, any deep philosophical 29:00anti-Semitism, just labeling. But it was uncomfortable. It made you, as a kid, try to determine, What does that mean to me? You know, processing it as a kid you fear it, or it's bullying; it's whatever it was. It did affect me in one of my schools, so much so that I moved school. But, you know, I didn't live in mortal fear of it. I don't think it characterized the community that I was in. It was some kids being bullies, trying to identify differences and prey on those differences. I don't think there was any deep-seated dogma around the way people saw it. But it framed the way we brought up our kids and the things that we hold true to ourselves. So, there was a bit of that, but not a great deal. Australia offered some great opportunities for ethnic and migrant families at the time.

CW:I wonder if you could share a bit of what you know about the history of the David Herman Theatre?

YT:I know a reasonable amount of it because I've been involved over the years with it. I'm one of the graduates of the David Herman Theatre. Some of my contemporaries are not. Because I was first onstage at the David Herman Theatre at the age of ten or eleven. My father slotted me into some child roles onstage. And probably at age thirteen was my first role in the theater. So, the David Herman Theatre evolved pre-war. So, there was a Yiddish theater in Melbourne in the years from 1911 to 1940, but they were very small productions. There was 31:00traveling tour groups. It had its richest period after the war. But just prior to the war, there would be traveling troupes of Yiddish actors that would come to Australia and perform to very, very small audiences, because there wasn't a rich and deep Yiddish-speaking community here. And a period of traveling actors that came just before the war were Rokhl Holzer and Jacob Weislitz. And they were on tour from Poland. And Rokhl Holzer was really a starlet in Poland. My father would tell me many years later that, while I may not appreciate this, him directing her in plays during the '60s and '70s, that was a lifetime dream for him, that he -- 'cause this is an actress that he would see as a young man, as a 32:00teenager, in Poland -- in the cinema! And, you know, for him, it was like directing one of the big stars. I didn't appreciate that, obviously, 'cause this was a woman we would collect in our car and take her to rehearsals when my father would pick her up. And so, that was a very influential time for the theater. And so, they got stuck here, in 1939, and couldn't return to Poland. So, they became mainstays of the Yiddish theater. And so, when my father arrived in 1950, they had already created a vibrant Yiddish theater scene. And he slotted straight into that. And he and Yasha Sher, who was one of the premier actors, and he were the leaders of the Yiddish theater. And so, my father was one of the two leading actors and the director. My father was the director, the set builder, the sound technician: he lived for the theater. So, the David 33:00Herman Theatre certainly had its golden period from about 1948 through to the mid-'70s to early '80s. So, certainly the '60s and '70s was its golden period. You know, plays were performed throughout the year to packed houses, both in Carlton and Elsternwick. I would be an usher, in my early teens, ushering colorful Holocaust survivors to their seat. And, you know, I still remember the funny stories of people sitting in a seat and a young man saying to them, "Oh, excuse me, you can't sit here; this is somebody else's seat." In Yiddish, they would very quickly tell me that, you know, "Ikh zits du, zoln zey zitsn ergets andersh [I'm sitting here, they should sit somewhere else]." And I would say, "Es gayt nisht azoy in teater [That's not how it works in the theater]." And I would get lessons from all walks of life. People would call me over and say, "Ikh ken du nisht zitsn [I can't sit here]." And I'd say, "Far vos kenstu nistht 34:00zitsn do [Why can't you sit here]?" They would say, "S'iz do a pyane [There's a piano here]." We used to have a grand piano in the corner. And they'd call me over and say, "Ikh bin alerdzhik to pyanes [I'm allergic to pianos]." And as a fourteen-year-old processing (laughs) that sort of humor, I really did struggle. But it was just that intensity of, you know, this whimsy and the stage. It just sort of blurred in from one play to the other. And then, there was gleyzl teys with visiting actors. I met Shimon Dzigan on several occasions, and he was in our home. And, you know, it was -- he was a star. And he behaved like a star when he came to the home. He would travel with a -- you know, the "it" Israeli actress of the time. And she may have not spoken Yiddish, but she was good-looking. And he fancied himself as a bit of a sort of a Frank Sinatra, Rat Pack sort of guy during the '60s and '70s. And he'd be in our home, and my father would try to explain to me, "Do you know -- this is Dzigan. Right? This 35:00is Shimon Dzigan." Like, that I'm meant to be impressed by Shimon Dzigan. I get it now. But those were heady days. I would -- 'cause I was helping the theater in lights and what have you, you know, it'd be one o'clock at a restaurant, and people shouting drinks in Yiddish and laughter and storytelling fueled by a bit of brandy and whiskey and what -- that was a really golden period for Yiddish theater in Australia. When my father died in 1980, I guess something triggered in me that that's a flikht that I need to continue. And we had the youth theater, and -- I think one of the things as a Yiddish actor is you gotta play Tevye somewhere along the line. And for me, playing Tevye in 1983 was quite -- it was quite a sobering moment, because that was my father's role. He played 36:00Tevye der milkhiker [Tevye the dairyman] first. In the '50s, he played Tevye der milkhiker, which is not "Fiddler on the Roof."

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

YT:And then, they played a Yiddish version of "Fiddler on the Roof" in the '50s as well. So, that was a -- for me, a very much continuum, and I suppose my high point in the Yiddish theater was being able to play Tevye. And then, other things like Ahasuerus in the Megillah, and what have you. The David Herman Theatre continued for a few years after my father's passing. While that didn't kill the theater, it was representative that there weren't those zealots coming through the David Herman Theatre -- that it really existed to reach out to the Holocaust-surviving generation, but there needed to be a theater that was for the emerging generations here. And so, the David Herman Theatre started to ebb with sort of farcical plays that were written in Israel in the '70s. Now sort of variations on this theme about family life, and they really sort of started to 37:00ebb away in the mid-'80s. And when Yasha Sher passed away, it was really the death knell of the David Herman Theatre. So. Then, there was a youth theater. You could argue that why weren't we part of the David Herman Theatre, but we were a different generation; we had different needs to express ourselves, and we were very much a cohort that had also had the Bundist/SKIF experience. And so, theater was important to us because we said, We're secular Jews, and the theater's a very important part of expressing yourself. It shines a candle on the times. So, I was very involved with that. And then, there was a natural progression into the Kadimah. And the Kadimah was evolving out of what it was at that -- serving the post-Holocaust generation and then deciding what role does Yiddish and secularism play -- what veltlekhkayt [secularism] -- play in the community? Some of it morphed from the theater into the Kadimah for me, and the 38:00activities that go with that and the responsibilities to it, which I still hold today.

CW:You mentioned earlier some mentors who -- could you mention a couple of them by name?

YT:So, culturally, and in terms of my Yiddish -- well, I mentioned to you earlier I wasn't a great student at Sholem Aleichem College. But I read well, and I articulated in Yiddish very well. So, my diction, my -- getting my tongue around Yiddish, came very naturally to me. So, you know, when I think about speaking Yiddish now as an adult, I'm highly cognizant of the words I use, so it doesn't come flisik [fluently] to me. As a child, I could speak Yiddish very well. And so, when I read, they saw in me probably a talent for articulation and, you know, being able to give the poets and the writers a young voice was important. Again, I didn't value it at the time, 'cause I felt that it was an 39:00obligation more than a want. But in my education, there was a -- one of the teachers at the school was Dotke Polovitsh. And Dotke was a very, very intense teacher and very deeply given to Yiddish and Yiddish kultur [culture]. And anything around the khurbm [Holocaust]. So, my father, while he mentored me on a couple of poems and things I did, because I was his son and he had to be my father, it didn't lend itself very well for him to mentor me around my Yiddish. That was a consequence of being his son. So, it was left to other people. So, Dotke spent a lot of time with me. I spent a lot of time in her living room learning my pieces for geto akademyes [gatherings commemorating the Holocaust and ghetto uprisings] and Yom Ha'atzmauts and other cultural evenings and readings. It's just a blurred line of how many we did. And I can still remember 40:00standing onstage in places like Melbourne Town Hall and large venues. We used to perform in very large venues 'cause of the size of the population that wanted to see these things, it was much more than the Kadimah. And I would occasionally look down at Dotke, and she'd be sitting there with her head down. And as I'm repeating my lines she would just have her head down, and you'd see she was moving with every line that I took. She was living that moment. So, it was very powerful, because I knew that she's there, guiding me around the poems or the readings that I was doing. So, she was very much a mentor around my Yiddish and understanding of the -- both the color of Yiddish and its culture and the pain in it, because I did so much that was geto akademye-related or memorial evenings. I also spoke at landsmanshaft [association of immigrants originally from the same region] evenings, so my mother's landsmanshaft evenings. So, there 41:00was a lot of intensity around that. So, Dotke was one of my mentors in that area.

CW:And was she an actor as well?

YT:She wasn't an actor. She was a teacher. So, she was very involved in Yiddish schools. She was a woman who was also damaged by the war. She had a tough life and the experience of the war affected her deeply. So yes, she was very -- very much guided me around that. The other people that guided me were people like Bunem Wiener, who I mentioned earlier, who was the president of the Bund. We just felt like we were so intrinsically involved with what SKIF and the Bund meant, it was in your DNA. So, I had mentors at SKIF who were also larger than life -- mentors, people that inspired me, people like Arnold Zable, who has a large voice in Australia, both as an author and part of the Yiddish community, who's also chronicled my experience through David Herman -- so the David Herman 42:00Theatre and the Kadimah. These were our leaders at SKIF, our helfer [counselors] at SKIF, and they were larger than life. It was the '60s, and, you know, we looked up to these guys because they had a voice, and they gave you -- thinking about you as a Jew, about the Yiddish experience, the Jewish experience, the world experience. So, these people were mentors. I was very close to the late Charles Slucki -- "Sluggo." Sluggo, while he was older than me, we loved the theater together. We loved the camaraderie of the theater. We would sit backstage -- and I was fortunate that his last production that I was in, that production, we did "My Name is Asher Lev." I didn't want to do it. Sluggo sat in this house here and said, "Don't worry, we'll do it." I said, "No, I'm too busy with work; it's a huge part; I'll never learn it." And he just had a quiet way 43:00that you do theater, 'cause theater is important. Theater is what you are. And he would sit in this room here, and he would be out in the deck in the sunshine, going, "You'll do this." I said, "I don't want to do it." He said, "You'll do it." And I loved the experience of being with these guys who were older than me but inspired me around the flikht of Yiddish theater and Yiddish expression and -- we threw some Yiddish into "Asher Lev" because we felt it was right. You know, we found the veltlekh [secular], just to give it a bit of nuance. While I found it incredibly difficult, 'cause it's a massive part, I'm so glad I did it for a whole raft of reasons at the time, and certainly now, with Sluggo passing away a few months later. It was a very deeply intense period. So, he was very much a mentor to me. Mentor in a more contemporary sense. And I mentioned the Bund. There was people in the Bund that I would spend time with as a young man, 44:00where it just felt natural to talk about political things. The you in Israel, you in religion. What is the modern Jew? And these are things that we did as we were growing older, before we started worrying about mortgages and kids and schools and careers. That was a very intense period sort of from -- and especially after my father died, because there were certain men in my life who felt that they needed to have that role with me, because I had a mother that was incredibly affected by the passing of my father. And so, I was surrounded by people that cared about who you are, where you are -- to prop you up but also to give you faith about, you know, this is what your father led you to. What's the expectation around Yiddishkayt, being a mensch? Being a mensch is a massive 45:00narrative that I even pass on to my children, is that you don't -- you know, I can give you money, but there's something much bigger in life, is be a mensch. Do the right thing. So, we talk about moral compasses, and now we've sort of broadened the meaning of being a mensch. But my father used to just -- that was his mantra. "Za a mentsh [Be an upstanding person]." What would a mensch do? And so that's -- yeah. So yeah, those were the sorts of mentors that we had. The Bund was very influential in my life growing up.

CW:I want to talk about the Bund a little bit, but first, can you just describe what your father looked like?

YT:He looked a lot like me. He did like the icons of the cinema and the theater, so he Brylcreemed his hair back. And in photos, he did like the Clark Gable look, that sort of intense look of a handsome actor. He put on a terrible amount of weight when he was in his forties, and he had angina at fifty, so he had to 46:00lose a lot of weight. He was a -- he was a fairly intense-looking guy, and he used to inspire fear in the theater. I remember he used to -- he had a temper. I felt the wrath of his temper occasionally with a couple of marks on my bottom when I was a kid. And he was frustrated. His career frustrated him. His obligation to the theater and community and those around him frustrated him. So, he looked quite intense. But he was a -- I'd suggest he was a handsome man. Probably he liked the relationships with the female actresses. I think it was all those things in the '60s -- you know, attractive actresses, the makeup, the lights. It was interesting watching your father's persona onstage and not having quite that access to him at home. I don't feel I was deprived, but I certainly 47:00can't recall a lot of time spent with my father, even at dinnertimes and what have you. Because he would come home from work and run off to the theater. So yeah, to say how did he look, yeah, he looked a bit like me. But he was more conscious of his community role as an actor, I would suggest.

CW:What was he like onstage?

YT:He was a powerful presence onstage. He was the number two. He didn't get quite the accolades of Yasha Sher, I don't think, at the time, but he was a more intense -- he would play more intense roles. The more troubled, intense roles of -- my recollection of the plays that he did. Mind you, he did a lot of plays in the '50s and early '60s that I wouldn't remember. But I think it was in his later years, he was more the patriarchal roles. But in the '50s, they did a lot 48:00of translated plays. So, he was Biff in "Death of a Salesman," because Weislitz was Willy Loman. 'Cause there were still the older ones that were alive. So, his persona onstage, he had a very strong persona. But I remember him on too many levels. 'Cause he was also -- from my earliest memories, was one of the directors in the stage. So, he was very -- his temper played out in a lot of the way he would direct and just make things happen behind stage. I remember one time we were at the Melbourne Town Hall, which is this big theater, and the cast were mucking up and having a good time, and he just yelled at this cast. And it blew me away, 'cause I heard his voice bouncing off every corner of the theater, just like, Wow, you know, just -- pretty significant at the time when you remember it now. So yeah, he was very large in that space. And he wasn't large 49:00in his career, but he was large in that space. That was his turf. So yeah, I think he was quite enigmatic in that way. But others saw him as an adult, but I saw him as his son. So, it was a slightly different perspective one has of a father and (UNCLEAR).

CW:And what was he like as a father?

YT:I don't get asked that question much. He was -- he was -- he was intense. You know, he had good humor; he had whimsy; but he wasn't a doting father. He was not a father that would get micro on how I was going with my high school studies. We weren't a family that my father would come to the parent-teacher 50:00nights and -- I think he came along on some school plays. As a teenager, I wasn't really into many team sports or anything like that. I played a bit of tennis. I think my father would have -- you know, in the twenty years that we were together, came to see one sporting event that I was in, which was a SKIF football match. And it was not for him. You know, we would go -- he liked his picnics. He liked his going to the berg [mountains]. "M'darf geyn tsu di berg. Frishe luft. [We have to go to the mountains. Fresh air.]" It's taking in the waters. I remember my father did cabaret in -- a little bit like the Catskill experience, we had here for probably ten years or so. So, Daylesford, where the waters are, is where he would go. And I remember he was a bit of a star, because like the "Dirty Dancing" theme, we had to go to these meals, and then there 51:00would be performers. And then, some of the kids would perform. I was too young at the time. And my father was all about doing his little skits and getting families to do some -- so it was always about performing. In terms of was he a great father, I didn't have any other yardstick to judge him by. He was kind to his family. He worked -- he worked hard. I mean, (sighs) he was -- he had bouts of being tired when I would see him. So, I remember my father would -- it was called dreml [nap]. He would dreml a lot. So, if he was home, he would be asleep. Because, you know, he was working late in the theater and going to work in a job that wasn't paying him brilliantly. We didn't have a lot of money. I remember when my mother and I went to New York and Israel in the '70s, in the early '70s. That was a really big thing for us. It was expensive to travel. We 52:00didn't have a lot of money. I think my parents tried to imbue in me that how lucky I was that we're going to New York and Israel and Hong Kong, 'cause you used to stop off in Hong Kong in those days. That was really big. And I think that was always the struggle for the dollar was a challenge for him. But as a parent, you know, there was lots of life, and we got exposed to a very rich, intense, Yiddish upbringing. And that was -- you know, I would go with my father to the theater. He would parent me through association with what he did. But my parents were not ones to sit down and talk about planning with their children. Those sorts of things weren't the sort of lifestyle that we had. So, yeah -- you know, I loved him. And he loved us. I remember just on the cusp of becoming an adult, he once called me a communist (laughs) because I'd come back from uni, 53:00and I had some ideals and things. And he says -- "Zolst nisht vern ka' komunist [You better not become a communist]," he would say to me at the dinner table, because I would be starting to question things, as one does. And I think that was about as troubled as I was as a teenager. We didn't have a lot of fights and things. I wasn't rebellious, and I got what he did. So, we were pretty close in that way. We didn't fight a lot. I can't recall fighting much with my father.

CW:So, I want to talk about SKIF and the Bund a little bit, in your growing up. First, can you just describe what the Bund is?

YT:So, the Bund was a political movement. It arose out of the conditions for Jewish workers in Poland and just general conditions for Jews. It was 1897, in a 54:00little shtetl in Vilna is where the Bund started. It had heroic leaders at the time, thought leaders, that inspired a generation -- a couple of generations -- of Jews to see an enlightenment, that we weren't just kheyder-based shtetl Jews, that there was an enlightenment around culture and thought and a doctrine of socialism, that you see a better world through a social justice system and politics that values the individual and community and what have you. So, the Bund was very intense in Poland.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

YT:So, the Bund was incredibly instrumental in the enlightened period, certainly in the major towns in Poland, like Łódź -and Warsaw. And my father was involved in it as a young man. And they were very active around Yiddish life, 55:00cultural life -- and political life. So, they were a political party. They won the majority of seats in the elections in Warsaw in 1939. So, they were an absolute presence. And you also had the intensity of the Zionist movements at the time. So, there was a lot of highbrow discussions about what is a Jew, and where will the answers come, and the burgeoning Zionist movement that, you know, next year in Jerusalem, and that we need a homeland, and the Bunds saying, No, we need to have an enlightened Europe. The Jew needs to feel free in Europe. And then, of course, the perfect storm of Nazism and what have you completely changed that dynamic, and the Holocaust had such a profound influence. So, after the war, the Bund was as much a pragmatic organization as it was a philosophical, political movement. You know, it did what it had to do. As with 56:00the Zionist movements, like Hashomer Hatzair, you know? They were working hard to get people to Palestine, all right? And the Bund was trying to pull together the communities from these disparate DP camps, and work with the American government, the local governments and councils. So, they were a machine. They were able to galvanize and mobilize forces to get this fractured community and give them hope and celebration about what they're going to do next in their lives. So, it was a very intense period. And while my father was more the actor than the ideologue, it didn't -- it gave him his framework, but it wasn't his life's passion. So, the Bund was not his vehicle. The theater was his vehicle. He saw the theater as a vehicle. So, the Bund for me growing up, I got exposed to both. And as a young kid growing up at SKIF -- but first and foremost things 57:00that these were my friends. This was my cohort. So, I often say to my kids -- and I try to explain that we didn't always live quite as well as we do now. And when I was growing up, we lived in a very humble home. Very small. I shared a room with my sister. But my friends all lived in apartments. We drove similar cars. The family had similar interests. It was only in the late '60s that you started seeing families that were starting to enjoy the economic benefits of their careers and the businesses and the investments that they made, and people started moving into bigger houses, and you started saying, Oh, wow, they must be rich and what have you. But the SKIF kept us grounded. We were able to see the world as much bigger than what we saw because it exposed you to things. Here I am as a eight- or nine-year-old, learning about famine in Biafra, learning about the plight of the Vietnamese, trying to discern what's going on between North 58:00and South Vietnam as an eight-year-old. And those were things that the Bund brought into your life, that it gave you a veltlekh perspective. And so, the Bund as I was growing up was very much about -- you know, I talked about be a mensch at home. It gave it political perspective. It talked about cultural autonomy, that being a Yiddish veltlekh Jew was the way that you lead societies forward, that you don't run to Zionism -- so as I grew up as a kid, we got a lot of -- the broader Jewish community in Melbourne adopted Zionism and its love for Israel and -- you know, I would go to Yiddish school, and we would still get the little kibbutz hats and celebrate what's happening in Israel. Being seven-year-old and Israel being heroic after the Six-Day War was a profound sort of dichotomy between what we were talking about in the Bund, because the Bund 59:00didn't celebrate Israel, 'cause it was still trying to celebrate the Jew, to promote the Jew, to promote the veltlekh Jew. And then, you had Zionism, that was influencing another part of the community, other kids that had this real intense celebration about Israeli life and were -- and Hebrew was being sung in songs and what have you. But for the Bund -- and we knew it at the time, that the Bund was relevant to us, that SKIF was relevant to us. And it gave us something to be proud of where we are, whereas while there was a strong Israel narrative in our community here -- very strong -- and you were guilted into that you had to celebrate Israel, there wasn't an answer to, Is the Israeli experience going to be the Diaspora experience? And as I got older into my teens, more and more I realized that that's gonna be a struggle for the Ashkenazi Jew, which we were here. We didn't know Sephardic Jews in the '60s and 60:00'70s. We were all Ashkenazi Jews. If we didn't speak Yiddish, we certainly had grandparents and family that were of that experience. There was only a very small part of the community by the '60s that weren't the Polish, Yiddish-speaking community. So, the Bund was very active. The Bund got under people's noses. We have a Jewish board of deputies. It's now called the JCCV, Jewish Community Council of Victoria. But the Bund is very active on that. And the Bund was also very active that you have to support like organizations. So, the Bund would have its representatives on the Yiddish school board, the Jewish community services' board -- which was called Jewish Welfare and Relief Society, for which I worked, my first job out of university -- the Kadimah. And so, it 61:00was very important that you're a delegate, because you would influence the thinking behind these organizations. For years, the Yiddish school was accused of being a Bundist school. And that was seen as some sort of negative thing, because Bundism was anti-- was considered to be anti-Zionism. And so, it was accused for many years of being a Bundist school, as if that's a terrible thing. I think with maturity, people say that it's not necessarily a terrible thing, but there was a fear by certain families that if you sent your child to Yiddish school that they would be indoctrinated with anti-Israel ideology. Which -- there certainly was an anti-Israel narrative, not because anyone had anything against Israel -- and there were those that felt that the Israel narrative was going to usurp the Diaspora and that there would be a tailing off or a falling away of the virtues and philosophies of Bundism about veltlekhkayt, about social 62:00justice -- about socialism, political socialism, the doctrine of socialism. Which was a real turn-off for people in the '60s and '70s because of the experience of Russian communism and Chinese communism. Vietnam, the domino theory, the issues of the United States struggling with the emerging Asia. Funny, it's still pretty prevalent nowadays. But, you know, Bundism was all about that, wrapping in what do we understand of commu-- where does the communist line sit? What were the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, and what was the Bundist experience around that, and what did anti-Semitism do that came over the top of ideology? So, there's all of those things in all; the Bund was that pool of thinking around, Who am I? What do I want to be? And what do I want to give back? So, giving back was a big part of it to the younger generation. So, for me SKIF and Bund were the arms of the same organization; that was intrinsic 63:00for us. So, being at SKIF and talking to kids about things that are going on in the world and giving them perspective, that was the driver. I got perspective; I felt it was an obligation to give perspective to younger generations so that they'd face the world with a confidence, an understanding, and a respect, 'cause you have to respect the things -- where you came from. So -- and again, that was that Yiddish narrative, that it's a veltlekh [worldly] environment. So, you know, I've been to Israel now -- I went to Israel as a thirteen-year-old, and it was a very surreal experience being there, and as a thirteen-year-old, there's a lot to process. And I've been back now five times. I've been with March of the Living. March of the Living was a very impacting influence on me, because -- I'm drifting off of that question, if that's okay.

CW:That's okay.

YT:I joined March of the Living for the first time in 2009 and went back to Poland. I knew it would be a massive struggle for my mother because my parents 64:00both said they would never go back to the killing fields. They would never go back to Poland. Even though others had, my mother was very angry about Poland. My father hated the Poles. But when I went back in 2009, my mother had mellowed to the extent -- she was still quite with it in 2009 -- she -- I've been back -- I've been twice. She felt that with the rising of deniers, that it is okay to go back because you need to educate the Poles, you need to educate the world, that we'll go back and we'll let people know what a Jew is, and the truth -- the search for the truth, rather than alternate facts. You know, going back to Polish soil, standing there in the area where my father lived -- 'cause he lived in Miła 24, which doesn't exist in the current framework (UNCLEAR) Miła 18. I 65:00couldn't identify a lot for my father, because Warsaw's not the Warsaw it was. But being at Auschwitz-Birkenau is a very sobering experience. Being in the hut that was my mother's hut, both in the Auschwitz one in the prison area, and then Birkenau, it's still standing, 'cause the women's huts are standing; the men's, not so much. So, those are very sobering things. And it formed the loop in my life. And I found the second time I went to Auschwitz-Birkenau, I was much better off because I was able to -- I was the rosh [Hebrew: head] of the group at the time, at the second time. The first time I went as a logistics parent, so I was following what was going on. But it completely distorted it for me, 'cause we went on March of the Living, which was like a jamboree, and it was like a carnival, and it was -- it was sunny. It was twenty-four degrees, and the sun was shining. The kids are running around hugging each other, and -- from the different countries, and meeting each other, and it was like, Whoa. This is not the leaden skies that I had thought of. So, the journey of going to Poland and 66:00then going to Israel as an adult has broadened my thinking as a Jew. But it still goes back to that Bundist experience of trying to look at it and saying, Well, what is the Diaspora life? You know, we've got an affluent -- in terms of affluence now, I pinch myself sometimes that I can travel and that we live well and that the careers have allowed us to live a good life -- and the life that our parents wanted us to live. No doubt about that, from a -- economic point of view. But the Bund is a narrative. It's a soundtrack in my brain that says that as a Jew, have I contributed? Have I helped add to the community we're in? And what are the challenges going forward in that? What will it be for my children? And so, our -- for home, while we exposed our kids to Yiddish, we also gave them 67:00the option and a choice of a religious bat mitzvah, both my daughters. And while I stood in shul, I felt it as an obligation to give them exposure, because what drove me as a Yiddish-speaking Jew in an intense Yiddish-speaking environment is not necessarily the narrative for my children. So -- and I remember this back to the time when I got married. So, we had a rabbi here in Australia, Rabbi Chaim Gutnick, who was the rabbi that everybody loved. He was a unifying experience. While he was a Lubavitch rebbe, he spoke to many different communities. And so, as a Bundist -- I got married eight years after my father passed away -- no, sorry, what am I talking about? Eighteen years after my father passed away. Sorry. And I went to see the rabbi in -- no. I will start again. I get -- mixed up the years -- see? Now I'm getting senile. I got married eight years after my father passed away, 1988. I went to see the rabbi, 'cause I was getting married 68:00in a shul. And I said to the rabbi, "I'd like to have an (UNCLEAR)." And the rabbi knew my father, 'cause my father was in the community. And he looked at me, and he said, "I'm honored, but I also have to say, Why? I wouldn't have thought you." And I said, "I know who I am, and I know where I've come from. And I respect who my father was. But my father would have also understood that you celebrate what being Jewish is about. For me, I can't say that all of a sudden I will be a God-fearing Jew, if I read from the Torah and if I pray to a God that I don't believe in. But I feel it's a journey that I need to go on so that if my children have a more spiritual side that needs fulfillment --" -- and I'm twenty-eight. I think I was still wet behind the ears when I was having this conversation with the rabbi, sitting in the rabbi's home. It was a deeply 69:00intense experience just making the decision. The shul thing was more of a process for me, I must say. Making the decision, sitting there as being this rabid -- I wasn't an anti-Zionist by any stretch of the imagination, but Zionism meant nothing to me at the time. It was about my relationship as a Jew to the history that I had and what I wanted to become. And sitting in the rabbi's home, it was quite a surreal experience for me. And I made the decision on my own -- no one influenced me; no one told me to do it. My fiancée at the time, my wife, didn't suggest that that had to be something I had to do. I did it one morning, and I said, "Yeah, I think it's the right thing to do." And it's -- there are bundistn [Bundists] -- because of the -- and we have this discussion. I've been asked by some bundistn why I wear a yarmulke at functions that aren't necessarily particularly religious funct-- like weddings. I said, "There's a rabbi in the house. If it's important to him, then I'll wear it out of respect." Because, again, part of being a mensch -- my father said, "Hob a bisl d'h-erets 70:00[Have a little respect]," all right? "Have a bit of respect for the elderly and those that might be a bit smarter than you, all right? All right?" And I think he used to say in Yiddish, "Host nokh nisht alts ongebisn." All right? "You haven't tried everything; you haven't eaten all the knowledge." I think that was the best translation of it. And I said the same to my kids. "You haven't swallowed all the knowledge. So, just maybe listen to people and reflect. All right? Make your own decision, but listen and reflect." So, that way Bundism filters in. Because you look at the world, and you look at it from the eyes of, What does my innate thinking tell me is right and wrong in these things? And so, as a Jew you then marry your politics in with the type of Jew you want to be. So, that's why -- my family life didn't lead me to shul, but the effect of losing my father and this rapidly changing community we were in -- and my friends who were Zionists, who had came back from Israel -- I remember a good 71:00friend of mine came to my home -- he unfortunately died of stomach cancer. And he was larger than life in Hashomer. I really liked him. We would have banter. And we'd challenge each other. Just one of life's moments. We didn't see each other very often. But he came to my home after he came back from having made aliyah and came back with his family. He looked across at me; he goes -- I'm gonna say this once, but he says, "Potentially you guys were right." Because, he says, "I now have to form a secular Jewish lifestyle," because Hashomer was also quite secular and quite left -- in some ways more left than Bundists, because they're able to play that out in kibbutzim in Israel. We didn't get that opportunity. You know? There was always a running gag: They're going to make aliyah to kibbutzim in Israel. What are we gonna do: go move to New York? So, we didn't have that moment in our life where we physically transplanted ourselves out of our community to another community. So, there was always a lot of that 72:00discussion. So, when I got married, that informing our own family life, we made a decision that we'd send our kids to Yiddish school. Sharon, my wife's, also -- I met her at SKIF, so she shares those values. She's probably moved more to the left than I have over the years. But, while she came from a home where her grandparents spoke Yiddish, her parents had lived in Poland after the war, and so she didn't hear Yiddish at home. She heard it from her grandparents, but she wasn't taught to speak Yiddish. And they were a generation that says, Gotta get to the Mount Scopus -- which was the biggest Jewish day school -- and learn Hebrew. So, they were of a more modern family that said, The future is Hebrew, not Yiddish. But we felt as a family that we liked the values of Sholem Aleichem College, and our kids will learn Yiddish and Hebrew, and then they'll make their own mind up going forward. But we haven't been zealous in this family for them to speak Yiddish. They understand it. My older daughter's picked up the acting 73:00gene, so she's been a reciter and an actress, and she's done Yiddish in shows and songs and what have you. My younger one, not so much. But that's more about the acting gene, I think. So, yeah. That's our family life.

CW:And what role does Yiddish play in your life now?

YT:It's still a large vehicle in how I express myself as a Jew and what I give back to the community and what I need for my own spiritual expression. I have, as I get older, a greater degree of cynicism about what will sustain the Diaspora -- affected by my experiences in Israel and -- I love Israel as a country, as a place of intense vibrancy. I love walking the streets of Israel. 74:00But I don't identify with it. I can't -- I don't feel I've got a lot of camaraderie or shared life experience with the Israeli. I like Jerusalem from a historical perspective. It's about broadening my understanding of the Jewish journey. But again, I don't identify with the -- certainly don't identify with the current Haredi and the issues they're having in Israel. I have political frustrations with the contemporary Israel politics and, you know, I'm as frustrated as probably many Jews are with the challenge of security versus the settlements and what that means, and what is it -- is it occupation; is it something else; is it -- I struggle with all of that. So, for me, Yiddish in -- (sighs) in our lives here is still about the obligation to contributing to the 75:00community. It's what we understand. It's the vehicle to do it. We're not gonna sign up to be members of any shul and identify that way. So, there's still an element of the Yiddish life. It's why I remain on the Kadimah committee, because keeping that as a strong organization, it has a relevance -- it has a relevance as an environment of thought, an environment where culture can still grow and emanate -- not emanate -- just sort of -- sorry, radiate. There's challenges because we're now given to other responsibilities around career and family, so you've got the challenges of balancing that. But Yiddish is still important to me in those elements. It still allows me to understand who I am, where I came from, and where I still see myself going. It imbues us with a sense of tradition in our homes -- so as an example, our seders during Pesach are very much a 76:00hybrid arrangement, where we embrace broader members of our family by a bit of Hebrew, but there's a strong narrative of Yiddish. We light candles on Friday, at Shabbat, and we say a little blessing in Yiddish, because that's who we are, and we want our kids to value that. Will they be Yiddish-speakers to their family? Most likely not. But maybe they'll reflect on their parents' experience, and we give something of that. I think there's major challenges in being a Jewish family going forward and holding something pure. Maybe it can't be pure. Maybe it's a hybrid of many things. But, you know, it is what makes you. You know, as I get older, I look at families where the kids are marrying out, and there's a -- one of the fears of any Jewish community is assimilation, and what does that mean, and do you know, I struggle with Christmas trees in Jewish 77:00homes, because that's a value that I struggle with, you know. I would hate to see one in my kids' homes. It's just -- we suffered too much. It would make my father turn in his grave. So, there are bits and elements that we see creeping into modern American life. I have family in America where being Jewish doesn't mean -- is a completely different meaning to them than it is here. So, the Bund, the Kadimah, that intensity -- while it's not as intense in my life as it was then, is still a philosophical and cultural driver for us.

CW:And what do you see the role of these, the Bund and school and Kadimah, in the community now, here, in Melbourne?

YT:I think it's critical. I think you need passionate, alternative cultural and political views, and not be scared of them, and not fall under a better 78:00narrative that the major Jewish organizations will have in Australia. The shuls are strong because they drive a commitment around membership and devotion to the process. But that's a narrative that works for those that are believers and find that intense experience is important for them.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

YT:So, can you repeat the question?

CW:The role of the Yiddish organizations in Melbourne today.

YT:Absolutely critical. Even if the voice is diminished from where it was twenty years ago, thirty years ago, it's still incredibly important. I don't go to Bundist functions as often as I did because I'm not as involved as I was. I'm more generalist in my involvement. But it's still incredibly important we have that voice. You know, a Jew should look at the world around them and relate 79:00their history, I think. You shouldn't be dominated by the Israel narrative that -- and, you know, don't get me wrong; I'm not anti-Israel. I think that Israel has played an incredible role in just the way a modern Jew perceives themselves: the confidence they take from it, the security they take from it, the passion that they take from it cannot be denied in modern Jewish life. But it's not for everyone. I see in a lot of people an indifference about Israel, because it's a political environment, social environment, that they don't see themselves part of. One thing visiting in it, liking it, wanting its survival. It's a different thing saying, "This frames who I am." So, the voice that SKIF gives its members, the voice that the Kadimah gives its members -- and just being heard -- is an important -- you know, let's question who we are. Let's decide what being Jewish is. You know, I hear people saying that religion doesn't mean anything to them 80:00anymore, that being Jewish -- I have these conversations with my contemporaries about their kids and, you know, does marrying out bother you? And they go, No, not anymore. You know, it's modern life. It's up to them what they -- and to a large degree, that is. You know, I can't dictate to my daughters what I (UNCLEAR) -- I tell them what I would like. I tell them in our discussion with them, "Please don't get tattoos, please don't do dope, and try and stay Jewish." So, I make it very simple. You know, we give them very simple principles to go by. They'll do what they want to do. I take pride in my family's achievements, but I also have to remember, it's not just us as a family. We don't just live our life for our own fulfillment; we are part of something bigger. So, for me, for us, for what we celebrate, we think the voice is important. I'm not a 81:00firebrand. I don't stand up on a pulpit or on a box, a soapbox, and espouse things. I think the way you handle yourself, the conversations you have -- I mean, I meet with guys that are my old Hashomer friends, and we still talk about politics and the politics of Israel and what worries us and what -- you know, Netanyahu is a conversation piece. And, you know, is it all the way with Netanyahu, or do we take pride in saying, Well, hey, whoa, you know -- and I like that, I like that, to be able to do that, if we flick articles around. I'm not a big poster on Facebook. Occasionally I read something, I'll post it, because I think it's something that should stimulate discussion. So, there is -- you know, very modern world, there's so much thought, so many ideas, so many short -- Twitter, obviously -- things that either inspire, ignore -- you're 82:00challenged in so many different ways. So, I think for someone who's heading towards their sixties, you just go, Oh my God, where do you draw a perspective? There's so much coming at you. I say to my kids, "Try and pick up a newspaper every now and then and read a longer article, all right? Don't just read the snippet in Instagram or (UNCLEAR). There's a bit more to that." But that's me being a dad. I think those dad things that one does. So, yeah, I think incredibly important and absolutely wedded to it.

CW:Well, is there any other stories or things you want to add about your parents or your family, your life, involvement with Yiddish?

YT:There's probably lots of stories. My mother's story of being a Jew and surviving as a Jew is an interesting one because she's had to live more of her life without her husband and be a matriarch of the family. So, she's written a 83:00lot of stories about growing up in Poland and being -- and trying to now find her celebration as a Pole, as well, because she loved Poland growing up. And she couldn't forgive herself for celebrating it for a while, but as she got older -- and unfortunately, she's recently infirm now, so we've lost the ability to communicate some of that. But there is one funny story with my mother. So, my mother was fortunate that she had a cohort that was incredibly intense. I remember when my father passed away we were a family with not many means. And I was twenty. I didn't know anything about checkbooks and mortgages and any of that sort of stuff. Twenty, my dad did all of that stuff. I got a -- we made a mortgage payment. To this day, I don't even know how we thought we would manage. My mother wasn't working. I was a student. I left that year to work a little bit 84:00to have a bit of money. My father -- in those days there was no life insurance policy; there was no superannuation. So, when he passed away, there was nothing in the bank. Had a small mortgage on the townhouse we lived in. In relative terms, we saw it as quite large, but in -- it was a small mortgage. We got a letter from the bank saying, "Your title is being returned to you, and thank you for your final payment." And I sat there, and I said, "Hang on. I just made a payment of two hundred-odd dollars; that can't be the final payment." And I rang the bank manager at that time, and he said, "Yes, your mortgage has been paid out. Some very nice friends, obviously, of your mother came in one day and said, Could they pay out the mortgage, and we said sure. You can pay money in; you can't take it out. And they accepted the payment." It was the first time I broke down after my father had passed away. It was just a few months after his passing. And I drove to friends of ours -- you've interviewed him, Abram Goldberg. And they had a coffee lounge at that time in the city, and I sat down. 85:00It was the first time I really -- I just wanted to thank him. And he said, "Done. Move on." In Yiddish, "Shoyn. Gemakht," he said. "Gemakht." And it blew me away. It's still one of the most -- incredible moments of my life, that my parents' friends recognized that we were a family in need. I don't to this day know how many of their friends made the contribution, but it was done. And for my mother, it was a profound moment. And she owned the roof over her head, which anyone will tell you, that's a massive feeling of security. But, you know, when I look back at our wedding videos, even at the bat mitzvah videos, we see how many of my mother's cohort is gone, to the point where there's now just a handful of them. But they meet, as much as they can, every Saturday morning for 86:00breakfast. It's getting harder for my mother. She had a fall recently, so she isn't going as much. But the funny part is -- there's a very famous Monty Python sketch called the "Four Yorkshiremen," where they all sit around talking about how difficult their life was, until it gets to ridiculous proportions. And it's like this when they sit talking about the khurbm. And it always -- it quite often turns to their experience. I mean, no one will never know how intense that is, if they didn't live it. And one of them will start talking about their experience. And they all fidget in their chair because they've heard the story a thousand times. But they're hearing it for the thousandth and first time. And it's like, (in Yiddish accent) "Ach, you didn't suffer! I suffered!" Right? And there's this -- it's called a pissing contest of who suffered more. And there's a humorous aspect to it because it's the same face, it's the same "Ach," right? And that's the Yiddish experience right there, right? "You call that suffering? 87:00This is suffering," right? And that plays out even now, so many years after, with their families -- and so, it's the ability to know when you're performing, the ability to laugh in the face of adversity. And I think that's the loop also for me, when I used to be inspired by people in the Bund, is that -- be proud of being a Jew, right? And the old saying, "They tried to kill us -- let's eat." Right? And it's that laughter through the tears, I think that's very much Yiddish culture. Because it was the ghetto experience; it was the wartime experience; it was the experience of rebuilding your life. Laughter through the tears. And I suppose that's really -- there's lots of anecdotes that go with that. And, yeah, I'm glad I had that intense experience growing up. You know, the future's the future. There's a lot of things that we hold dear that even 88:00today, as we look around the political world, is changing so fast. That's why you need to step back and say, "What do I laugh at here and what do I cry at here," you know? And that really was our history.

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

YT:A hartsikn dank tsu dir [Thank you very much to you].

CW:Thanks so much for sharing these great stories and reflections with us.

YT:Thank you.

CW:Great.

[END OF INTERVIEW]