LILLY GAEV ORAL HISTORY

CAROLE RENARD: This is Carole Renard, and today is Friday, April 14th, 2017.  I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, with Lilly Gaev, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project.  Lilly, do I have your permission to record this interview?

LILLY GAEV:Yes, with pleasure.

CR:  Thank you.  So, I'd like to begin by talking about your family background a little bit.  Do you have a sense of what life was like before the war, going back to your grandparents or earlier?

LG:  I do.  Sometimes it seems that we have a short history, because everything was obliterated -- haven't been back to Warsaw -- some of my cousins 1:00have -- and I've thought about going to look for the streets.  So it's more abstract to think about past generations before my grandparents, except for hearing little stories about Bobe Mindl [Grandmother Mindl], and, you know, a particular great-aunt or grandfather, but I have a very clear sense of my grandparents' generation -- my parents growing up in very colorful and distinctively characteristic households, different from each other.  My mother was from an Orthodox family, really frum, mit d'peyes [observant, with the 2:00sidelocks], and I brought a picture of all of the brothers, my mother's father and his brothers, with the long beards, and -- they were scary-looking to me, when I was little, the pictures of them.  But then I grew up listening to the stories of my mother and my two aunts, and just how beloved those scary (laughs) fathers were, because I also have cousins who were the surviving children of some of the other brothers.  And they look like their grandfathers, you know, the grandchildren.  And then, of course, the parents would talk about whether this grandchild or that grandchild was so much like this grandfather or that 3:00grandmother.  And the sense of connection -- it was very self-realizing, I mean, not always maybe to the merit of the kids -- you say, "Ugh, you're just like Chelah."  "Ugh, you're just like Motl."  And, well, do you carry on that legacy, sort of, unconsciously, realizing not always the best qualities.  Then there's genetics, too, so a lot of that may have more verity than I gave it credit for.  But the most distinctive thing -- and I was just reading it last night, 'cause I was reading some writing of one of my aunts -- was how all three sisters talked about how they revered their father.  And when I was growing up, 4:00I really challenged, like, "Oh, come on," you know.  He never raised his voice.  When he came into the room, shah, still.  We had so much respect for him.  We kissed his hands.  We washed his feet.  And all he needed to do was give a look -- the look -- and we were quiet.  And I thought about my own rather raucous family, 'cause my father was expressive, to say the least, and I thought, Wow.  That's a powerful kind of loving connection.  There is a way to have a powerful, stern, yet loving and compassionate type of parenting.  So 5:00that's something that -- I wish I had known him.  Would have been an amazing experience to see -- to experience him as a grandfather.  Fortunately, many, many family members that were lost in the war had the delight of having him as a grandfather.  So he's the most colorful person.  He owned a candle factory, and all of the kids, sooner or later, worked in the candle factory, packing candles.  And my mother used to show me how she would develop this kind of automated system of packing the candles, and it was so ingrained in her.  She'd clop on the table and push them together, as if she really was sitting there 6:00with the candles.  And one of the brothers came to the US and opened a candle factory, Penn Wax, which all through my childhood everywhere I would go I would see the little boxes of birthday candles, and they would say Penn Wax.  So I guess it was a national company for a period of time.  I'm like, oh wow, that is so cool!  But I just picture these yeshiva bochers, who mostly were davening, working in the candle factory as their day job.  They lived in Warsaw, so it was a big city, and I imagine it to be modern for that time, but somehow it seemed like, even before shtetls, and even before the ghettoes became 7:00a horrible reality, the sense of shtetl existed even in the big city of Warsaw, that they really kept their community --

CR:  Can you talk a little --

LG:  -- as a constant --

CR:  Yeah.

LG:  -- yeah.  And so I guess they always lived in apartments -- they didn't have a house.  And the neighbors upstairs, and the neighbors downstairs, and the neighbors across the street.  And the growing-up years seemed to be just full of laughter and warmth among the sisters and among their girlfriends -- I always heard about the girlfriends.  And, in fact, my mother married her girlfriend's brother.  They knew each other from the neighborhood.  They didn't date, but they knew each other.  And, I mean, dating wasn't even 8:00something to talk about, because the marriages were arranged.  So they found each other after the war, and my aunt recognized my father from the back in the displaced persons camp -- might've been in Czechoslovakia.  I'm not sure.  Everybody wrote on the wall -- on the blackboard -- who they were looking for.  They were posting pictures, or "the son of this one," and my father had blonde hair and blue eyes, and he was somewhat distinctive, more Slavic-looking.  And my aunt Miriam said, "It's Kazhik!  It's Kazhik!"  (tears up) So my mother said, "And where's your wife?"  And he said, "No, I'm not married."  And, you know 9:00-- (laughs) he said, "And your husband?"  "Oh, no, I'm not married."  So it was a shidekh, a match.  So that was a pretty magical story to hear --

CR:  Yeah.

LG:  -- growing up, yeah.  Their households were really different, because my parents were -- my parents' family -- my mother's family was so observant, and my father's family was more like modern Orthodox.  My grandfather on his side had a trucking company, and I think there was a little bit of judgment that came (laughs) from my mother's family.  I don't know how they would've felt about her marrying him, but it was a good match.  I hear stories about how my 10:00grandfather would get up early in the morning, like five in the morning, to go and do the laundry to help his wife.  But he didn't want anyone to see him, because it wasn't manly.  But he had rakhmones on her, he had compassion.  And they had a balye [washtub], a tub -- a big, wooden tub.  They didn't have a washing machine.  They had a scrub board, and wringing was with the hands, so you needed somebody to be strong.  So I really have some vivid, heartfelt images of him.  And it seemed like my grandmother was a very wise woman, who 11:00the kids took very much to heart.  "Di mame hot gezogt, di mame hot gezogt [Mother said, mother said]" -- there's all these quotes about what her mother said.  And they get passed on.  They're in my head, too.  There was one that she only translated, and it rhymed in English, and -- "When the bed is made, my head is made."  Because when we were leaving the house, for any reason or any length of time, my brother would say -- and I would say, "Come on, come on, mom."  She'd -- "Wait, wait, wait.  I have to make the beds."  It's like, who cares?  Nobody's gonna break in and report that your beds aren't made while we're away, and you're not going to be in "House Beautiful" magazine.  "When the bed is made, my head is made."  And, I don't know, "Ven di bet ligt glakht, 12:00di kop ligt glaykh."  It doesn't really rhyme, so maybe there was something else.  But that was one of the "Mame hot gezogt" phrases that, actually, I've passed on to a lot of people, (laughs) who've found it useful.

CR:  Wonderful.  Well, I do want to start moving --

LG:  Yeah, go ahead --

CR:  -- on to the next --

LG:  Yeah.

CR:  -- you know, the next --

LG:  Sure.

CR:  -- chronological parts.  But just before we do that, how many siblings did each of your parents have?

LG:  So my mother had ten:  two sets of twins -- the two sets of twins were boy and girl.  Both boys died, one early, like at two, and one at twenty-one, from illnesses that at that time were commonly fatal.  And, you know, my 13:00brother -- my father -- hmm, Ted, and Henia, and Angie, and my father -- you know, five or seven, I'm not as sure.  My father didn't really want to talk about any of it.  I met his surviving sister Angie frequently, but she lived in California -- she came before the war -- and his surviving brother Ted, who went to Australia before the war, and then he came to Philadelphia, where I'm from, to work with my father as an electrician.  They didn't get along.  He was rather odd.  I worried about him all the time.  They lived with us for a while.  He seemed to get depressed.  He seemed to me to be -- get paranoid.  14:00He committed suicide on New Year's, around the time I was sixteen.  I remember because I had a sleepover and I was worrying about him, and I kept telling my parents, "There's something wrong with him.  I think he's paranoid.  He needs help."  And they took him to the hospital, and he was mistakenly informed that he was going to have to go to the state hospital in Philadelphia, Byberry.  And Byberry was a synonym for "you must be crazy."  And he jumped off a fire escape.  It was pretty horrible.  They didn't tell me the truth.  They often didn't tell us the truth about things.  I think the truths they had to live with were so painful, so it was always an ease-in.  "Uncle Ted's in the hospital, he's very sick."  It sort of dragged on.  They did that when my dog 15:00was hit by a car.  They did that when cousin Harry died.  Let us down easy.  We used to go nuts about that.  We said, "Listen, we grew up with the darkest truths.  We asked you about your numbers, when we were old enough to make the question out of our mouths, in child's English.  So, please."  (laughs) So it was a real kind of contradiction in how they dealt with current losses in their lives, and yet they were so resilient in integrating the worst of traumas.

CR:  Yeah.  Thank you for sharing that.  So I want to jump ahead a little bit to your family's war experiences.  I know you wanted to talk about your mother 16:00and survival in the camps.

LG:  Yeah.

CR:  Can you tell me more about what you know about that?

LG:  Yeah.  My mother told us a lot, and it just was woven in with day-to-day conversation, with jokes, with songs.  What I say is our family's strength is that we can laugh and cry and talk all at the same time.  And it really enables us to have our eyes open, not have shadow parts that we're afraid of, or ashamed of, or angry about.  So that really helps me a lot in my trauma work and other types of therapy work, which we'll talk about later.  So I knew about cold potato -- cold, raw potato and water -- being delicious soup.  (laughs) I knew 17:00about lice in their hair.  I knew about rats running over them when they were sleeping.  I knew about precious, precious friendships that were formed in the camps, with other people.  And my mother and her sisters were in Majdanek and Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, and they walked, walked, walked, sometimes for days, miles, all day.  And people fell, and they left them.  People lagged, and they were shot.  And this was woven into "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and the Goldilocks stories, you know?  Interesting childhood.  It was incredibly joyful.  They survived.  They were survivors.  They were proud of each other 18:00and of themselves, and mainly what they emphasized was that it was because they were together that they survived.  That they each lived for each other.  They each wanted to live the next day for each other.  That they couldn't afford to let go of that lifeforce, because they had to take care of each other.  That's kind of a gift and a burden, because, I think, for all of us -- my brother and my four cousins -- the sense of an uber-responsibility can maybe be obnoxious to other people.  (laughter) I certainly hear that from my kids.

CR:  Yeah, and I do wanna talk about your experiences growing up, hearing those --

LG:  Yeah.

CR:  -- stories, and growing up with your brother and cousins a little bit --

LG:  Yeah, yeah.  My father was in both the Polish army and the Russian 19:00army.  And he also was a prisoner of war in Siberia.  And it wasn't until I got married and moved from Philadelphia to Rochester, New York, and he was a guest in my house, that he actually talked at all about his war experiences.  He was a cavalry soldier, which explained why, secretly, he would drive me to different stables in Philadelphia -- Fairmount Park -- we had a lot of park area, for a city -- and let me ride.  And I would say, "Come and ride with me."  "Ugh, I have to work.  I have to work."  He was an electrician.  I can't -- it was unthinkable to him that he would take time.  But that would've been such a magical thing.  So it's bittersweet, but he did encourage my athleticism, he encouraged me to ride horses, to do gymnastics, all the things 20:00that my mother would say, "Oy, ish!  Kenst gehargen mentshn -- these things can kill people," you know.  Absolutely anything, as far as she was concerned, could gehargen mentshn -- could kill people.  (laughs) "You could take an eye with that!" became a stock joke.

CR:  What was it like for you when he finally did start sharing stories, since it was later in your life?

LG:  I felt so appreciative, and so much closer to him, because I wanted him to see that I could handle it, and that he was part of what made me a strong person.  He always -- he would come in.  My mother and her sisters would talking to us, and he'd say, "Red nisht azoy fil tsu di kinder, red nisht azoy fil -- don't talk so much to them, don't talk so much to them."  And we would 21:00say, "We wanna know, we wanna know."  And he would go out and he'd be shaking his head.  So, especially the fact that he was a cavalry soldier, and he talked about that, and being proud of that -- I just love that, that we have that connection of physicality and risk-taking.  But I think, as a man, and then just his own pride and personality, that he didn't wanna cry.  He didn't wanna cry.  I never saw him cry until his brother died.  And then, boy, and then he cried, for a year.  So he was more rigid and authoritarian in what was right, what was wrong, what God wanted, what was nice for children to say and do, what 22:00was proper for girls.  So we had a lot of conflicts.  We had a lot of debates.  A lot of debates.  So when he did start to tell me some stories about himself, that was a leveling of a playing field, that he wasn't just committed to telling me the right way about everything, that he could just share, as an adult, and let me listen.

CR:  Yeah, yeah.  I wonder if you'd be willing to read the short story that you wrote, about --

LG:  Yeah, I really --

CR:  -- your mother and aunts' experience?

LG:  -- would like to do that.

CR:  So can you just give a background, really quickly --

LG:  Yeah.

CR:  -- about what this is?

LG:  Okay, so this is a flashback memoir, so it's really brief, and it's about 23:00both -- it's a flashback within a flashback.  It's my memory of being with my cousins when we were little and listening to our parents also flashing back.  And I think that the personal power of it, for me, is that is really testimony to both survival, the will to survive, and, most importantly, as I mentioned before, the prioritizing of connection and building internal strength and security.  So this is called, "You Be the Nurse."  (reading) "Under the dining-room table, through the carvings of the Gothic oak pedestal, I squinted, 24:00cozy with my cousins.  In America, daddy wanted strong furniture that served to hold full plates, enough food to test its mettle, fill our tummies, and bear his leydn [sorrow].  The patterns from the crystal chandelier, another attempt at New World finery, entranced us.  'Blink your eyes, blink your eyes, it's so neat,' I instructed my small clan to share the transport.  The shapeshifting wrought by white, lacy edging of the elaborate holiday tablecloth veiled from us the truth that both it and the immensity of the table didn't quite fit the simple setting of a brick Philadelphia rowhouse, kinda like I didn't quite fit in on the playground, the thin girl whose mother wound her braids tight against each ear, an early-day Bose headset that buffered my puzzlement.  'Hey, look at that little Polish peasant girl.'  My ears were more keen through the tablecloth, deciphering the marrying of Yiddish to English to Polish, and back 25:00again.  'Skin and bones, skin and bones, bloyz bayner,' daddy lamented over my lack of fleysh [meat], his tongue tsk-ing with scarcely mock horror.  'Kazhik, loz di kinder shpiln [let the children play],' my mother now and then would allow, 'the children might rather play than eat.'  Under the table, the platform staged our drama.  We coveted our Fisher-Price doctor and nurses' kits:  a blue stethoscope for doctors, yellow thermometers, pink and white hats for nurses, the red needle.  'I'll be the doctor; I'm the oldest,' I directed.  'Leah, you, you'll be the nurse.  Doris will be the patient.'  Doris was the little one.  She was always very patient.  Leah, the delicate one, whispered to us that her secret middle name was 'Silk.'  She suggested that David be the doctor, 'cause he was a boy, but he preferred to read comic books.  'He'll be the other patient,' I decided, 'in the waiting room.'  Above 26:00the Rosh Hashanah tablecloth, the three sisters stood in patterned aprons with steaming plates -- roast chicken with crispy skin, kosher, from Abe's; roasted potatoes with paprika, blushing like my modest mother when daddy made one of those grownup jokes.  Aunt Miriam's blue eyes read mischief.  Her arms carried meatballs with garlic.  Aunt Alice was a shtarke [strong woman], feisty in her tininess.  'Kak im on!' she coached us when they teased us in the neighborhood -- 'They should shit themselves.  Zog nit kayn mol az du geyst dem letstn veg [Never say that you've reached the final road].'  I never could figure out where any of those words would stop or started, but I knew we should never say 'die.'  The sisters stood, shoulder to shoulder, folding paper dolls with matching blue numbers.  They never folded.  They never even sat down.  In the 27:00camps, after the transport, the sisters could scarcely dream of roast chicken.  A raw potato was a gift; to steal a boiled one, a khap a mekhaye [to snatch a delight].  They told us of how they were nurses.  To work was to live.  In 1935 [sic], four years after Fisher-Price created doctor's kits for children, the doctor came through the infirmary every day for the selection at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.  Those sickest would then be taken.  That morning, Alice and my mother donned their identifying striped nurses' uniforms and urgently walked to their duties.  I imagine thin, wet hairs cloying at their shaved heads, "mit harts klapping -- with pounding hearts," my mother would say.  I sat with my cousins, clasping my knees under the table, listening to the story unfolding, and, like us, too big now to fit under the 28:00table.  Dressing Miriam desperately, from bedclothes to nurse's uniform, my aunt Alice and my mother Blanca stood shoulder to shoulder, squeezing her between them to keep her standing.  Three paper dolls, three short nurses, they walk besides Mengele in his elevated shoes as he scanned the infirmary and chose those sickest from their beds.  As the doctor left, Alice and Blanca released Miriam, collapsing from typhus, and gently tucked her into bed."  (crying) So, they were very clever, and they saved her life.

CR:  Thank you so much for sharing that.  That was beautifully written.

LG:  You're welcome. 

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CR:  How old were you when you wrote this?

LG:  I wrote this two, three years ago --

CR:  Okay.

LG   -- 2014.

CR:  Okay, so recently.

LG:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Yeah, the memories of growing up, with my brother and my cousins, just are so vivid -- the colors, the lights, the furniture, which of course found multiple (laughs) uses in multiple households in multiple generations.  I think my brother might still have one of my mother's couches.  Just got reupholstered, not covered with plastic. (laughs)

CR:  Yeah, yeah.  Well I definitely wanna talk more about those memories --

LG:  Yeah.

CR:  -- a little bit later, but I'm curious about your family's postwar journey.  Do you know where your mother and her sisters, and also your father, went when the war was over?

LG:  Yeah.  So, as I said, my mom and her two surviving sisters, and -- there were four sisters who had not married yet, and didn't have children.  The married sisters were lost right away, because they took the children to the gas chambers, and the mothers went with them.  They weren't gonna leave the children.  So one other unmarried sister, Chelah, was with Blanca, Miriam, and Alice, so the four of them were trying to survive the camps together, and sticking together was the most important thing.  And sometimes it was really a crapshoot which line to be in, with selections, because sometimes they reversed it, so you didn't really know.  I mean, if you were sick, if you were infirm, if you were old, you could pretty much guess, but sometimes it was really 31:00confusing, and it was just by some instinct that one of them would grab and schlep the other out of what they were convinced as (makes air quotes) the wrong line.  And they lost Chelah in that way.  The wrong line.  So, the three of them were liberated by the Russians.  They were hiding from them, because they heard that they were raping the women.  Fortunately, that didn't happen to them.  As far as I know, that didn't happen to any of them.  They were hit with the butts of rifles in the head.  My aunt Alice had a lot of sequelae from things like that.  So they all were at a camp, a postwar camp, trying to find 32:00each other, trying to find cousins.  And because my mother's two uncles survived in America -- Srulke in New York and Saul in Philadelphia, and also my father's uncle, Sruel -- Israel -- in New York, and Ralph in California -- they had people to come to.  So they came to Philadelphia, and they all lived with Saul and Rive, his second wife, who I remember 'cause she had these mink stoles with little heads and the little feet, and too much perfume, and she would go like this for us to kiss her.  My mother pointed out she was the second wife, not the mother of the children, so not a blood relative.  So I was allowed to say "ugh" to Riva.  And they had to live with Riva, and she was very proper, 33:00which fork to use, and how to eat -- take the bones out of the fish.  And here they called themselves the "grine, vilde khayes -- the Greenhorns, wild beasts," (laughs) that they didn't know from anything like that.  And I guess she made them feel pretty ashamed a lot of the time.  But at the same time, they lived in a beautiful area of Philadelphia, with a garden and rosebushes, and that's where my parents were married.  And my aunt Miriam and uncle Al were formally married there, as well, by the rabbi, together; they had a double wedding.  But they evidently married, I think maybe, in Germany, before they came, so they were already married.  That's an interesting, separate story, because my uncle Al is actually a first cousin, which in Judaism is allowed.  They didn't know 34:00each other growing up, and it was just love at first sight when they found each other after the camps.  So they lived with -- my aunt Alice was still single.  And they all lived with Riva and Saul, who helped them buy a house.  Then they all lived in the brick house, the rowhouse in Philadelphia, main city, and I grew up there.  I thought, at first, that my cousin David was my twin, or at least my brother, 'cause he was six weeks younger than me.  So two of the sisters were pregnant together -- amazing -- and we were in the same highchairs, next to each other, and playpens.  Oh, they kept us in two playpens, because they were afraid we might fight.  So there are pictures of the two of us in two 35:00playpens, and two highchairs.  Alice, I guess, got a job and met Louie, who was also from Poland, but had been sent by his family to Brazil as a young man to study kheyder [traditional religious school].  And both Alice and Lou were into politics, and Yiddishkayt, and socialism, and speeches, and writing.  So that was pretty cool, and that's how I actually got my opportunity to go to Yiddish school -- Yiddish shul -- in addition to Hebrew school.

CR:  Right --

LG:  And that was voluntary.  Hebrew school was mandatory -- Tuesday, Thursday, Shabbat services, Sunday school, oy-oy-oy.  But outside of that, I 36:00opted to also go to Yiddish school, through Workmen's Circle, and it was just --

CR:  Okay.

LG:  -- so much fun.

CR:  Yeah --

LG:  So, anyway, they -- yeah, so they all started out in one house.  Then they did a little better, and one family moved across the street, and the other family moved around the corner.  So we had our own shtetl.  There's a song about -- "Baranevitsh, oy oy, baranevitsh, dude shil, dude mil," and then we had some off-color rhymes that went with that.  (laughs) And it was like that, you know?  Herman the grocer, and you didn't go buy ham from him, because it didn't look nice for Herman that a Jewish family bought ham, and, according to my father, I would say, "He sells it."  But, "No, no, the Jewish families don't" 37:00-- and so my mother would send me to buy, like, four ounces of ham and two Italian rolls, and she and I would eat them off the wax paper, and they never made it into the refrigerator, God forbid, God forbid (laughter) that my father should know.  But it was a very cozy life, and the synagogue was, like, the next block.  And there was playmates and friends sort of that my mother opened half of -- a quarter of her heart to, but the core was the six cousins, and the three sisters, and the uncles.  And it was a very, very sweet, secure childhood, and, for them, it was a gan-eyden, a garden of Eden, just to see their children eat an orange.  We didn't have dessert; we had fruit.  "Eat a 38:00fruit."  "What's for dessert?"  "Eat a fruit."  (laughs) 'Cause that was the best they could give us.

CR:  Um-hm.  Yeah.  I do have more questions about --

LG:  Yeah, sure.

CR:  -- your childhood, but I wanted to talk a little about your aunt Alice --

LG:  Um-hm.

CR:  -- who you mentioned quite a few --

LG:  Yeah.

CR:  -- times now.  So she wrote Yiddish poetry --

LG:  Yeah, and her husband gave speeches on Talmud and midrash, and they were very active in Workmen's Circle organization and other things too, probably.  And she was a tiny, little, birdlike lady, with a very strong singing voice and a wicked sense of humor.  She really was dismissive and arrogant towards 39:00anybody that would have a negative judgment or gesture towards any of the kids.  And, you know, she really empowered us.  You know, "Kiss my tushie, beh, beh, beh," (laughs) was what she said we should do if anybody hurt us.  She called the teachers.  Yeah, she really was a strident, amazing person.  She always had health problems, and somehow she survived the war, and she often was the one who would be pulling the others out of one line or the other.  So she wrote poetry about her growing up, about her family.  She wrote a lot of dark, dark stories about how terrifying it was when they came -- their last 40:00Passover, when they came to take away the father, 'cause he already had had a stroke.  What it was like to be one of ten children.  (laughs) So I remember for one Pesach, when our kids were still little, I translated one of her poems about the Passover seder, and I changed the end of it, 'cause I didn't have the heart to really make it as dark as it was.  And then I thought, Oh, I'm doing the same thing that they did to me, that I hated.  (laughs)

CR:  Right.

LG:  So she knew many, many songs, and we were always singing, and she was the initiator of the singing.  And then, when I would go to Workmen's Circle camp, 41:00or the Yiddish school, there it was, and it was in Hebrew print, 'cause Yiddish is in Hebrew print.  I'm like, Oh, I know that stuff from Hebrew school, except in Hebrew school I don't know what the hell any of it means.  But actually, in Yiddish, I do.  And my uncle read the "Forward" in Yiddish, so we would all sit on his lap.  And he was very stern, very stern guy.  He loved kids, though.  He loved kids.  And he would point his finger and help us read the Yiddish.  I always thought it was so magical that Hebrew letters could turn into Yiddish, which sounds so completely different.

CR:  This was Alice's husband, who --

LG:  Yeah, Louie.

CR:  Yeah.

LG:  Yeah, and he was -- maybe he had ADD, or some sort of an organizational challenge where he couldn't be distracted.  He'd lose his focus.  So he'd say, "I want to tell a joke."  And everybody'd be like (groans).  "I want quiet.  42:00I want to tell a joke."  It was so contradictory, you know?  And his jokes were funny, too, but we would be scared into silence, and then Alice, his wife, would start giggling.

CR:  Alice's --

LG:  His wife.

CR:  Oh, yeah, um-hm.

LG:  And she was provocative.  And he would say -- stop in a middle of a joke -- "Alice, stop laughing."  And then, of course, all of us would be hysterical, 'cause it was just so ridiculous and absurd.  But he got through it, and we all got through it.  The punchlines were good.  Or there would be a moral to the story.  There was also a lot of morals to the stories, 'cause he was very well-versed in Bible and literature.  So that was interesting.

CR:  Do you have any memories of seeing Alice writing?

LG:  I don't remember her writing, but she always had the book, and there was always more.  So I don't know when she wrote, but it was pretty prolific --

CR:  Right.

LG:  -- and --

CR:  Did she read to you guys?

LG:  She did.  Not that much, not that much.  Occasionally.  Or at an occasion -- you know, a family gathering, or some kind of a meeting, or a Hanukkah party, sponsored by maybe Workmen's Circle.  So it wasn't as direct a sharing of that part of her, but we always knew about it.  It was very cool.

CR:  Um-hm.  Yeah, I can imagine.  And so you said that she and her husband are the people who sort of got you into the Workmen's Circle --

LG:  Yeah --

CR:  -- school?

LG:  -- yeah.

CR:  Can you tell me what that experience was like?

LG:  Well, it was fun, because, first of all, I had the sense that I really was 44:00listening to Yiddish in utero, 'cause that was mostly what they spoke.  They also -- the sisters spoke Polish to each other, like the schoolyard, school friend intimacy of Polish.  To their husbands they spoke Yiddish, and the larger groups with family -- extended family -- they spoke Yiddish.  And that just -- it was just so much fun.  And I could understand it, as opposed to being in Hebrew school, for my whole life, and learning how to daven -- and I'm very grateful that I can, and I'm very grateful that I can get up and magically read from the Torah.  I mean, I don't know how that happens.  That just -- without any vowels, remembering the trope -- that's an amazing, magical 45:00experience.  But it's on another plane.  Yiddish just was, I think, really mame-loshn, really my mother tongue, even though they didn't want us to speak anything but English.  They were afraid we would have an accent, which -- of course children don't have accents.  That's the time you can pour all the language at them, because they spoke Polish, they spoke a little Hebrew, they spoke a little German, they spoke a little Russian.  And it would've been great to be fluent at least in Yiddish and Polish.  So that's unfortunate, but the -- Camp Hoffnung, we had Mikhl Gelbart, who was, I think, himself a songwriter, and also led us in song.  And it was in English and in Yiddish.  So it was like, I 46:00got it, and not only did I get it in terms of the language and the way it expressed itself in writing -- and it was integrated, as opposed to my experience with Hebrew in Hebrew school -- but I think that Yiddish shaped my whole way of looking at the world.  There's a cleverness, a double entendre, a joke, a shtokh [jab], some sarcasm, some drama, some expletives, some laments, that just are so palpable.  And growing up I would say something in response to 47:00an adult's conversation, I would answer it with some little Yiddish phrase, and my mother would say, "How do you know -- fun ven vayst di klayne vertlakh [how do you know these little phrases]?" You know, how do you know these things?  Like, what do you mean, how do I know these things?  (laughs) And she said, "You always pick out -- picked exactly what the answer should be."  And I'm like, I don't know, it just seems obvious.  And I think I think often in Yiddish:  around emotional things; around challenging things that don't make any sense; the cynicism that's built into, I think, Jewish culture, from the experiences that Jews have had all through their lives, all through their 48:00history.  I think that's built in to shape a worldview that is willing to keep your eyes open, and laugh and cry and talk.  (laughs)

CR:  Right, yeah.  And so you said you also heard Polish growing up?

LG:  Yeah, and so that was the grownup language, and we weren't -- though it was really interesting.  The message -- and they never said these things.  There was no verbal dictate, and we didn't have to sign a contract or a release, but the directive was you should understand Yiddish, and follow directions in Yiddish, and it was always very cute when we spoke, but not too much, 'cause God forbid you have an accent.  And Polish we shouldn't understand at all.  So I 49:00used to sit on my mother's bed and listen on the phone -- we had an upstairs line -- when she talked to her sisters, which was multiple times a day.  And I understood a lot of Polish back then, 'cause I really -- and I was a double agent, 'cause I was the oldest.  And so I had the ear of the adults and the kids, and I often knew what was going on.  'Cause they'd discuss their children, and, "Oh, Leah is so sensitive, and Doris is trying to find herself."  (laughs) It was delightful.  It was delightful.  When I go to Philadelphia now, even though our parents' generation is gone, more Polish comes back to me, and more Yiddish comes back to me.  And, among my cousins and my 50:00brother, actually I think I am more able to be conversant, and I recall a whole lot more.  But one of my cousins, Doris, has often had housekeeping help, or painting, carpentry.  It always was a Polish underground, steady stream of Polish immigrants -- perhaps undocumented.  And she learned Polish.  So she speaks Polish, and it's adorable.  I love it.  I love to listen to it.  And so then I drive back from Philly, and I'm sort of speaking to myself in Polish, and I always say the closer I get to the sign that says New England, it fades away.  But a lot of times I go back and forth -- like French, Yiddish, Polish -- and I realize that I've done that really -- once I started learning French in 51:00high school, grammar, it was like, Oh, grammar, I get it.  That's actually how I learned English grammar.  I didn't really understand English grammar.  I could speak it, but I couldn't really tell you about it.  It was, Oh, I get it.  Oh, and then I guess there's Yiddish grammar, and I guess there's Polish grammar.  And I would just go back and forth.  I think it really is a wonderful thing for your brain.  I wish I had had opportunity to really be conversant in both of those languages.  But I see that it is not only internally entertaining for me, up through the present, but that it's really been a gift, even though there could have been a more thorough integration of those languages.

CR:  Um-hm, yeah.  I know that your uncle read the "Forverts" to you.  Do you 52:00remember any Yiddish radio or books around the house?

LG:  There were Yiddish books, but I never even opened them.  There might have been -- there might have been radio shows that they listened to, but it wasn't something that we'd gather 'round.  It was much more just live conversation --

CR:  Yeah.

LG:  -- and jokes, and stories, and sayings, and twists, mixing English and Yiddish, and rhyming.  And then there were a lot of songs, and some of them were sad, and my mother used to change the words to make it less upsetting.  (laughs) She'd change the words.  So, you know, protectiveness; at the same 53:00time, honesty coexisted.  Yeah, and it worked.  It worked out pretty well.

CR:  Do you remember any of the songs?

LG:  Well, I'm -- I can't really -- I'm a terrible singer, but I guess I remember little parts of them, and they come and go.  They come and go.  If I have the words, then I can do the whole thing, like at the seder in Philadelphia that I just came from, which was thirty-two people, all of our kids.  They come from far and wide, doesn't matter where they are in the world, literally.  This time, my cousin's son came from Germany, where he's doing some sort of part of his work, and he flew in just for that.  Another son, a few years ago, was in 54:00the Peace Corps, and he got leave to come.  It's amazing.  But so we sang the whole "Partisan Song" -- "Zog nit keyn mol, az du geyst dem letstn veg -- don't ever say you're walking the last path."  You know, we shall survive.  I integrated that into the little short story.  So, yeah, I know a lot of them down in there, so if I get a start, or if I'm with people, then it's there.  So, little phrases are still readily available, but, again, I think it's because we weren't encouraged to open our mouths and let those words come out, yeah.

CR:  Right.  Did your family ever go to Yiddish theater?

LG:  I did, (laughs) and I try to do that when it's in New York.  If they did, it wasn't frequent, and they didn't -- they just didn't really go out a lot, you know?  Their recreation was to be together.  Really.  I mean, I -- my husband and I make it a point, and we have our whole marriage of -- forty-six years, in June.  Yikes.  We have at least one date night every weekend.  The kids knew that.  I think kids should experience their parents leaving, so they know that they'll come home.  (laughs) But I don't know if it was a financial thing.  I 56:00don't know if it was a social awkwardness, or if it seemed frivolous, but really, they barely went anywhere.  I mean, maybe something at the Newcomers Organization, they had events there.  Bina Landau, one of their friends who they met in the camps -- they became girlfriends, the women -- she was an amazing singer, professional singer in Philadelphia.  So she would sing in Yiddish, and sometimes I -- we would go to those things with them.  So it was just more daily Yiddishkayt in the culture of their conversation.

CR:  Um-hm, yeah.  And, obviously, you've talked about growing up with your 57:00mother, and her sisters, and all of their families within the same block, pretty much.

LG:  Right.

CR:  Were there other survivors in the neighborhood?

LG:  I don't know if there were survivors in the actual neighborhood.  I think, if there were, they -- well, I would've known them, because there was a significant extended circle of their friends, many of whom they knew from home, some of whom they met while they're in the camps, that they were closely connected with.  And there was -- if there was a bar mitzvah, if there was an anniversary, if there was a Holocaust memorial event, they would be together.  And they all had children, and we were all sort of the same age range, 58:00obviously, 'cause they all came around the same time.  I didn't really -- I mean, aside from the handful of kids that lived in the neighborhood and that I went to school with, I didn't really interface very much with American Jewish families.  They were even a bit alien to me.  (laughs) I never -- when I went to high school, Girls' High, and it was a city high school -- it drew from the whole city -- it was an academic school -- and then I made some new friends -- pretty much I stayed with my little core group from elementary school.  You know, a shtetl mentality.  But I remember that one of my girlfriends -- that I went to have a sleepover at her house, and her mother was really young, and very fashionable, and thin, and wore a lot of makeup.  And I'm like, I wonder if her mother was a prostitute.  I mean, it was bizarre.  I went home and I said, 59:00"Mommy, I'm worried that Marlene's mother is a prostitute."  (laughter) It was so alien, first to come out of the tight circle and -- whenever you start going to friends' houses, maybe third grade, that these parents didn't have accents, and they were younger.  I didn't like it, you know?  So, yeah, stayed pretty tight.

CR:  Um-hm, yeah.  So you've talked a lot about Yiddish in your home.  Are there other aspects of growing up that felt particularly Jewish?  Specifically 60:00in the home?

LG:  Everything felt Jewish.  (laughs)

CR:  Yeah.

LG:  Everything felt Jewish.  The first question, when you met someone:  "Is he Jewish?  Is she Jewish?"  "This isn't nice for the Jew" -- if something happened that was on television, about someone who was Jewish who'd -- was shamed, or was convicted -- "It's not nice for the Jews, it's not nice for the" -- just like it wasn't nice for Herman if I bought my four ounces of ham at his grocery store.  They were very, very concerned about that.  Everything was them and us, basically.  I mean, obviously, they were terrified.  They were still terrified.  So -- our foods, too.  I mean, I came to recognize later that it was more Eastern European, because if I'd go to a Polish restaurant, or 61:00be invited to some -- a Polish friend's Easter dinner, it would be like, "Whoa, blintzes, oh.  (laughs) Really?"  So --

CR:  Did your mother cook?

LG:  My mother was a terrible cook.  She had no interest in cooking.  She loved the '50s, modern housewife opportunities to open cans, to take the frozen vegetables out.  And she would cut them -- cut them open.  I don't know if they didn't have an opening, or if she didn't have the patience, or if she didn't understand it, but she would take a serrated bread knife and cut open the box of broccoli or frozen whatever, and it used to really annoy the hell out of me.  (laughs) But I never thought to investigate myself.  The first time I 62:00brought home fresh mushrooms, after I was married, and I thought, Ooh, this is exciting, you know, what the hell do you do with them?  So then my husband walked in as I was throwing away the stems, peeling the caps, and excavating the gills.  Basically, I had a mess.  And he's like, "What're you doing?"  I said, "But isn't all that stuff poisonous?"  I didn't know that there were poisonous mushrooms and safe mushrooms.  I mean, (laughs) fresh asparagus?  I could have fresh asparagus and canned asparagus on the same plate and consider them two different foods, and they are two different foods, but, you know what?  I love canned asparagus.  (laughs)

CR:  Yeah.

LG:  So, yeah, she didn't -- "Hob nisht keyn koyekh" I heard a lot, growing 63:00up.  "Hob nisht keyn koyekh -- I don't have the energy."  And a lot of it was a mental, emotional energy.  She was actually amazingly healthy.  They all, really, were quite amazingly healthy.  They all lived into their late eighties.  My aunt Miriam, I believe, might have been ninety.  She died most recently, about five years ago, I guess, yeah.  Big, big loss.  Huge loss.

CR:  Yeah.

LG:  So, my aunt Alice made "Bubbie Alice cake," which is pretty much in any Jewish recipe book, a sour cream coffee cake.  Sometimes she put apple in it.  It was amazing to us.  It was real.  It didn't come from a box.  My brother I 64:00used to go buy Duncan Hines, make cakes.  (laughs) But it was on a big sheet, a lot of it -- seemed enormous -- and her house often smelled really good.  And she actually put garlic in some things.  My mother couldn't tolerate it, 'cause of her stom-- they all had bad stomachs.  I mean, the war just did such a number on their digestive systems.  They all had bad stomachs.  They all were -- lived on Tums.  Maalox, they all had Maalox mouth, which I couldn't stand to look at.  (laughter) And my uncle Al, Miriam's husband, loved to mess around in the kitchen and make Swedish meatballs, and goulashes, and hodgepodges, and put seasoning in them.  I loved going to their house, because the food was more interesting, and there was actually maybe, like, roast beef in the refrigerator.  (laughs)

CR:  Did you ever cook with them?

LG:  Well, I would cook occasionally with my Uncle Al.  At my mother's house, we just complained.  (laughs) But she made the best flounder.  I thought Jews only ate flounder and salmon.  I didn't know how you pronounced salmon.  My aunt Miriam said "seh-men," and I said, "Not cement, salmon."  And my mother said "sal-mon, sal-mon."  I was like, Oh, okay, I thought that was somebody's name, Solomon.  (laughs) There were a lot of things I really couldn't pronounce until way later than I should've been able to, and that was pretty embarrassing.  So she made wonderful flounder, I think 'cause she put tons of butter on it, and occasionally really good sal-mon.  And the best chicken soup.  But pretty narrow, pretty narrow.  Tongue.  Boiled tongue.  I love 66:00boiled tongue.  I can't even say that to people; they'll leave the table.  And we used to pet the tongue, my brother and I, "Poor cowie."  (laughs)

CR:  Wow, yeah.

LG:  I don't think we really made that big a connection.  Well, we knew it was a cow.  (laughter) So, yeah, food was basically to survive.  I was very thin.  They were always trying to get me to eat.  It's just -- the food wasn't that interesting.  My husband's mother's an incredible cook, and that's when food really -- the whole culture of food really opened up to me, when I got married at twenty-three.  Yeah.

CR:  Yeah.  I wanna talk a little bit about your summer camp experiences, because I know that you attended a Workmen's Circle camp for a few years, and then a Hebrew camp after that.  First of all, I'm curious about the decision to switch over from one camp to the other.

LG:  I don't even know what that was about -- it had nothing to do with me, I don't think.  Maybe it did.  I really loved the Workmen's Circle camp.  I loved the singing, again, the Yiddishkayt, just the flavors.  Maybe I found out from some friends that it was cool to go to Camp Rita.  I really don't know.  It's interesting, 'cause I'm a pretty buttinsky, opinionated person, and have been my whole life, and took all of the benefits of being the oldest.  But I don't know how that happened.  I know that I learned at Workmen's Circle camp how to ride a horse, how to play tennis, how to swim, how to play volleyball, 68:00how to curse -- that was the best.  I was eleven --

CR:  In English or in Yiddish?

LG:  Well, I learned how to curse in English, which, when I came home, my father had a fit, and that's when I said, "You know, you guys curse all the time."  But it was benign.  In Polish, "Psiakrew -- dog's blood."  That's pretty vile.  Or "zasrana dupa [Polish: shitty ass]" -- and I won't even translate that.  (laughs) So, somehow, cursing in English was a lot more offensive, but it was the way to get a rise out of everybody.  So I really give credit to Workmen's Circle camp for a lot of cultural milestones, fitting into a greater culture -- like knowing how to curse, and understanding that girls and boys make out, and things like that, sex.  So it was -- I really appreciated 69:00(laughs) that opportunity.  And then there was the coziness of Shabbat, and Erev Shabbat, and the food, and the singing.  And it just felt like a good next step, moving -- being able to stay overnight, by myself, move away from just the family, insular subculture, but still being held in the Yiddish culture.  It really was a great transition, and I really -- I loved camp.  I would just like life to be camp.  I try to make my life camp.  And, I mean, Rita continued that, because there were a lot of activities, but, I don't know, somehow it 70:00didn't have just the tam, the yidishe tam, the flavor.

CR:  Um-hm.

LG:  Yeah.

CR:  Um-hm, yeah.  Did your cousins go, as well?

LG:  Well, I'm the only one that lasted.  (laughs) Workmen's Circle camp, I think, at least Alice's kids and my brother maybe went -- there was a resort part of it for the parents, too.  So adults could go, and enjoy, and schmooze, and be involved in their Yiddishkayt.  They only went when their parents were there.  They didn't wanna go after that.  I don't think any of my cousins went away to camp, except me.  And I was like, Hey, see ya later.  Why two weeks?  Why a month?  How about the whole summer?  (laugh) Yeah, so I really -- I'm 71:00grateful that they sent me to camp, and that they honored my enthusiasm --

CR:  Yeah, yeah.

LG:  -- to keep going.  Yeah, I think it really gave me a lot of good survival skills, and athletic skills. 

CR:  Um-hm, yeah.

LG:  An important experience.

CR:  Definitely.  So I'd like to jump ahead to your --

LG:  Yeah.

CR:  -- life now, but before we do that I wanted to ask:  looking back on your childhood, are there any values or practices that you think your parents were trying to pass on to you?

LG:  I think the most important thing was take care of each other.  My mother often would say, in regards to my brother and myself -- our relationship -- "I just want you should be good together.  Just be good together."  That was 72:00really, really an important value.  And when I am with my brother and my cousins, I mean, they -- I just always tell them how precious they are to me, always.  It's not something that we save for special occasions or wish we had said.  So, yeah, that kind of -- I mean, it's a little burdensome, too, I think, to feel that responsible.  But you can see, from how they grew up, particularly in my mother's family, that -- because she talked about it more, my father wasn't that forthcoming -- you could see that taking care of each other 73:00was equivalent to survival.  So I think that's the main dish.  (laughs)

CR:  Could you expand a little bit on the idea that it was also burdensome?

LG:  Yeah, because, realistically, even if you're convinced that what you have to offer might be absolutely the best way to take care of somebody you love or care about, you may be wrong, (laughs) occasionally.  I had to point out to my parents or my aunts and uncles that they were mistaken -- well-intended, but mistaken.  They may not be ready for it.  They may not wanna listen.  You may, by virtue of your conviction that this is your birthright, be so intrusive and obnoxious that nobody wants to hear about it, (laughs) so -- and just, in terms of a personal sense of safety, if you really carry that sentiment, it's 74:00hard to quiet yourself and just be at ease, because how can you be okay if everybody else isn't okay?  So it has its merits and its limits.  (laughs)

CR:  Right, yeah.  So I'd like to skip ahead to you sort of starting your own family.  What values were important for you to transmit to your children about Jewish identity?

LG:  Again, it was, I think, the appreciation of family, the sweetness of family, the importance of not taking it for granted.  I didn't wanna drive too 75:00heavily home what people can do to each other, and how scary the realities of history have been and continue to be.  I didn't wanna be a bearer of darkness.  But I did tell them stories, and I did emphasize my mother's words:  just be good to each other.  And I think that that was consistently conveyed, among my other cousins and my brother, because -- maybe another thing I'll mail is a puppy pile -- what I call a puppy pile photo.  Every year, when we get together for Thanksgiving or Passover, we just make sure at one of our 76:00gatherings, when everyone's there, we take a picture of all of the kids.  And they're really big now.  (laughs) And my brother's sofa, which was my mother's sofa -- which is now reupholstered -- is pretty big, but it doesn't expand, but it somehow always manages to hold all of those kids, as big as they are.  And they intertwine themselves around each other.  And I think it just represents the family ethos.

CR:  Um-hm, yeah.  Did your children get to grow up with your parents at all?

LG:  They -- my mother died when my daughter, I think, was a senior in high school, so that maybe was seventeen or eighteen years ago, and the fir-- the last nine years of her life -- or eight years, from '81 to '89 -- she had 77:00Alzheimer's, so she was in decline, in terms of her memory.  But she was able to stay in her home, because of St. Maurice, another Polish angel -- a lot of Polish angels in their lives -- who lived with her, and took care of her, and sang Polish songs to her, and played Yiddish records, and cooked the foods that she liked -- of course, 'cause Polish, Yiddish, Eastern European, is pretty much the same.  So she was not store-housed, so when we came to Philadelphia, even during the time when she was in decline, we were at her house, and she was enjoying the kids.  She also lost her vision, and she would say, "Well, at 78:00least I have people who can see for me, and at least I have people who can remember for me."  She became, actually, (laughs) happier, because she couldn't remember what it was she was always so anxious about.  And of course, they were all really anxious, all of them -- my aunts and uncles -- understandably.  And depending on their personality, they would express it in ways that sometimes were able to -- they were able to laugh at themselves, sometimes not so much.  But yes, all of our kids experienced their bobes, and their z-- not their zeydes, because, well, my father died when I was pregnant with my son, which really was so unfair.  But he knew I was gonna have a child, and he was so, so happy about that.  "Now you're talkin', Lil.  Now you're talkin'!"  (laughs) 79:00I wanted to tell him that I was pregnant, before I told my mother, 'cause she was always the first on the phone, and he'd always say, "Oh, Lilly, here's mommy."  I'm like, "No, no, no, no, wait.  I wanna talk to daddy."  I just wanted to give him that honor, that aliyah.  (laughs) And, yeah, it was really -- obviously very bittersweet.

CR:  Yeah.

LG:  And my mother came to stay with me when I had my son, to help out.  And we were walking down the stairs, from the second floor to the first, in the house we rented for that year, and she was walking next to me, on the same stair tread, holding his head, and I'm holding him.  There was barely room for us on the same stair tread.  I'm like, "Mom, this is an example of how sometimes overkill is overkill."  So it kind of became a joke that she didn't think was 80:00that funny.  (laughs) My cousins' kids had longer times with both their bobes and zeydes, and they also -- particularly my aunt Miriam, who was the youngest of the three that survived -- she was the youngest of all the kids in the family, actually, a menopause baby.  She became the ultimate bobe for all of the children, and she made the rounds.  She called everybody almost every day, and she and I really had a very, very delightful relationship.  The joke, actually, was that Doris and I were switched at birth, three years apart, 81:00because I was so much like Miriam, and Dor was a lot more like my mother, and quiet, and pensive.  And it's a mixed joke, I think, because, I think Doris and her mom didn't have a -- I mean, obviously they were close, and loved and admired and respected each other, but they didn't have that certain kind of -- a tam -- flavor of connection that I had with Miriam.  And she really still keeps me company.  My mother does, too.  All of them do.  And I tell people about when they lose loved ones, that the relationship continues, if you're open to it.  The relationship changes and matures as you do.  So those people really continue to be alive and vibrant, if you're open to that.

CR:  Yeah.  I'd like to talk about your relationship to Yiddish today.  You talked about how it sort of informs the psychotherapy work that you do, and EMDR, specifically, and I was wondering if you could talk more about how Yiddishkayt influences your work --

LG:  Yeah.

CR:  -- and, obviously, growing up with survivor parents, as well.

LG:  Right, yeah.  Well, over the years of being in clinical practice, which is maybe thir-- at least thirty-five, now, maybe more -- I've -- I started out focusing on anxiety disorders, phobias, as a cognitive behavioral therapist, with exposure response prevention, correcting people's beliefs, incorporating 83:00mindfulness and meditation, quiet the nervous system, and I was always integrating experiences from growing up, with little Yiddish phrases and stories -- also a lot of training in hypnotherapy, particularly Ericksonian hypnotherapy, which is storytelling -- it's multiple embedded metaphors.  So you'd find the person's story, and create analogies that maybe their subconscious can pick up when their conscious minds are too scared, or too ashamed, or too angry.  That gave me tremendous validation, that training, about the power of storytelling, because before that I was always like, Why am I 84:00telling this story?  Is this -- is this -- am I doing therapy the right way?  (laughs) And then, as I continued maturing, and -- as a therapist and as a person -- I started to identify more that if people come into a therapist's office with something that is bad enough, painful enough, frightening enough, shaming enough, that they're undermined, that is lowercase-T traumatizing to them, to their nervous systems, often enough that they're aroused, hyper-aroused.  A few years after that, I started reading about research and 85:00actually calling things "little-T trauma."  I'm like, hey -- (laughter) yeah, but of course, nothing really is a new thought in the world.  So I decided to do EMDR trainings.  That was back in the '90s, when people were rolling their eyes, not back and forth, but like, what the hell is this stuff?  Actually, Bessel van der Kolk, who's a big trauma researcher, was in my trainings.  We were both rolling our eyes like this.  (laughs) But there's a lot of data now about how effective it is.  So, having lived with traumatized people, who were incredibly resilient, I found that -- that was validating to a lot of people, revealing -- strategically revealing things about that, and often quoting, often 86:00in Yiddish, phrases that people then would take and make their own.  And, by virtue of having something in another language that's funny, that mirrors your experience, or hits you in a place that is useful, it -- that changes your cognitive story in ways, very often, that are healing.  If I see somebody who is a perfectionist, or has OCD, and is a student at Smith, where those qualities are rewarded (laughs) -- sometimes you're too good a match for your school -- and I say, "Hey, di mame hot gezogt -- my mother said, 'Loz zayn krum, abi arum 87:00-- let it be crooked as long as it goes around.'"  What does that mean?  I'm like, "Let it be.  Leave it.  It's good enough."  And if they go home with "Loz zayn krum, abi arum," it's funny.  And when they're writing their paper and they're about to take -- pull the paper out of the proverbial typewriter that doesn't exist anymore, for the third time -- delete, delete -- because they're so anxious, and they have that phrase, they leave it alone.  "Zol helfn vi a toyte bankes":  wonderful, therapeutic phrase.  "It'll help like leeching a dead person."  In other words, not at all, forget about it.  When people are 88:00just banging their heads against the walls, trying to do better, or change something that really doesn't merit that degree of obsession, "Hey, zol helfn vi a toyte bankes."  It's a riot.  So, proud to say a lot of my clients now know a good bit of Yiddish, (laughs) and they really appreciate, also -- people who have trauma -- the selective sharing that I know is very, very validating to them.  And resilience is something that everybody has as a resource, but a lot of times that needs to be cultivated, nourished, pointed out.  And I think my 89:00history allows me to have the ability to be validating, be compassionate, and bear witness, and encourage them -- people who are in pain -- to bear witness to themselves with respect.  To sit and honor -- be good to themselves.

CR:  Um-hm, yeah.  That's wonderful.  You also take adult Yiddish classes at Congregation B'nai Israel, in Northampton?

LG:  I've done it on and off, yeah, and --

CR:  When did you start attending those classes?

LG:  Well, I mean, the first thing I did when I moved here -- 'cause I was pregnant with my son -- was to join the synagogue, even though I'm not particularly active there.  So, over time, there have been offerings, so I've 90:00done that when I can.  I haven't done it for a while.  Hannah Kliger and Rakhmiel Peltz -- now they're back in Philadelphia -- but when they were here, and Rakhmiel was teaching, I mean, it was just so delightful, so fun.  Also there was gleyzele tey [cups of tea], and I don't even know if they still do that anymore -- or maybe it has another name -- at the synagogue, where it was a senior gathering, and people would speak Yiddish.  So, back in the day, I used to show up there, even though I was a lot younger, because it was a place to absorb it, and to speak it, and to sing some songs and tell some jokes.  I don't know how many people, now, in the congregation, are still -- keep that 91:00alive.  I have a cousin -- my father's sister's daughter -- she mostly lives in Australia.  Sometimes she comes back here to visit.  I think one of her children was in school here.  But she just sort of makes intermittent appearances in our lives.  But she speaks Yiddish, and so she and I try to speak, and it's really sweet.  I wish she was a little more available with some degree of continuity.  And, occasionally, I meet someone who I already knew, and something comes up that reveals that either they were a child of Holocaust survivors, or they grew up Yiddish speaking, and it's really fun just to try to 92:00have a little banter.  My cousin David married -- a second marriage -- a rabbi in Philadelphia who speaks Yiddish, and I try to speak with her, too.  You know, my Yiddish is -- it's not from the books, so it's all purely verbal, really, except for the short opportunities to go to Yiddish shul and sit and read the "Forward" a little bit, but -- the way one word slurs into another word, where does one -- like I said in my story, where does one word end and the other begin?  I don't have that degree of skill or confidence, and I'm much, much less shy about it at this point.  I don't care.  Every year I think I'm gonna go to KlezKamp  if I can find dates that work.  It's still on my bucket 93:00list, because I think that I would absolutely love it.

CR:  Do your children speak or understand Yiddish at all?

LG:  A few words, a few words.  And, again, it's because I haven't been fluid, comfortable being fluid.  What was interesting was that, when they were growing up, we had au pairs -- exchange students -- and I wanted to have girls from Germany and Austria.  My family had a fit.  (spoken with a Yiddish accent) "What!  What!"  (laughter) "Are you crazy?"  I said, "Yes.  What else can I do?"  If there's anything I can do, post-Holocaust, to make some investment in a healthier international future for humans, who still keep doing the same dumb 94:00things, it's to have a German girl live in my house for a year.  And one time I got a letter from one of them, Kirsten, "To the family who gave me the most wonderful year in my life so far."  And what I would say to them is, "Speak to me in German, I'll speak to you in Yiddish."  And we had so much fun, so much fun.  Whereas the first time I went to Europe, right after college graduation, I was afraid to even open my mouth in German-speaking countries.  I was that paranoid.  Subsequent times, I'm like, "Hey, speak to me in German, I'll speak to you in Yiddish."

CR:  Yeah.

LG:  Tsebrokhene yidish, broken Yiddish.

CR:  Um-hm.  You mentioned that you also go to Yiddish theater when you can, 95:00in New York.  Can you tell me more about that?

LG:  Now and then, if I can get anyone in the family to come, or sometimes I go myself.  Yeah.  It's a shame that there aren't enough opportunities, because it's very sweet.  And, evidently, there's a whole Yiddish festival, I think in Prague, with poetry and stories, and it's not just attended by Jews.  So it's really exciting and amazing that there's a resurgence.

CR:  Um-hm, um-hm.  Yeah, absolutely.  You've alluded to this in different ways, but how, if at all, has language influenced your sense of identity?

LG:  Tremendously.  I think my humor is from my Jewish culture, totally.  My 96:00-- the -- just the little twists, the puns, the jokes.  I really credit the perspective of the Yiddish language.  I really credit it.  It's very alive in me, very vibrant.

CD:  Yeah, you also just mentioned this idea of a resurgence of Yiddish, and I'm curious to hear what you -- what you think the future of Yiddish is, right now.

LG:  Well, my cousin Dor went to that festival in Prague, as a poet, and she doesn't -- she doesn't write in Yiddish, but she happened to be there for some other kind of poetry conference, so that was just pretty exciting for her.  A 97:00lot of traditions are becoming diluted.  A lot of languages are petering out.  A lot of animal species (laughs) are becoming extinct.  I've really -- am so grateful for this Yiddish Book Center, and I wish the programs weren't all at two o'clock -- two o'clock Sunday afternoon, 'cause I am usually bike riding, or skiing, or snowshoeing, or hiking, or kayaking, (laughs) and so I put in a request that you have more time variations in your programming, because there's a lot of stuff I would love to just come to all the time.  And I know that it 98:00would be wonderful for Yiddish to be offered in more college language curriculums, yeah.  Because it just -- it's so alive.  It would be tragic for it to become a dead language.

CR:  Yeah.  How do you think the identity of younger generations of Jews differs from yours?

LG:  Well, looking at my own kids, I can say that they are much more prioritizing the transcendence of different -- of differences.  That to cling to a religious path, a cultural path, is a mixed bag.  They're growing up 99:00seeing, unfortunately, even more so now, with this presidency, that highlighting the other, and -- is fraught with danger, because, I mean, I understand it, and I've talked about it all the time, because I treat anxiety disorders, that we are primitive.  We're critters, who have the same brain that wants to know that you're safe.  That's the first concern.  And so you sniff around to get a sense of whether we're the same enough that we're safe.  And, in humans, that maintains a wariness of an other, and that can be exploited.  Hitler certainly 100:00did that to the nth degree.  It's happening now.  It's happened across time.  And the kids in our family, I think, are activist-minded.  Some of them are very much activist in their life path, and, to them, I think that -- as my daughter said, when she was about six -- that the solution -- she said, "Mommy, nobody should -- there should be a law.  Nobody should be allowed to marry someone of the same color or the same religion."  I'm like, hm, out of mouths of babes.  But the downside of that is, you know, the loss of cultural traditions, and a language that might be in the minority that really informs 101:00your worldview, your sense of connection, your identity.  So we don't want to lose all the colors of the rainbow.  So I think that's really a challenge, 'cause -- on the one hand, and on the other hand.  (laughter)

CR:  Yeah, yeah.  Well, we're nearing the end of the interview, but I have a couple of other questions to ask you.  But before that, I was wondering if there were any topics that you'd like to discuss that we haven't touched on, briefly.

LG:  I'll just scan my little crib sheet.  Hm, really -- I think we've done a 102:00good job.  What I did wanna say is that helplessness, it does not sit well with me.  I'm glad to see that among my family's kids the same is true.  We have a pretty forthcoming, outspoken group of doers among our children.  And my brother is a tenant law advocate, as an attorney, and my cousin David, who's also an attorney, who represents the rights of physically and mentally disabled 103:00people.  So I'm very proud of that.  And right now, with our political drama and bizarreness, there's a real urgency that I've been feeling, and I was really overwhelmed.  Where am I gonna go?  What am -- what do I do first?  Like, oy, oy, oy, oy, oy.  So I joined the ACLU and local -- they're trying, locally, to act nationally for efforts to address all the police departments, and all the towns, to endorse nine points for sanctuary cities.  And so I decided, okay, 104:00right now, let me focus on one thing, (laughs) and undocumented immigrants seems a very, very relevant focus for me.  Clearly immigrants are us, so I'm glad to have landed on that opportunity, just for my own sense of focus and small, little bit of empowerment.

CR:  Yeah.  It's all important.  Well, so I have a couple of questions that we typically ask at the end of the interviews, but, first of all, what is your favorite Yiddish word, phrase, or song, if you can pick one?  (laughter)

LG:  Hm, hm, let me see if I -- if I have one of the -- well, I guess "Loz zayn 105:00krum, abi arum" -- let it be crooked as long as it goes around -- is one of my favorites, because it allows me to coexist with helplessness, with imperfection, with lack of control.  Allows me to be tolerant with myself and with other people.  I think that was a real gift of insight and wisdom from my grandmother 106:00-- maybe her mother, too, so I don't know how many generations that came from.  My father used to pace around with his hands in his pockets and say, "Lill, Lill, Lill, shver tsu zayn a yid, shver tsu zayn a yid -- it's hard to be a Jew."  I used to get very angry at him.  "What do you mean?  You think it's only hard to be a Jew?  It's hard to be a human."  "Ah, Lill, Lill, Lill.  Such a big one, such a silly one."  I should know better, you know.  So sometimes I walk around and put my hands in my pockets, and I say, "Lill, Lill, Lill, shver tsu zayn a yid," because it was a metaphor.  Of course it was to be a human, and that's morphed, for me, into just a -- bearing witness and acknowledgment of human struggles.  And it allows me also to float backwards 107:00and extend compassion to my father's memory that I didn't necessarily have.

CR:  Yeah.  Well, the last question is:  what advice do you have for future generations?

LG:  Hm, wow, that's a big one.  (laughs) Well, I would say, be curious and appreciative of your heritage.  Don't take the sweetness of that for granted.  And create your own quilt.  And quilts weave from other memories, other times, other fabrics.  So, yes, create your own quilt.  (laughs)

CR:  That's beautiful, thank you.  Well, thank you so much for --

LG:  You're welcome.

CR:  -- coming here and sharing these amazing memories and reflections, and, on behalf of the Yiddish Book Center, a sheynem dank [thank you very much], and, yeah, thank you very much.

LG:  A sheynem dank to you, too.

[END OF INTERVIEW]