ADRIENNE COOPER ORAL HISTORY

PAULINE KATZ: This is Pauline Katz, and today is December 28th, 2010. I am here at KlezKamp in the Catskills with Adrienne Cooper, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Adrienne Cooper, do I have your permission to record this interview?

ADRIENNE COOPER: You do.

PK:Thank you.

AC:You're welcome.

PK:To begin with, I'd like to ask you to briefly tell me about where your family comes from.

AC:I was born in Oakland, California. My mother was born in Chicago, Illinois; my father, in Hamilton, Ontario. And my grandparents on my father's side come 1:00from Poland and Lithuania, on my mother's side come from Russia and the Ukraine -- specifically, from a town called -- my grandfather from Rohachiv or Rogachyov and my grandmother from Pyatigorsk.

PK:And what was it like growing up in Oakland?

AC:It was an interesting community. My parents came there because my father was stationed in the Navy during the war, and so they moved from Chicago and discovered the Golden Land -- the goldene medine -- in California, and really felt like it was the goldene medine. And we were always involved in the heart of a Jewish community. My mother was a Yiddish and Hebrew singer in the area as long as I remember. And we were -- you know, belonged to synagogues -- and in my 2:00formative years, first in an Orthodox synagogue and then in a Conservative synagogue that was very influential in my life, Temple Beth Abraham. And the rabbi was Harold Schulweis, who was an inspiring social justice figure, a Yiddish speaker -- a native Yiddish speaker from New York -- and a stellar Jewish community leader.

PK:Were you frum [devout]?

AC:We were not frum, but kept kosher at home. I was shomer shabes [Shabbos observant] when I was growing up. And it was a kind of full, aesthetic Judaism. I think I spent five days a week in shul studying -- and later, as a teacher myself -- in that Hebrew school.

PK:Did you go to public school?

AC:I did go to public schools in -- first in Oakland when I was little, and -- you know, in various places that we moved to in the Bay Area, and graduated from Oakland High School. And I went to the University of California at Berkeley for a couple of years, and then moved to Israel -- and finished my university at Hebrew University.

PK:You said the shul was important to you. What type of things did you do with the shul?

AC:It was really the source of my Jewish literacy. I was very studious and I was very interested, and it was like a parallel education. So, when I came back into public school, there was history that I knew that nobody else (laughs) knew. There was a bigger context for me. I was also involved in Young Judaea at the time, and that was a kind of studious -- you know, we'd read the "The Zionist 4:00Idea" and you'd read the -- you know, various socialist -- basically, socialist Zionist texts. I considered myself a -- you know, a socialist Zionist. And so, that's where my -- the excitement, I think, in my education came in my Jewish education, and that informed the other.

PK:And did you start singing around then?

AC:My mother was kind of the singer in our community. And, you know, I always sang. But, you know, I sang in the youth movement, in shul, in school, and, you know, participated -- singing throughout.

PK:Who were your friends in your various spheres?

AC:I had very good friends in school, but I think best friends in Young Judaea, 5:00in the Zionist movement. And we -- I actually did not go on Year Course. I went first to university at Berkeley for two years, and then when I did -- after two years at Berkeley, I did go to Israel. I have a very specific memory, because the student movement at the -- the student strike at Berkeley happened while I was there in -- I was there from '64 to '66, and I remember -- I think it was Jerry Rubin coming to my house -- he was a leader of the student strike -- coming to my apartment and urging me, actually, not to go (laughs) to Israel. You know, criticizing what was not ideal about it. At that time, I used to leave 6:00teaching on Shabbos at Temple Beth Abraham with Michael Lerner, who later became the founder of "Tikkun," and another guy named Norman Adler, who was a psych PhD student, and we would go into the Oakland ghetto and tutor black kids. So, I would, you know, move from having taught Hebrew school in the morning to tutoring in East Oakland. And so, the -- when I moved to Israel, where I intended to stay -- I lived there for five years -- I graduated university there, but I came informed with all of this kind of political -- radical politics, and looked for that in Israel as well.

PK:What kind of a radical politics are you talking about?

AC:It was, you know, a basic -- at that time, an anti-war -- anti-Vietnam War politics. And in Israel, I was really quite idealistic. I really, from the beginning, wanted a two-state solution. I lived there during the Six Day War. My whole family was there. My brother was in university; my other brother was in high school. And we did think of settling, permanently. All of us graduated from various schools there: my brother from medical school, me from Hebrew University. And I attended the Rubin Academy of Music as well -- my younger brother graduated from high school there. So, I had a very clear kind of 8:00socialist Zionist, pro-two-state solution to the -- the period after the war -- point of view.

PK:Had your parents also moved to Israel?

AC:My mother did. My parents weren't together, so my mother did, and stayed for a number of years. Worked in educational TV and so forth. And so, we all lived there in overlapping periods over a period of many years.

PK:Now what were you majoring in?

AC:I majored in History and in English Literature. At that time, at Hebrew University, you had to have two majors, so those were my two.

PK:And why those two?

AC:Why those two? I was always interested in history. When I was at Berkeley, I was a psych student, and one of my professors sort of said, "Now go out and 9:00study humanities and fill out your -- the breadth of your background so you can be a good shrink." And I never came back. (laughs) I kind of went into history and kept going.

PK:Why did you leave Israel?

AC:I left to come to graduate school in the States. I left also because it felt very -- like I knew exactly what my life -- the parameters of my life would be there, and I wanted at that time to broaden them some. I had begun to work in music. I was on a parallel academic track at Hebrew University and began a master's program there. And at the same time I had been studying at the Rubin Academy of Music and doing some music theater in Israel, and felt that I wanted 10:00to broaden my horizons a bit. So, I came back to the States and went to the University of Chicago -- in History -- in a PhD program.

PK:At the musical theater, what type of performances -- what type of musical theater were you performing?

AC:I was in a phenomenal theater directed by Arieh Sachs, who was a very adventurous literature professor and theatrical mensch at -- he was at Hebrew University and in a circle of really interesting poets and authors and people in -- arts people in Jerusalem. So, we did a Hebrew language -- quite a bawdy and wonderful Hebrew language production of "Everyman," the medieval play. And you know, some other stuff -- chamber operas at the Rubin Academy. So, there was a 11:00range of things.

PK:Now what did you go to Chicago -- what was your major in Chicago?

AC:I was in a History PhD program. So, I got my master's there, and I had the amazing -- and that actually is what led me to Yiddish. I began to study Yiddish at Chicago with one of the librarians, who was the wife of Bolek Ellenbogen, who was the kind of manager of the building at the YIVO -- he was a fantastic older Bundist. And his wife, Halinka, taught -- his sister, I'm sorry -- his sister, Halinka, taught Yiddish at -- outside of the regular faculty at the library. There was a group of students that studied with her. And she was married to 12:00Arcadius Kahan, who was a -- the descendant of a prominent Bundist family. He was a political economist at the University of Chicago. And I took one of my orals fields with Kahan, on Eastern European Jewish history. And he suggested that I go to the YIVO summer program. My ABD -- my unfinished PhD -- was on Hebrew and Yiddish writers in the United States. And knowing very little, I felt like I had invented this topic for myself. And once I came to the YIVO after having finished doctoral orals at Chicago, I sat down -- again -- to study through the Max Weinreich Center. So, we were sent to -- we had access to 13:00classes -- both at the Max Weinreich Center at YIVO -- so I studied with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and with Mikhl Herzog and with Khone Shmeruk and Benjamin Hrushovski. And we had access to classes at Columbia, and at JTS I studied with David Roskies and with Ezra Mendelsohn and all these great historians. But it was kind of wrong-headed (laughs) -- in which I had already finished a doctoral orals (laughs) and then sat down for another couple of years to study Yiddish literature and language and culture and East European Jewish history some more. (laughs)

PK:Now why had you decided on Yiddish and Hebrew literature?

AC:I think that I was in an interesting disconnect. When I came back from 14:00Israel, I found myself kind of on a language bridge between Hebrew and English. And I actually had difficulty expressing myself verbally (laughs) in graduate school. Because I had been functioning for four years -- four or five years in an academic setting in Hebrew, and so I found myself between these languages. And as I began to study Yiddish, I found myself in another -- yet another Jewish language, and I felt this enormous affinity for Yiddish writers in the United States who were isolated linguistically. And so, it was a little mystical connection, and it led to an enormous well.

PK:And what was it that led you to learning Yiddish in the first place?

AC:I have no idea. It was the -- Kahan. It was the suggestion -- and I think because I was trying to, for myself, I think, fill out a picture. You know, I believe that everybody does a PhD (laughs) out of some kind of, you know, desire to complete a thought process that they're having about themselves or with themselves. My main field was American intellectual history, and as a very identified Jew, I think that I wanted to fill in the background for myself. And so, I believe that that's what led to it.

PK:So, after YIVO, did you go back to Chicago to finish?

AC:No. I sunk into the YIVO. I came there -- first to the summer program, then I 16:00did go back to Chicago. And then, I was offered a -- they were great talent scouts in those days, and they had -- and the YIVO had funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a fellows program -- and from various Jewish foundations -- from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. And they were often very generous doctoral stipends, so basically I was supported -- between these NEH fellowships and the National Foundation and Memorial Foundation -- to, you know, sit down and continue to study. But it was quite an exciting time, because the faculty was unbelievable and the resources were amazing and the seduction (laughs) of really 17:00a generation of young scholars and then artists to a really broad field of work in Yiddish. So, I went from, you know, looking at academic papers in the -- papers for my academic work in the archive to exploring the other floors, in which there was the music archive, the sound collection, my colleagues working on "Image Before My Eyes." And then, I was offered a job. So, I began to do this academic work, but then I was offered a day job (laughs) at some point, and that shifted the balance.

PK:What was the job?

AC:The job was to be the assistant director of the Max Weinreich Center -- and, after a couple of years, to direct the YIVO summer program. So, I went from teaching singing on the lawn (laughs) to directing the program: helping select the students, distributing scholarships, hiring faculty, and managing that program -- the relationship between YIVO and Columbia University -- for a number of years. And then, to the position of assistant director of the YIVO. Sam Norich was the executive director at that time, and we worked together and we managed, you know, planning and supervising, exhibitions, staff work, and so forth.

PK:When you were teaching singing at YIVO, what songs were you teaching?

AC:Well, it was a really interesting experience, because I was at the same time learning some songs from different people. I had a number of mentors, and -- you know, in my artistic life. So, the first thing, I think -- among the first things that happened when I came to the YIVO is I was invited to sing at a YIVO dinner. So, I got up and I did things that I had been actually working on in Chicago and performing in Chicago. So, I, at that time, was working a lot in classical music in my musical life, and I did some Jewish music, but it was through a classical framework. So, I got up at this YIVO dinner and sang Lazar 20:00Weiner's and Glatstein's "Tsela-tseldi," and up out of the audience, you know, kind of holding onto my arm, came Lazar Weiner, the composer. I had no idea that he was there. He was very gratified to hear a couple of his songs, and they're very sophisticated art songs. And he gave me a scholarship to his course at the 92nd Street Y, he invited me into his home, he coached me, and we had a wonderful relationship for a number of years. Wolf Yunin, who was a teacher at the YIVO -- and a marvelous -- one of the Yung-Vilne Yiddish poets -- also kind of, you know, (laughs) took me home to Forest Hills and coached me. So, I had access to these remarkable artists as mentors. And then, within the building, it 21:00was Henry and Michael and Josh Waletzky and other people who were more or less of my generation who were doing other kinds of work. And so, I began to work with them on music projects. We -- Josh was putting together "Partisans of Vilna" around that time -- Josh and Henry. And so, I worked on the recording -- not the film, but the recording. And those were very carefully prepared, deep experiences that were -- that had enormous reverence for the material. We 22:00prepared that recording for the better part of a year before we walked into the studio -- explored all aspects of the Partisan repertoire from Vilna and then, you know, went into the studio to record it. I was involved also in a wonderful project that was funded by the National Endowment on the Arts that -- with an early generation of younger -- or were thought of as younger Yiddish performers at that time -- Andy Statman and Perl Teitelbaum and Josh and others. And that was called "Vaserl [Stream]." And the -- some of the Schaechters were involved in that. I met Zalmen Mlotek at that time, performing in the Bronx. I was told 23:00that when I got there -- I didn't need to rehearse, 'cause when I got there I would meet the pianist and we would do fine with, you know, just having a little meeting before the performance. And that was my meeting with Zalmen. And then, we stood up on stage, you know, an hour later, and (laughs) performed a concert. So, that world of colleagues opened up out of that set of experiences.

PK:Back to your mentors --

AC:Yeah.

PK:-- why do you think they grabbed you and took you home with them?

AC:Well, I guess my approach to all music is kind of the same. So, I have an enormous interest in the psychology behind the song and in language. And I had done a lot of work in -- you know, in German lider [songs] and in French art 24:00songs. And the stuff of the texts was always what I was about, and not so much performance and not so much the vocal pyrotechnics -- but I had a well-prepared, you know, vocal technique. And what I found was, you know, this -- another kval, another source of amazing texts, and I could go back to my family's repertoire and re-experience it and kind of take it back for myself. So, I guess what -- I think that what they saw was somebody who was mindful -- and, you know, I got them and they got me. So, (laughs) we understood each other.

PK:And of your partnerships -- I'd just like you to talk a little more about the partnerships and the collaborations and the colleagues and the world that you were living in.

AC:Yeah. I guess I've always seen music as a collaborative activity. And you know, I think that (laughs) most people do. But what it gave me, I think, was an opportunity to -- you know, to explore with a community. And I think that's the -- you know, the old socialist in me -- is, you know, with a community of colleagues -- co-equals -- and we could kind of plunge in and explore together. 26:00And -- yeah.

PK:Why do you think there were so many people of the same age interested in this new music?

AC:Well, first of all, there was, you know, this kind of "Roots" phenomenon. But there was also support for it, frankly. So, there were a number of centers where -- you know, there was government support available. Our arts money was being given to retrieving this music and so there were folks who were being encouraged and supported to work in this field. In Europe, as well, there was money available to record, to tour. There were audiences, and there was a -- and this 27:00was, like, the mid-to-late '70s -- and there was a world opening up of all this range of possibility, from people to work with, people to learn from, mentors to work with. Just like the instrumentalists had, we on the vocals side had as well -- people were available to us and we knew how to find them. They wanted to be found. And I was able to, you know, go back to my own family and understand what was there -- what was there in my mother's background, especially -- and to take that back.

PK:Let's continue on your path to here.

AC:Okay.

PK:So last -- you had started working at YIVO; you were working with Zalmen; you were working on all those collaborations.

AC:Right.

PK:What next?

AC:Well, what next was that in working in the summer program -- first, I had the opportunity to teach a number of people who were, you know, these lovely young people who had come to the summer program. Among them, sitting on the lawn, was Lawrence Glamberg and Alicia Svigals -- taking the Yiddish summer program because they had begun to work in the Klezmatics and they were looking for -- you know, to learn Yiddish and to learn Yiddish song. So, on the other end was Ellie Kellman, who was teaching at the summer program. She taught me "Shnirele perele [String of pearls]," and I, you know, walked out onto the lawn and taught 29:00"Shnirele perele" to Lauren and to Alicia. I learned "Ale brider [All brothers]" somewhere, went out to the lawn, taught "Ale brider." And so, this wonderful chain of relationships yielded, you know, what we know it yielded. So, that was, you know, something that started out quite simple in a chain of communication that ended up in an altogether other world -- that has opened up another world. The other thing that happened that was significant -- and that brings us to where we're doing this interview -- is that I worked closely with Henry at the YIVO. And we had endless conversations about, Well, what if we looked at the 30:00example of the summer program, which was five days a week, three hours a day of language class -- immersion language class -- and then afternoons filled with cultural activities. So, you could go to a Yiddish film and discuss it; you would go to a translation workshop; you would have a conversation circle in the afternoon; you would be exposed to native speakers; you would be taught singing; you would have a theater workshop. And we said, Okay, so this works for fifty, sixty, seventy people who are able to devote six to eight weeks of a summer to doing this full time and having an immersion experience. What if -- like Henry's experience of old-time music camp or Balkan music camps -- what if you took the 31:00model and you flipped it and you had an immersion arts experience -- an immersion experience of klezmer music and Yiddish song -- and you added to that immersion experience a language class that people would go to for an hour or two during an intensive week. Could we try to do that? So, out of the YIVO -- because I had an administrative position and Henry was the head of the sound archives -- we attempted to launch a program. We went to the old -- I think it was Boiberik, which would become something else -- and another kind of new age camp retreat grounds and we put out a brochure, looked for registration -- to 32:00break even. And to make it work, we needed about 125 people; I think we got in the vicinity of, you know, ninety-nine, a hundred. We couldn't make it work that first year. We tried again the following year, and we, you know, started out with 150 people or so, and KlezKamp was launched. And that was twenty-six years ago. And it grew every year after that. We didn't do it at the place that had been Boiberik; we did it at the Parksville -- at a hotel in Parksville. And you know, that was the beginning of this. But it came out of looking at the program and saying, Well, we could do this for more people in a more kind of accessible format.

PK:How did you get involved in the Yiddish theater?

AC:That was serendipity. Miriam Hoffman was -- had been asked to create an entertainment for the -- a YIVO dinner. And she decided to do a version of Itzik Manger's "Songs of Paradise." So, myself and Michael Alpert and I think Eleanor Reissa and another couple of folks put together a primitive version (laughs) for this dinner of "Songs of Paradise." And once we did it, we took it up to a -- the JCC in Riverdale. And somebody invited Joseph Papp to come see it. And so, he came to the JCC at Riverdale, he saw the production, and he invited us to do 34:00a -- I think it was supposed to be a month of weekends or something at the Public Theater. And once we brought it down to the Public Theater, it ended up running for six months, eight times a week. (laughs) So, I would go to my day job and then fling myself downtown. (laughs) And you know, my poor daughter had a period of six months of being dragged to the theater when she was, I don't know, eight years (laughs) or nine years old, doing her homework under the table, getting to see people doing "A Winter's Tale." Mandy Patinkin was actually doing "A Winter's Tale" in the next theater over -- in the bigger house at the Public Theater. But we ran there for six months full time and then moved the show across the street to the Astor Place Theatre, ran another few months, 35:00toured internationally with it to Holland and Germany and all kinds of other places. And after that, I did some other projects -- an amazing project with Jenny Romaine at Great Small Works Theater -- a production of "The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln" that also had a similar success. I was a co-creator of that production with Jenny and with Frank London. We wrote ballads together -- music together -- and developed, again, over a period of a couple of years, developed this really remarkable piece of work. And it ran at the La Mama Theater Annex 36:00for an extended period of time and then toured throughout the States and Europe.

PK:How did you end up at the Workmen's Circle?

AC:Somebody called me. I -- between my work at YIVO, I had worked -- and I think it's relevant -- I worked for seven years at the Museum of Chinese in the Americas. So, I worked in ano-- I brought -- I was actually recruited there because people on the museum staff knew that I had been trained by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (laughs) and people like that, and they really wanted an integrated, multicultural approach to their own work -- an interdisciplinary approach to their own work. So, I was recruited as program director and had an 37:00amazing experience learning that community and really applying this interdisciplinary approach that -- to Yiddish culture and Eastern European Jewish -- American Jewish life -- to my work at the -- in the Chinese American community, and in this wonderful museum that's since developed into a remarkable place. When I left there after seven years, I did a project for -- under a Federation grant at a synagogue, bringing spirituality to the synagogue through the arts. And again, I brought -- you know, we founded a klezmer band there; I had a Yiddish singing group; we did exhibitions (laughs) and family history. So, 38:00it was, again, the kind of YIVO mindset about how you enliven a community by giving it back its own culture. And when I was there, somebody called me -- a headhunter called me and asked me to recommend someone for the job that Chava Lapin was leaving at the Workmen's Circle to direct the Center for Cultural Jewish Life there. And I said, "Well, I don't want to recommend anybody. I'd like that job. (laughs) I'd like to apply for that job." And so, I did, and got it.

PK:Had you been keeping up your political activism in between?

AC:Not as straight political work, but through my arts work. My arts work was always informed by that. Since then, I served on the board of Jews for Racial 39:00and Economic Justice and was supportive, over the years, of various social justice projects and organizations. But it was mostly through my arts activism.

PK:I'd like to -- well, first of all, how did your feelings on Yiddish and Yiddish culture or just the arts in general change after having your daughter?

AC:That's a great question. So, I remember (pauses) -- first, I remember singing to her -- you know, of course, in Yiddish -- from the beginning. And that was my 40:00formative experience, as well. On my new CD, I have a sound collage. And one of the things in the sound collage is my grandfather singing liturgical music, my grandmother singing a version of the Sholem Aleichem lullaby, and I can be heard in the background -- my father had a wax disc recording machine in the house, and so he recorded -- I come from a line of singers: my grandfather, my grandmother, my mother, my grandmother's uncle. And so, in this piece of recording, my grandmother is singing, and I'm going, "(makes singing noise)" -- and (laughs) there's this child's -- baby's voice. So, it was clearly in my ear from the time that I was born. And that's kind of what I reproduced with Sarah. 41:00We did some Yiddish conversation and vocabulary, but I didn't really speak with her on an -- you know, on an ongoing basis. But you know, songs she heard, and she had some access to Yiddish vocabulary. I was -- when I first came to New York, I had, you know, those various Hebrew school jobs and then Yiddish school jobs. So, I taught in the Yiddish school in Bergen -- I think in Bergenfield -- Bergen County, New Jersey. And when they decided to form a West Side Yiddish 42:00school -- it ended up being a Workmen's Circle school -- I was the founding director of that school. Yankl Salant was a teacher there; Roz Perry was bobe reyzele [grandmother Reyzl] and would come in and teach and do storytelling with the kids. I developed curriculum for that school and had a marvelous group of mostly Yiddishist parents -- a lot of people from Hemshekh, from the Bundist summer camp. And so -- and Sarah was, you know, a little kid in that school. So, I just -- I was looking last week at photographs, 'cause I was working at the YIVO right after she was -- just after she was born. I was -- you know, had been 43:00a student, and then began to work. So, there's these wonderful pictures of her sitting at what was Max Weinreich's (laughs) desk, with his library behind her, talking on the telephone. (laughs) She used to make up little budgets. (laughs) And she was, you know, like, three, four years old in these photographs, in a little red plaid dress. So, a lot of what was happening was osmosis. Some of the YIVO students were her babysitters. (laughs) And so, what came out was both a set of relationships, but an early, you know, exposure to everything that was going on around her. And when we founded KlezKamp, it was the last Christmas she 44:00ever saw (laughs) outside -- in the outside world. She was about five and a half years old, and has been coming here ever since now -- works here and directs the children's program. So, what she -- it's not so much what changed in me as, she grew up in this world. And so, you know, this is her community. It's a formative community. And everything that goes on here, from language to music to these relationships, you know, was formative, from the time that she was, you know, four years old or so.

PK:What was it like to work on a CD with her?

AC:Oh, it was wonderful. Well, we've worked before -- when she was a littler kid -- I think she was about twelve -- Guy Laflamme was preparing "Remember the 45:00Children" for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. And so, a number of -- Sarah and -- I don't -- I think Dudl Waletzky -- I'm not sure if he was on that or it was "Partisans of Vilna" or something, but I remember her in her room preparing an audition tape (laughs) for "Remember the Children." And so, we worked on that -- kind of parallel, not together. She had her own songs. And I think that she -- she's accompanied on that -- I know by Jeff Warschauer. So, again, those relationships formed in that context. So, that was the first CD (laughs) recording that we were on toge-- more or less together -- both of us 46:00were on -- separately. And I very much wanted -- when I prepared this CD that has just come out, called "Enchanted" -- it was a real collaboration. First of all, she pushed me a lot to get it out, to get it done. And I wanted this intergenerational conversation -- over, you know, time and lender [space, lit. "countries"]. And she is a really important and thoughtful part of that conversation. So, we did everything from the Glückel mother-daughter bird song together to "Volt ikh gehat koyekh [If I had the strength]," in which -- from the time that I adapted this Hasidic song into -- I made it into a peace song -- 47:00she was already working as a Yiddish translator, or a writer of Yiddish songs and a translator of Yiddish texts into English, and she had done a wonderful English language verse for this song, and so we sing it together, and in an amplified chorus of other younger musicians and friends and collaborators.

PK:Why do you think she followed you down this path into Yiddish -- Yiddishkayt?

AC:(pauses) Well, I think first of all, there seems to be a family tradition (laughs) of voices. And she would have to speak for herself, and probably will. But I think that it's something that she values enormously. It means something 48:00to her; it's a core part of her Jewish identity. I think similar things in it interest us both: its breadth and its -- you know, its kind of being in the great argument of Jewish civilization, of a full Jewish civilization that runs from, you know, liturgy to spectacular apikorses [heretical texts, lit. "heresy"], that runs from music to foodways, that runs -- you know, that can make a life. And so, I don't know. You know, it's her mystery. But what I do know is that she was at Sarah Lawrence College; she went for a year to study at 49:00Hebrew University; she -- at the end of that time, she sent me an email saying, What I'd like is, get me an application to the YIVO summer program. So after a year immersed in Hebrew and in -- living in Israel, what she wanted (laughs) was an application to the Yiddish program. So, it must have filled out something in that full experience of living as a Jew in a Jewish country and then wanting this to be -- to come to another level. And then, she attended the summer program a number of times -- went from the intermediate level to the advanced 50:00and I think took that a couple of times, began to write in Yiddish, began to teach in Yiddish shules [Yiddish secular schools]. You know, there's that kind of interesting trajectory between studying and then teaching -- taking the responsibility to teach -- and, you know, looking over your shoulder at your students and discovering what it is that you have to communicate, and I think discovering a lot more about the culture by teaching, through teaching.

PK:That brings us nicely to today and your Yiddish classes. Why do you -- or your singing classes.

AC:Yeah.

PK:Why do you think people are interested today in Yiddishkayt, Yiddish culture?

AC:Well, I think that it provides a -- in part, I think it provides a vehicle 51:00for growth -- for a certain kind of growth. I think it provides an enormous opportunity for people to understand themselves by connecting to a community -- by connecting to a contemporary community that is creating living Jewish culture. And it's more than Yiddish culture; it really is a living, participatory, Jewish life that is, I think, amplified in a way that -- that some synagogue experiences are, but they choose a particular zone. And here, you can both experience a contemporary community -- contemporary Jewish creativity along a huge spectrum -- and the opportunity to look back and see how you are 52:00connected to this, where you come from, where your ancestors come from. And just that -- both depth -- you know, it's a kind of wild mind experience, because you experience yourself and your family history, you know, deep over time, and then there's this vista that opens out of where you can participate now -- how you can bring that forward to fill out an identity. And I find that the students' experience of both making something in the moment, either by -- anything, from listening to somebody else to having a conversation that -- you know, over generations with people -- to developing a skill that meets an adult where they 53:00live, from traditional papercutting to deepening a language skill to making music to using your body to dance and to absorb that sound and express yourself through it -- is, you know, a remarkable experience for students. They are able to connect through communication, through emotion, and through a developing skill set. So, it's quite the full experience for an adult learner. In master 54:00classes, people have a very expansive experience of that, and I find that in repertoire classes, that's -- it provides me an interesting experience every year to take a topic -- to look at the lens of -- create a lens for looking at Yiddish music, Yiddish vocal repertoire. And so, I try to kind of solve a puzzle or answer a question or open a door. So, we do everything from one year looking at Gebirtig repertoire to this year looking at what happens in Yiddish song if you look at the forest, the field, the river, the town, and then you look at how industrialization and urbanization and immigration creates a new world of the factory, the dance hall, the train station, the -- you know, a world that's 55:00transformed technologically -- how that will have informed these songs. But again, it gives you that -- you know, those lateral planes of your own family's history, your own family's journey, and then what you're able to integrate as a person encountering this puzzle. Let's solve this puzzle together.

PK:I'd like to go back to your mentors for a bit --

AC:Um-hm.

PK:-- and actually ask you how you feel about being the mentor today.

AC:Well, I think part of it is that was the experience of that -- it probably 56:00is, you know, both the -- now I understand, you know -- when you look from a particular perspective in your lifetime, I understand what that socialist Zionist community was, and then the YIVO community as far as kind of talent scouting -- you know, identifying people (laughs) who could be recruited and then who would passionately embrace the cause, right? And so, you know, I became one of them. (laughs) I was made into one of them. And I so delight in knowing a student, in knowing a colleague, in trying to answer some of these questions 57:00together in the mutual exploration or in being able to frame an opportunity for that exploration, for that discussion -- everything from a job opportunity (laughs) to looking at somebody else's project, to identifying a collaborator and inviting them into a project, to being invited. And so, you know, they're a set of relationships to the extent that I'm in a position to invite somebody in. You know, it's a gift that passes in both directions.

PK:Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about?

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

AC:About twelve years ago, the American Jewish World Service established a 58:00program that was meant to secure a cultural community in the former Soviet Union. It was really a brilliant project, because instead of just encouraging emigration, instead of only doing social service projects, the AJWS really looked at the former Soviet Union and said, Well, what would really support communities there? And they settled on education and culture. And so, when they decided to do this, they literally brought coals to Newcastle. They brought teachers from the United States who had worked in programs in Yiddish teaching 59:00and in performance, in arts -- and they brought us to St. Petersburg and to Kiev and later to Moscow. So, I remember, you know, getting on an Aeroflot plane with Zalmen and going to St. Petersburg. And we had no idea who we were gonna find there, but because both of our families had come from -- parts of our families had come from places in Russia, we were very excited. We walk into these classrooms and meet these squads of people who could have been us. Had our families not emigrated, we would have been these people. And we begin to -- you know, to teach. First of all, they're spectacular students -- they're spectacular tools for learning and for absorbing. And what the experience was of 60:00meeting people with a very thin thread, but not a broken thread altogether -- so they were living in the places where this culture had developed, they had some access to it, but it was really weakened, and you felt like you were knitting that thread really delicately back together. The experience that was amazing was the amount of eagerness and off-the-hook joy. So, I remember that we taught the song "Shprayz ikh mir [I am walking]" -- which is a song about a -- you know, a guy getting on a horse and going to an inn and wanting a drink and intending to go and buy horses but spending all his money on drink. And the experience coming 61:00back was of the room rocking with joy. It's a joyous song, and the amount of joy in these students -- along with enormous discipline -- was absolutely -- like, took our breath away. So, we spent a lot of time weeping (laughs) in these cla-- every so often -- but also having this, you know, kind of sucked up with such enthusiasm and energy. And I've gone back over that period of twelve years to teach at various programs. After a good, I would say, four years, these people had already turned into Yiddish culture creators. They were writing songs; they were teaching other people; they became -- they learned Yiddish -- from scratch, in most cases; some of them became teachers themselves. So, this exchange -- 62:00from being able to re-seed something -- so there are bands and they go to festivals and they've now become our colleagues, and in some cases, again, teachers and mentors of others in these programs. That was an enormous gift to -- you know, for us to receive and for us to be able to give. The model of these programs, which was really based on the original kind of KlezKamp model -- the fact that we learned, or we developed a way of teaching this music, and we've been able to -- and culture -- and we've been able to pass it on through the founding of these other, similar kinds of programs means that there are these 63:00projects which are pretty modest in scale and easily supported, easily translated from one community to another. So, they exist now in England and in France and in Germany and in -- and I've taught in these places, where sometimes you're teaching all Jews and sometimes you're teaching very few Jews. In the program in Weimar, there would be two or three stray Jews who would wander into this program, and you're teaching mostly Germans. That's a different kind of exchange. But the ability to open up worlds for the experience of Yiddish culture and to discover who it is who wants that and who needs it and who is 64:00connected to it, who can connect to it, is -- you know, has been a remarkable experience.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

PK:Well, I would like to ask one last question. What's your advice to future generations?

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

AC:What I'd like future generations to know is that this culture belongs to them. That they have a right to take it, to explore it, to create something of their own in it. There is a potentially very destabilizing kind of experience in not knowing language, in not being able to possess a set of skills that -- and a 65:00fluency -- that makes them feel secure and that gives them the right to participate. But I really hope that they'll be, you know, kind of bold and fearless -- that Jewish culture and Jewish literacy and Yiddish culture and Yiddish literacy is hard come by. It's work. And because we don't live in a yidishland [Yiddish context, lit. "Yiddish country"], right, in a full environment -- for an adult who's smart and fluent and spontaneous, there is an 66:00awkwardness to expressing oneself, to feeling competent, to feeling brave about representing this culture. But the only way that it's going to persist is in that courage. And it's a lot to ask of people. But they have every right. And in a way, they have a responsibility if they want to take that on. And I wish for them that kind of courage and recklessness -- you know, to just throw themselves at it and to own it. Because, you know, the culture needs them. There is no yidishland, there will be no Yiddish culture makers after a certain, you know, 67:00point in time who were born in a fully functioning Yiddish world. And it is a crazy project to try to live and create something of this culture. But there are all kinds of sources for receiving it and for participating. And it's a generous community. So, you know, people will be -- will continue to be invited in. The project is hard, and -- but I think that it fits the project of Jewish life. 68:00What I love about Yiddish culture, what I love about modern Jewish culture, is its golesdikkayt [diasporic nature], is its off-balance quality. I think there's an enormous opportunity to live in that modesty, where you're not, you know, culturally dominant, and where the culture needs your energy and needs your desire and needs your participation.

PK:A sheynem dank [Thank you very much].

AC:Nishto far vos [You're welcome].

[END OF INTERVIEW]